South by Southeast (2 page)

For the next two hours, while patrons came and went and the orchestra packed up its music, Escobar talked to me about his project.
Freaknik
was a zombie movie only on the surface, he said. “This film, at its heart, is about love and redemption in the face of unspeakable evil,” Escobar said, tapping the script. “The ultimate trial. Like me, Tennyson, you've known trials. That's why my vision won't be complete without you.”

April and my father often said everything happens for a reason, but I never believed it until that moment. My worst experiences had led me to a table with a stranger who was willing to help me build a future in Hollywood. It wasn't just the best night of my career; it was one of the best of my life.

If only I had known what real horror would be waiting in Miami.

All of us are the walking dead.

SALSA IS THE
sound of Miami, and Miami changed everything. The Magic City's betrayal follows me with music.

Salsa was blaring the night of Marcela's birthday, when I was showing off the fruits of the dance skills that had once been a part of my trade. Dancing comes easily to me, so I was delighting Marcela's sisters and girlfriends by twirling them two at a time—one in front, one in back—spinning and weaving through the intricate beat like a black Fred Astaire. Anybody watching me would have thought I'd been raised in the heart of Havana or San Juan.
Baile!

I hate to brag, but this brother can dance his ass off in any language.

That night, my life's pieces were still in place. When I have trouble sleeping, I hold that snapshot in my head, every detail close enough to touch. My patio was packed with Marcela Ruiz's relatives, aunts and cousins and half-siblings of all ages and sizes, dancing with equal fervor. Up and down the street, the night was lit by candy-store colors.

I didn't know anyone at the party. I didn't even have a date. Didn't matter.

Marcela was my father's girlfriend, although
girlfriend
is a funny
word for a woman in her fifties whose boyfriend is pushing eighty. Marcela coaxed my father back from the dead. She had become his “special friend” when he had his stroke and ended up in a nursing home years before. Marcela was an RN, and she'd taken a liking to Dad before he could speak or move, appreciating what was left. At the time, I saw nothing but a husk. Marcela gave me my father back, and Dad and I were doing better the second time around. LAPD Captain (Ret.) Richard Allen Hardwick was a cool-ass guy.

With each passing month, a part of me braced for the next time Dad would go to a hospital. I'd believed he was as good as gone at the nursing home, and I'd never been so wrong. When the time came, it would be the worst day of my life. I could tell already.

Dad couldn't dance the way he used to—he could barely walk—but he was dressed for the dance floor in white linen slacks and matching guayabara. He bobbed his head to the salsa beat, walking with the polished wooden Ethiopian cane my ex had given him as a gift. Dad worked his cane like a fashion statement. Somehow Dad had found peace with his limitations. When I doubted miracles, I remembered Dad rising from his body's ashes.

Dad hovered over his party like a movie director. “Hey!” he barked at a middle-aged man near the serving cart. “Get that damn pig away from the dance floor.”

A wide-hipped woman turned, shooting him a nasty look over her shoulder. While her hips rocked with exuberant worship to Rubén Blades, she'd nearly sent the serving cart and its whole roasted
cerdo
flying to the floor. The pig was a traditional Cuban meal Dad had ordered for Marcela, and the skewer was rammed through the porcine mouth, emerging on the other end. Made me want to swear off pork. Dad had ordered enough food to feed a village.

“Mister, do you speak
inglés
?” Dad said, raising his voice. “Move it,
por favor
.”

After two years of speech therapy, people could understand almost everything Dad said. Marcela's cousin Fernando, a neurosurgeon from West Palm Beach I'd introduced to Dad an hour before, didn't appreciate being mistaken for the help. He stared at Dad with a combination of pity and loathing.

I gently led Dad away from Marcela's cousin. “Sorry, man,” I whispered to Fernando. “You know how it is.”

“No,” Fernando said, and sipped from his mojito. “I don't know how it is. In fact, I'd very much like to understand, but . . .” He shrugged, leaving the thought hanging.

Like everyone in Marcela's family, he wondered why she was wasting her last hunting years with an old man on a cop's pension. Dad was old enough to be her father. If I hadn't been so confused about it myself, Fernando's attitude might have pissed me off. Dad was seventy-six, and he didn't even have charm on his side.

“El corazón quiere lo que quiere,”
I said, repeating the phrase Marcela had spoken when I'd finally gotten up the nerve to ask her.
The heart wants what it wants
.

Fernando huffed a curse in Spanish and moved away, tired of conversation. I couldn't blame him. That single phrase had justified endless reckless behavior and heartaches. A copout. Maybe Marcela had daddy issues. Maybe she had a fetish for wrinkles. Maybe she only felt safe when she was in control. Or maybe . . .

Or hell, maybe she was in love with him. I tried to count Dad's good qualities from Marcela's point of view: He stayed home, never running the streets. He didn't talk much, so he was a good listener. And he threw a hell of a birthday party, apparently—even if the best he'd done for me was bringing cupcakes to day care.

Dad had created a Cubana's wonderland for Marcela, with white Christmas lights strung across my South Beach hotel's patio and balcony like stars hanging above the beachfront. Her favorite restaurant had catered a feast, with roast pig, black beans and
rice, fried plantains, and fried yucca. A five-member salsa band was working the crowd of fifty into a sweat. Dad had even sprung for a butterfly-shaped ice sculpture, although the painstaking creation wasn't faring well in the warm, humid fall night.

Marcela had been slimming down for the trip to Miami for weeks. She'd squeezed into a short silver glitter dress that was snug in all the right places and showed off the calves she'd won in her new morning jogging regimen. Marcela Ruiz had seemed plain when I met her, but under my father's care, she had blossomed. Dad stared at her as if she were perfection in female form.

But what happens in five years? Or one or two? Six months?
I didn't like those thoughts, but it was hard to avoid them when Dad's prescription bottles could fill a Hefty bag. Nothing in his body worked without jumper cables. Marcela understood that better than anyone.

“How much did all this cost, anyway?” I asked Dad. Until he'd met Marcela, he'd been the most frugal man I'd ever known. Even my fifth-grade cupcakes had been on sale, two days past fresh.

“None of your business,” Dad said. He looked nervous, fumbling in the pocket of his slacks as if he'd misplaced something. A medicine bottle? He took nitroglycerine tablets for his painful angina, which mimicked heart-attack symptoms. Perspiration beaded his forehead.

“You all right?”

His least favorite question. “I'm no damn child,” Dad said. He nearly tripped over his feet as he pivoted away from the catering table, but I didn't move to steady him.

I wandered to the balcony with my bottle of Red Stripe and stared out at Ocean Drive's collection of art deco hotels lit up in candy-shop neon. I'd spent too much money renting the two-bedroom suite for my shoot, even at the “friend” price from a woman I knew who'd made a fortune when South Beach flipped from Retirement City to Vacation Haven in the nineties, But what the
hell? My family was celebrating my casting in a horror film as if they thought I was headed for the A list. Chela, the teenager I'd rescued from my former madam, had graduated from high school and would be going to college . . . eventually. We were on our first family vacation—maybe our last. I wanted it to count. I had money sitting in my bank account after winning a sexual harassment settlement against producing powerhouse Lynda Jewell. Long story, and it was far behind me.

Neon. South Beach. The salty-sweet ocean air.
Perfecto.

Beyond the neon's glare, my beachfront perch was close enough for me to make out the moonlit Atlantic, as still as a sheet of black glass. Pinpricks of lights from distant cruise ships or cargo vessels twinkled in the distance, but the water was undisturbed.

Even on the hottest summer days, Southern California's ocean seems immune from the sun. Now it was fall, and I went swimming practically every day in Miami, often after dark, when the beaches emptied. Heaven. I didn't need a wild ride; a calm, warm bath felt just fine.

Watching the ocean made me think of my ex, April. I almost reached for my cell phone, until I remembered that April was still at work for another hour on the West Coast. I felt itchy if I didn't talk to her every night. How had I let myself end up in a long-distance relationship?
Only you're not in a relationship anymore—remember?

One day, April and I would have to put a name to what we had. Friends with Fringe? Lovers Lite? We'd collected enough pain over four years to make us both wary of labels, but we couldn't keep hiding from each other forever.
You're the one who's hiding,
I corrected myself. We both knew the next move was up to me. If April nudged me and I pulled back, we would never have another chance to salvage whatever we were trying to build.

“Isn't true love beautiful?” Chela said, startling me from behind. I thought she'd taken up mind reading, until I saw her gazing
toward Dad and Marcela. They both stood close to the martyred pig, swaying gently to the band's
bolero
. Dad wobbled, but he didn't fall.

Chela had just turned eighteen, nearly as tall as I was, with a swimsuit model's lithe curves, a scalp full of wild corkscrew ringlets, and a sun-browned complexion that kept observers guessing about her ethnicity. In Miami, most people assumed she was Cuban. Modeling scouts had approached Chela as she strolled South Beach's streets with me, but so far, I'd managed to talk her out of taking any meetings. I'd argued that the scouts weren't from Elite or Ford, so why settle for anything less than the best? In truth, as a college dropout who'd left school to pursue acting, I knew that if she put school off to do modeling shoots, she would never bother to go to class.

But I felt guilty discouraging her. She wasn't avoiding the scouts because of any advice from me; she just didn't see the same beautiful face in the mirror that the scouts did. Chela was slowly emerging from the cocoon of drab, bulky clothes where she'd been hiding. Ocean Drive Chela wore bikinis and sheer fabrics, but not the girl I knew at home.

“So, what's true love?” I said. “Drop some wisdom on me.”

“You're asking me?” Chela said. “Please.”

“You're the one who said it.”

Chela shrugged. Instead of looking at me, she stared toward the ocean. “Loving someone no matter how scary it is,” she said. “No matter what anybody says.”

After Chela's adolescent liaisons with johns twice her age, her definition of true love could excuse almost any toxic behavior. I used to live by the same credo, and my old life had nothing to do with love. She saw the skepticism in my face.

Chela gave me a cutting look. “Hey, you asked. Not my fault if you can't deal with the answer.”

She started to walk away but stopped in her tracks when Dad
rang his martini glass with a knife. The patio slowly hushed except for the slow-moving traffic on Ocean Drive below us, laughter, bicycle bells, and revving motors.

Chela grabbed my arm, excited. “It's time,” she whispered, grinning.

Once again, I was the last to hear almost everything under my roof. I'd been invisible to Dad when I was Chela's age, and she was his new BFF. Call me childish, but I felt a sting of annoyance.

Then I was captivated by the sound of Dad's voice; he spoke slowly, careful to enunciate, all evidence of his stroke gone as he rediscovered the basso voice that had made him a coveted public speaker. “Marcela's the birthday girl today, but I'm hoping she'll be good enough to give me the gift of a lifetime,” he said.

Dad sounded like himself again for the first time in years. He suddenly clasped Marcela's hands and stared into her eyes. I suspected what was coming, and I doubted the night's fairy tale would have a happy ending.

“Marcela Consuela Ruiz . . .” Dad said, “Will you marry me?”

The gasps that followed were more shock than delight. I think I gasped, too, at least to myself. The night froze. Marcela's face was slack. When I'd once joked to Marcela that she would be my Evil Stepmother one day, she'd looked me dead in the eye and said, “I'm a romantic, Tennyson, but I'm also a realist.”