Birds of Paradise

by Diana Abu-Jaber

  On her way out, Felice slips through a clot of Danish tourists, six-footers with hair the whiteness of candle tips and lashless ice eyes. She notices that fifteen-year-old Irma (pronounced Ear-ma) and her thirty-two-year-old mother-agent, Pax, also happen to be there. They started showing up on go-sees last year. Pax sits on the love seat with her gray-tipped bulimic’s teeth. She clutches on her lap a lavishly ugly double-buckled Fendi croc purse. Irma reclines in one of the store’s hiked-up dentist’s chairs and gazes into the distance as Maurice spray-tats a ten-color Hawaiian Tropics Betty Page down the length of her leg. Felice feels a flash of anger: since when is Irma getting Felice’s modeling work? Duffy, still at the front counter bantering with a couple of guys in navy and white Lauren, notices her glare, “She got here first.” He shrugs.

  Pax smirks and singsongs at the ceiling, “Somebody’s getting street-kid skin.”

  Felice’s mind darkens, her thoughts turn into ropy strands; she thinks of pointing out Irma’s speedball shivers. Then she notices that Pax is hunched forward, holding her daughter’s knobby hand. Felice stares a moment. She turns away, pushing through the shop and out the glass door.

  LINCOLN ROAD GLITTERS with reflections—display windows, doors, kiosks. As she walks, the street becomes a flicker book of images. In sixth grade, Hannah taught her to let her eyes unfocus and detach herself from the public gaze: “Don’t ever look at people—they have to look at you.” Felice has always relied on her reflection for consolation—beauty her only certainty. She walks up to the rectangular mirrored column flanking a gelato store. There’s a faint shadow ringing each eye, a crease at the corners of her lips, and her neck juts forward at an unappealing angle she’d never noticed before. Plunged into a black mood, Felice stares down the length of Lincoln Road: everywhere, it seems, are girls and their mothers. She passes the tables at the bookstore café, where a waiter in an ankle-length half-apron stops and watches her. Annoyed, she returns his look. Then she feels the bottom of her stomach drop: The date with her mother. Felice looks at the table where her mother probably waited for hours. How could she forget? She squeezes her eyes shut, presses fingertips against the corners so hard that white phosphene ghosts leap inside her eyelids. Stupid. Stupid.

  She feels she is falling into a canyon of vaporous sadness. She walks deeper into the shopping corridor, the jangle of voices, electronic music broadcast from the boutiques, and the hooded wash of trade winds and palms. She becomes angry with herself for her sadness. Sorrow is a luxury, like that of home and school—like living in the gentle, indoor world.

  SHE USED TO FEEL concerned about keeping up, knowing things like who the prime minister of England was, or what war was happening where. For a time, she tried going into the libraries—for the comforting quiet, the soft furniture—as well as for the books. But librarians were more eagle-eyed than teachers or police. They knew instantly who was actually working on a school project and who was just another street rat.

  Two sisters used to run the small south branch of the Miami Beach library, Ms. Vera and Ms. Hoff. They let Felice stay and read all day long. They tolerated a limited amount of napping in the padded chairs. Ms. Hoff showed Felice how to set up an email account and how to browse online for news and current events. Ms. Vera gave Felice novels: Dubliners; Pride and Prejudice; The Sun Also Rises; Catch-22; Beloved. One day, Felice came across a novel on the Recommended Fiction shelf. It was about a man who was obsessed with young girls—nymphets. Hannah had used that word. When they had Mr. Rendell for orchestra, Hannah had said, he loves nymphets—watch out. As Felice read, the book began to bother her. She was angry with the show-offy language, some of which she couldn’t follow. But the story—about this babyish girl who fell into an old man’s clutches—captivated and horrified her and filled her with near-sensory memories.

  “The kids at this school think they’re so great,” Hannah drawled. It was a week before Thanksgiving—Felice’s favorite time of year. They were lying in the east field, the air vibrating with late heat, the grass warm and crackling under their legs. “I can’t stand this place—I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.”

  Felice held her hand up so sunlight glowed peach and gold in the web between her fingers. Recently Felice’s friend Bella told her, with affected dismay, about a rumor going around that ever since she’d met Hannah, Felice felt that she was “too good” for the rest of them. They were starting to feel, Bella sniffed, that Hannah had a real “attitude.” Felice lowered her hand and squinted at Hannah, “So where you gonna go that’s so much better?”

  Propped up on her elbows beside Felice, Hannah toyed with a ribbon of Felice’s hair. “Nowhere. Were you aware, by the way, that Rendell is madly in love with you?”

  “Okay, that’s gross.” Felice clapped a hand over her eyes. “Lizard-Face. Yucky-do.”

  “Oh yeah?” Hannah breathed, leaning so close Felice could smell mint gum. “Well, guess what? You own that dude.”

  “Still grossing me out.”

  “Maybe we should have him killed,” Hannah said speculatively. “It’s really pretty scummy, the way he checks you out. You know how they did it back home? Some guy starts giving a girl the eyeball . . . and schlerp!” She dragged a finger across her throat.

  Felice giggled, repeating the motion. “Yeah, schlerp to the music man!”

  “Serious,” Hannah said, her face suddenly deadpan. “I saw it done. Ask me what happened to my big sister sometime.”

  “You did not.”

  She just stared hard at Felice, then rolled up to her feet and walked away, throwing back her hair and brushing off the grass, so Felice had to run after her.

  THE BEACH GLISTENS before Felice as she heads down Fourteenth, board banging against her hip. The water looks like melted light, flooding above the horizon. She wades through another berm of afternoon tourism along Ocean Drive, then she’s on the footpath to the beach. She thinks of Emerson saying when you live at the beach, you have to remember to keep looking. She wishes he was there, then turns away, quickly, from the thought.

  Berry and Reynaldo are in their place at the Cove, sitting with Heinrich—a model and crackhead—and Tracey, who looks spent and ugly from too much crystal, and mostly makes her money from stripping and hooking. Felice has seen her sleeping under picnic tables in the early morning—the hour when the craziest, most broken-down people drag shopping carts along the beach walk, trolling the garbage for empties, rinsing themselves at the freshwater showers. The kids sit on ratty towels and jackets, protected by a bluff of beach grass. They’re hunched around a popping, greasy-looking joint. Heinrich sucks smoke through his teeth, shaking his head, exhaling through his nostrils like a dragon. Felice joins them, folding herself onto a shared towel.

  “Got any candy?” Berry asks, eyes watering. “I’m super hungry.”

  “I wish,” Felice says.

  “So you’re hanging out with the Young Aryans now?” Reynaldo asks her. “What’s up with that?” He tilts back his head, the joint hooded under his fingers, cupping a curl of smoke.

  “No Aryans allowed,” Heinrich says. “Not on the beach.” He must have come from a shoot—the woodchip curves of his hair look like they’ve been sprayed with a glittering resin.

  “Whatever, you guys.” Felice shrugs. “I think we broke up or something.”

  A skinny tourist kid in a pair of board shorts leans over the wooden rail. “Hey.” His teeth are very white. “You guys know where I can get some junk?”

  Reynaldo looks at the joint in his hand as if it had suddenly appeared there. Tracey lurches at the tourist. “Fuck off, surfer dick.” She has two vertical lines etched from her nostrils to her lips like parentheses. Everyone but Felice laughs. “Go the fuck back to Cheese-ville,” Tracey adds morosely. “Fuckhead surfer dick.”

  “Jesus, fine, fuck you too,” the tourist says, backing away, then stops and shouts, “Bunch of no-job losers!”

  Reynaldo sighs a wisp of pot smoke and watches it curl in the
air. Berry takes the joint, pinching it between her thumb and index fingers. “This isn’t so bad, Heinrich,” she observes. “I’m getting a buzz. I just wish I had some Twizzlers.”

  The tourist stalks off toward the crowded south end of the beach. Felice sees him stop short once or twice, as if struck by some new, cutting remark to fling at them.

  “So what’s happening, baby?” Berry asks Felice. “I feel like we never see you anymore.” Her heavy-lidded eyes lower, examining Felice. “Is your skinhead nice?”

  “I’m here now, aren’t I?” Felice says, then adds, “Tomorrow’s my birthday.”

  “It’s your birthday, baby?” Reynaldo asks. “That’s insane.”

  Berry kisses the side of Felice’s head. “We’re going out, for sure. We’re getting loaded.”

  “Birthdays,” Tracey says scornfully. “Fuck me.”

  “How old are you?” Heinrich asks Felice.

  She smirks.

  “Old lady,” Reynaldo sings. “Eighteen.”

  “Fuck you,” Tracey says to Reynaldo. “That’s the same age as me.”

  Felice sucks in a breath, on the verge of a laugh. Is she kidding? She studies Tracey. Her skin is mottled and creased and browned, her hair is matted but thick. Tracey sleeps outside, she reminds herself.

  “I’m sixteen,” Heinrich says. “I’m going to be in Milan—or L.A., I guess—by the time I’m twenty. My agent says I’ve got the spring cover of GQ in the bag. But I can’t wait to get into film. I’m done dicking around with modeling.”

  “Sucking dick, more like it,” Tracey says.

  “At least I’ve got a fucking life.”

  “How about I’ll beat your fucking brains in you don’t shut the fuck up,” Tracey says, and takes a long, crackling hit on the joint.

  Felice stays out on the beach, stoned and half drowsing, watching a bar of sunset glowing like a heated ingot. For a second she sees a gleaming bank of blue color, then a flash of green. It vanishes instantly. She curls up on her side on one of the beach blankets—a fuzzy synthetic with the remnants of a satin border: the sort of blanket that used to lie on a child’s bed. Felice wonders if Emerson saw that green sunset; she closes her eyes, listening to the stoned voices and the rising, gravelly wash of the waves.

  Brian

  THE RIGHT FRAME OF MIND IS LIKE A BETTER ANGLE of light, Brian thinks, it changes everything. Last night, he and Avis sat on the couch, talking about the coming grandchild, ruminating over this newcomer. She put her feet in his lap. For an hour, he had intimations of an earlier life. The first evening in ages that they’d spent together. Old times. The only off note was when he’d raised, again, Stanley’s request for money. Avis had crossed her arms and looked displeased—as if it hurt her somehow. Again she’d said that awful thing, How do we know it’s ours? And Brian had almost said, At this point, I hardly care. He’d dropped the topic. He thought: She doesn’t believe we can afford it.

  He slides his hand along his butter-colored leather briefcase. Downtown Miami glows in his windshield, the morning sun gilding the vines and fronds that border the highway. He strolls from the garage into his office building, hums in the elevator. He taps on his computer. Among a pile of messages from Agathe and Malio, three new emails appear on the screen: Parkhurst@PBI.com, subhead: Acquisitions.

  The sparkling mood dissipates. Parkhurst. Brian considers trying to get in touch with that group—what were they even called? Citizens’ Action Corps for Little Haiti? To say what, exactly? Run? Brian glances up: the lights are on in Fernanda’s office. He tries to direct his attention back to the laptop. To the right of the email box is a stream of news items: Housing Market: Bubble Trouble? 2005: A Bigger Boom Ahead? Competing with Foreign Investors. He clicks over to the live-feed weather channel to see the latest foaming white spiral flicker back and forth over the ocean. A tropical system like an Indian mandala, moseying toward the Caribbean, an announcer saying, “Climate analysts warn that this one looks like a doozy . . .” They always say that.

  He smoothes his hands over his face and tries to imagine some sort of career escape route. Retirement holds no attractions: he’s a mediocre golfer at best, a duffer, and no good at working with his hands. Perhaps he should taper off from head counsel, shoot for something less front-lines, bury himself in the research libraries. He’s secretly imagined hanging out his own shingle, practicing on his own terms—but there is something daunting there. The sort of thing, he imagines, that would keep him awake at night, worrying about those billable hours. He lightly beats at his lowered temples with the flats of his open palms, a dull pressure building behind his eyes, the contents of his skull expanding.

  A warble of corridor sound and Brian looks up to see a splinter of light. Javier in his door. “Aha, you’re here.” Javier taps a folder. “Got a little somethin’—somethin’ to talk to you about.”

  “Not a great time, buddy.” He rubs his forehead.

  “Good, for me neither!” Javier drops into the chair across from Brian’s desk. “In which case, let’s dispense with formalities. Here’s my question: Are you ready for your next million?” He slides the folder on the desk.

  “The what?”

  Javier laughs. “The latest million, bro. To add to the pile.”

  “Pile? You’ve got me confused with sales. I’m a paper-pusher.”

  “Ay, man, listen, I come bearing glad tidings.”

  Brian pushes back against his chair, the apparatus tilting. “Parkhurst send you? About that Blue—whatever—Topaz place?”

  “Coño, man, nobody fucking sent me.” Javier bounces his fist on the padded chair arm. “I’m here because I care about your gringo ass.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Javier holds both hands high, a big shrug. “Just got these listing details on my desk this morning. It’s a little extracurricular something, so no telling on me, okay? I heard about it from Brooksie Martell.”

  “That guy!”

  “Relax—Brooksie’s not attached to this. These guys are new.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Prescott and Filson.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “They were one of the groups in the big Bank Towers. Silent partners. Focusing on prestige projects.” Javier fishes in his suit pocket and draws out a ivory-gray card like a chip of enamel. He hands it to Brian. “They’re working with Shaquille O’Neal and Tom Hanks on a midtown restaurant package.”

  “Hollywood money,” Brian sniffs, tossing the card on his desk.

  “Who cares—old, new, Hollywood—long as it’s green, right? Listen.” Javier rolls forward, resting his forearms on the desk. “This is the real deal, Bry. They’re keeping the offer small and sweet. I know of two other top realtors buying in. Tippy-top.” He cocks his eyebrow. “Sales are limited to eighteen investors total. For the whole damn building. You gotta be invited.”

  Brian smiles, despite himself. Javier has attempted to lure him for years. “Ah. So they’re doing the chosen ones a big favor—letting people hand over money?”

  “What can I tell you? Have to pay to play.” Javier spreads out his hands, a lavish shrug. “They’re gonna call it the Steele Building—nice, huh? They snagged Ira Huntington—he designed it so it’ll look like a solid piece of stainless steel. It’s near the Indian Creek—non-oceanfront—they nabbed the property practically gratis—stole it from the Miami Beach geriatric crowd, and”—one hand tilts—“passing the savings along.” He picks up the folder. “You won’t believe the plans—cathedral ceilings, wet and dry bars, private theaters, tiered terraces. Each unit gets its own maid’s quarters.”

  “Maid’s quarters. Jesus.”

  Javier flips the folder open, one finger tracing the floor plans, tapping the brochure. “The units are going to be a-freaking-mazing—I just read the specs—the floors are getting this pink marble quarried right from Carrara. Viking ranges and Sub-Zeros—the real stuff, not the mass-market crap.”

  “Heaven for
bid,” Brian says. “And what are these miracles going for?”

  “You get in for two point three, deep-deep preconstruction discount.”

  “Two point three million? Are they dipped in gold?”

  “You’re buying floors, man. Two units per. Two-floor minimum per investor. And you’ll be able to sell each unit separately. We’ll turn them around, I kid you not, for five, maybe six each. And that buyer’s gonna get a screaming deal and make a bundle. Come on, Bry, you know the game. I’m not telling you anything new here.”

  Brian sinks his chin onto the heel of his palm. “Where’s that three million supposed to come from?”

  “Two point three,” he says, “You don’t have two point three? Are you shitting me? You need me to open a home equity line for you, Brian?”

  “Who else is buying in?”

  “A few local big shots, some overseas clients.”

  “What? Like, Saudis?”

  “The client roster’s almost full. You want in, you’ve got till close of business tomorrow. Latest.”

  Brian drops his hand on the Times and sits back, regarding Javier. He’s worked late hours with this man for sixteen years; they’ve whacked racquet balls and trudged across greens together; their families know each other, they have annual shared rituals: the Miami Ballet’s Nutcracker Suite; Mango Festival at the tropical garden. Brian leans forward, his weight resting on the desktop. “Everything’s tied up in other investments. And yes, Jav, it’d be quite a feat for me to get ahold of that much.”

  Javier’s expression fades slightly. “What’re you saying? You can’t be bothered to move money out of those products getting you—what—ten—hell, say twenty—percent for a deal that’ll bring you maybe even a hundred percent return? Listen, hijo—there’s already big wallets getting in line behind the first buyers.”