Miami Midnight (20 page)

Crissette rolled over on her back, holding the bikini top to her breasts to keep it from falling. Gaby thought that Crissette, with her graceful dusky body, looked more like a professional model than the amateur volunteers she’d been shooting the past few hours. While they’d been at the St. Laurent shop Crissette had bought two summer outfits that, even though on sale, had been dazzlingly expensive, worth several weeks of her salary. The day before, Crissette had bought lunch at an expensive waterside restaurant, picking up the check for both of them because Gaby didn’t have the money to spend. But in spite of the bursts of extravagance, Crissette was noticeably restless and edgy, and certainly not very happy. She never mentioned David Fothergill.

“Hey, Gabrielle, is your announcement okay?” she asked lazily. “How does it look?”

“It looks all right.” Gaby studied the photograph that had been taken when she’d been working in Florence. She hadn’t realized how much she’d changed. The young woman whose photo would appear in the
Times-Journal
wedding announcements column looked like a stranger with her prim smile and pale hair scraped back from her face. She had to admit she certainly wasn’t the same person she’d been a little over two months ago. She now had an entirely new wardrobe and a new hairstyle. She even had a considerable tan. Her gaze dropped to the words below her photograph. “Mrs. Paul Aston Collier of Miami announces the engagement of her daughter, Victoria Gabrielle, to Dodson Flagler Brickell III, also of Miami.”

Well, she thought, sighing, it was done. The announcement of her engagement would be read by the
Times-Journal
’s several hundred thousand readers in the Greater Miami area on Sunday, including all of Paul and Jeannette Collier’s friends and Old Miami acquaintances, as well as Dodd’s and his family’s.

“The bride-elect is the daughter of the late Paul Aston Collier, sportsman and founder of the Marathon Ocean Racing Cup event, granddaughter of Aston George Collier, a pioneer South Florida developer, and a grandniece of General Robert R. Pierce of St. Augustine. Miss Collier attended Ransom Country Day School in Coconut Grove and graduated from Miami Beach High School. She has a degree in art history from the University of Florida and until recently worked as research assistant for the Ohio State Fine Arts project in Florence, Italy. She is currently employed as fashion writer for the Miami
Times-Journal
newspaper.”

Gaby had shown her typed engagement copy to her mother several days ago, taking pains to describe how and where Dodd had proposed to her, there in the Brickell Tower restaurant. Her mother had paid no attention at all. She was absorbed in a story in the Sunday paper about Frank Sinatra’s recent visit to Miami Beach hotels, the scenes of his former glory. “He’s such an old man,” Jeannette had lamented, “in his seventies now. I just can’t believe it!”

Gaby had left her mother with the paper. Outside the room a sympathetic nurse had told her not to worry. This indifference, the self-absorbed distraction, was fairly normal for addiction withdrawal. But it hadn’t made Gaby feel any happier.

“The bridegroom-elect,” she read on, “is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Dodson Flagler Brickell Jr., of Miami and St. Croix. He attended St. Paul’s Academy and the University of Miami, and has a law degree from the University of Virginia. He is currently a junior partner in the Miami firm of Brickell, Masterson and Brickell, serves on the board of directors of the South Florida Coastal Bank and Trust Company, and is finance officer for Palm-Mar Development Corporation. Mr. Brickell is a member of the Biscayne Yacht Club, the Eldorado Cotillion, and Polo Bath and Tennis Club. Wedding plans to be announced.”

Before she’d left the hospital Gaby had gone to see the cashier about her mother’s monthly bill. She had been stunned when she was told it had been taken care of. Dodd Brickell had paid for everything. And was continuing to do so, because her mother’s health insurance had run out.

She put the paper in her lap and closed her eyes, feeling the sunshine hot on her face. Dodd was a rock, a tower of strength. The past two weeks he had accepted all her excuses about the pressures of her job, her mother’s hospitalization, her tiredness, with sweet understanding. Now that they were engaged she knew Dodd wanted intimacy. After all, hadn’t he been her first lover? Hadn’t she always made it clear she was in love with him? But Gaby couldn’t bring herself to go beyond a few hurried good-night kisses. Her own deceit, her terrible guilt, were making her miserable. Still, she knew that no one, not even someone as patient as Dodd, would believe her lame excuses forever.

She had told herself over and over there was no earthly reason why she shouldn’t love Dodd now as she had for most of her life and be ecstatically happy that he loved her too. Except that reason was named James Santo Marin.

She felt sick about it. She’d never thought of herself as an immoral person. Could she ever forget or forgive herself for what she had done? Sunday’s paper would announce to the world that she was going to marry Dodd Brickell, but she’d gone to bed with someone else, a well-known man from Miami’s upper-crust Latin society with reputedly shady connections. A trigger-tempered, tempestuous playboy, a man any woman would have sense enough to stay away from! But from the time she’d lain in James Santo Marin’s arms and he’d made love to her, everything else had ceased to exist. Even now, she thought, shuddering, he haunted her dreams, disturbed her sleep with the ghostly memories of his passionate fire.

Crissette had been watching her. “Gabrielle, you look like you’re proofreading an obit. What’s the problem?”

“Nothing.” Gaby stuffed the proof page back in her purse. “I guess getting engaged is just more complicated than I thought.”

Dodd had called her several times about plans for their engagement party, and each time Gaby had told him that whatever his mother wanted to do about a dinner dance in Palm Beach was just fine. She cringed from the realization that marrying Dodd wasn’t going to be quick or simple. It would take months, and she was surprised by her own sudden urgency. Frankly, she longed to get it over with.

Crissette came over to sit down beside her. “You can’t fool me, honey, your head’s in some other place these days.” She looked puzzled. “That Cuban family come back to the apartment? Hey, your mother’s okay, isn’t she?”

Gaby couldn’t meet her eyes. “No, the Escuderos haven’t come back. I suppose Angel and Elena are gone for good. As for my mother, she decided all by herself to sign up for the Mount Sinai addiction rehab program. So that’s one problem out of the way for a while.” She managed a smile. “We don’t even have to worry about the bill. Dodd—my fiancé—is lending us the money.”

Crissette was still frowning. “Then what is it? Prenuptial jitters? Gabrielle, I never saw somebody who should be happy look so down in the mouth. Kid, you need to ventilate.” Crissette was fond of psycho-jargon. “Relate to what’s traumatizing you. You can trust me, honey.”

Gaby laughed shakily. The one time she’d “ventilated” her problems she’d been in the
babalawo
’s office and the results had been disastrous. The
Santería
high priest had called James Santo Marin. And
that
had ended with a catastrophic afternoon in the garage apartment.

“Crissette,” Gaby said abruptly, “are you in love with David Fothergill?”

The other woman looked startled. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Because he’s in love with you. No, David didn’t say anything to me,” she added quickly. “I just wondered if you knew.”

Crissette’s face had gone stiff. “I’ve got no future with David Fothergill. In spite of what you might think, I’m not ready for the old cliché of the black woman supporting a no-good black man in return for a lot of lovin’. Just like”—her voice was cool—”I’ve never been into tap dancing or eating watermelon.”

“Oh, Crissette. I didn’t say—”

“No,
I
did,” the other woman said sharply. “Look, Gabrielle, like it or not, I’m a middle-class, professional black. My family wants the best for me. David Fothergill is an illegal alien who’s got no job, no money, and is probably sleeping in the streets right now.” She looked away toward the brilliant vista of sun and water beyond them. “If I love him that doesn’t make a damned bit of difference. I’m not going to change my mind.”

She got up abruptly and gathered her discarded clothes and shoes.

“Crissette, is David a poet?” Gaby asked. “Has he ever said anything to you about it?”

The photographer snorted. “Baby, all those calypso cats are poets. That is, when they’re not being the one genius musician the world’s been waiting for, or the new Michelangelo. I’ve heard that line, too. But all they’re looking for is some loving woman to pay the bills.”

Gaby had no business asking, but with what had happened to her the past few weeks, she felt she had to know. There was no one else to turn to. “Crissette, was—was the attraction between you and David mostly ... ah,
sex
?”

“
What
?” Crissette turned to her. “Gabrielle, what’s bothering you? Hey, you’re not just marrying this Brickell dude because you can’t stay out of the sack with him, are you? Jeez, honey, he doesn’t look the type, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

“Oh, no, not Dodd.” Gaby had turned bright pink. “I’m serious. I want to know,” she went on desperately, “if you can put aside a—a powerful attraction, forget someone you don’t want outside of ... wonderful sex. Someone who wouldn’t make you happy anyway. Like David,” she blundered on. “A relationship that couldn’t possibly have a future. You know, make yourself forget the whole thing, walk away from it and”—her voice cracked—”be happy.”

Crissette stood with both hands on her hips. “I’m not following any of this. Okay, Gabrielle, you want to tell me about it?”

Gaby shook her head, too overcome with misery to speak. Her story on the Coral Gables fashion show had appeared, complete with the sidebar on James Santo Marin. Looking over the Modern Living section, someone in State News had commented idly that the good-looking Prince of Coral Cables was the same guy who’d had a Miami Crime Commission investigation of his business affairs last year, looking for possible drug connections. The remark had sent a cold chill down Gaby’s spine.

It’s all wrong, she told herself. You’ve got to stop thinking about him!

Crissette sat down beside her on the bench, still holding her shoes in her hand. After a long silence she said, “Yeah, I guess it’s possible to forget somebody you love.”

They sat for a while staring at the sea.

“But not too damned probable,” Crissette added.

Jack Carty had noticed the announcement in the Modern Living section. “If I had known you were going to get engaged,” he said, his face buried in letters to the editor, “I would have asked you out to lunch sooner.”

Gaby, going over the story on the Rive Gauche evening wear, noticed Crissette’s photographs hadn’t turned out at all well. That was strange. Crissette was tops on the fashion beat. Then she realized what Jack had said. “You were going to ask
me
out to lunch?”

He put down the Sunday sheets and handed her a stack of brightly colored brochures on the Greater Miami Annual Summer Festival. On the top packet he had written: “Cover the fashion angle. Interview who’s wearing what. Check with society page.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, ducking his head again, “it looks like I missed my chance.”

Gaby went back to her desk and sat down. Jack Carty’s talk about taking her out to lunch was probably a quirk of her imagination. She pulled off his note and stuck it on her calendar. As she thumbed through the festival press material, she remembered her terror just a few short weeks ago at her first press releases, wondering what, exactly, she was supposed to do with them. Now she knew at least half of all press releases were merely sales pushes for fashionwear or accessories and had nothing of interest for a feature story. They were filed in the wastepaper basket.

The Miami Summer Festival, however, was different. The event, sponsored the last week in August by the Tourist Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, and leading civic organizations, had been invented several years ago to counteract Miami’s growing reputation as a crime capital, and to attract tourism during the “dead season,” when most of south Florida’s attractions came to a sunbaked standstill.

This year the week-long celebration featured a Miami Dolphins preseason game in the Orange Bowl, a world-class pro tennis tourney in Miami Shores, a Goombay-calypso festival on the downtown Miami bayfront, and a street dance and arts bazaar in Coconut Grove. The crowning event was Saturday night’s Hospital Foundation Costume Masked Ball at the Deering estate, Vizcaya, the world-famed Italian Renaissance-style mansion and gardens that were now a historical park.

Vizcaya was expected to be jammed with not only Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach socialites, but a sizable jet-set representation from New York, Newport, Southampton, London, Rome, and Paris.

Gaby opened the brochure with interest. All this had started while she was in Europe, but Vizcaya was the perfect place to have a spectacular festival ball. This year two dance bands, one for Latin music, and a star-studded concert with singer-television star Don Johnson of
Miami Vice
, Linda Ronstadt, Julio Iglesias, and opera star Placido Domingo, would be followed by a gigantic fireworks display over Biscayne Bay with Miami Beach and Key Biscayne as a backdrop.

The press release listed the prominent names of the Costume Ball Organizing Committee, most of whom Gaby recognized. Her elbows on the desk, she cradled her head in her hands as she read the list. With the announcement of her engagement in the newspaper Sunday, the costume ball assignment meant she’d be renewing old acquaintances, trying to avoid the subject of her mother, explaining how she’d become the fashion writer for the
Times-Journal
—and dealing with surprise, felicitations, and a flood of questions.