Reading with Rasta: Icarus Over Collins
Icarus Over Collins by Hector Duarte, Jr. Chapter One.
Bailey Cohen
There he is. Sandy Mangual doing his acrobatics high above Collins Avenue. Eleven stories up. Again. How many goddam times are me and his mom going to have to talk to him? He’s gotten good at swinging like a pendulum; one, two, then at the peak of the third swing, swoosh. Releasing his grip and landing on the balcony like someone out of Cirque du Soleil.
Behind me, Gabe says, “That kid’s going to slip one day and bye bye, birdie.”
I was so entranced by Sandy, I hadn’t even heard him. “I’ll call Ximena later.”
“Couldn’t wait till dinner?” he says, tapping my glass.
“Just warming up before the girls get here.”
“They’re coming over again? It’s only Tuesday, and the three of you are partying like it’s a forever weekend. Some of us work tomorrow.”
“Wear the noise cancellers I bought you.”
“That’s not the point.”
Sandy is still out on the balcony, patting down his jeans and checking himself before going inside. I yell across Collins at the top of my lungs. “I’m telling your mom.”
“He can’t hear you, Bailey.”
Of course he can’t. With the distance and constant honking traffic beneath us.
I mirror Sandy as he steps back inside, closes the hurricaneimpact sliding-glass door behind him.
“He’s got balls dangling like that,” I whisper.
“Until the day he doesn’t. More importantly. I don’t want your friends coming over tonight.” Gabe pulls the glass from my hand. “You have to control this shit.” He swallows it down hard enough I hear the gulp and makes to the kitchen.
“Come on, party pooper. Remember when we used to party all the time, party all the time, party all the tie-ime?”
He stops but does not turn toward me. “Yeah, back when you still worked full tie-ime.”
What a dick. He keeps walking so I jog up behind him, scoop his feet out from under. He hits the floor like an anvil. Since high school, I‘ve been doing this shit to people and it’s never worked before. I mean, he drops so hard, I laugh. A nervous laugh, because I have no idea what else to do. Gabe does not like to be laughed at.
He grabs the glass that miraculously did not shatter. “Go ahead; do what you do best. Ignore the issue completely. I’m going to be in my room and you three better not wake me or I’m kicking all of your drunk asses out of here. I swear to God.”
I turn and stare again across at the balcony where minutes earlier a sixteen-year-old dangled high over Miami Beach. I get close enough to place my palms against the hurricane-impact windows. I’m doing this as a meditative exercise. To avoid going off on Gabe.
All right. So, I don’t work a full-time job that requires an eight-hour grind. Sure, I like to drink. More than most, maybe. But I’m up every morning to meet clients. Okay, client, singular, which doesn’t bring in a full-time income. Yet. But it will. A year and a half back, Gabe swore up and down he was fine with it as long as I chipped in whatever possible for utilities, cooked, and kept the house clean. None of his self-righteousness about it back then. A lot happens in a year.
This place is too amazing not to show off. It keeps me calm. All I have to do is walk outside, listen to the waves crash, the cars honking, smell the salty air, watch the waning dusk make tall torches out of the light posts snaking their way north on Collins and up through Sunny Isles. Worlds apart: a year back inside that matchbox-sized efficiency way out West in Miccousoukee Country, wondering what the fuck a bachelor’s degree in physical therapy was good for. I swore then I’d show off a place like this if I could. Now that I can, why not?
The girls are surprised I put up with it. There’s an ulterior motive. Gabe’s so fucking hot and his parents own the place, so he barely has to work for this high-rise condo with a view of the ocean out one panoramic window and a lengthy expanse of Collins out the other. No more tiny studio that requires walking through the bathroom to get to my bed. I can afford a wine bottle a night. That was a dream one year back. Now it’s reality, and I’m celebrating because Bailey Cohen is all grown up.
I’m half a bottle in while Clarissa and Hanna are still at a glass and a half. They’ve been nursing the whole night, petrified to wake Gabe. Constantly shushing and whispering at me to keep it down, pointing at the wall dividing us from him. Loving how scared they are, I ramp up the ante with some music. Who better to complement a drinking session than Amy Winehouse? Her nighttime Glastonbury set. I’ve got every beautiful stumble, mumble, and drunken rant memorized.
It’s funny to watch the girls inch their ways toward leaning, forcing arm stretches and fake yawns. I crank it up just when Amy punches an eager fan who reaches for the mic.
“Turn it d—” Hannah starts.
Before she can finish, Gabe’s in his rumpled PJs, blearyeyed, leaning a tight fist against the drywall. “Will you shut that fucking shit off?”
Clarissa tilts her head toward the door, signaling Hanna. “We’d better—”
“Don’t fucking move. You two have been needing to hear this for a minute,” Gabe says.
I stand between them. “Don’t talk to them like that.”
He smirks and turns to me. It’s a smile like he’s been waiting for this, some time coming. “Know what, Jane fucking Fonda? Keep drinking like this. Watch what happens when your metabolism catches up to you.” He turns back to the girls. “And you two cunts.”
The wine bottle shatters just under his fist, splashing the wall and his pajama bottoms purple. I purposely missed. Believeme, had I wanted to, I could have sliced it across his temple. Hada right mind to.
Gabe tightens his fists and lunges after us. I yell at them to run, keeping caboose until we get to the door, and I slam it behind him.
Gabe’s fist pounds against the door like a jack hammer. “Don’t come back up here. Any of you.”
I pound back, because fuck him.
Hanna and Clarissa take off.
There is no noise from inside. Looking down at the door crack, I see when he snaps off the light.
His patience is thinning. Last time, he dumped all my booze down the drain, and I promised never to do it again. By the end of the week, I’d found a reason to celebrate and tip a glass again; he didn’t complain when I told him I had a new client: Ximena Mangual, the prominent telenovela actress who lives across the street, mother of Sandy Mangual.
Fifteen minutes pass. That asshole locked me out. I keep things civil and knock again; nothing. In seconds, my phone chimes. You’re not sleeping here tonight. Figure it out, guapa.
I lose it and start banging on the door, yelling at him not to be such a selfish motherfucker. I mean, I’m really trying to kick through.
Sheldon, the next-door neighbor, peeks his head out. “Don’t you two work? I’m trying to get some goddam sleep in here. Don’t make me call front desk and have security come up here for whatever domestic dispute you two got going on again.”
“Mind your own fucking business, maricon de mierda!”
Sheldon shakes his head and gently closes the door.
I go down before security comes up.
Bernardo Castillo is waiting for the elevator when I get to the lobby. It’s not the first time he’s been called up there for a Bailey–Gabe row. “¿Todo bien? I was just—” he starts.
“I know. We had another argument. He kicked me out. Can I stay down here tonight?”
“You know that’s not—”
Bernardo is not just security. He’s the building’s jack-of-all trades: maintenance, front desk on long weekends. I’ve even seen him valeting cars. Lately, security’s sent him to intervene during mine and Gabe’s dramatic fallouts. They must’ve noticed we’re close.
“Please. I wouldn’t ask if I had anywhere else to go. Te lo ruego. Por favor.”
“Bailey. No puedes seguir en esto.” Bernardo looks back at Mister Schecter eyeballing us from behind front desk. “Promise me you’ll move around. You can’t stay in one place or me pelan el culo.”
“I’ll stay down here and make some calls.”
“Perfect.”
I walk around the lobby and phone the girls. Hannah answers that they found a nearby bar and are partying it up without drama.
Just when I think I’ve got no place to stay, Bernardo comes back pissed and offers for me to spend the night. Not in the way it sounds. I know that right off. If not, I’d have not taken the offer. Bernardo’s a good guy and I’m grateful. I make sure to let him know by buying a case of beer and having our own happy hour until late in the evening.
Before dozing off for a few hours of sleep, I text Gabe. No worries, found a place to stay. I’ll come pick my shit up this weekend. I complement the message with a shot of the empty beer bottles on the coffee table, because fuck him.
When I wake up the next morning, he’s written back. Be out by tomorrow and slide the key under the door when you’re done.
Me and Bernardo walk back into Las Brisas together and, as inconspicuous as we try to be, Schecter spots us coming into the lobby through the service entrance and immediately waves Bernardo over. I’m hoping I don’t cost this guy his job and already have a confrontation with Schecter up my sleeve in case it comes to that.
I get to Gabe’s door and there’s a note taped there, written in his chicken-scratch scrawl: WORKING EARLY. SHIFT ENDS ABOUT 2. BE GONE BY THEN!
Fucking dickhead. It’s better we don’t get to see one another because we might just make evening news headlines.
I’ll enjoy his place one last time. After coffee percolates, I sit by the window, staring at the expanse of all the beautiful blue water lapping Miami’s sandy shore. A little girl runs away from the water, back toward it, away from it again. Traffic snakes its way through Collins and out to the mainland. So much going on out there. Something about all that action going on without me tells me it’s time to cut out on my own. This needs to happen this way.
That sentiment relaxes me enough to roll a joint I plan on smoking on Gabe’s couch, in the middle of the living room, because fuck him. As I’m licking the end shut, my cellphone alarm rings.
Shit. Ximena Mangual’s session. In the craziness and drama that’s been life the last twenty-four hours, I’d forgotten about my one client, the one who’s going to help me build up the clientele list. Can’t let this big fish get away. Unless I want to be one of the schlubs sitting in traffic, honking their way to a nine-a.m. shift. Time to exercise the frustration away.
Geared up, I get to Ximena’s condo across the street and run the thirteen flights up to Ximena’s floor.
Sandy answers with a huge, sneaky smile on his face, backpack slung across one shoulder, hair wet and tousled. “Hey, Bay.”
“Hey, San.”
“Um. . . Mom’s not here.”
I deflate.
“Fuck. She didn’t call you? They told her last night she had to be in for an early shoot. Sorry, man. I’ll tell her to pay you double next session.”
“It’s cool. Just tell her to let me know when she wants me to come back around.”
“Yup.”
I wedge my foot in the door before he shuts it. “Hey, don’t forget I see you from my window. Stop jumping down from the top balcony.”
“I’m sixteen. Mom doesn’t want to make me a copy of the key till I’m seventeen—one week—so until then. . .”
“Risk your life pretending to be Cliffhanger?”
“What’s that?”
“A movie with Sylvester Stallone.”
“Who?”
“Stop jumping down is all.”
“I leave the balcony door open, come and go as I please. Devon upstairs lets me jump down. What’s the whoop?”
He makes to close the door again. I push it with my fist this time. “Seriously, man. Stop fucking around or I’ll tell her.”
With three conjoined fingers in the air, he pledges scout’s honor. I’ve lied plenty myself. I know he’s blowing smoke, which I’ll be doing momentarily in the middle of Gabe’s beautiful, beachview condo.
I descend the stairs at a dead run. Outside the Landings, I look across the street and up at our condo, Brisas Canarias. God damn, it’s going to be a bitch making a lateral move from a place like this but it’s better than being walled inside a luxury prison.
In a couple hours, all my shit is packed, Gabe’s living room smells like the lot at a Phish show, and to really smoke him out, I’ve made curry chicken for lunch. There’s a sweet satisfaction knowing it’s going to take him days of opening the windows to get the smell out. The one time I made curry, he didn’t stop bitching about the smell still being in his nostrils and his stomach being ripped to shit. For such a professed man, he sure is a capital-P pussy.
Right on time, my stuff is packed, head is swimming, belly is full, and the condo smells of petty revenge and harbored anger. Perfect. I walk to the glass windows to look out and finish the roach. Truth is, I’m going to massively miss this view.
I walk out to the balcony and hit the pungent roach to Miami Beach’s soundtrack. Waves crashing on one side, cars honking on the other, both blend into a meditative rhythm that helps anchor me to my situation. There’s a lapse between the sight of waves and the sound of their crashing that’s addicting. Nature’s deliberate pause, forcing me to wait just momentarily enough, for the full sensory experience. Lungs fill with salty air as I inhale. Squeezing tightly on the rail, I close my eyes and just listen. Projecting the image of crashing waves I’ve just seen to the back of my eyelids. With every inhalation, I envision flecks of sea salt entering through my nostrils and settling everywhere stress and pain exist. I exhale. Much better.
My eyes open to see that slippery fucker Sandy at it again. He and Devon out on the balcony, passing a joint between them, laughing, high-fiving, hugging it out.
Ximena’s going to hear about what her sneaky son is up to. I turn right, looking out to the ocean. A kite surfer cuts into a wave, is airborne for what feels like minutes, and glides back down onto the water.
Across the street, the sound of shattering glass rips me from my daydream. High above The Landings, Sandy dangles over Collins Avenue.
Glass rains to the street below.
“Get back up!” I scream like he can hear me. Like those words could magically catapult him back to stability and safety. Sixteen fucking years old. Too impatient to wait seven days for a God damn key.
Sandy falls fast to the ground. He is not suspended like the kite surfer, is instead pulled to the concrete below. I remember Gabe’s words. Repeated so often, they’ve become a mantra. “Bye bye, birdie.”
Fixated, I follow his young body’s trajectory straight to the pavement, fast as a missile. Pedestrians down below point and follow his track, too. A couple of silent, harrowing seconds after he hits, a small crowd surrounds the body. Seconds after that, screams reach my ears.