the first day, was the insiders’ opening event—a cocktail party known as Toffs at Twilight. A man named Roy Duroy staged that party every year at the hotel he owned, The Random, on Collins Avenue, not all that far south of the Lincoln Suites. The Random was a typical hotel of the much-touted South Beach Retro boom. A clever developer like Duroy would buy a small, crabbed hotel, eighty years old or more usually, give it a lick of paint and some in-room computer outlets, change the name from the Lido or the Surfside to something hip and flip like The Random, and pronounce it an Art Deco architectural gem. Now you had a small, crabbed gem. The rear of the property was its saving grace. It overlooked an inlet from the ocean. Duroy had put a lot of big umbrellas with magenta, white, and apple-green stripes out there. Very colorful, these umbrellas, and Toffs at Twilight was already going strong when Maurice, Norman, and Magdalena arrived. A hundred, two hundred Miami Basel insiders were crammed around tables under the umbrellas, drinking, or milling about between the umbrellas, drinking. Everybody was drinking and kicking up a noisy surf of big talk and haw haw haw haw haws! and scream scream scream screams!
What bowled Magdalena over was the stir Maurice’s very presence created. Roy Duroy himself immediately rushed up and gave him a big bear hug. His flattery fluttered down on Maurice like rose petals. A big real estate developer named Burt Thornton—even Magdalena had seen him on TV and in the newspapers—rushed over and all but licked Maurice’s alligator-hide moccasins. So many people came rushing over to Maurice, he stood there for an hour without moving six inches from where he first came upon the colorful umbrella-scape. Magdalena had always known that Maurice was a billionaire who had “influence.” Nevertheless, what she had never been able to get out of her mind was Norman’s photograph of Maurice’s crotch rotting with herpes pustules. But now, at Toffs at Twilight, she was looking at a Maurice el Grande.
Meantime, Norman was sulking a bit. Nobody had recognized him so far. He had even given up his laughterrrahHAHock hock hock strategy for attracting attention. He groused to Magdalena that all Roy Duroy wanted was Maurice’s backing for some out-to-lunch dream of turning The Random into a chain operation, and Burt Thornton just wanted Maurice to intervene to keep North Tryon Street Global from foreclosing on him for an enormous loan for a development that hadn’t panned out.
The three of them got back into the big black Escalade and headed off to the High Hotel, also in South Beach, where BesJet, which leased private planes to corporations and the mighty rich, was having a cocktail reception… even louder this time, the roaring surf… the big talk, the haw haw haw haws! the shriek shriek shriek shrieks!… Magdalena was stunned. Across the room she spotted two movie stars, Leon Decapito and Kanyu Reade. No question about it! Leon Decapito and Kanyu Reade!—in the flesh! ::::::Leon Decapito and Kanyu Reade… and me… we’re guests at the same cocktail party.::::::… But not even stars like them could have commanded more attention than BesJet gave Maurice. The president of BesJet rushed over to him, flashing every tooth he could squeeze into his grin. When they shook hands, the president clasped his left hand over their mingled fingers, as if sealing a vow. Five times he must have told Maurice that tomorrow the 170th BesJet flight heading specifically to Miami Basel would be landing. He no doubt knew Maurice had his own plane. He just wanted him to have the word, because in Miami, among all the nobs who could afford private flights, Maurice’s seemed to be the word. Norman was growing positively glum. They went from the BesJet party to a swell, expensive restaurant called Casa Tua for a big dinner given by Status, the new magazine that had become very hot by ranking people in every area of life you could imagine.
No step over a threshold and through a door had ever given Magdalena such a status boost before… and no sooner did she step into the dining room, amid a hundred or more people, than she spotted the celebrated faces of Tara Heccuba Barker!… Luna Thermal!… Rad Packman!… She couldn’t get over it. She was breathing the same air they were! But the Status people couldn’t have made a bigger to-do over any of them than they