that, how was she supposed to know what equity owner meant?
She couldn’t keep Resentment on its polite behavior any longer. “So I bet now you’re gonna tell me you have a place on Fisher Island. You just forgot to tell me, right?”
The good doctor’s antennae seemed to sense real anger this time. “No, I’m not gonna say that. All I’m saying is I have a medallion, and I have an equity owner’s ID card.” He pulled a small card out of the breast pocket of his shirt, showed it to her so briefly, and put it back in the pocket.
“Okay, then, if you don’t own a place, then how come you have all this stuff… these IDs… and you’re so ‘upper class,’ as you call it?”
The convertible advanced a few feet, then stopped again. Norman turned toward her and gave a sly smile… and a wink with a glittering eye. It was the sort of smile that intimates, Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret.
“Let’s just say I made certain arrangements.”
“What kind?”
“Oh… I did someone a very big favor. It’s a quid pro quo situation. Let’s just say this”—he gestured toward the medallion—“this is the quid for the quo.”
He was very pleased with himself… quid pro quo… Magdalena vaguely remembered hearing the term, but she had no idea what it meant. It was reaching the point where every new term he sprang on her inflamed her resentment. The hell of it was, he didn’t think he was springing anything on her. He seemed to assume she knew them because every educated person did know these things. Somehow that made it even worse. That really rubbed it in.
“All right, Mr. Upper Class,” she said. “Might as well hear it all. What’s this line right next to us?”
He apparently thought she was now making light of things. He smiled knowingly and said, “That’s what you might call the haute bourgeoisie.”
That really rankled her. He was starting in again. She more or less knew what bourgeoisie meant, but what the hell was oat supposed to mean? The hell with it! Why not blurt it right out?!
“What the hell is—”
“These people are renters and hotel guests and visitors”—Norman’s exuberance, his joie de Fisher Island codified status rankings, ran right over her voice. He had never heard her say a profane word before, not even a “what the hell,” and he didn’t hear it this time, either. “If any of them can’t produce an ID card—let’s say they’re just arriving to go to the hotel—they won’t let them through until they call ahead to the hotel to see if they’re expected.”
“Norman, do you have any idea how—”
Rolls right over her: “They’ll take his picture and a picture of his license plate, even if the guy has an ID from the hotel. And I’ll tell you something else. No guest of the hotel can pay cash or use a credit card. Nobody on the island can. You can only charge things… to your ID card. The whole island’s one great big private club.”
Magdalena made an exaggerated angry panoramic gesture, taking in the entire scene, and that so surprised Norman that he paused long enough for her to get a word in.
“Well, isn’t this nice,” she said. “We’ve got upper class, middle class, and lower class… bim, bim, bim… and people like me would be in lower class.”
Norman chuckled, mistaking the irony for joking around. “Nahhhhh… not really lower class. More like lower middle. If you’re really lower class, like a repairman, a construction worker, a gardener, let’s say, or anybody with a truck or one of those vehicles with lettering on it—I don’t know… pizza, carpets, a plumber, whatever—you can’t get on this ferry at all. They have one that comes in over at the other end of the island.” He motioned vaguely to the west. “It leaves from Miami itself. I’ve never seen it, but I gather it’s kind of a big old open barge.”
“Norman… I just don’t… know… about your Fisher Island—”
They were moving again. This time they arrived at a booth. A black-and-white arm blocked the way. A uniformed guard with a revolver!—no, it was a scanner—stood in front of the Audi and aimed it at the license plate and then at the medallion. When he saw Norman behind the wheel, he broke into a big smile and said, “Hey-ey-ey-ey, Doc!” He came over to the driver’s side. “I saw you on TV! Yeah! That was great! What was