Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,19

after work, I dressed in a linen sundress and walked half a mile to the bus stop, where I caught a bus to the University of Miami. There, I waited on a low cement wall under the wide canopy of a poinciana tree outside the law school until Dennis emerged, carrying a satchel in one hand and combing his hair with his fingers. I could not reconcile the disheveled student, sunburned nose and shaving nicks, with the suited lawyer he was working to become. Dennis saw me and waved, and as he walked toward me, in the moment between being alone and being with him, I experienced the sensation of being stunned by the instant. The breath left my lungs. I looked at the boy coming toward me, who in my arms, by my side, seemed familiar, but in those baffling seconds revealed himself to be a stranger, essentially. It was like moving too quickly toward a painting, such that it distorts in proximity. Was this person my boyfriend? This lanky gait, this lazy posture, this wide smile? He reached me finally, and swept me into a hug that seemed to start before he was even beside me, and the moment of disorientation I’d experienced dissolved, the painting snapped back into perspective.

That evening, we made our way not to Bette’s bamboo couch but to Dennis’s apartment on Miami Beach. The pretext was that Dennis would cook us supper—a noodle dish he was fond of, a bachelor recipe with too much soy sauce—but I suppose during the long, windy ride down the palm-lined highway, I knew we had both signed up for something more, and I was nervous as we drove. We had both slept with other people: I with a boy in college, a close friend, just three times after we’d studied together and opened a bottle of wine, and Dennis with his ex, with whom he’d lived for three months.

Inside Dennis’s apartment, it was quiet and dark. He dropped his keys on the kitchen table and went to open the balcony doors. In blew a salty breeze that smelled of warm sand. He offered to make margaritas—this was a drink he knew I was fond of—and started rooting through the refrigerator. After a moment, he declared he was out of limes and would run to the market on the corner. He kissed me quickly and left. I went to the balcony and leaned against the metal railing. The sunset had started. Below, two Cuban men stood at the entrance to the café downstairs, talking animatedly in Spanish, and when they parted to let a third man by, I saw that the third man was Dennis, coming out of the building. He greeted the men and one of them raised a hand, and then Dennis walked a bit, tossing his keys into the air every few steps. He was happy. Any outsider could have seen it. He was happy because of me. After he went into the store on the corner—he called it the bodega—I watched the ocean, its rolling persistence, its calm fortitude. There were a few people still scattered along the beach. The sky was the color of bruised peaches, the sand bluish in the fading sunlight. Dennis emerged from the store with a brown bag under one arm. He came closer, then looked up and gestured toward the beach and the sunset. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he called up to me. “Isn’t it paradise?”

“Yes!” I called.

I cut the limes and he squeezed each half into a small glass pitcher. He dipped a finger in the juice and brought it to my lips. I tasted it and made a face, and he laughed. “We’ll improve on it, I promise,” he said. “There’s nothing like fresh margaritas.” As he spoke, I brought the knife down through a lime and felt it slice through my fingertip. I yelped and Dennis grabbed a dish towel from a drawer and pulled me into the bathroom, holding my bloody finger as we went. He sat me down on the toilet and rummaged through the medicine cabinet.

“It’s not that bad,” I said.

“It’s a geyser,” he said. He held my finger under the faucet while the cold water ran. Blood billowed and dissipated. “This is why I should never sharpen my knives,” he said. “Clumsy female visitors, bleeding all over my kitchen.” He smiled and I laughed. He toweled off my hand and spread a little ointment on my finger, then wrapped it in a small