Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [14]
I listened to the rich baritone voice of a Baptist minister, but his words on the nature of sin and salvation drifted past me like birds finding no place to land. On a channel far to the left, a woman talked at great length on the many benefits of tofu and other soy products. Around the dial again and Howard Stern was interviewing a man who had become a woman and a woman who had become a man. After a while I turned off the radio and listened to nothing, and I liked that a lot better. It was one of those days when the only thing that makes any sense is silence.
I drove south on Biscayne Boulevard until I reached the Kennedy Causeway up on Seventy-ninth Street, then turned east toward the beach, my usual route, past the crab place and Mike Gordon’s with its big steaks and redwood waitresses. Two years on Miami Beach and the sight of a pelican still made me stare like a tourist. The wingspread of a ptero-dactyl; the focused, unblinking eye; the steady flight and the sword thrust of its long, gray beak into the bay. Then I was on the main bridge with Biscayne Bay flashing north and south, the sailboats placid and going nowhere.
In a place like Miami, there is always the ongoing battle between the paradise visions of the past and the nightmare prophecies of the future. Depending on where you were at the time, it could be hard to tell which was winning, but today my windows were open and the sky was endless in all directions, and it seemed to me that paradise, my paradise, still had a few more good years left in her. New York was another life, crowded with memories, like a love affair that had been good while it lasted but you wouldn’t want back again, even if it could somehow be arranged.
I had come to think of my life here as the “Miami Years,” both words capitalized and in quotes, like the heading of a chapter in a memoir I would probably never write. After the troubles in New York, I had headed for Miami because of Gus Santorino, an old cop who had broken me in on the force and then taken his savings south and opened a nightclub on the beach just as the party crowd began crowding the old folks out of “God’s Waiting Room,” as the beach used to be called. Come on down, Gus said, and so I did.
So too began “The Uncertain Years.” Gus made me chief of security, but I was really just the king of the bouncers, battling with machos at three o’clock in the morning, and wearing a black bow tie and a tuxedo shirt that more often than not ended up with blood on the sleeves by the end of the night. The violence was part of the music, and it came in waves, rising through the pulse of the dancers like a tsunami. Someone would be given the old heave-ho, and the dancing would go on. The broken glass would be swept away, and the hips of the Cuban girls would start swaying again on the dance floor. Endless free drinks from the bartenders who watched my back and who never stole enough from Gus to get themselves fired. That, too, had been another life.
I avoided the cocaine that was everywhere at the time, but I drank too much. Then one night I got into a footrace with a purse snatcher outside the club and wound up doubled over, out of breath, out of shape, and sucking wind big time. That was something I couldn’t tolerate. I found a gym owned by an old-timer named Cal (a friend of Gus’s) a few blocks from where I lived and slowly started on the road back. I lifted weights and I ran. I took kickboxing classes and yoga. My social life was a series of workouts. I trained alone and didn’t make any friends, and then one day when I was on the treadmill, I noticed Cal looking at me from where he sat behind the counter selling memberships and protein shakes. Our eyes met, and the old man nodded.
Then he offered me a job.
And so the segue from cop to bouncer to personal trainer was complete, and I became a gym rat for hire. I took a test and got a certificate, and Cal set me loose on the clientele, but I knew what I was doing. The biggest problem was the amount of talking required, and I was not in a talking frame of mind