OVERTOWN, MIAMI, FLORIDA

JANUARY 1971

Mary wished she had brought her cardigan. She hadn’t wanted to forget it again at the bar, and the night looked warmer than it felt. She wore a short, flowered cotton dress with bell sleeves, fishnets, and patent leather heels. There was more of a bite to the evening air than usual, and her bum hip was giving her pain. The chill went straight to the metal plate they had put in after she toppled off the porch back home. After the fall, her husband started giving her a hard time about her drinking, and her parents chimed in. She’d come to Miami to escape the cold, the pain, and the shame. Not necessarily in that order.

That kind of drinking is unattractive on a young girl, only thirty-three. Pretty funny, coming from cousins like the man who slipped Mary her first slug of whiskey at twelve. Then a hold-your-nose-just-one-more, until one side of her head was heavier than the other. What came next swam in her lopsided brain still. She’d told her mother straightaway.

Mary’s mother’s face flushed, forehead veins pulsing with the kind of fury you only carry for someone who has put a pin in the balloon of your entire life with one sentence. It would always be the fault of the pin. Just look at her. Mary was that kind of girl. She broke the rules. If anyone asked for it, it was Mary. Ding-a-ling, staring at the sky.

The fall was the final proof of her utter brokenness. Broken enough to turn and not look back. She had neither beauty, nor youth, nor health, nor reputation. Check ya later! She’d go far away, to a land where the rustle of palm fronds in the sea air sometimes sounded like a whisper of hope, a possibility of new beginnings.

In the meantime, there was a night to get through, a morning to face, with the sweats, the teeth-grinding shakes, and the ache that cut straight through her as if the plate they put in her hip had razor blades for edges.

A bar stool would have been a more obvious place to hang her shingle, but instead she ordered herself another gin and tonic and sidled into a red leather booth with a view of the door. One more now, until she found someone to buy the next round. She’d make it up. It was still early.

Mary usually hung out in Overtown, a part of town mostly populated by Black folks. She felt more at home there, even though she drew stares with her pale skin, thick legs, and platinum hair. In the white bars, she was a piece of furniture, a talking couch. In Overtown, she was something special.

On that night in mid-January 1971, in one of her regular hangs on North Miami Avenue, her only competition was an orange-haired middle-aged woman at the end of the bar, her shoulders already slouched forward so they seemed to hug the glass on the bar in front of her. There was a table full of hippie kids and a Black guy with an Afro like a bonsai tree sitting in a corner booth with a white woman—likely out somewhere none of their friends would see them. Other than that, a few barflies who wouldn’t be good for anything more than goosing her when she walked to the bathroom.

Every time the door opened, her luck could change. The very next person who walked in could be the savior she’d been waiting for. She liked to imagine he’d be someone like Ernest Hemingway. He’d been rumored to visit Overtown once, before he kicked the bucket. He was someone who understood how hard life could be. She’d especially loved that one story about the tiger or whatever it was that froze to death on a mountain somewhere in India. Her mother had called her morbid, said no man wants his lady too thinky-thinky. “They only say they like smart girls. Men like to be right, and they like to be taken care of. The end.”

The door swung open, and a rotten waft of the bay’s low tide sailed in, followed by a striking man in a wide-collared shirt and a pair of sharkskin bell-bottoms. A light-skinned Black guy, well groomed, with a beard, heavy mustache, wild hair. He carried himself with confidence, chest out like a peacock. He scanned the smoky, windowless room with ice-blue eyes. Hunting for something? Maybe for her?

He caught her eye briefly, then walked toward the bar and ordered a beer. Mary’s face flushed. Ignoring her in this crowd? How low could you go?

The man drew several slow swallows before he locked his gaze on her. There was barely a drop left in her glass, mostly melted ice. She looked down at it with a cartoonish pout, pushing her frizzy blond bangs out of her eyes. The man’s smile went electric.

A sparkle ran up her spine. She loved that moment. Only problem was it almost always went downhill from there.

“Whatchu doing all alone like this, little kitten?” said the man.

“I’m not alone anymore.”

“You need another one of those?”

“Gin and tonic,” she said. “Double!”

He brought back a drink, and they shot the shit while she sucked it down through a miniscule straw. He told her his name was Sam.

So many names. How to remember? She gave them nicknames. Sammy Davis Jr.? No. Sam…son. Samson from the Bible. She couldn’t remember much from Bible study, but she knew he was strong, and this man was strong. Something about his hair being all that. A little queer, how they go all on and on about his hair. He was kind of vain if you think about it. This man also seemed vain. That was how she’d remember his name.

“Where you from?” he asked. “Because it ain’t Overtown.”

“No, no, it’s not,” she said. “From near Boston.”

“So far from your family, sweet little thing like you?”

“They just…” She heard herself slur the last word, enough to alert her she was getting a thick tongue. “You know. They want to control you. First your own parents. Then you meet some guy and maybe you think he’s going to give you some grown-up life where you finally do what you want to do. My sister did everything they wanted her to do. The goddamn Labrador did too. They listened and obeyed when everyone said think this and eat this and don’t drink that and don’t do this and if you do, confess. Well, I’m not a dog, and I’m not my sister.”

There it was again, the soft sibilance. The words she couldn’t quite call to mind. She hated that. She was talking too much, she knew it. His eyes were already starting to wander. They asked you a question, but they never wanted the answer.

“They didn’t understand you.”

“They didn’t,” she slurped the last of her watery drink. Mary toyed with the gold cross she wore on a chain. Her father had bought it at a kiosk at Faneuil Hall when she was a little girl.

“I do.”

He had nursed the one beer and she had downed two more G and Ts already. Would have thought there was a crack in the glass for how fast they went. Didn’t pack the same punch anymore.

“Come with me for a little cruise, sugar,” he said to her necklace.

“Only if it’s a Caribbean cruise.”

“Sure!” he said. “Caribbean, anywhere you want to go, beautiful little thing you. You’re like a queen. Maybe you the queen of whatchu call it…Polynesia!”

He was funny. Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad. “You got a car?”

“Your cruise ship awaits,” said…Sam. That was it. Sam. “And it’s the only cruise that actually pays you.”

“Fifty.”

He got up and half bowed, holding out an arm toward the door.

There was always that moment, when she had to stand. People could be strange about a little thing like a limp, as if it made her a leper. She tried to make it look like a swagger. He didn’t mention it. So far, there were a few things she liked about this mysterious stranger.

“Nice ride.”

“1964 gold Wildcat. Just got it.”

“Made of real gold?”

He opened the door for her but didn’t stay to close it. He shuffled around back and hopped in the driver’s seat. She’d barely yanked the heavy door shut when he cut the wheel hard. He sure got quiet quick.

He pulled a U-turn and hopped on the 27. “Where we going?”

“Whatchu mean? We’re going to the Polynesian Islands.”

“I think that’s the other way.”

“How about we find you another drink?”

“How about we get there?” she said, bitchy, the alcohol leaving her system. He put his arm around her neck, and she leaned into him. The strip malls and low-slung concrete motels grew sparse, swallowed by lush foliage.

She dozed for a moment, and when she woke with a jerk, his arm was still around her shoulders, his palm resting gently on her throat.

“We there yet?”

“We there. Here we go.”

He turned off the 27 onto 170th Avenue, which was less of an avenue and more like a dirt path. The car kicked debris off the limestone onto its undercarriage, making a sound like a hailstorm. The radio played “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.” To the left, the reflection of the moon shimmered on an otherwise black expanse of water. Beyond that unfolded the vast green expanse of the Everglades. To the right was a cluster of dense brush, probably only ever visited by hunters or teenagers looking for a remote place to neck.

He slowed to a halt, and with the hand that wasn’t around her throat, he began to knead her thigh. She crossed her leg to offer him more of it. She may have had a bum hip, but she had plenty of thigh. She sighed and laid her head back against the brown leather upholstery, more from exhaustion than from pleasure.

“Let’s get in the back.”

Mary lifted the latch and kicked open the door. She took in the smell of the trees, the buzz of the cicadas, the stars caught in a loose net of filmy black clouds. It was a pretty kind of spot for an ugly deed. Maybe she’d get away with just a handy.

He sniffed at her like a dog, kissed her thighs through her fishnets, dragged them down to her ankles, then licked the embossed diamond pattern they’d left on her skin. He stopped dead and looked her straight in the necklace.

These freaks—there’s always a body part they caught sight of when their sister was in the shower, or a mother who made them rub her feet too much, or a nun who spanked them in front of the class.

Mary’s throat was dry. She swallowed and swallowed again.

“That’s right,” he said, lightly kneading her throat. “Swallow for me. I love it when you swallow.”

His hand tightened. This one was a little freakier than usual.

He released. Something in her rose to the surface, stone-cold sober. He wasn’t a little freakier. He was a lot freakier.

She looked around. Could she even get out if she had to? Where was there to go? She scanned the ground for a rock, a stick, anything.

Nah, nah. She was drunk and paranoid. She reached for his cock but her hand found only air as he closed the vise grip around her neck. Her body instinctively jerked, hands rising in front of her, no more effective than swatting a swarm of flies. Probably he’d just let go after he came. He wouldn’t be the first man with one hand around her neck and the other on his cock.

Her vision went starry, then black, and when she returned, her head was in his lap. She looked up at him. Who was he? Where was she again?

“You’re beautiful. I own you. You’re mine.”

He pressed his lips to hers and squeezed again.

“You’re trying to kill me?” she spat. “Go ahead then! Go ahead kill me, you son of a bitch.”

The man paused, looked up as if thinking or praying. “Okay.”

She thrashed and gagged. “Damn you to hell,” said Mary. Her chest screamed for breath, collapsing in on itself.

“I love you,” he said.

She had been right. She wasn’t crazy. They had all also been right. She was doomed.