The man bent at the waist banged his collapsible walker against the steps of the Miami Beach Cinematheque. A young man emerged to help him in the door, saying cheerfully, “Anything for art.”
Museum Hours was an intriguing film that managed to make Vienna look unattractive and the job of museum guard look rather appealing.
When it was over, we drove to the restaurant at which we had made reservations. Parking was hopeless, so I succumbed to the valet. Inside, we were led to a table in a dark room throbbing with music. An uninterested waitress handed us menus. We struggled to read them, then quietly left, and found a table on the sidewalk at the cozy restaurant next door.
The waitress brought us a plate of stale bread and a bowl of cold tomato sauce. Hania explained that she was a celiac and asked about the risotto with mushrooms. “No,” the waitress told her, “you cannot have that.” Her only option, the waitress assured her, was gluten-free penne. I told her to take away the bread and sauce.
The owner approached and asked if we had gotten our bread. “Yes,” I said, “it was stale.”
“I’ll bring you some focaccia,” he said in a strong Italian accent. “On the house.”
About ten minutes later a warm disc appeared straight from the oven, sprinkled with rosemary. Tasting it, I was transported to Genoa, where, in 1991, I had eaten my first focaccia. It was moist enough not to need it, but I asked for olive oil anyway. I usually don’t like eating breads in front of Hania, but this, I had a feeling, was going to be the meal’s highlight. I ate like Novak Djokovic after he wins a tournament.
It was a beautiful summer evening. Women passed by in short skirts and high heels, some with legs that seemed to be emulating the palm trees lining the street. A family of ten piled into an Escalade, the heat of its engine warming our wine.
A man came limping up the street and stopped to chat. Twenty-four summers earlier, Willie had shown us around South Beach with a friend. Every half hour or so he had stopped to ask, “Don’t you just love Miami?” It had been our first weekend in South Florida.
The food was mediocre; the check the highest I’d ever seen for a pasta dinner. The owner appeared again and told Hania that she could have eaten the risotto with mushrooms as it contains no wheat. I asked about the empty storefront next door. He said that a business has been planning to move in for months, but it’s taking forever. “They found a body under the floor,” the owner said. “It was 30 years old,” he assured us, and then gave us a brief history of Miami in the ’80s
He asked us where we were from. Hania answered first: “Poland.” Then, in Polish, he called her “beautiful.” Italians.
Back at the other restaurant, the valet said he had a question for me. I braced myself for: Do you make it a habit to use the valet of one restaurant and then go to another? But instead he said: “Do you want to sell your car?”
“It’s 10 years old,” I told him. It was also a Honda Civic. And this was Miami Beach.
“But I like it,” he said. “It’s mechanical,” by which I think he meant it had a stick shift. I told him I’d think about it.
Driving back to Fort Lauderdale I said to Hania: “Don’t you just love Miami?”
