Miami Noir: The Classics by Les Standiford

Author:Les Standiford [Standiford, Les]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781617758669
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2020-11-16T21:00:00+00:00

The Works

by T.J. MacGregor

South Beach

(Originally published in 1990)

I know how it is down here on the beach for the old ones now, what with rising prices and traffic and crime. They’re afraid to go out at night. Their Social Security checks barely cover a month of meals at Wolfie’s. They feel like Miami Beach’s postscript.

The Art Deco craze did it, you know. Ever since folks decided Deco was in again, those little hotels over on Ocean Drive are booming with business, charging prices like I can’t believe, and yeah, people pay them. I mean, seventy bucks for a room no larger than a closet, five bucks for a hard-boiled egg and a slice of bread that’s hardly toasted, two bucks for coffee. The old ones can remember when coffee in these places cost a dime.

There’s a haughty look to the hotels that really gets me too. They stand so prim and proper at the edge of the sea, all spiffed up in pastels, windows so clean they gleam like jewels. The old ones feel like they can’t afford to even walk there, and when they do, shuffling in their tired bones, under the weight of eighty or ninety years of memories, they’re nearly trampled by the youthful crowds rushing to this hotel or that bar.

So I keep my prices low and do what I can. When an old one is troubled or sad, sick or too drunk to stand, I take him or her in. Word has gotten around that Millie’s Place is where you go when it’s gotten bad.

Like tonight, for instance.

Toby wandered in off Washington Avenue a few minutes ago, out of the thick night heat, looking about as bad as a man can look and still be alive. He’s ninety-four years old, with a spine so bent he can hardly lift his head, glasses thicker than his arm, a heart that just won’t quit.

He’s counting one-dollar bills from a tattered envelope with SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION in bold black letters across the top. If I remember correctly, he worked nearly half a century for an auto parts plant that merged with another plant, and most of his pension got lost in the transition. His Social Security check amounts to about three hundred dollars a month, and we all know what that buys you in Miami Beach.

“The room’s only six bucks, Toby,” I tell him when he keeps counting out the bills.

“Want a meal, too,” he mumbles, moving his dentures around in his mouth because they hurt his gums.

“Eight bucks, then.”

“And the Works. I think I want the Works, Millie.”

“You’d better be sure. It’s a bit more expensive.”

His head bobs slowly. It reminds me of a beach ball, rising, falling, riding a wave, and I want to stroke it, embrace it, kiss this old, beautiful head. It’s as hairless as a Chihuahua, with a mass of wrinkles that seems to quiver and dance to the back of the skull. Not so long ago, on a rainy afternoon down at

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.