In Florida

Maybe the story of a friendship can only be told in flickering glimpses, a slide show on a screen, and for Lynne and me those slides would have to stretch back forty years and include a few segments we’d rather forget. We have seen each other’s best and worst and long ago reached a point of mutual acceptance that grew into understanding and eventually into love, a love that has the heft of history now. I love Lynne so much I would go to Florida to see her. And that’s what I did last week.

We decided to meet in West Palm Beach, which is about an hour and a half drive for Lynne, and we deliberately chose a “retro” hotel called The Biba, described as a fine example of Bermuda vernacular architecture and one of the first motor lodges in the United States. It was a funky place, faded green exterior, coconut palms, and a turquoise rectangle of a pool in the back. Next door was an auto parts store with a screaming yellow sign, but once you walked into the front lobby with its mirrored walls, or lingered in the lounge, you had the feeling Humphrey Bogart might step up and offer you a drink. Oh, okay, so instead of Sam playing it again at the piano, it would be Desi Arnaz on his conga drums, and the decor, with its magenta, purple, and orange color scheme, seemed to suggest the 1960s, but still, the overall tone was one of quirky nostalgia. (I was jolted back to reality when a young woman ambled in wearing shorts that revealed a disturbingly substantial portion of her buttock cheeks.)

My father went to Florida when I was a little girl. I tried to help him pack for his trip, piling ties into his suitcase, sumptuous armfuls of paisley and stripe, unable to choose. He looked bemused, then smiled and hugged me and put them back in his closet. He said something about being back soon, but soon was a lie whose o’s became a long chain of moons and zeroes and empty rooms. Florida meant palm trees and alligators and my father being faraway.

My more updated sense of Florida evokes heat, humidity, hanging chads, and theme parks...in other words, it depresses me. But the Florida Lynne and I discovered on this visit sometimes felt like the Florida my father might have experienced. We were on the outskirts of an historical neighborhood with beautiful old stucco houses and tacky wooden bungalows whose doors were framed in pink and sea green. There was a wide blank street nearby, surreal in the sunlight, with an abandoned theater, several thrift stores, and a vacant pink and yellow building that seemed to be hopefully awaiting some commercial destiny. There were tropical breezes at night and the scent of gardenias in the air.

Florida seems to favor a pallete of pastels, but not a timid one. The walls of our room were painted in lilac, pale chartreuse, and a sherbert sort of orange. It was somehow more appealing than it sounds, and we made ourselves quite comfortable. There was a plastic ice bucket that leaked, a noisy air conditioner, and a blinking red light on the phone that wouldn’t turn off – the desk clerk apologized, but it made me feel like there was always a message waiting, and I liked that. Lynne had brought along little bottles of wine like the ones you get on an airplane, a cooler for snacks, and special reflective tanning blankets that we never did use. Our closet was a narrow space with a door made of beads, and the beds were covered in soft linens. In the mornings there were Cuban pastries and strong coffee in the lounge. Clearly this was a place with its priorities in order, a fine setting for our little reunion.

On our first morning in West Palm Beach, we went to the unexpected Ann Norton sculpture gardens to marvel at massive stone structures set among palm trees and tropical plants -- and how often do you get to pick up a ripe mango from the ground? We had lunch at a Greek place called Souvlaki, which was quite satisfactory, once I realized that dolphin on the menu means mahi-mahi. We dutifully drove across the bridge into Palm Beach proper, with its fancy hotels and designer stores, but mostly we explored our own neighborhood. We struck up conversations with a young man in a French bakery across the street from the hotel, with the woman who ran Pizza Land where the dough is flown in frozen from Brooklyn, and Karen and Ivan, two friendly strangers we met in a thrift shop who discovered they had grown up in the same Long Island town.

And those thrift stores were fun! I am intrigued by such gatherings of orphaned goods, each with its own mute story. (How does a bridal gown end up in a window with old lamps and dishes?) We found terrific bargains, too. For me, the best deal was a camel hair coat on sale in the Goodwill for $2.95. It fit me as though it were tailored for me and was cleaner than my own garments. (I guess there isn’t much need for winter coats in Palm Beach.) Lynne found a beautiful black knit dress, a couple of unusual belts, and a yellow cardigan, among other gems.

Afterwards we treated ourselves to ice cream cones, spirals of rich vanilla, concupiscent curds whipped in kitchen cups by the roller of big cigars (to paraphrase Wallace Stevens). We recalled the Carvel on Suffolk Avenue in the sixties and looked back on the ice cream outings of our childhoods. Yeah, "The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream."

I guess you could say that Lynne and I have borne witness to one another’s lives. How many people know exactly where you came from and all your wanderings since? So here we were, touching base in (of all places!) Florida, stopping time and feeling giddy and simply being ourselves.