Florida Story

→ PUBLISHED IN ISSUE NO. 35: FALL/WINTER 2025

Lara wanted us to get matching tattoos in her friend Steve’s new shop. She whispered this to me, in the backseat of the car, as her dad sped along the highway. I’d last visited her in seventh grade, when she still lived in Connecticut. We’d gone sledding on a golf course, stayed up all night and baked. Now it was warm wind blowing through the windows, Fleetwood Mac on the radio, Lara’s mom, Linda, in the passenger seat, drinking Diet Sunkist. I smiled at Lara and suggested the image of a dandelion puff or maybe a lily, our shared birth month flower. I didn’t ask if she was serious. We were sixteen.

We pulled up to the Cohens’ new home, an apartment complex called Las Palmas, with a sign that looked like it had been painted in the 1960s. It was a two-story yellow building with orange awnings. Bars covered the windows. The whole setup felt more like motel units than apartments. Lara’s dad, Stan, hurled my duffel from the trunk.

“My parents live in 2A and I live in 2B,” Lara pointed out, vamping like Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune.

I remembered the expensive gardenia-scented candle that my mother had gift-wrapped for the Cohens; I could see the box’s shape poking out of my purple duffel bag. If my mother were here now, she would present the gift with too much ceremony, trying and failing to hide her disappointment with what she’d no doubt describe later as a harsh twist of fortune. But I was not my mother, and I could not bring myself to give Linda her gift. In their old house in Westbrook, it would have made sense, but here the candle seemed out of place and embarrassing. I wasn’t disappointed that they were living in what seemed like a motel. What I felt was more like awe. 

“Why don’t you girls freshen up and knock on our door in about twenty minutes,” Linda said. “Dad wants to take Nadine to the crab place.”

I blushed, flattered that Lara’s dad wanted to take me anywhere. There was something about Stan that did that to a person. Stan was so clearly a jerk that anything vaguely solicitous he’d said to me in the car—Call me Stan, Was your flight all right?—had taken on great importance. After the car ride, he’d gone straight inside the 2A door without uttering another word. Since the one depressing meal our families had shared in the small town near our camp three summers ago, I’d wanted to ask Lara more about her father, but I also knew better. She’d never said so, but I could sense that her parents and their complicated lives were somehow off-limits. 

 “Thanks so much, Linda, for having me.”

Linda reached out and squeezed my hand with both of hers. Long painted nails, orangey red, and one tasteful diamond on her left ring finger. Her right hand was bejeweled. The overall effect was more fun than tacky. Before Lara, I’d never met someone with such an old mom and she seemed glamorous in her advanced age, a former showgirl in big white plastic earrings. She beamed at me before going inside 2A.

As we entered 2B, I pushed my black Ray-Bans on top of my head and breathed in the faint scent of cigarettes, salt and bleach, gasoline, and patchouli. I gazed longingly at Lara’s kitchenette—avocado-green linoleum floors—and at her unmade bed and wall full of tacked-up posters and photos, including several of the two of us. “You have your own apartment.” I said it evenly, but we both knew that I was deeply impressed, even cowed.

“Everything’s different since we moved,” she admitted. “But I’m still the same.”

But she wasn’t. Her boobs were even bigger than the last time I’d seen her, and yet somehow she also seemed thinner. She went into the bathroom, and I opened and closed her pearly green compact full of face powder from what looked like the 1950s; it had probably belonged to her mom during her time as a showgirl. I picked up Lara’s beaded earrings, her big gold hoops, her watermelon Jolly Ranchers and empty Diet Coke can and set each item down carefully, as if this were the scene of a crime. Lara came out of the bathroom, and I lowered my Ray-Bans. 

“I feel like Don goddamn Johnson,” I said. 

“I hear he’s a terrible person,” said Lara. “I know a bartender who’s told me some stories.”

I tried to make my face seem normal. “You go to bars?”

“The other guy, Stubbs—he’s supposed to be nice.”

“Tubbs. His name is Tubbs. Philip Michael Thomas.” 

“Someone’s done her research.”

“Always.” 

Lara dove onto her bed, flipped over, and reached for a plastic bin beneath the frilly bed skirt I recognized from her Connecticut room. She sat up, with the bin atop her crisscrossed legs, as if we were in a bunk circle and she was about to dole out some contraband snacks. “Come here,” she said, digging around. “So Steve can see what we want.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. 

“Stick out your arm.” 

I didn’t ask what she was planning, didn’t request the dandelion puff or the lily that I thought would make cool designs for someone, if not me. 

Lara held my wrist. Her hands were warm but not clammy, and I started giggling as she pressed the marker firmly onto my skin. I thought, At least she knows how to draw.

“Stop laughing,” she said. “This needs precision.” Her mouth hung slightly open. “Okay,” she said, furrowing her thin brow, “And… done.”

“I’m afraid to look.” 

“I’m not going to give you something bad,” she said, sounding insulted. 

I checked. The design looked inscrutable, like maybe a chair inside a circle. 

“Our initials,” Lara said, still holding my wrist. I made out the N and L inside a bubble or cage. “You and me.”

“Oh,” I said, and I felt my throat catch. “Cool,” I mumbled before taking the pen from her. “Your turn.”

“Just copy mine and then we can be matching.”

“I craved that kind of permanence with Lara, who was the friend I wished were my sister but also the kind of person who might vanish at any minute. 
”

As I drew on Lara’s soft, pale skin, I thought, This would bind us forever. I craved that kind of permanence with Lara, who was the friend I wished were my sister but also the kind of person who might vanish at any minute. 

The design was abstract enough to invite questions but not weird enough to attract too many. I thought, Maybe I would get a tattoo. Could I possibly be that person? 

As Lara examined my work on her inner arm, I walked out onto the small balcony. Fuchsia blossoms spilled toward the street below, where a very tanned, very lean man slowly pushed an empty shopping cart. He was wearing nothing but a neon pink Speedo. When I saw a lizard on the railing I shrieked, but Lara joined me on the balcony and assured me that they were as common here as pigeons in New York. 

I stifled my nervous laugh and shook my head. I ran my finger over my design and then over hers. My sunglasses slid to the tip of my nose.

“What,” Lara said. Her eyes were searching mine, or maybe I only wanted them to. 

Man with a parrot. Man with a boa constrictor. Man with a knife tattoo. Man with long nails singing “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” gliding by on roller skates. “Clock strikes upon the hour and the sun begins to fade,” the man sang, and Lara continued without skipping a beat, and the man hooted “Yes, girl.” She even got me to join her for “And when the night falls, loneliness calls.” She wasn’t embarrassed in front of her parents—in front of anyone, really. We walked and sang, swept up in the spectacle of a South Beach sunset. My parents would have looked at us like we were drunk. They also would have driven, not walked, to the restaurant. If we’d been with my parents, I would have been angling to forge distance between us and them, counting down the minutes until we could go off on our own, but Lara didn’t seem to mind having Stan and Linda around. The sun went from blazing to soft: shining on the parrot’s grass-green feathers, glinting off the snake’s amber scales. The sun caressed the men and their muscles, the women and their pastel miniskirts. A few long-legged models approached, openly carrying trays of cigars. Stan bought one from a redhead, and as he waited for his change a drag queen rushed by us in a purple-sequin blur—Permiso, amores—dodging cars along the avenue. 

The restaurant was in a hotel. I couldn’t figure out if it was fancy or just old. Gauze drapes swung in the breeze, and behind the drapes there were old people in rocking chairs on the veranda. And behind the old people there was the sea. The whole tableau seemed to say, “Everything is behind something else, everything until you reach the water.” The old people gave the impression they were paid to sit there looking pensive, maybe extra for rocking back and forth. 

“This town tells more stories than most, wouldn’t you say?” Stan asked, winking at Lara, who squeezed a lemon over her crabmeat, wringing it out until there wasn’t a drop of juice left. He motioned to the waiter to bring him and Linda another round of Captain Morgan’s on ice. Then he leaned forward. “There are the Haitians, who’re so poor that they don’t overlap with any other groups. The Latins hate each other—Argentines hate Cubans, Cubans hate the Puerto Ricans. Mexicans really hate the Puerto Ricans—”

“Dad!” Lara interrupted. 

“Jewbans mix with everyone rich, or at least rich enough.”

“Dad.”

“What’s a Jewban?” I asked.

“A Jewish Cuban,” Linda whispered. 

“And the Jewbans hate the Cubans coming from other places in the US.”

“Oh, my God, Dad,” said Lara, who was somehow maintaining a smile. One night at camp, when neither of us could sleep, she told me that once a man came to their door and told Lara that her father owed him fifty grand.

“You gotta know the actors is all I’m saying,” Stan said. “What I’m saying is that you have to make decisions with your eyes wide open.”

“We gotta go, Dad,” Lara said, putting her napkin on the table. 

“Oh, yeah?” he said. “You got places to be?”

“Something like that,” she said, with a wink. 

He took out a roll of bills.

“When we went to the bathroom together, crammed into the sticky space lit by one red lightbulb, and I asked her why, she told me that she knew I’d tell her to be careful, and she’d realized lately that she didn’t really want to be. ”

Steve’s tattoo parlor was on a quiet street in what looked like a dive bar; inside, up above, parrots were flying freely. The machine in the corner reminded me of the dentist’s office and I reflexively clenched my teeth, imagining the buzzing sound of ink being injected, the metallic taste of silver fillings flooding my mouth. Lara introduced me to Valerie, a muscular, extremely tanned tattoo artist and psychic. Her hair was slicked back into an extra-tight ponytail, and yet she had a relaxed, even languorous air. A parrot landed on Valerie’s shoulder and she barely flinched. Lara kissed Steve hello on the lips; he had rings on every finger. She said, “Say hello to Nadine.” He was wearing the thinnest of white tee shirts and his pupils were enormous. Lara hadn’t mentioned Steve in any of her letters, hadn’t told me she’d so much as kissed anybody lately. When we went to the bathroom together, crammed into the sticky space lit by one red lightbulb, and I asked her why, she told me that she knew I’d tell her to be careful, and she’d realized lately that she didn’t really want to be. 

“I’m not ready to get the tattoo,” I said.

She shrugged. “Oh, that’s not tonight. Tonight we’re going clubbing.” 

“Clubbing?” 

“We’ll show him the design, though. We’ll show him together.” She swung the bathroom door open and there was Steve again. 

“So,” I asked, “where are all of the tattoo designs?” 

“I keep them filed away,” he said. Then he asked if I liked the decoration on the ceiling. 

I considered the shellacked tangle of fishing nets, strewn with conch and clam shells. “It actually looks like the senior prom last year. I didn’t go, but I saw the gym.” 

“In other words, she loves it,” Lara said pointedly. “Steve made all of this.” 

“I mean—” I took an exaggerated breath, stalling. “I can basically smell the ocean.”

Steve lit a hand-rolled cigarette and squinted a sort of smile. “Where did you come from?” he asked, blowing smoke. 

Lara hoisted herself up on top of a cabinet, her legs dangling. “Hey,” she said to Steve, holding out her arm. “Look at the tattoo we want to get.”

Valerie looked up from a notebook; she’d been writing with a purple pen. “Honey, get down from there.” 

“So, birds can have free rein, but I have to behave?” Lara countered. Her voice sounded shrill, unfamiliar. “Hey,” she said again, and tapped Steve on his shoulder. “Look.” 

He turned to Lara and took her wrist in his hand, nodding at our initials in the black circle I’d drawn. She wrapped her legs around him. He didn’t resist. She took the hand-rolled cigarette from his fingers and took a slow drag. Her feet were in silver flats and she crossed them at the ankles, locked around Steve. She studied me, as if she was trying to answer a private question, then she exhaled smoke over Steve’s head. “Let’s go,” she said, jumping off the cabinet. “Valerie, you coming?” 

Valerie shook her head. “Last time I went out dancing I fell hard for a closeted Jehovah’s Witness, and she spent the night with her face between my thighs, crying.”

“Damn,” said Steve.

“Right?” She took a swig of beer. “Have fun, kiddos. I’ll man the fort,” she offered with a little wave. 

“How old is he?” I whispered to Lara as we followed Steve outside. He was wearing black motorcycle boots; his stride was slow, but he covered a lot of ground. 

She ignored my question, and I realized, in a sort of matter-of-fact way, that I was attracted to Steve. I had an urge to reach for his frayed collar, tear his barely-there shirt in half. That shirt would slide right off his body, and wouldn’t Lara be surprised. It would appear as if he’d planned to be shirtless as we walked through the doors of the club. We were going clubbing, right? 

We were. 

I’d never been to a nightclub. Outside was a line of eager people, but Lara motioned me toward the front of the line and Steve said something to the bouncer, who laughed out loud and said, “Dang, man, dang!” I had a strange, sinking feeling that he was laughing at Lara and me, or maybe just me. But he let us in. The heat and humidity and the fury from the people waiting—it all disappeared once we were inside. There was dry ice and air- conditioning and comfortable-looking couches in tucked-away corners and mirrors on many surfaces and hordes of tanned, thin people. Onstage was a gilded cage holding two prowling tigers and a man—presumably their trainer—who looked irate. He was dressed in black vinyl and held a whip. 

“What the…” I muttered. “Um… where are we?”

Lara just watched me and giggled, grooving to the music while applying dark burgundy lipstick. A strobe light flashed right on us then, and she puckered those lips as if for someone’s camera. She blew a kiss at Steve, who was just out of reach but focused, quite seriously, on the gold Egyptian hieroglyphics on the wall, as if he was actually trying to read them. Lara’s pale skin, her pale hair and dark lips—they all stood out from the tanned bodies, as if a shutter was clicking open and closed, as if a flash was going off and flashing only on her. She went out on the dance floor alone. 

“What is this place?” I asked Steve, loud enough that he could hear me over the music. 

“There’s so much money in this town.” He said this as if he was imagining something quaint and possibly funny. 

I nodded, watching Lara, happy amid a sea of strangers.

“So much money,” he said, sharper now. “All these places, you know, are in the laundry business. It’s only a matter of time.”

“A matter of time for what?” Talking to him was like talking to someone from another country, where the idioms are all off and you don’t want to be rude but you do want to understand. 

“Until any club disappears.”

“The laundry business?”

Steve looked at me maybe for the first time since we got here. His dark hair fell into his eyes, and he smiled without showing his teeth. “Drugs,” he said, almost gently.

And we were on couches so velvety and cozy. The lighting in these corners of the club was different from the main space; it was sultry and dark and I had taken a drag of someone’s hand-rolled cigarette and it was definitely not tobacco. Lara was petting my hair and Steve was talking about rituals and it was decided that we should go to the beach, we should go to the Cuban place, we should go to the harbor, where someone named Ivan kept a boat. 

We didn’t move. 

Lara took a cigarette from Steve’s pocket and another man leaned in, one I hadn’t realized was sitting there; he offered up a light. Lara exhaled thoughtfully. “I was in the school play this fall,” she said. 

“Oh, yeah?” Steve gave a squinty smile. 

“Yeah,” Lara said, nodding. “The director told me that if I didn’t watch out I’d probably get famous.” She ashed her cigarette into a small silver tray. “He said it, like, “If you don’t watch out, you might get AIDS.”

My face flushed hot. Lara was conceited, I realized, and with this realization came a bolt of jealousy. “Why did he tell you that?” I asked. 

Her eyes darted around the club. She shrugged. Then, “Oh, wow, okay—George Michael at three o’clock.” 

I nearly squealed but kept it cool. George Michael, taller than I would have imagined, with his hand on an even taller man’s chest. He was laughing just like a regular person. “What play were you in?” I sounded more confrontational than I would have liked—did I really think Lara was lying about being in a school play? 

“Oh, come on, he was obviously kidding.” She stood up, slightly wobbly. “I’m going to the bathroom.” 

I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to come with her, but I desperately needed to pee, so after a few moments I followed. The bathroom was cavernous; I called out, and—after she responded—went into a nearby stall. While I was peeing, I looked through the space above the lock and saw Lara approaching the sinks. She washed up and looked at herself in the mirror, then dried her hands carefully with a paper towel. “Nadine?” she called out, and when I called back to her from behind my stall door she took out that old green compact that I’d assumed had been her mom’s, and instead of using the compact’s puff she dabbed her finger in the powder and sniffed. Right there out in the open, with a practiced flair; not even in the privacy of the toilet stall. 

Immediately, I felt stone-cold sober. I was from Long Island, this was a nightclub in South Beach, and though I’d heard that cocaine was everywhere I had never actually seen it and didn’t know anyone who’d tried it. I’d foolishly assumed that this inexperience would be true for Lara too. 

By the time I stepped out of the stall, she’d put it away. I looked at her. The lighting was too bright, and Lara looked too young. “Can I borrow some of that powder?” I asked. “I’m so red.”

She looked at me but didn’t hand it over. 

“Look at my face,” I said testily. “See how red it is?”

“Nadine,” she said. 

“Seriously?”

“Is there something you want to say to me?” 

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I guess it depends on what you tell me.”

Lara looked around in that darting way again, and she struck me, for the first time, as ferrety. Her features were formed in such a fetching, rounded way, and yet I saw it now: her ferret-self that had been there all along. 

A woman came out of a bathroom stall, pushed her breasts together, and walked out. 

Lara whispered, “You’re so judgmental.”

“I’m judgmental?”

“Yes.”

“I’m the least judgmental person.” I caught a glimpse of us in the mirror and saw how I was still much taller. I stood up straight. “Well?” I said. “Aren’t you going to offer me some?”

She looked around again. “I mean,” she said, clearly annoyed, “do you want some?”

I suddenly felt a wave of revulsion, and I had the urge to grab her wrist and pinch the tattoo design I’d drawn on her just hours ago. At camp we’d played rose garden, raking each other’s inner arms until the skin was red and raised. I felt the urge to pinch her, but I washed my hands instead. Then I flipped my hair over and brushed it with my fingers, flipped it back and let it settle, the way I’d been doing since a babysitter taught me how, every morning of my dumb life. I took a deep breath, which did absolutely nothing, and stormed out of the bathroom. Then I made a beeline for the mirrored triangle bar and ordered myself a Long Island iced tea. No one here cared how old I was. No one would care if I snorted cocaine right here off this mirror. My stomach dropped as I saw Lara and Steve, grinding up against each other a few feet away, under the flashing lights. They didn’t notice me. Why would they? I downed my drink, approached another couple, and slinked between them. I danced with them both and I was down low, my hips swinging, and why did I forget that I could really dance? At some point another man approached me from behind. He had his face in my neck; I felt his beard and smelled his sweat. My heart was racing; it had never slowed down. I scanned the room for Lara but didn’t see her. I closed my eyes and I was on the dock of our summer camp, baking in the hot sun after a long swim. I was a good swimmer, maybe the best at camp. But Lara had done a swan dive off the rock formation where we weren’t supposed to climb. Lara had done a flip off those rocks and had almost been sent home, but Stan had somehow talked the camp director into letting her stay. 

The man had his hands on my waist, I peeled my body from his. Where were Lara and Steve? They had been right there. I tried, mildly, to break away, but the man wasn’t letting go. I tried to rise against my fear and turned to meet his eyes. Here I was, a good swimmer, a good dancer, finished with my drinks. I kept dancing but also scanning—for Lara, for Steve. I had no idea where they were. Had they left me here? I didn’t remember Lara’s address. In a sudden move, I slammed myself forward, away from the man, and then I was pushing people, running outside with no sense of how much time had gone by since I’d left Lara in the bathroom. 

“Hey,” I said to the bouncer, trying to catch my breath. “Hey, do you remember me?”

He looked at me blankly. He had a scar on his cheek that I hadn’t noticed before. I wanted my parents. Would they yell? Would they be gentle? Either way, I knew they’d tell me to forget Lara and forget my stuff and take a taxi to the airport immediately.

“Maybe you remember my friend,” I said. “She was with a guy named Steve.”

He looked at me with something like pity. 

“Blonde?” I tried. “Silver shoes?”

“You’re describing most of the women here, hon,” the bouncer said. He looked tired. “Blonde with a Steve.” 

“She has really nice tits,” I said, laughing. “Like, memorable.”

And wouldn’t you know it, his eyes flashed with recognition. “Really pale?” he asked. 

I nodded.

“I do remember her.”

“Have you seen her in the last hour or so?”

“This time of night? Things really start breaking down.”

I looked down the sidewalk in the distance. The pavement was covered with quivering shadows. Just hours ago, when we were so focused on getting into the club, I hadn’t noticed the palm frond patterns crosshatching the sidewalk. I walked away, calling out for Lara over and over before leaning against a Porsche and setting off its alarm. I bolted back to the club, where a man in a beautiful suit mentioned to the bouncer that some girl was passed out on the steps. 

I ran toward where he’d come from, icy with certainty, already envisioning the phone call, my father’s stern voice. My heart was pounding straight into my head.

A figure was splayed out on the ground beneath the long marble steps of some kind of municipal building. As I walked toward it, I scanned the eerily quiet spot, ready for someone to grab me or at least pull a knife for my cash, which I’d earlier shoved into my padded bra, the way that Lara instructed. I saw sweatpants on the figure, and I knew that it wasn’t Lara. I still couldn’t catch my breath. I kept picturing how she’d wrapped her legs around Steve. I stood there, frozen, then buried my face in the edge of my tank top, dirtying it with makeup that Lara had applied so carefully.

It was a man sleeping beneath the steps. He looked weirdly peaceful, his mouth gaping open, his belongings piled beside him, a man with long blond hair.

Flooded with relief, I ran back across the street and there was Lara and Steve, standing on the sidewalk, chatting it up with the bouncer. The club blared “Don’t You Want Me” as Lara gave me a casual wave, like we were meeting here at the club door at a mutually agreed upon time. 

“Where were you?” I spat out. I was done with being cool. 

“Whoa!” Steve said. 

Lara ignored him and put her arm around me, which was awkward, because she was shorter. 

“Come on,” she said. 

I’d left my house and my parents just that morning; I’d flown on an airplane and drunk more in one night than I ever had in my life. “Lara,” I said, “I’m really tired.”

She took my face in her hands. Her palms were sweaty, her lips were swollen, her right eye was bloodshot. “No,” she said. “Just, no.” The force of her, genuinely wired, was too much to argue with. I gave over to her plans. We walked so close to the ocean that I could really smell the salt. It was four o’clock in the morning and I was trailing behind Lara and Steve, right down the middle of the street. It was desolate here: metal roll-down grates, drunks sleeping in beach chairs.

“Freedom is the only way to figure out who you really are. I happen to believe it’s better to do that while you’re young.”

“Do you smell that?” I said as the shock of hay and manure overtook us. And there—lying atop piles of straw, barely cordoned off by ropes—were two live elephants, sleeping. So much would happen before I went home. There’d be white sheets draped over scaffolding on a rooftop, where naked perfect men and women worked on even tans. We’d watch them from the street below, while drinking lemonade. I’d watch the sunset with Linda, while Lara was taking a “disco nap”; Linda, who, when I remarked sort of primly that Lara sure had a lot of freedom, would level me with a nod. Freedom is the only way to figure out who you really are. I happen to believe it’s better to do that while you’re young. There’d be a night drinking vodka blue Slurpees from 7-Eleven, before falling asleep in 2B and waking to find that Lara had gone out again. Where I didn’t know. Lara returning at dawn with a dazzling smile, along with two incipient bruises encircling her upper arms. There’d be a tearful hug at the airport imbued with the sense that we were unlikely to see each other again. 

But, for now, it was still my first morning in Florida and the sky was still dark. Lara didn’t take Steve’s hand; she took mine. “The circus,” Lara exhaled, watching the elephants, as if everything now made sense. 

They were huge and gray, with long black lashes, as if they’d emerged from the pages of a children’s book. 

“We’ll get our tattoos tomorrow,” she assured me.

Do you remember? 

Elephants. Sleeping under the stars of South Beach, right in the middle of Lincoln Road. We watched these beautiful creatures, and Lara held my hand; I held hers. It was 1987. The sky was a cloudless inky blue with no hint yet of sunrise.