If relationships have different flavors and levels of nourishment like food, I had no bread and butter in my life, and I hadn’t for quite a while. In those years I existed in a nether world between work and no work. I was married, but I saw myself going it alone. I was carrying no one, nothing, along inside me every day. The fact that Piper didn't want to know anything more about my life was a relief.
She wanted to return a scarf to one of the regular stores on our designer trap-line. The designer was French, and had become very popular in the 80s for his scarves in a horse-y pattern. I tagged along to observe Piper handle the exchange. I knew she’d worn the scarf and spilled wine on it one day while we were sitting by the pool, but I was certain she knew what was appropriate in regard to returns in these circumstances.
After the salesclerk was somehow made to feel it was her privilege to accept Piper’s return, she turned to the rear counter to put the scarf back in its place. At that moment Piper slid two scarves that had been carelessly left out on the counter into her shoulder bag.
I tried to catch her eye. I wanted to ask her what was wrong. Was she confused? Were the scarves samples? Piper simply kept up the low key patter with the salesclerk, serene and oblivious to everything around her.
When the transaction was over she continued to browse the shelves, scanning the belts and handbags; beginning a lecture on the relative merits of various leathers. She was minutes into the lecture when she shoved her shoulder bag at me, telling me to take it. Of course, I did. Seconds later, the in-store security guard, dressed in a business suit, cuffed me. He grabbed Piper by the elbow and walked us both to the back of the store.
Up to this point in my life, I’d lived in several places, and worked at many more. I’d known insecurity and anxiety, loneliness, and rejection. But I’d never known a shock of fear as cold as the one I felt that afternoon. I’m sure if that same cold had been outside my body instead of inside it I wouldn’t have survived more than a few seconds.
Piper walked calmly, almost as if she were being escorted rather than being forced to walk to the back of the store. I stumbled behind, already crying and protesting.
The guard grabbed my purse and Piper’s shoulder bag from me. After looking at the identification in both, there were no photos on licenses then; he asked which one of us owned the shoulder bag with the scarves.
I waited for Piper to speak up. She looked at the ceiling, and at the wall behind the guard’s head. She looked everywhere except at me, and she said nothing.
I said everything. I told the guard I’d never been in trouble. I insisted my purse was the vinyl one, not the one with the scarves. I went on and on; a river of desperate apologies for something I didn’t do that went much further than necessary.
Piper asked to make a phone call. The guard took her to another room. I was left alone in a panic wondering what to do. Call Roy? He wouldn’t know what to do. Contact my parents? They were thousands of miles away. I thought about calling a lawyer, but I didn’t know any lawyers. I’d never used a lawyer before. I never had a need for a lawyer.
I spent the next hour and a half alone in a small room waiting for either the police to come and get me or a chance to once again beg forgiveness for something I didn’t do. But nothing like that happened. Instead, I watched as Piper and a tall man dressed in an expensive suit--the word “bespoke”, a word she’d taught me, ran through my head--walk toward the front of the store. The security guard walked with them, and then turned, as if now ready to deal with me.
I jumped up and shouted. “Piper! What’s going on! Are you leaving? What about me?"
Piper turned, cocked her head, and looked in my general direction, but not at my face.
I stared at hers for fifteen seconds. I knew that look. She was considering something.
She tapped the man in the bespoke suit on the shoulder, pulled his head down to her height, and whispered something in his ear.
He turned, walked back to the security guard, and spoke with him quietly for a minute or two at the most. Then Piper and the man left the store.
The security guard came back to me and told me the situation was resolved to his satisfaction. I should go, get out of his store, and never come back.
I walked to the sidewalk cried out.
I didn’t have a way to get home. Piper drove that day. It never crossed my mind to call Roy.
I had to get back to the condo, someplace that at least gave me the illusion of safety. The adrenaline had given me a terrible headache, and the image of Piper cocking her head and considering me so clinically had scared me.
I had just enough money for a cab. I knew Roy wouldn’t be at the condo when I got home and I was glad. If I was going to be in the presence of anybody at that moment, it had to be someone I was sure loved me.
Piper didn’t show up for work the next day. I tried to call her a week later. But her number was unlisted. I never thought to get it when we worked together because we saw each other every day. I never saw or heard from her again.
I got a few more months out of the yellow page gig before they brought in some bi-lingual salespeople. During that time I worked diligently, but futilely. At some point, I must have discovered that hard work done without thinking can provide relief from almost anything.
It didn’t take me too long to understand why Piper never wanted to know more about my life. She knew all there was to know about it the first time we went to lunch. She also knew no matter how much I learned about her life, I would never understand it. She knew I would never understand a person taking a job just to keep busy, or to please parents who support you and want you to stay productive and out of trouble.
It wasn’t till years later, after meeting other people like Piper that I understood the complete nature of what I came to think of as our exchange. As far as my end of the exchange went, I amused her. It was a good thing I did, or I don’t know where I would have ended up that day at Bal Harbour.
As far as her end of the exchange, that was much easier for me to eventually understand than accept. If it had been free brunches, lessons in fine living, and wine by the pool, that would have been easy. I’d have ‘fessed up to myself and been done with it.
I had to take the relationship out of my back pocket and turn it over many times over several years to understand that what Piper gave me was a little part of someone to carry around inside me every day. Her steady attention and positive feedback, sincere or not, gave me a type of nourishment. It wasn’t the bread and butter you build a life on, but it helped to sustain me for a while.
But I couldn’t allow myself to realize that at the time. If I had, I might have felt compelled to leave Roy right then. My instinct to survive, and someday flourish had been too acute for that. I sensed Miami was not the place to plant a flag of my own.
Next "Al, Miami and Me"
Note: I'm currently rewriting and expanding "Miami 1986" into a novella. In the new version, I do hear from Piper again, or rather she hears from me. Stay tuned.
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