‘I see what you mean.’
She took out of my hands a dish of thin pastry boats filled with pink chunks of lobster in pale green mayonnaise. ‘You’ve done more than your duty here,’ she smiled. ‘Get on out.’
She lent us her car. Allie drove it northwards along the main boulevard of Collins Avenue and pulled up at a restaurant called Stirrup and Saddle.
‘I thought you might feel at home here,’ she said teasingly.
The place was crammed. Every table in sight was taken, and as in many American restaurants, the tables were so close together that only emaciated waiters could inch around them. Blow-ups of racing scenes decorated the walls and saddles and horseshoes abounded.
Dark decor, loud chatter and, to my mind, too much light.
A slightly harassed head waiter intercepted us inside the door.
‘Do you have reservations, sir?’
I began to say I was sorry, as there were dozens of people already waiting round the bar, when Allie interrupted.
‘Table for two, name of Barbo.’
He consulted his lists, smiled, nodded. ‘This way, sir.’
There was miraculously after all one empty table, tucked in a corner but with a good view of the busy room. We sat comfortably in dark wooden-armed chairs and watched the head waiter turn away the next customers decisively.
‘When did you book this table?’ I asked.
‘Yesterday. As soon as I got down here.’ The white teeth gleamed. ‘I got Warren to do it; he likes this place. That’s when I made the bets. He and Minty said it was crazy, you wouldn’t come all the way from England just to take me out to eat.’
‘And you said I sure was crazy enough for anything.’
‘I sure did.’
We ate bluepoint oysters and barbecued baby ribs with salad alongside. Noise and clatter from other tables washed around us and waiters towered above with huge loaded trays. Business was brisk.
‘Do you like it here?’ Allie asked, tackling the ribs.
‘Very much.’
She seemed relieved. I didn’t add that some quiet candlelight would have done even better. ‘Warren says all horse people like it, the same way he does.’
‘How horsey is Warren?’
‘He owns a couple of two-year-olds. Has them in training with a guy in Aiken, North Carolina. He was hoping they’d be running here at Hialeah but they’ve both got chipped knees and he doesn’t know if they’ll be any good any more.’
‘What are chipped knees?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you have chipped knees in England?’
‘Heaven knows.’
‘So will Warren.’ She dug into the salad, smiling down at the food. ‘Warren’s business is real estate but his heart beats out there where the hooves thunder along the homestretch.’
‘Is that how he puts it?’
Her smile widened. ‘It sure is.’
‘He said he’d take us to Hialeah tomorrow, if you’d like.’
‘I might as well get used to horses, I suppose.’ She spoke with utter spontaneity and then in a way stood back and looked at what she’d said. ‘I mean...’ she stuttered.
‘I know what you mean,’ I said smiling.
‘You always do, dammit.’
We finished the ribs and progressed to coffee. She asked how fast I’d recovered from the way she had seen me last and what had happened since. I told her about the gossip columns and the car, and she was fiercely indignant; mostly, I gathered, because of the car.
‘But it was so beautiful!’
‘It will be again.’
‘I’d like to murder that Jody Leeds.’
She scarcely noticed, that time, that she was telling me what she felt for me. The sense of a smoothly deepening relationship filled me with contentment: and it was also great fun.
After three cups of dawdled coffee I paid the bill and we went out to the car.
‘I can drop you off at your hotel,’ Allie said. ‘It’s quite near here.’
‘Certainly not. I’ll see you safely home.’
She grinned. ‘There isn’t much danger. All the alligators in Florida are a hundred miles away in the Everglades.’
‘Some alligators have two feet.’
‘Okay, then.’ She drove slowly southwards, the beginnings of a smile curling her mouth all the way. Outside her cousin’s house she put on the handbrake but left the engine running.
‘You’d better borrow this car to go back. Minty won’t mind.’
‘No, I’ll walk.’
‘You can’t. It’s all of four miles.’
‘I like seeing things close. Seeing how they’re made.’
‘You sure are nuts.’
I switched off the engine, put my arm round her shoulders and kissed her the same way as at home, several times. She sighed deeply but not, it seemed, with boredom.
I hired an Impala in the morning and drove down to Garden Island. A cleaner answered the door and showed me through to where Warren and Minty were in swim-suits, standing by the pool in January sunshine as warm as July back home.
‘Hi,’ said Minty in welcome. ‘Alexandra said to tell you she’ll be right back. She’s having her hair fixed.’
The fixed hair, when it appeared, looked as smooth and shining as the girl underneath. A black-and-tan sleeveless cotton dress did marvellous things for her waist and stopped in plenty of time for the legs. I imagine appreciation was written large on my face because the wide smile broke out as soon as she saw me.
We sat by the pool drinking cold fresh orange juice while Warren and Minty changed into street clothes. The day seemed an interlude, a holiday, to me, but not to the Barbos. Warren’s life, I came to realise, was along the lines of perpetual summer vacation interrupted by short spells in the office. Droves of sharp young men did the leg-work of selling dream retirement homes to elderly sun-seekers and Warren, the organiser, went to the races.
Hialeah Turf Club was a sugar-icing racecourse, as pretty as lace. Miami might show areas of cracks and rust and sun-peeled poverty on its streets, but in the big green park in its suburb the lush life survived and seemingly flourished.
Bright birds in cages beguiled visitors the length of the paddock, and a decorative pint-sized railway trundled around. Tons of ice cream added to weight problems and torn up Tote tickets fluttered to the ground like snow.
The racing itself that day was moderate, which didn’t prevent me losing my bets. Allie said it served me right, gambling was a nasty habit on a par with jumping off cliffs.
‘And look where it’s got you,’ she pointed out.
‘Where?’
‘In Ganser Mays’ clutches.’
‘Not any more.’
‘Which came first,’ she said, ‘the gamble or the race?’
‘All life’s a gamble. The fastest sperm fertilizes the egg.’
She laughed. ‘Tell that to the chickens.’
It was the sort of day when nonsense made sense. Minty and Warren met relays of drinking pals and left us much alone, which suited me fine, and at the end of the racing programme we sat high up on the stands looking over the course while the sunlight died to yellow and pink and scarlet. Drifts of flamingoes on the small lakes in the centre of the track deepened from pale pink to intense rose and the sky on the water reflected silver and gold.
‘I bet it’s snowing in London,’ I said.
After dark and after dinner Warren drove us round to the sales paddock on the far side of the racecourse, where spotlights lit a scene that was decidedly more rustic than the stands. Sugar icing stopped with the tourists: horse-trading had its feet on the grass.
There were three main areas linked by short undefined paths and well-patronised open-fronted bars; there was the sale ring, the parade ring and long barns lined with stalls, where the merchandise ate hay and suffered prods and insults and people looking at its teeth.