1: Unlikely Heroines
The ocean doesn’t stop where it used to. It sluices through streets that once had names, through buildings that still hold ghosts. Offshore dredging rigs float where dry ground once baked in the sun. They claw newly submerged seabed to be pumped inland onto the new plateau—high, dry, and expensive. Buildings rise from it like a promise that money can outbuild nature. This is Gloria’s and my world. We design buildings for the city rising beside the carcass of Miami. It is called New Miami. Gloria believes in building codes, steel, and concrete. She’s polite, smart, refined, and beautiful. Then there’s me. I’m Nancy Brookes. Loud, outspoken, occasionally crude, and fully capable of using the word fuck when you least expect it. I’m not bad- looking either. People say we’re lovers. Two single women running a business together—of course they do. *** I’m sitting in my office wondering where Gloria is. Eventually, she appears in my doorway. Pink blouse. Long red skirt. Hair perfectly brushed despite the humidity. Beautiful as always, though sweat darkens the fabric beneath her arms and along her collar. “Good morning, Gloria,” I say as I lean back in my chair. “Good of you to drop by.” She grumbles, “My car’s in the shop. I had to take a bus.”
High Ground
I almost ask why they hadn’t given her a loaner, then stop myself. Loaners don’t come with hand controls. She can’t drive without one. My mind wanders to something Cindy once told me. Cindy’s one of our draftsmen. She’s in her fifties, pretends to be twenty-five, but thinks like a twelve-year-old. She saw Gloria boarding a bus one morning. Gloria waited off to the side, letting everyone go first. People stared as she walked to the bus. The driver offered to lower the ramp. Gloria shook her head and said, “No need, I do this all the time.” Cindy described her climbing the steps, lifting each foot with her hand while balancing on a crutch, then shifting to the other side. Slow and awkward, yet somehow graceful. She reached the top but every seat was taken. The driver asked two teenage girls to move. One laughed and said, “We were here first.” The other added, “It’s not like she can’t stand or anything.” An older woman stood and offered her seat. I’m deep in thought about Gloria never complaining, never getting angry, and never wanting special treatment, when I hear: “Hello, Nancy, are you there?” I jolt back to reality to see Gloria staring at me. “The bus was sweltering,” she says. “This office is sweltering. I’m soaked, and the clients are coming in what—two hours?” Her eyes move critically over my sleeveless romper. “You’re not meeting them dressed like that?” “Hell no. I keep respectable clothes for clients.” As she lowers herself into a chair, leg braces clank softly beneath her long skirt.
2
Unlikely Heroines
The overhead lights flicker, and a low rumble passes beneath the building. Neither of us reacts. Florida used to never have earthquakes, but offshore fracking changed that. Now tremors roll through New Miami so often we barely notice. Gloria, however, is strangely still. “What?” I ask. She stares at the window beside my desk as she says, “My reflection was weird this morning.” “What are you talking about?” I ask. “I was getting ready for work, sitting at my dressing table singing along with the music playing. You know the tune.” She sings softly, “He promised to buy me a trinket to please me. And then for a kiss, oh, he vowed he would tease me.” Her voice sounds pretty, very feminine. She goes back to talking, “We had a tremor. A bottle tipped over on the counter and rolled away. I caught it without missing a note.” She resumes singing, “He promised he’d bring me a bunch of blue ribbons to tie up my bonnie brown hair.” She points to her chest and says, “Then I noticed a spot right here.” I comment, “Something nobody else would have seen.” “I looked at it and said, ‘Oh, heck.’” I laugh. “There you go getting vulgar again.” She doesn’t respond, but continues, “I lifted myself out of the chair, walked to the closet, and hung a clean blouse on one crutch so it wouldn’t drag on the floor as I walked back.” I say, “Is there something not normal about that?” She responds, “Not yet, but listen.”
3
High Ground
“I sat so I could put it on and glanced into the mirror. My reflection was glancing back at me, but …” She gives me a strange look. I ask, “But what?” She closes her eyes. “Something weird. It was shaking its head at me.” “You were holding your head still and your reflection was shaking its head?” I say with a disbelieving chuckle. “Were you smoking funny stuff?” She assures me, “It was real. It was like the mirror was chastising me for that spot on my shirt. I did a double take. It laughed at me then went back to normal.” “What do you mean, ‘normal’?” Before she can respond, a hard jolt shakes the building. Somewhere in the drafting room somebody yelps. Coffee sloshes across Gloria’s hand.