Florida, Man

The first thing I discovered while cleaning up the condo as we were moving in was a CIA mousepad along with a Smith & Wesson Safety and Instruction Manual. Then I found a tray of bullets. In the refrigerator, I found a syringe. A bathroom drawer contained the book Never an Outbreak: the breakthrough method that stops the herpes virus and eliminates all outbreaks and a bottle of PolySonic Ultrasound Lotion with superior coupling efficiency. I thought I was the only one who had ultrasound fantasies.

The previous owner of the condo rented it out to a man he said was the CEO of a mattress company who traveled a lot. Obviously, this was a cover. From what I could surmise, the man who occasionally lived in our condo was a kinky secret CIA agent who made bad decisions, but he was a good shot: I found a target practice silhouette with a hole torn through the heart...

As a Canadian, I find Americans to be a source of endless curiosity. It dismays me that they would allow a gun shop to set up beside a liquor store, but I'm grateful that there's no Post Office in the plaza, so that it falls just short of an invitation to a one-stop rampage.

As I was driving home from the grocery store one night, the car in front of me turned left into the car beside him. He must have seen the car. He passed it so he could turn into its path. Is it possible to intentionally have a car accident, to make the mental declaration off with your headlights?

My husband and I were walking into the Florida town for dinner one night when a man emerged from an alley and plopped himself down at a table on the patio of a seafood restaurant, announcing as he collapsed into the chair that he had been stabbed. But there was no sign of blood. We had to take the guy's word for it that he had been stabbed which perhaps is why everyone on the patio, including the woman at the podium who told everyone who approached that the restaurant was totally booked all of the time, looked distressed and disoriented. We were caught on a cruise ship between the ports of belief and disbelief, neither of which would allow us to dock. My husband put his hand on my back and gently pushed me on. Later that night when we returned home there was yellow tape around the seafood restaurant patio. I guess the guy really had been stabbed.

When the first case was reported in Washington state and grew into contagion, life continued as it always had in the Florida town. I decided that my proxy for panic would be the brunch crowd on the patio at the Italian restaurant across from the beach. When New York was registering apocalyptic dread, the patio remained packed. St Patrick's Day was muted--not as many drunken people fell or urinated into bushes--but the vibe was still celebratory. How could there be menace in the air when the sun was shining, the palm trees were swaying, and the temperature was 82 degrees? The day we left the Florida town, the beach was open and patio at the Italian restaurant was still half full.

"My daughter is begging me not to go to California," said the woman in the salon chair next to me. "But I'm going anyway." I admired her defiance, the kind you have in a salon chair or a bleacher seat, but not in the emergency waiting room. "Our Prime Minister told us to come home and I have to leave," I told the owner of the salon who wished me safe travels, and sounded genuinely alarmed for me.

Part of me wished I could stay and become part of her big dream. But I knew I was too small.