It happened on the corner of 147thand Miller, beneath the long branches of an oak hanging over the corner. It happened often enough— usually to white kids crossing U.S.1 in front of the University of Miami or other tourists on The Beach—but seldom in this residential area, and never on this intersection.
I was so innocent that my first thought was he didn’t know he was exposed. But the way he was staring at me so fixedly soon made me realize it was on purpose.
The streets of Memphis’ town had been orange groves when he was a boy. He remembered as, one by one, the groves were bulldozed to make room for neighborhoods, for the people from up north, finally tired of the long winters, to settle into their respiratory diseases and neurological disorders.
The ending to my story in Orlando flickers. I thought I knew how the story would end when I first set out to write this series. The scene would be framed at the Orlando International Airport...
If I like her and she likes me, we run the gauntlet: Wally’s, Lil Indies, Tako Cheena, and then a fifty percent chance of never seeing each other again...