Mary in Miami

Seeing Mary is like having the cicadas come out from hibernation: It only happens every 17 years and the cacophony keeps you up all night!

She pulled up right on time Friday night to pick me up from the Ft. Lauderdale airport. The humidity was oppressive. Moreso than in Philly, to my disdain.  We drove on wide boulevards that spilled out in both directions to accommodate the speeding bullets in the six lanes.  Diamond white lights swerved in and out of my side view mirror and I wondered when I had become such a prude about fast cars. 

After very little deliberation we decided we would eat Asian food before finding some young and fun activity. We usually look forward to acting approximately the age of our last reunion. This is usually particularly distressing to our livers. 

At Lemongrass (there's one in every town), we feasted on some sushi and Thai food.  We have been gchatting almost daily for the last month and there was little "catching up" to do. The conversation flowed from food admiration to relationships to our sisters' children. We finished the bottle of Chardonnay easily and headed to her townhome nearby. 

She lives in a large townhome with her best friend and sister, plus a couch crashing girlfriend who has a little barky fluffy dog. Upstairs in her room, I waited while Mary and her friends made plans for the evening. I am always content to have others make the plans. After losing their minds at the Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake concert, they were eating a late dinner at home and invited us over for drinks. 

We like to talk and dance while getting ready. We were out the door in about an hour and speeding along to Las Olas around midnight when her friends called to bail. Undiscouraged, we painted Las Olas red on our own. Around 4 AM we ditched the clubs and went to the Floridian, a diner sort of like Little Pete's but huge.  The servers all wore black t-shirts that said "24 hours" inside a big white heart.   Our server was a 50-something, muscular Polish lady with a spiky pixie. She filled our table with my fries, Mary's 6 oz. steak with three over easy eggs AND toast AND potatoes, and the onion rings, turkey wrap and cheesesteaks of out newfound bar buddies.

The two guys and the couple were locals originally from Philly, Rio de Janeiro and Turkey.  We had a hilarious late night meal, sobered up and zombied back to her place. Shit, I thought as we lay down at 6AM. We would really need to pull it together to be at our 11AM appointment at a bridal trunk show in Miami.