Stiltsville: A Novel by Susanna Daniel Page B

tropical storms and one devastating hurricane, through the Mariel boat lift and the cocaine cowboys. Outside Florida, I’ve never met anyone else who lived in Miami or cared to, or even anyone who is not somewhat surprised to hear that I lived there for half of my life. Perhaps what is still most surprising to me about Miami is that in spite of its lurid excesses and unreal beauty and unreal ugliness, it was possible for me, a girl from Georgia, to create a life there. Overall, an excellent life. A life I knew even as I was living it, I would miss when it came to an end.

1976
    W hen Margo was five, we left her with Bette one summer weekend and took Marse and Dennis’s old friend Paul, whom Marse had been dating on and off for a year, to Stiltsville. The morning after we arrived, I was in the downstairs bathroom changing into a swimsuit when I heard an airplane’s engine. The noise drew me into the sunlight on the dock and I watched as the plane—a Cessna with twin propellers and a red stripe down the fuselage—swept into the sky above our leg of the channel, then banked and circled over the Becks’ stilt house to the northeast. Dennis was fixing breakfast while Marse and Paul dressed. Stiltsville was five miles from downtown Miami: from land, the plane would resemble a quiet mosquito, and the houses perched on stilts in the bay would dissolve in the blurring of waves and sky. But from where I stood, the plane’s noise and proximity were overwhelming. It was seconds before I heard Dennis shouting over the sound. I turned to find him waving frantically from the upstairs porch for me to come inside.
    I walked back up the dock, trying not to run, and up the stairs. Paul stood at the kitchen window holding binoculars to his face, and Marse stood beside him in her pajamas. Paul handed me the binoculars. “Looks like we have company,” he said.
    The Cessna’s fuselage was pockmarked and the paint was faded and nicked. There was one man in the cockpit, but I couldn’t make him out. “Drugs?” I said.
    “What else?” said Paul.
    “We don’t know it’s drugs,” said Dennis.
    “Who owns that house?” said Paul.
    “The Becks,” said Marse. “Marcus and Kathleen. They’re hardly the type.”
    I thought of Kathleen Beck in her floral sundresses, and of the stork-shaped cookies she’d brought when Margo was born. Every so often I saw her in the parking lot of Margo’s school, picking up her twin daughters. I’d thought she and Marcus had planned to be on the water that weekend, but they must have changed their minds.
    A hatch door opened beside the cockpit. “Here we go,” said Marse. We waited, and then a package dropped into the water ten yards off the Becks’ dock. There was a small splash and the bright white package bobbed immediately to the surface. The Cessna circled once more and headed southeast, away from land.
    We stepped onto the porch. There was little current, and any movement of the package was almost imperceptible. “What are we waiting for?” said Paul.
    Dennis watched the package through the binoculars. It seemed to be heading toward the Becks’ house; if so, it would slip under the dock, past the pilings, and out to sea. The whole process would take three hours, or five at the most. “Could be messy,” said Dennis.
    “We can’t just leave it there,” said Marse. “We should call the Coast Guard.”
    “Why would we do that?” said Paul.
    I said, “Calling the Coast Guard isn’t a bad idea.”
    “I’d rather not,” said Dennis.
    “Why?” I said.
    He didn’t look at me. “Because the registration on the boat is—well, it’s lagging.”
    “I don’t think they’ll care about our boat registration, honey. Besides, the Coast Guard is federal.”
    “They could call the marine police.”
    Paul said, “How well do you know these people, the Becks?”
    “Fairly well,” said Dennis.
    “Kathleen’s a Girl Scout troop leader,” said Marse.
    “Marcus plays the tuba, for