She arrived in Miami on a summer night that was lit and sparkling like a Christmas tree. She wore her baby pink dress. Mark was there to meet her, his belly bulging under a loose-fitting polo shirt, his hairy
legs bold and strong, jutting out from a pair of white shorts that was almost tight. He chucked her luggage into a large shiny car without the slightest complaint.

“How the flight? All right?”

He slammed the doors, wound the windows down and eased the car into the traffic.

“OK, I guess,” she said.

“Feel just like Jamaica. Hot same way.” He piloted the car adroitly amidst a maze of underpasses and meandering highways.

She wound her window halfway up and cut Miami in half. He said something about how nice she looked but she hardly heard. She sat agape and astounded as they sailed above the glimmering city as if she
sat on a bed of stars.

She closed her eyes momentarily so she could open them again to the magic around her and confirm it was not a dream.

Kingston had buildings. Kingston had lights. But to see the beauty of it, one had to be in the hills as the streets all ran at ground level. Herein Miami, the highway took them through the centre of the shining city, not just horizontally, but vertically too.

“You eat?”

Mark’s words brought her back. “What?”

“You eat on the plane?”

“No.”

“OK. Let’s go on the beach.”

“Now? Like this?”

He laughed teasingly. He had deliberately worded the suggestion to have a double meaning.

“Don’ worry, we just going to eat.”

“The place pretty,” she sighed.

“You don’ see nothing yet.”

Later, when asked what she remembered most about her first nights in Miami, Shirley Temple Brown said, ‘The lights.’

Those that lined the vast cruise ships from stem to bow as she passed the causeway, the ones that ran up and down the vast cranes reaching into the skies and guarding the port of Miami like sentinels, the big blue sign of the Miami Herald that appeared to her left as the draw-bridge approached, and
Miami Beach emerging as they crested onto the bridge, prescribing therim of the dark waters like a jewelled arc.

And when they got to the beach and cruised along the strip looking for a place to park, there were more lights blazing on buildings – hues of blue and red and purple and neon green; pink, and hazel and orange
too – buildings with names like Avalon, Olympiad, Majestic. Lights everywhere. Lights strung through trees, running along the sidewalk, on bikes, on people’s backs, on skateboards and skates.

This, she thought, was heaven on earth.