But we landed safe and sound at Miami only half an hour late, and found our Thrifty Rental car without having to resort to anything as demeaning as helpful public information. Which seems as yet unconsidered in Chad County. But from there things looked up. A friend had suggested spending part of a twelvehour layover having brunch at the Delano Motel, in Miami Beach; the hotel itself has been rescued by Philippe Starck famous for his weird retro chair designs from shabby gentility and transformed into a witty postmodern wannabe Thirties Deco palace, and the kitchen is said to be looked over by Claude Troisgros, whose brother Michel staged a while Chez Panisse and now runs the family temple in Roanne.
We sat under the ceiling looking out toward the pool and, beyond that if we could only have seen it through the wandering semi-nude readers of the New York Times, the cerulean green Atlantic; and we took our ease and a couple of Mimosas, and consulted our menus and the oddly clad fellow diners, and had an enjoyable couple of hours.
I looked like a retired college instructor from a private liberal-arts college, which is in fact one of my roles: Harris tweed sport jacket, Italian silk tie, conservative blue button-down shirt, black trousers and shoes. But it was not the prevailing dress in Miami Beach. I doubt a building has gone up along this mall since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
The best buildings are streamline moderne; the worst aspire to it. Along the mall is a curious assortment of chain boutiques, souvenir shops, those odd emporia of computers and cell phones and CD machines that seem to spring up in tourist centers, second-hand clothing shops, gelateria, restaurants serving pizzas and the like, a white gospel church, and one decent bookshop, and the home of the New World Symphony, directed by Michael Tilson Thomas.
The mall is furnished with fountains, cafe seating, a number of vendors of juices freshly prepared from fruits clearly brought in from sustainable local airports, and tall palms, one thicket of which was peppered with noisy green parrots. We killed a bit of time, bought a Spanish-language phrasebook, and ambled over to the Delano for our Mimosa and a leisurely consultation of the menu.
