Walking through Walls

one Redneck Mambo"My, aren't you a cutie!" She leaned closer to me and took a drag off her cigarette. As she exhaled, her ample sunburnt breasts, spilling out of her black fishnet one-piece, bobbed up and down against my face. Dressed in my blue blazer, bow tie, khaki shorts, and freshly shined Buster Browns, I was, at six years old, an irresistible magnet for drunken middle-aged women looking for love. Mom always insisted that if I were going to sit at the bar and drink that I at least be well dressed.I was at my favorite bar, the kind that was very popular in the 1950s throughout the Caribbean: below ground with a big picture window looking directly into the front of the pool. For hours I would watch would-be Esther Williams types engage in aesthetic swimming routines or drunken couples attempting to make love in the shallow end of the pool completely unaware that some of us had a front-row seat.At the moment, the hotel's live mermaid was doing her aquatic show while sucking on an air hose. I lived for the mermaid. She was my fantasy come true -- a sleek woman in a tight flesh-colored bathing suit, wearing very red lipstick, who did artistic somersaults and blew bubbles at you through the window. For some reason, possibly due to the Gulf Stream or immigration, mermaids did not exist back in my hometown of Miami. Mermaids were strictly a foreign phenomenon.Being a gentleman, I restrained myself from telling this aggressively drunk woman that her breasts were blocking not only my view of this very important show but my air passages as well.The Bahamian bartender gave me a wink and a smile. I was a regular, and he had witnessed my powerful little-boy charm on women many, many times. I was the Cary Grant/Hugh Hefner of my first-grade class -- suave, debonair, and just a bit naughty when necessary. I knew the difference between Manischewitz and Bordeaux.He poured my third drink: a planter's punch packed with dark rum. Delicious. On these weekends away, my parents would often park me at the bar. What better babysitter than a bartender and an open tab?At the time, I spent many of my weekends in tiki bars throughout the Caribbean, accompanying my mother and father on business trips. Nassau, Havana, Port-au-Prince, Kingston, and the Caymans were each just a short hop from Miami. In 1958 round-trip airfare to Nassau was around twelve dollars. Sometimes we would fly over for the day just to bring back duty-free liquor for one of my parents' parties.Pop was an internationally known interior decorator who, through no real effort of his own, specialized in making pretty for Caribbean dictators, prizefighters, minor celebrities, assorted mobsters, and just plain rich folk. Because Miami did not have a great demand for decorators, my father's clients existed largely outside of U.S. jurisdiction. Wherever there was offshore banking, Pop seemed to have clients. Once they had quietly exchanged one passport for another, his customers would discreetly retire to their Lew Smith-designed villas, usually the kind with an ever-ready seaplane parked out front. In the fifties, the only thing those Miami rednecks knew about decorating was driving the wife over in the pickup and grabbing whatever piece of colonial furniture with brown plaid upholstery was on sale at Sears during the Midsummer Spectacular.When my parents visited Havana, Mom would usually step off the plane and head straight for the casino, from which she would often emerge the next morning after beating the pants off every English expat at blackjack. With her gold cigarette holder, emerald earrings down to her shoulders, and style for miles, Mom was a brilliant gambler and always walked away with a win. Gangster Meyer Lansky regularly bought her breakfast after a night at the tables; he was probably hoping to recoup some of the house losses with a little snuggle behind the bar. While Mom was shaking the dice,Smith, Philip is the author of 'Walking through Walls' with ISBN 9781416542940 and ISBN 1416542949.