There aren’t any street lights, porch lights, or traffic lights. I can see the stars as if I am in the Everglades. There is the occasional flicker of candlelight from a window, or the bluish glow of a fluorescent lantern. The headlights of the few cars breaking curfew are almost painful.
I am over a mile from I-95, but I can hear the dim roar of highway traffic. The constant whirring of air conditioner compressors has been replaced by the two-stroke purr of suburban generators, broken by occasional bursts of music from a transistor radio, an errant car alarm, or the wail of a siren. But on the porch all I can hear is the buzzing of out-of-season mosquitoes.
The tang of woodsmoke is out of place in Miami; I feel as though I’m back in Kentucky.
And it isn’t so bad, sitting in the dark, quiet house, enjoying some very good rum from St. Lucia, brought to me by very nice people. I could get used to this solitude.
