In late-April of 2008 I left Thailand after a ten-year stay. My family accompanied to the sprawling Bangkok airport. happy tourists were heading home from vacations. I kissed my children good-bye and hid the tears by burying my head in Mam’s neck. My dog howled, as I got on the airport bus.

Mam’s belly was swollen with our new baby.

“You come back soon.” It was a wish, not a question.

“Soon.” I could not say when. My ticket was one-way to New York.

The polar-bound 747 stopped in Tokyo and Anchorage. Winter gripped Siberia, Alaska, and Canada. Two returning pipeline workers recounted their holiday highlights. They had blown their money on a good time. I had given my last $300 to Mam and kept $100 for me. Neither amount lasted long in Thailand or New York.

My East Village apartment was history, however my good friend AP had promised me a soft landing. His wife and the Hamptons architect resided in a Fort Greene brownstone.

That Brooklyn neighborhood was a train stop across the East River from Manhattan.

I slept on the couch in the TV room. The advanced remote control stymied my surfing the channels and I fell asleep reading Melville’s TYPEE. His romantic tale of a New England sailor’s living with Polynesian headhunters mirrored my existence in Thailand. I dreamed of sweet Mam welcoming the dawn.

Morning came early to a jet-lagged man.

I sat on the brownstone’s stairs and read the NY Times. The US economy was shambled by two foreign wars and the banks’ housing scam. Most people were bankrupted and jobs were hard to find without help. At a party my old boss Richie Boy said that he had a spot for me.

“I’m opening a store in the Plaza Hotel.”

“When?” I was hoping to hear ‘tomorrow’.

“September.”

I was struggling hand-to-mouth with five mouths to feed not counting my own. That tomorrow was very far away from today, but I said, “Count me in.”

“I’m willing to do anything,” I told a movie actor friend.

“I wish I could help.” Bill’s film was premiering at Lincoln Center.

“You already have.” He had bought my ticket back from Thailand.

I wandered the streets.

The sun shone on New York, but the city was hard to crack open after a lengthy departure.

Mam called for money.

“I’ll get some in two days.” I hung up my cell phone and contemplated my options.

Richie Boy had a gun in his safe. I could rob a bank with his 9mm. At the worse the police would send me to Riker’s Island. The city prison offered three meals and a cot.

My phone rang late that evening.

It was Lisa from Palm Beach.

The two of us knew each other from Paris in the early 1980s. She had been working for Armani and I had been the doorman at Les Bains-Douches.

She had a loving son nicknamed ‘Pickle’.

Kristopher was 16.

He was still ‘Pickle’ to his mom.

“I might have a job for you here. Taking care of a mansion and a dog. The pay is $400/week,” the Philadelphia native was fighting with her mother. She had married a has-been crooner. Her new husband wanted everything.

“That might work.” Mam could live on $300 and the rest was mine.

“Bad wine is cheap.” Lisa liked beer. Her favorite was Corona.

“I don’t deserve any better.” I figured on getting a part-time job at 7/11. They had to pay minimum wage.

“Johnny will call you later. He’s one of us.”

His wealth came from the sale of mobile cell-phone towers. Lisa’s family fortune was anchored in fashion. They knew each other from Philadelphia and not North Phillie.

Johnny phoned that night. He was in the SFO airport on his way to China.

“I heard you were arrested in Thailand.”

“You heard right.” Police from Bangkok’s Cyper-Crime unit had arrested me in Pattaya. “I was selling bootleg F1 merchandise online. My sight was placed before Ferrari. They hired a detective agency to find me. The Tam-Luat raided my house, but were strangely respectful. I was never cuffed or asked for a bribe. They bought me beer and food. In Bangkok I was put in an office and later was on national TV, then cut loose for three months before my trial. My fine was $100.”

“Unbelievable.” Bangkok prison was famous around the world.

“I’m a lucky man.”

Johnny liked my story and said, “I’ll fly you down here. My wife, son, and I are going to Italy for the summer. You take care of the house and my dog.”

“What kind?”

“An Airedale.”

After hanging I googled the breed. An expert had written in Wikipedia ‘an Airedale is swift, formidable, graceful, big of brain, an ideal chum and guard. ….To his master he is an adoring pal. To marauders he is a destructive lightning bolt’.

I was good with dogs. My dog Champoo was a Tzi-Shu. She loved me more than she loved herself and almost love me as much as my daughter Angie.

AP and I discussed the offer.

“A rogue Yankee-Mick was made for Palm Beach. You go down there and find an eighty year-old heiress with three weeks to live. You’ll inherited her fortune and life will be cherries and ice cream. What have you to lose?”

“My place on the sofa.”

“It will be here for you no matter what.” AP was a good friend and a better architect.

At 55 I was the youngest man at the West Palm Beach Airport.

Lisa waited in the departure lounge with her son. Pickle had grown into a young man.

She kissed my cheeks. We were friends. Nothing else, but friends.

“Welcome to Florida.”

“You have that right.” And for the first time in weeks I breathed easy.

The next dawn I woke on the living room couch. Lisa and her son were asleep upstairs. I tried to call Mam in Thailand. There was no answer and I got to my feet. I hadn’t swam since Pattaya and exited from the Moorish mansion. The beach was at the end of the street. At this hour a bathing suit was optional and I stripped off my clothes.

The Gulf Stream glowed with the rising sun.

A police car cruised north on Ocean Boulevard.

I was the only person on the beach.

The officer was used to northerners in love with the ocean and as long as I didn’t drown on his watch, I was a free man. I ran into the warm sea and swam for thirty minutes. I hadn’t felt this good in a long time.

After toweling myself dry I wandered down to the main drag.

The traffic on South County Road was mostly pick-up trucks loaded with Mexicans. They tended to the gardens and the houses during the off-season. A police car was parked at the gas station across from City Hall. The officer was eying each and every passenger. None caught his attention. He took one look at me and decided that I was more a threat to myself than public safety.

I returned to Lisa’s house. The flowers by the pool were in blossom. She was brewing coffee in the kitchen.

“Nice swim?”

“The best.”

“Care to accompany me into West Palm.” She had to run errands. It was how people passed the time on Palm Beach.

“Why not?” I wasn’t meeting Johnny until later.

West Palm Beach wasn’t in good shape. Florida had achieved record foreclosures after the bank collapse. Empty work sites were everywhere.

“Everyone thought they could make a million flipping houses. Somebody had to be left to hold the bag.” Lisa owned her house outright thanks to her mother. She was almost safe, but was wary of a future dominated by the state’s GOP. “Never know who that will be.”

Downtown was in even worst shape.

“They tore down these buildings for future condos. They have over 10,000 empties in this county. No one is saying how many in the state. Maybe a million.”

“Tough times.” I had seen a single HELP WANTED sign at any of the convenience stores or supermarkets. “You know anyone needing a good worker?”

“Not this time of year, but I’ll ask around.”

A Palm Beach police officer was renting Lisa’s pool house. She told him that I was taking care of Johnny’s dog.

“Pom Pom?” Kevin shook his head. “You be careful. That dog is on a list. If it’s seen off its lease, we have the right to shoot it.”

“Shoot it.”

“It’s attacked two dogs on its street and one on the beach. Pom Pom is no sweetheart. Only a question of time until it bites a person.” Kevin walked down the driveway to the police station. It was less than three minutes away.

“Dangerous?” I was thinking about wild animals.

“Not to you? Let’s go have a beer.” She meant at her house. I nodded in agreement. Beer was always good in the tropics.

That evening Lisa and I met with Johnny. I asked him about Pom Pom.

“My wife rescued her from the pound. She’s sweet most of the time. You should have any trouble with her from what I hear about you.”

“Can I meet her tonight?”

Johnny waved a finger. “We’re packing for Italy. You’ll meet her tomorrow.”

After he drove away in a Mercedes, I turned to Lisa. “I feel like I’m going on a blind date with a psychopath.”

“It won’t be that bad. Besides what choice to you have?”

Only to drink more beer and Lisa’s fridge had plenty of Coronas.

Early the next morning Lisa, Kris, and I rode over to Johnny’s mansion in her BMW. It wasn’t a new car and Kris’ soccer gear was strewn across the backseat. He wanted to play for the Premier League like millions of other boys and teens around the world.

We turned off South County Road.

Johnny’s house had once been part of the Wentworth Estate.

The lawn was perfectly manicured and the trees were trimmed.

“You don’t have to do anything, but walk the dog.”

“Yeah, it’s a breeze.” Kris was 16. Teens that age are experts in sarcasm.

The inner courtyard was a Moorish paradise with a pool sparkling in the sunlight.

This was me.

“When I was a kid, I thought I had been kidnapped by my family and came from money.”

“Everyone thinks that.” Lisa laughed, because her emigre mother had married rich. I couldn’t blame her mother. Her walk out of Russia to Iran during WWII was a story of legend and even more so because it was true.

“More wish it then think it.” I knew my place in this world.

Johnny greeted us at the fountain and introduced me to his wife and son. Lucinda knew my good friend Tem’s wife from college. “Caroline says such good things about you.”

“I was Tem’s best man at his wedding.”

“Excuse us, we have to finish packing and please take good care of Pom Pom. She’s a little crazy, but sweet as pie in the end.”

I wished them a good trip to Italy and asked Johnny, “Where’s Pom Pom?”

Johnny led me into the living room. Lisa went upstairs with his wife. Kris stayed in the courtyard. Johnny waved me through the French doors into the spacious living room.

A Basquiat and Haring hung on the walls. First edition books lined the walls and a polished grand piano was in the corner. There was no TV.

“I don’t watch TV.”

“Me neither.” In Thailand the TV had been usurped by Mam to watch soap operas. Each one shared the plot of a poor girl loved by a rich boy without a Cinderella’s happy ending.

A growl rumbled from behind the sofa.

Pom Pom bared long white teeth. She was a big dog.

“Her smile is worse than her bark.”

I offered my hand and she snapped at my fingers.

I swatted her muzzle. Pom Pom scrunched up in surrender, but her eyes said, “Just wait.”

“She’s a testy dog. The man at the pound said that she came from a crack den in Riviera Beach. That’s a bad neighborhood to the north.”

“I know how to handle her.” It wasn’t like I could leave. I only had $50 in my pocket and New York was a two day hitch from Florida.

“You can drink anything in the kitchen, but nothing from my private stock.”

“It’s a deal.”

We shook hands and he handed me the keys to his life in Palm Beach.

“So what do you think?” Lisa asked after Johnny and his family left.

“I think I’ll be fine.” I dipped my toe into the pool. The water was the right temperature and I had checked the kitchen pantry. There was enough liquor to last the summer.

“I thought you would.”

I got my bag from the car and Kris said, “Good luck. You’ll need it.”

I knew that he was telling the truth, because he was a good boy.

TO BE CONTINUED