Beach Dream

Congress Hotel, Art Deco District, Miami Beach.
Photo by Silvia Ros.
Not really like the dream building, but I couldn't find any pictures of seedy buildings, though the balconies on the left would pass. Everyone wants shiny and new. Imagine that.

I'm walking along the beach. Eventually I come to a place where a river empties into the sea. The beach makes a corner here. I meet some guy and we go back the way I came, but now we are several yards inland from where I was walking and the ground is covered with short leafy plants, maybe 3 or 4 inches high, kind of a gray-green color. The leaves are covered with some kind of fuzz. We are careless of walking on them, we give it no more thought than walking on a lawn.
    Eventually we get back to the place where we are both staying. It might be a cheap motel or apartment house. There are two buildings about three stories high and a dozen rooms long. There is a balcony that runs the length of the building that also functions as a hallway. The two buildings face each other. They are perpendicular to the beach so if you look down the length of the balcony you can see the sea. The railing on the balcony is constructed like a solid wall, perhaps stuccoed. My room is on the top floor nearest the ocean. Facing the other building the ocean is on my right.
    I got what I came for, now it's time to go to other guy's room and get whatever it is he is after. Turns out his room is exactly opposite mine. The stairs are at the other end of the building, so getting to his room by conventional methods would mean walking to the end of the building, descending three flights of stairs, walking ten feet to the opposite building, climbing three flights of stairs and then walking the length of the building again. That would be annoying and inconvenient.
     The other guy steps over the railing at the end of the balcony. There is a six inch wide ledge there. He takes a couple of steps and leaps across the gap and lands on the corresponding ledge on the other side. He gets what he needs. Now we could walk to the stairs and walk down, but he steps over the railing in front of his room and onto the narrow ledge outside the railing. Now he jumps down to the railing the surrounds a landing that projects from the floor below.

As always, I only post this because I remember it so clearly, and because it is a bit of exercise in writing a narrative.