Concrete and Bougainvillea

The wrecking ball had already taken the eastern wing of the Miramar, exposing the pastel pink bathrooms like cells in a giant, plaster honeycomb. Clara stood at the edge of the construction fence, her hard hat slipping forward over her brow, watching the yellow dust rise into the humid Miami air. The contractor, a man named Henderson who had lost three fingers to a circular saw twenty years ago, handed her a waterlogged cardboard box. It had been found behind the lath and plaster of the old dining room, sealed away in 1954 when the hotel had changed its menu from French-Creole to Jewish-American deli.

Inside were three dozen menus, their edges curled and brown like dry sea-grape leaves. Clara touched the dry paper, her fingers tracing the faded silver ink that spelled "Pompano Papillote" and "Pineapple Sorbet with Rum." The scent of old fat and damp plaster was still trapped in the fibers, a ghostly kitchen that had survived seventy years of ocean humidity and salt-rot. A crane groaned behind her, lifting a heavy girder that had once supported the grand ballroom’s chandelier, its iron rivets popping with the sharp, metallic snap of pistol shots.

She looked up at the remaining wall, where a faded mural of a flamingo still stood against the grey concrete. The bird was missing its head, which had been carried away by a backhoe an hour before, but its pink legs still rose elegantly from a painted swamp. Clara tucked the menus under her arm, feeling the heat of the noon sun roasting her shoulders through her cotton shirt. By evening, the Miramar would be nothing but a hill of grey dust and twisted rebar, destined for a landfill in Broward County, leaving only these paper dinners to prove that people had once eaten fish in the shadow of the palms.