Barefoot boy with cheek

Pardon my silence, but we've been on the road. Back the same day in each case, but tired enough that I can claim fatigue (though I think it was actually a rare light dusting of writer's block).

Saturday Robert was determined to get our closet organizers nailed down (figuratively; they'll actually take screwing together), but the Home Depot here didn't have the pieces we needed.

The HD up the Overseas Highway in Marathon had just what we wanted, so we logged the 100-mile round trip, loaded up the 400 pounds or so and threw in dinner at Bobalu's, on the way home on Big Coppitt, as a deal sweetener.

Sunday we went all the way to the mainland, to the Four Seasons Miami, to visit our old friend Sidney, down from Chicago for the winter. We thought his wife, Deanna, was going to be there (and brought her roses from Publix in Key Largo), but she'd flown north for a bat mitzvah or two. Still, Sidney was incredibly well attended by his Filipino assistant, John.

Sidney, who's 88, met us poolside, stretched out like Meyer Lansky on a hot day in Havana. We caught up on old times, and then John pulled the cabana sides closed so Sidney could dress for lunch. We poured ourselves into his s spanking new Lexus (long version, quite spiffy) and motored off to the southest part of South Beach: La Piaggia, on its very tony bottom.

Turns out they don't mind if guests at their tables in the sand take their shoes off, and Sidney loves to wiggle his toeses while he eats. He also loves to ogle the flesh, which was as common at Piaggia as his hamburger was rare. Thanks to various marvels of plastic surgery, there were some very tony bottoms as well as some incredible vistas up high, too.

It was a great lunch. An apparently youngish woman came up to Sidney at one point, trailing clouds of expensive perfume, and gushed at him for a while. He feigned deafness. After she left, he said, "Brooke [his daughter and great protector] knows her from New York. Brooke said, 'Daaaaaddy, that one will be really expensive.' "

He'd rather spend it on the Lexus.

On our way home, the sunset blazed directly into my westbound eyes for the second day in a row. The backlight on Flagler's old rail bridge at Bahia Honda made up for it: