Walking Through Walls Read Free

reclaim what is rightfully theirs. Only in America, and, especially, only in Miami.
    It was in this miraculous light that my father was able to convince the ultrarich that he was just the man to fluff their pillows, hang their drapes, and ease them away from their addiction to anything rococo or European baroque. In no time at all, he was designing tropical-fantasy interiors that combined the best of Oriental splendor and high-style fifties moderne.
    Pop brought an enlightened sensibility to his clients, introducing them to current styles and educating them to new possibilities. When he sketched a room, and no such furniture existed in the market, he quickly designed it and had it custom fabricated. Everything from high-style, free-form modernism to Zen-inspired minimalist furniture began to fill the better homes in South Florida. His commercial work for restaurants, bars, hotels, and even hairdressing salons tended to be more adventurous and experimental than anything else seen at the time. For one Miami Beach hotel, he created a prepsychedelic black-light lounge where his mobiles were painted fluorescent glow-in-the-dark colors along with the eye-popping murals. Drunken patrons appeared as Martians bathed in the purple light.
    As often as possible, he hired local artists to produce large works and sculptures for these public spaces. Pop felt an obligation to generate commissions for starving artists and believed that their work contributed an important creative twist to his projects. One artist in particular, Jon Keller, created bizarre murals, screens, and sculptures for his interiors. Jon, whose skin was so thin and ethereal that you could see the blue veins running through her face and arms, lived in a wooden shack on stilts in the black section of the Grove. She was married to King Louie, a Chinese man who worked as a waiter at the local Formosa restaurant. King was never around much, so Jon focused on her surrealistic-inspired work, which seamlessly blended Fellini and Dalí into a classical yet alien aesthetic of floating ghosts, Minotaurs, and busts of patrons with dramatically rearranged physiologies.
    Often my parents would leave me at Jon’s shack for babysitting while they went out on the town. Jon was oblivious to the aggressive wildlife of snakes and daddy longlegs that would try to make friends with me as I slept on her floor. Eventually Jon’s barbiturate-induced fantasy life superseded her reality, and she killed herself. Back then suicide had a kind of shocking chic, akin to martyrdom, that it does not carry today. Jon was typical of the tortured yet wildly creative souls with alternative visions of reality who surrounded my father at the time.
    In addition to the Caribbean, Pop’s other happy hunting ground for clients was Palm Beach, a galaxy away from Miami. PB’s starstudded social life was often covered in the Miami Herald ’s “For and About Women” column, where reporters breathlessly gushed, “Under a mammoth canopy of silk in flamboyant sunset hues and in an atmosphere of Oriental, eye-popping splendor, Society with a capital S danced the hours away Sunday night at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse Celebrity Room. It was the fifth annual Polo Ball for the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. Honorary chairman, the Duchess of Windsor, never looked prettier. She and the Duke danced with a number of different partners to the music of the Marshall Grant and Guy Lombardo orchestras. Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy laughed and chatted with the Duke, Elsa Maxwell was everywhere. Joan Crawford and Joan Fontaine were introduced by emcee Walter T. Shirely. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert A. May were there, and so was Mrs. May’s movie-star daughter, Dina Merrill. Bearded Joshua Hecht, star of Fanny, threw back his head and sang songs from Broadway musicals. The entire crowd sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Frank Hale, and the Playhouse president blushed. Pastel blonde Cee-Zee Guest was at the same long