Delux Stroller

The tufted silhouette of a sailboat, its flag slack in the humid air, bobbed just offshore on a glassine sea the color of twilight. The sun pummeled the cracked planks in the boardwalk, sending beachgoers scurrying across as they headed for the sand, flip flops in hand. The twenty five-block stretch of raised promenade is an exercise Mecca 365 days a year. Joggers, power-walkers and rollerbladers (in spite of the signs that tell them to keep off) careen toward vacationers ambling along as they check out the flora and fauna, which amounts to South Beach’s out-of-control population of wild cats.

I was trying to walk faster to stir up the least bit of breeze but none would come, and the sweat trickled from top to bottom, soaking every piece of clothing including my shoes. A slack-shouldered man, ambling toward me, seemed impervious to the heat. His stare was catatonic as he walked beside his wife, who was pushing a new baby in a deluxe stroller. His pale skin was untouched by the slightest bit of moisture, as if he was being cooled from the inside out.

The word that came to mind was “frozen.” Was it his marriage that had turned him into a walking piece of marble; lack of sleep from having a new baby, perhaps; or was the stroller the culprit—pricier than he could afford? He raised his face skyward as pelicans glided past, skirting the tall buildings that hem the shoreline. He watched closely as they dipped and rolled like pinballs falling back toward the flipper, catching the ocean breeze that refused to lower itself to our elevation. The wife stopped, fussing over the baby while he continued to plod along, completely unaware that she was no longer by his side.

In Your First Novel, Ann Rittenberg and Laura Whitcomb explain that settings can either mirror plot, characters and/or theme, or can contrast them. They describe a setting that mirrors the plot as a doctor who is going blind living in Alaska where night can last for months; and a setting that contrasts the plot as a woman who has amnesia working in a scrapbooking store crammed with ways to celebrate and display memories.

What struck me about this man on the boardwalk is that he seemed incongruently cool compared to the rest of humanity milling around on the scorching wood surface. He was, to me, an example of a character in contrast to his setting. Do you find he’d make an interesting persona for a story? If so, what tale would you build around him?