The Life of Molly M.

du Bois
Miami Beach

Last night I had dinner at a pleasant, gay-owned restaurant, 626, with one of my New York house mates here for the week on a photo shoot. We sat outside on Lincoln Road to enjoy the sights passing by and were served by a stunning, blond boy from Estonia, named Igor. The Baltic states produce some of the most beautiful blondes in the world. Mannered and intelligent, their porcelain skin sparkles under the Miami moon.

My dinner companion told me the story of a quirky lady here, Molly M. Molly lives in Bal Harbour and was widowed twenty years ago; her husband had founded a huge chain of mid-level woman's clothing stores in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states. Their son now runs the empire and Molly is well-known in the retail world. Every day she has her hair done, puts on her finest clothing and jewelry and goes shopping. Of course, this is not unusual; it is standard fare for many wealthy, older women in this town. But Molly has a twist to her shopping. Every day she heads to the posh Shoppes of Bal Harbour and purchases several smart items, has lunch, and returns home. The following day she takes the very same items back to the stores and returns them and shops again. It was clarified for me that she was NOT like the many shrews in Manhattan I knew who bought an item at Saks, wore it that night with the tag tucked under, and returned the worn piece the next day.

No, this is Molly's way of spending her day; she keeps something every now and then, but for the most part this is her recreation. And, she's been doing it so long that, except for the occasional new shop girl, it is a well-known tradition at The Shoppes. The ritual repeats every day: Shop, lunch, return, shop, lunch, return.

You can almost hear Rod Sterling's voice. "Molly thought she might do something different today like taking a Cruise to Nowhere and do a little gambling. But the only cruise Molly would be taking would be a Cruise to the Twilight Zone."