It was a beautiful day, and I took a walk along Lincoln Road to see what was up on a mid-week afternoon. There wasn't much up at all; just about every store was empty of customers. It seems that the town is holding its breath, waiting to see if "season" actually happens this year. The Shoppes of Bal Harbour--a bastion of high end stores--continued to hemorrhage jobs, and you can call me Miss Cleo, but I wouldn't expect to see Coral Gables' shopping center, Merrick Park, even open next Christmas if what I hear is correct. The restaurants and bars are still filled on weekends; people will always need to entertain themselves, even if they won't buy new clothes, but the mood is one of wariness. The annual Boat Show is staged soon, and you have to wonder how many people are planning to buy one this year.

My poor Leopoldo didn't come out of this past, wild weekend unscathed; he was so exhausted that he had to stay home Monday and be pampered by me. As Mrs. Stuyvesant-Fish would so eagerly point out, I am a battle-hardened social warrior not easily tired or scared off.

And, speaking of that social wind bag, Mamie actually tip-toed up to me at Twist yesterday and startled me with a pinch. This is notable because I can usually hear the thunder of her charge down the road for a drink long before I see her. It's like "Boom, Boom, BoomaBoom" and there she is. But yesterday she crept in like the fog, or--as I pondered last night--what must have been like the Great Molassas Flood in Boston in 1919. Today Baroness Seitzinger warned me that Mamie was stirring up the airwaves with incendiary references to my backside (one must always try to deflect from one's own backside as much as possible). Still, we love her so, and she realizes that in times like this the look of plenty has taken on new meaning. But I must warn her to watch her words or I will have her forcibly taken back into house arrest.


It wouldn't be the first time I had to have her carried out of one of my parties.