21 Feb Short film. Short story. Action
Color blue
by Patricia Argüelles
The restaurant was known as Francis and Francis was the name of the owner.
Every family spent their Sunday having breakfast in that restaurant. Francis was a famous traditional dinner in Miami in the 80´s. Everybody wanted to spend their Sunday morning at Francis, kids, and adults.
Back in those days, Francis Mooney, the owner, was a 30-year-old woman that decided to buy a restaurant in Washington Avenue and build a classic American dinner. It started with very little attendance, but eventually, everybody knew about her famous pancakes and her blueberry milkshake. Her idea of a restaurant was to create a spot in Miami, where every family could chill and eat her homemade peanut butter pancakes and her caramel blueberry milkshake.
Everybody wanted to go to Francis. On Sundays, Francis used to organize some activities for the kids in the backyard, so parents had a quieter Sunday.
At the end of every meal, each kid received a blue balloon filled with Elio. Elio makes the balloon fly, and it can be amusing if you in inhale it because of your voice changes.
Every Sunday you could see some blue balloons flying around the sky of Miami.
When you saw one, you knew that it was a balloon that some random kid got at Francis and that had released it to the sky.
For ten years, Francis enjoyed an unprecedented success around Miami and the dinner was full every week. Everybody in town knew her and her restaurant.
17th March 1992 “OUR FRANCIS IS A DRUG DEALER” Every front page of every local and national newspaper announced this shocking and controversial news.
Francis Mooney, a drug dealer? Everyone wondered surprised and bewildered.
How can Francis Mooney be a dealer? The Francis we know, the Francis that makes the best pancakes in town and the best caramel blueberry milkshake. The one that makes our Sundays not Sundays.
Everybody in Miami bought the newspaper to read the article and to find out what if they were talking about the Francis they knew.
“Francis Mooney drug dealer for the past 10 years” “The classic Francis Sunday breakfast dinner was a cover for our cocaine trafficking” “No words are needed to explain this horrible surprise” “Francis Mooney was working for many other drug dealers taking cocaine from one side to the other side of the city” “ How?” “Using her blue balloons.”
Francis Mooney was 23 years old when she ran away from Madrid. She ran away from the dictatorship that subjected Spain under the power of Franco and got into a transatlantic that departed from Lisbon to Miami.
She arrived in Miami with nothing, she came looking for the American dream, but when she disembarked, that dream of Miami faded away. The port of Miami was full of men laying down, sleeping utterly drunk with women around them desperately trying to sell their last piece of fish. The women selling the fish had an anguish and desperation look, they argued and yelled to the tourists, insisting them to buy at least one piece of fish.
Francis felt lonely and lost in this situation. She walked towards South Beach. She found a place to live with the savings she had from Spain and settled in a room for a few months.
She worked in different restaurants as a bartender. She poured coffee every morning, she cooked breakfast for many people in a local dinner and lived her life by day by day.
But the experience was not turning out as she imagined, until one night.
She was standing out of her favorite bar in Miami, smoking a cigarette at the entrance door when a handsome guy came skating along. She stared at him, and he stared at her and felt down on the floor. Francis was an exotic good looking woman that irradiated Latin vibes with her green eyes. They had a drink or two together and fell in love.
After a few months dating, Francis was very curious to know what Adrian did for life, he was keeping it as a secret and was starting to be very anxious to know what he did for the living.
Adrian eventually told her the truth. He was a well-known drug dealer. Francis could not believe what she was hearing and laughed. She thought that the idea of falling in love with the first drug dealer who had crossed her path was hilarious.
She was not scared or horrified at all, on the contrary, she felt that maybe Adrian was her way to a better life in Miami.
He told her about his business that he just carried out the traveling transaction, he was the “taxi driver” of every drug dealer. Francis, who was struggling with her life and needed money offered Adrian her help to deliver the drugs, in exchange for cash. He hesitated at the beginning, but at the end he accepted. So they became the taxi drivers couple that provided every drug supplied in the city.
They drove from one point to another with their truck full of drugs. For two years.
After those years, Adrian and Francis got fed up with driving everywhere and had an idea that would change their life.
Francis always wanted to complete her American dream by opening up a dinner. She tried to open a diner where everybody would want to spend every morning. She wanted to become famous, and so she did. When the restaurant started to work, Francis remembers an anecdote from Madrid. Every Sunday she used to go to a Spanish diner called VIPS, to have a delicious brunch with her family. The owner gave every Sunday to every kid, a red balloon filled with Helio. She used to play with it for an hour, and then she let it go. Every Sunday Madrid’s sky was full of red balloons, and you always knew that somewhere a kid just ate his four pancakes at VIPS.
So thinking about her childhood, Francis had a similar idea. She wanted to have her corporate color, blue, flying around Miami. Every Sunday kids will walk around with blue balloons and then they will let them fly.
But her idea went further on. Because Adrian was still traveling around with the car, and they needed money, she had an idea. Once the people of Miami recognized the balloons, and that every Sunday you new that many balloons were going to fly around, she was going to fly another type of balloons at the same time. Same blue balloons filled with Helio and cocaine. Because of their weight, they end up coming to the floor and so the people that needed the drugs just had to wait for the balloon to come down.
So every Sunday, the sky was full of blue balloons flying around, and everybody thought that they were only the blue balloons from Francis. Nobody could have ever imagined that some of these balloons also contained cocaine.
For ten years everything went well. The dinner was full every week, Adrian was in charge of every balloon on Sundays, and they had a healthy and peaceful life in Miami Beach.
But, the day had come. The day that everybody knew the truth about Francis had come in the form of a Blue Balloon.
17th March 1992, Sunday morning. Many balloons are flying around. One of the balloons is flying quite low, and a man tries to grab it. He cants, so he plays around with a stone and throws at it. The balloon explodes and out of now were a white powder comes flying down. He runs to it and grabs some white powder in his hands. He can’t believe it, he smells it and realizes that it is cocaine. He runs with the broken balloon in his hands to the police and tells them everything about it.
None of them believes him, so they try and grab another balloon to confirm what the man was saying. Another balloon full of white powder, full of cocaine, explodes.
All of them new that the balloons came from Francis, so they quickly went to the diner. It was 4 p.m., and the last family was having their breakfast. The two officers waited, Francis poured some coffee to them and chit chatted for a while.
The last family finished and left the restaurant.
Francis closed the door, and the two officers stood up and walked to the kitchen.
“Hey, where are you going! That is a private zone! You can enter there!”
Screamed Francis.
The two officers entered the kitchen. Adrian was filling in every balloon with cocaine.
They closed the door and locked Francis out. Adrian had his earphones on so he didn’t hear all the movement.
Adrian turned his head to the door and saw the two officers. He quickly stopped what he was doing and tried to hide the cocaine and the balloons.
“How long have you been standing there ?”
Adrian said.
“Long enough to believe that you have destroyed every family Sunday breakfast in this town.”
