Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (28 page)

The telephone rang again.

“Well, bye then,” Marquez said.

He walked away, leaving her feeling as far from happy as she had felt in a long time.

The phone rang yet again.

Marquez snatched up the receiver. “YES, YES, YES, YES, what the hell is it and it had better be good!” She listened for a moment. “Sure,” she said in a slightly more subdued voice. “Sure. I’d love to come to work. Why not? I obviously have no life!”

“What are you doing here?” Summer demanded.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? They called me in to hostess,” Marquez said. “What are you two doing here?”

The Crab ’n’ Conch was half-full with early-dining families, old people just finishing up, and the first few later-dining couples being seated.

“We are celebrating,” Seth said. He stood behind Summer, took her hands, and spread her arms out in a “ta-daa!” position. “You are looking at a certified scuba diver. As of about an hour ago. Take a bow, Summer.”

Summer took a little bow, which Seth did along with her. “Seth is buying me dinner, so we would like a window table.”

“Oh, you’d like a window table, huh? You think you get special treatment?” Marquez asked.

“You know,” Summer said, batting her eyes, “you look great in that dress. I mean it. Like a model. I wish I had your body and your hair.”

Marquez laughed. “You’re going to need your scuba gear to breathe in here if the crap gets piled any deeper. Okay, okay, I’ll get you a window table.” She grabbed a couple of menus. “At least
someone
thinks I look good, even if it is just another girl.”

“What are you talking about, Marquez?” Summer asked.

Marquez stopped, handed the menus to Seth, and pointed to an empty table. “Here, take these and go seat yourself. I have to talk to Summer.”

“Oh, fine,” Seth grumbled. “Just dump the guy.”

Marquez took Summer’s arm and drew her away to a corner of the coatroom. “Don’t get mad or anything, all right?” Marquez said. “I had Diver over at my house.”

“Why would I be mad?” Summer said in a phony, shrill voice. “It’s none of my business.”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, it didn’t work out all that great.”

“Oh, really?”

“Don’t gloat,” Marquez said. “It just turned out…I don’t know. It’s like there’s more going on with him than I thought. Also less. I mean, I think he may have problems.”

“Like what?”

“Like he doesn’t
know
his own name. Either he doesn’t remember, like he has amnesia or something, or else he was just blowing me off.”

“Puh-leeze, he was just blowing you off. That’s the way he always is. You can never get a straight answer out of Diver. Diver’s…I don’t know. He’s just Diver. But of course
you
had to cross-examine him.”

“I asked a couple of simple questions,” Marquez said.

“And now you don’t like the answers.”

“I thought I would like the answers,” Marquez said crossly. “I guess.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have asked questions. I thought you liked him because he was so simple and innocent and not at all like J.T. And then you start in on him?”

“I didn’t ‘start in on him.’ I was trying to get something going, that’s all. Just because you treat him like your platonic guy friend, doesn’t mean
I
have to,” Marquez grumbled. “Maybe
you
don’t notice how he looks anymore, but I do.”

Summer felt troubled. “I’d hate to think he actually has amnesia or something. That means he’s sick, kind of.”

“Yeah. Besides, what happens if he regains his memory and it turns out he’s really some kind of prep who buys all his clothes out of the J. Crew catalog? Then what?”

“Excuse me,
this
is from J. Crew,” Summer said, pointing to her blouse.

The manager of the restaurant stuck his head around the corner. “Oh,
there
you are, Marquez. Maybe I should just tell the customers who are waiting at the hostess stand to come find you hack here.”

“I’m on my way,” Marquez promised. Then, to Summer in an undertone, “I volunteer to work an extra shift and he’s ragging on me anyway.”

“You’d better go,” Summer said. “We’ll talk later. Maybe we can figure out if Diver needs some kind of help. Maybe
we
could help him.” She smiled wryly. “Help him turn into a prep.”

Marquez rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. Look, if I wanted to be Mother Teresa and help screwed-up guys, I’d help J.T. He was first in line.”

“You know, this really is a nice view,” Summer said, gazing out through the floor-to-ceiling windows as she smoothed the cloth napkin on her lap. “I work here, but it’s like I never have time to really notice it.”

Outside was the dock, congested with evening strollers enjoying the early stages of sunset and the slight relief from the heat. It was the usual collection of humanity as it appeared on Crab Claw Key—too-fat people showing too much skin, too-fair tourists with bright red sunburns, too-rich people with too little taste.

But there were families as well, pushing baby strollers and trailing bright helium balloons; young married couples on their honeymoons, looking glazed and tired and ostentatiously sharing ice cream cones; then, like a time-lapse photograph, the older couples, gray men and bottle-blond women wearing gaudy matching outfits and sharing secret smiles and knowing winks with their partners as they watched their younger selves pass by.

“I should pay more attention to things,” Summer said thoughtfully. “There’s a lot going on.”

Seth looked up from his menu and followed the direction of her gaze. “Kind of a good show, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, I don’t know what Bloomington, Minnesota, is like, but where I’m from, in Eau Claire, you don’t usually see this many different kinds of people.”

“I suppose Eau Claire and Bloomington aren’t very different,” Summer said. “More like each other than either of them is like Crab Claw Key. Not that people there are boring or all the same—they aren’t. But everything here is raised to a more extreme level.”

“That’s good
and
bad, I guess,” Seth said.

“I know. You have to watch out or you lose yourself here, right?” She gave Seth an affectionate smile. “I remember you telling me that. What was it? ‘Tropical rot’?”

Seth laughed. “Did I say that? Hmm, sounds like me, I have to admit.” He grew more serious. “I think that at the time I just wanted to find some way to keep you from falling for Adam Merrick.”

Summer’s smile faded. “I guess I’d have been better off if I’d listened to you.”

Seth kept his face immobile, but in his eyes there was a smug, satisfied look that annoyed Summer just a little.

“Go ahead. You want to say ‘I told you so,’” Summer said.

“No, I don’t,” Seth said. “I don’t want you to feel bad. I just want—”

“Yo, Summer, what are you doing in here? Trying to pretend you’re a tourist?”

They both looked up and saw J.T., wearing his usual cook’s whites. But there was something different, Summer realized—for once, his apron was clean.

J.T. noticed her dubious stare. “I can’t come out into the dining room looking like my usual disaster area,” he explained. “Seth, right?” He held out his hand to Seth.

Seth shook it. “Yeah, we met once, I guess, back last year when you and Marquez were…Um…Well, I stepped right in it, didn’t I?”

J.T. waved it off. “Forget it, man. Ancient history. I just came out to see if I can cook up something special for my favorite waitress.”

Just then Lianne walked up to the table, her order pad at the ready.

“I thought
I
was your favorite waitress, J.T,” she said, looking up at him with a look of near-adoration.

J.T. returned the intimate smile. “Well…”

Lianne looked coolly down at Seth and deliberately put her arm around J.T.’s waist. J.T. put his arm around Lianne.

Seth looked at Lianne. Then he looked at J.T. He was clearly trying not to react, but Lianne had been his girlfriend for years.

Lianne shot a triumphant look at Summer. A look that said, “See, you may have Seth now, but I’m not exactly crying myself to sleep every night.” Then Lianne turned a slow, cold smile on Seth.

J.T. glanced sheepishly at Summer, suffering the usual male embarrassment at any public display of affection. But he had forgotten the more important point—Seth was Lianne’s former boyfriend. Then, seeming to make the connection in his mind, his eyes widened and he looked a bit nervously at Seth.

Just to complete the circle of discomfort, Marquez sauntered up.

Marquez instantly spotted Lianne’s arm around J.T.’s waist. Her nostrils flared. Her lip tried to jerk itself into a sneer.

J.T. shifted uncomfortably, as though he suddenly wished Lianne’s arm was somewhere else. Or at least wished
he
was somewhere else.

Seth took a deep breath and prudently buried his face in his menu.

Marquez sent Lianne a look that could have frozen the sun. But Lianne returned the look with one of defiant spite.

“So,” Summer said brightly. “What’s good on the menu tonight?” This was dangerous. Diver had just blown off Marquez. This was not the time for her to be around J.T. and Lianne acting lovey-dovey.

“Maybe you should get back in the kitchen,” Marquez said to J.T. “Cooks aren’t supposed to be out here making the place look bad.”

“What are you, the manager now?” J.T. shot back.

“How about if
you
go back to the hostess stand,” Lianne said to Marquez. “This is
my
table. I’m their waitress. It’s my responsibility.”

Summer saw the flame light up in Marquez’s eyes. “Marquez, let’s all just—” Summer began. Too late.

“Then why don’t you
act
responsible instead of hanging all over the cook, practically feeling him up here in the middle of the restaurant. People are trying to eat.”

Lianne sucked in her breath sharply. “How is this
any
of your business, Marquez? You and J.T. are not together anymore. So get lost.”

“Only a sleazy lowlife would go after some guy who just broke up with his girlfriend,” Marquez said in a voice that carried clearly to several adjoining tables. “I mean, are you so desperate you’re going to jump all over J.T. when he and I just broke up a few weeks ago?”

Lianne lowered her voice to a silky, dangerous tone. “Is that so, Marquez? Then what about your friend Summer?”

Marquez looked blank. “What?”

“You may notice she’s here with Seth, even though Seth and I just broke up. If I’m a sleazy lowlife, then so is Summer.”

“That’s different,” Marquez said lamely. She sent Summer a quick shrug of apology.

“Lianne, why don’t you just leave me and Summer out of this,” Seth said quietly, emerging from his menu.

“Oh, perfect. Sethie doing his protective thing, as always,” Lianne sneered. “Sethie is so protective. Like an extra father.”

Summer glanced at Seth. He looked angry but calm. She felt embarrassed. It was pretty clear that J.T. felt the same way. Their eyes met. He shrugged helplessly.

“Look, how about if we—”

“Look, how about if we—”

Summer stopped and looked at J.T. in confusion. They had both said the same thing at the same moment.

“I was just going to say, how about if we all back off and start over again,” J.T. said.

Summer nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Let’s stop all this, okay, guys?” Her gaze met J.T.’s again. She saw her own troubled feelings reflected in his eyes.

To Summer’s surprise, Marquez was suddenly reasonable. “Summer’s right. Let’s try and act our ages.” To J.T. she added, “As opposed to our IQs.” And to Lianne, “Or our bra size.”

Well, as reasonable as Marquez ever was. J.T. looked sheepish. “How about if I just go back to my kitchen and Marquez goes back to the hostess stand, and, um, maybe we’ll just get someone else besides Lianne to wait on you.”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart,” Lianne said to J.T., adding extra emphasis to the
sweetheart.
“I’ll ask Tony to come over.”

When they were all gone, Summer and Seth looked at each other for a few seconds in complete silence.

It was Summer who cracked first. She grinned. “See? This kind of stuff never used to happen back in Bloomington.”

Seth chuckled. “Not in Eau Claire, either.”

“It’s that tropical rot,” Summer said. She began to giggle. “I think we should run for it.”

“Right behind you. I know a place where we can get some conch fritters. And then tomorrow we’ll spend the whole day underwater with nice, sensible fish.”

Marquez waited for an hour before she got the opportunity to corner J.T. She lurked around until she saw him go into the walk-in refrigerator. She glanced behind her, making sure that Lianne was nowhere in sight, then she swiftly followed him in. He had his back turned to her as he counted portions of fish in long steel trays.

She wasted no time on preliminaries. “I can’t believe you would replace me with that skinny little witch Lianne. I thought you had better taste than that.”

“Go away, Marquez. I have work to do.”

“You totally made a fool of yourself out there,” Marquez said. “I hope you’re satisfied.”

J.T. turned around. “I don’t get it, Marquez. What do you want from me?”