Beach Blondes: June Dreams, July's Promise, August Magic (Summer) (42 page)

Although she hated to think that Lianne was with him at that moment. Not that it was about Marquez wanting
him.
That wasn’t it. She just didn’t want Lianne to have the satisfaction. Calling Marquez a cold, selfish person with nothing inside—for that, Lianne deserved to be lying alone in her room thinking J.T. really had dumped her to be with Marquez.

Hah. That would show her.

Marquez fell asleep after a while, listening to a Damien Rice CD—haunting, wispy songs that were like some halfway station between waking and sleep.

She woke suddenly, eyes wide, with the realization that someone had just come into her room. “Who’s there?” she demanded of the darkness.

“Me,” he said.

She relaxed, sagging back against her pillows. “How did you get in?”

“Key. I remembered where you guys keep the esstra key.”

“I’ll have to remember to hide it somewhere new.”

His speech was slurred. Not extremely, but noticeably. He had been drinking. Marquez heard him fumbling around in the dark. Probably looking for the light switch.

“Don’t turn on the lights, I’m in bed,” she said.

“’Fraid I’ll see your jammies?”

“I don’t wear jammies,” she said coolly. She felt around in the pile of clothes near her bed for an oversize T-shirt and pulled it over her head. “J.T., why are you here?” She could barely make out the hint of his shape, still beside the door, probably leaning against the wall. Half ready to topple over and pass out. Wonderful.

“I wanted to see it,” he answered.

“See what?”

“The place where you painted out my name, erased me,” he said. “You tole me it was erased.”

“J.T., just go away,” Marquez said, alarmed now. She
had
told him she’d taken his name off the wall. Unfortunately she had, for reasons that escaped her now, painted him in again. If he saw that, he would get the wrong idea.

Suddenly the overhead lights snapped on. Marquez snatched at her sheets. J.T. was definitely drunk. He was swaying like a tree in a gale. He had on shorts and a T-shirt and, for some reason, a gray raincoat. His hair was a mess. He blinked like a mole in the light, shading his eyes with his hand.

“Jeez, that’s bright,” he said.

“It just seems that way because your pupils are probably twice their normal size,” Marquez said.

“I’ve been drinking. Beer. Also, I’ve been doing sad things. So don’t be all cranky with me, Marquez,” he said.

He pried himself away from the wall and walked to the middle of the room. For a long time he just stared. Stared and swayed. He swayed far enough that Marquez leaped out of bed to grab his arm and keep him from falling over.

“You said you painted over me,” he said.

“I did,” Marquez said. “But it was just this big, empty hole, so I had to put your name back in. Temporarily. Until I can think of something else.”

J.T. snorted. “You’re such a liar. You lie about everything. You lie about that.” He pointed to his name on the wall, huge, 3-D letters that made it the single biggest feature of the mural, bigger by far than it had originally been. “Plus, you lie about…everything.”

Marquez was tempted to let him go and watch him fall on his face. Instead she walked him over to the bed, lined him up, and with no unnecessary gentleness, pushed him straight back. He fell spread-eagled, faceup.

“I broke up with Lianne,” he said to the ceiling.

“Why did you do that?” Marquez demanded, There was a small refrigerator under the Formica and chrome counter. She retrieved a Coke and popped the top.

“She cried,” J.T. said, ignoring Marquez’s question. “Also cursed.”

“Well, you probably shouldn’t have broken up with her,” Marquez said, feeling guilty and vaguely triumphant, and then feeling guilty that she felt triumphant.

“Had to,” J.T. said. “She wanned to know if I was over you. Guess what the answer was?”

“Drink some of this,” Marquez said, sitting beside him and pressing the Coke into his hand. “A little caffeine. Sorry, I don’t have a coffee machine here.”

He sat up partway and took a long swig.

“I’m messed up,” he said sadly. “I don’t know what to do anymore. One minute all happy. The next…messed up.”

Marquez could not think of anything to say.

“I…I mean, I don’t even know
who
I am anymore. J.T.? Jonathan? I don’t know.”

“You’re whoever you always were,” Marquez said impatiently. “But you know, maybe you should see a shrink or something. Get some help.”

He nodded and smiled to himself over some secret joke. “Yeah, I need help. I need help. I need someone.”

“J.T., look, you know I’m not good at—”

“Not
you
,” J.T. sneered. “I don’t need you.”

“Then what the—”

“Her,” J.T. said. He swept the room with his hand, then pointed at the painted walls. “Her, that’s who I need. I need the girl who painted all this. Not you.”

Marquez swallowed hard. Typical J.T. He just
had
to make everything complicated when it could be so simple. He just
had
to pick at everything.

“Look, J.T., once and for all, I’m me, that’s me too, but I have a right to be whatever I choose. I’m not going to be some loser artsy-fartsy type selling crappy paintings to tourists on the boardwalk. So get off it.”

But he was looking at the wall, smiling and nodding, ignoring her. “That girl, she’s the one I love. She’s the one I can’t forget. I saw her once, dressed in this gown, this fancy dress, painting and…just gone, just not even part of the world anymore. Did you know that?” He focused his bleary gaze on her. His breath reeked of beer. “Did you know I was there and saw you that one time?”

“No,” Marquez lied. Why
had
she let him watch her?

To her amazement, since she would not have thought he could walk, he got up and went to the door. But he didn’t leave. He switched off the light. “There. Now I don’t have to see
her.
I better go.”

“J.T., you’re too drunk to make it home. You’ll fall in front of a truck and get run over.”

“I’ll bounce right off,” he said, giggling incongruously.

Marquez grabbed him rudely by the lapels of his raincoat and marched him back to the bed. She pulled the coat off and pushed him onto the bed.

Under the cover of darkness she unwrapped her sheet partway and spread it over both of them.

For a while she thought he might just have fallen asleep. But then he rolled closer and laid his arm across her stomach. And then, quite naturally, he kissed her.

It was not a great kiss. He was sloppy and smelly.

“I love you,” he said.

“Sleep it off,” she said roughly. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

He held her. “I feel better now,” he said.

“J.T., let me just make this clear. I’m not going to make love to you,” she whispered.

“I don’t need you to
make
love,” he said. “Just love me.”

Marquez sighed. “Like I have a choice,” she said. “Jerk.”

He buried his face in her soft explosion of curls and whispered in her ear, “You’re not so tough. Just say it.”

“J.T., just go to sleep. You’re drunk, and you’re getting on my nerves,” Marquez said irascibly. She closed her eyes. “Okay. So I love you. Big deal. You make one wrong move, and I break your arm.”

The woman on TV was telling a talk show host a complicated story having to do with marrying her husband’s best friend while she was still married to her husband. But it was okay, she said, because she’d only done it to get close to the live-in girlfriend of the second husband, because they shared an interest in alien abductions. Both of them had at one time been abducted love slaves of the Venusians, who, according to the woman, were really pretty nice people, once you got past the extra eye.

Summer was ironing her work uniform, messing up the annoying pleats because she was paying too much attention to the show. There were footsteps on the deck outside, and Summer found herself hoping it wasn’t Seth. Her hair was half done, she was wearing a ratty robe over a ratty T-shirt (having fallen behind on laundry), and besides, she wanted to learn more about the Venusians.

“Who is it?”

“Diana.”

“Diana?” Summer said under her breath. “Come in!” she yelled.

Diana was elegant, as always, dressed in a sarong skirt that seemed to be wrapped over a one-piece bathing suit. The striking thing, though, was the big blond wig. She looked like a cool
Glamour
model wearing Dolly Parton’s hair.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

“Sure. What’s up?” Summer asked, looking pointedly at the hair.

“What do you mean, what’s up? Don’t you watch TV?” Diana asked.

“We watched baseball last night.”

“Too bad. Should have watched
The Last Word.
Suddenly I’m famous, or infamous, or something.” She took off the wig and looked at it with amusement. “Nice, huh? It’s Mallory’s. There are six TV trucks parked out in the driveway. I thought they might spot me coming down here.” She tossed the wig on Summer’s bed.

“Yeah, I noticed something going on out there. They must have run that tape you gave them, huh?” Summer said.

“Good guess,” Diana said dryly. “Now it’s like a sleaze convention in our driveway, and I have someplace I have to go—without them following me.”

“You think they’d actually follow you?”

“Mallory says I should count on it. I’m refusing to say anything more to anyone. She says that otherwise it will look as if I’m trying to exploit the situation.” Diana rolled her eyes expressively. “It turns out Mallory is pretty smart about this kind of stuff. I should have known.”

“Jeez, Diana,” Summer said, “isn’t this kind of weirding you out?”

Diana shrugged. “A little, I guess. But it’s been a weird year for me. It is gross, yes. Like now the entire country knows who I am, and that Ross tried to rape me. They disguised my face, you know, with one of those fuzzy spots, but that just increases the desire of these other creeps to get a picture.”

Summer felt a little overwhelmed. She pulled back her curtain and looked in the direction of the house. Of course, all she could see were the trees that always blocked the land view. Diana seemed cool and in control, but then, Diana had seemed perfectly cool and in control at a time when, Summer now knew, she was actively planning to commit suicide. Cool and in control didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“Jeez, Diana,” Summer said again, having thought of nothing better to say. This was a situation completely outside her experience.

Diana began unwrapping her skirt. “Anyway, look, I’ve got places to go, people to see. I want to use one of the Jet Skis under the house.”

“Well, they are yours,” Summer pointed out.

“As a matter of fact, I was going to say you’d better come with me. That is, if you’re going into work. Those guys will jump any warm body that appears, and you’d have to walk right through them. I mean, unless you want to get famous too.”

“No,” Summer said quickly, alarmed by the idea. She hadn’t told her parents about her own near run-in with Ross Merrick. It was just the first of an ever-expanding list of things she hadn’t told her parents in their weekly phone calls. She could only hope they hadn’t somehow accidentally watched any of the tabloid shows the night before.

“The last time I rode that stupid Jet Ski I was with Marquez, and we ran out of gas,” Summer said.

“Come on,” Diana said, ignoring her protest. “If you’re coming with me, I’ve got to go.” She checked her watch. “I’m going to go to the marina and borrow a car.”

Summer began folding her uniform neatly. She wrapped it in a plastic trash bag. “What is this place you have to go to?”

“None of your business,” Diana said, softening the harsh statement with a reluctant smile.

They descended through the trapdoor in the floor, and minutes later were skimming across the choppy little waves at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour. It was only her second time, but Summer felt like an old pro on the machine now, flexing her knees to absorb each new shock as the Jet Ski went airborne and crashed, sending up a white plume of warm salty spray. It meant arriving at work wearing a bathing suit, with her hair tangled and salty, but that was nothing very unusual at the Crab ’n’ Conch.

And there was such sheer pleasure in flying along under the bright yellow sun, her legs stinging from the force of the water, hot wind whipping her hair, that she wondered why she didn’t get to work this way every day.

Diana rode just ahead, her own hair a dark tornado, pushing the speed ever upward, past the point where Summer cared to keep up.

They arrived too soon at the marina, both slowing to meld with the busy to-ing and fro-ing of other craft: white-winged sailboats, colorful windsurfers, and needle-sharp cigarette boats.

Summer glanced over at Mr. Holland’s boat. Sean was not on deck, and she felt vaguely relieved. Diana had disappeared, going her own way in the small maze of floating docks.

Summer parked just below the Crab ’n’ Conch, tying up the little Jet Ski with what she hoped was professional-looking confidence.

She climbed the ladder, carrying her bag, and went in the back door of the restaurant, where she was promptly informed that she was not on the schedule to work that day. She protested that she was, but a check of the schedule showed that she was not.

Back outside, feeling a little lost since Marquez
did
have to work and Summer had no plans for the day, she felt a shadow fall over her, blocking the sun.

“Hi,” Sean said. “Going in to work?”

“Yes,” Summer said quickly. She was proud of herself. She was blowing him off. She was blowing off Sean Valletti.

“Cool, then you can wait on me,” he said.

“Well, actually…” she said, shifting gears, trying again to get rid of him, “I
was
going into work, but I got my schedule screwed up.”

“Better yet.” He grinned. “In fact, perfect. I have one of my uncle’s cars and I was thinking of driving down to Key West, maybe shop for something for my mom. Her birthday’s coming up, and it would be cool to have a girl’s advice on what to get.”

“I guess I could do that,” Summer said.

It sounded perfectly innocent, and she
had
tried twice to get rid of him. She was just going to help Sean shop for a present for his mom. No one could possibly imply that it meant anything. Some article of clothing, Summer thought, yes, that would be best. That way Mrs. Valletti would wear it when she went to PTA stuff, and Summer would be able to point it out to everyone as the thing she had helped Sean pick out when they were in Florida together.

Oh, come on, Summer,
she told herself, angrily trying to suppress the guilt,
it’s just a harmless little way to annoy whichever girl will probably be going with Sean by then, because you certainly won’t be.

Harmless. As in no problem. As in no big deal.

Unless they ran into Seth.

Diana tied her Jet Ski up in a far corner of the marina. She unpacked her skirt, watch, and purse from the little compartment under the seat, wrapped the skirt around her waist, and jumped two feet straight up when someone said, “Diana!”

But then she recognized the voice, and a wave of pleasure, a very unfamiliar feeling for her, swept over her. Diver. He was standing on the deck of a sailboat a few feet away, wearing his inevitable bathing suit. He jumped down to the dock, causing it to rock sluggishly back and forth.

“Hi, Diver,” she said, feeling a little shy.

“Hi, Diana,” he said, looking almost as uncomfortable as she felt.

She hadn’t seen him since the amazing moment they’d shared on her balcony. He had not grown less attractive. His eyes were no less deep. His lips were still…

“Did you come to see me?” he asked.

“To tell you the truth, no,” she admitted. “I, um, I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that yet. The last time—” She lowered her eyes and stared at the boards, and, incidentally, at his legs. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me,” she said.

“I thought about it,” he said solemnly.

Diana couldn’t help but smile. There was something irresistibly sweet about his sincerity. “And what did you decide, Diver?”

“I decided yes.”

Diana nodded, satisfied. “Hey, I guess you wouldn’t want to go with me, would you?”

“I wouldn’t?” He seemed confused.

“What I meant was, maybe you’re busy.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Okay. Then how do you feel about little kids? And dolphins?”

She picked up the car she’d arranged to borrow and drove calmly past yet another TV truck that seemed to be heading out toward the Merrick estate. She sped along the highway, island hopping, feeling wonderfully free at being off Crab Claw Key, and nervous and excited, and incredulous that Diver was sitting beside her.

On the way she told him a little about the Dolphin Interactive Therapy Institute and her work there over the past year.

Diana checked in with her supervisor and introduced Diver to the mostly female staff and volunteers, who, Diana noticed, had the usual response to Diver—overly long handshakes and sappy smiles.

When the introductions were over, Diana went to get her most special charge. “Diver, this is Lanessa,” she said as they walked out to the dolphin pool. It was a huge crystal-blue tank filled by the waters of the Gulf. There was a covered area, an awning that stretched out over the last few feet of the tank, but beyond it the sun beat down, and the very faint breeze did little to cool the air. “Lanessa, this is my friend Diver.”

Diana had expected something like instantaneous rapport between the little girl and Diver. But the first contact was disappointing.

“Hi,” Diver said.

Lanessa just looked up at him and sidled behind Diana.

Just then Jerry, Lanessa’s favorite dolphin, burst from the water in a high, flying jump with a midair turn.

“He learned that himself,” Diana said apologetically. “We don’t train them to do any dumb Sea World tricks.”

“You wouldn’t have to train Jerry,” Diver said.

“No, he’s always—” Diana stopped. Had she told Diver the dolphin’s name? She couldn’t remember telling him. But obviously she must have.

Jerry swam to them under the water, surfaced, and began chattering away, bobbing his head at Lanessa as he usually did. Lanessa smiled at the dolphin, as she had for the past couple of weeks. It had taken her more than a month to learn that smile.

“Shall we go in and swim with Jerry today?” Diana asked Lanessa. Sometimes the answer was yes, and then they would stay in the water for a few minutes while Jerry waited patiently for Lanessa to pat his head. Other times, for reasons Diana could not decipher, the answer was no, and they merely watched Jerry.

Today Lanessa just shook her head.

“I don’t understand why,” Diana said to Diver.

Then, to the little girl, “Should we just watch Jerry play today?”

Lanessa nodded.

It had been a mistake bringing Diver, Diana realized. His presence had upset the equilibrium, had made Lanessa withdraw again. Given her history, she had never been comfortable with any of the male staff or volunteers. Diver was male.

But then Diver leaned over to the little girl. He seemed to be whispering in her ear.

Lanessa nodded. She turned and looked straight at Diana. There was something in that look that sent chills up Diana’s spine.

Lanessa pointed at Jerry and tugged weakly at Diana’s hand.

“You
do
want to go in?” Diana asked.

“Yes,” Lanessa said.

“Should Diver come with us, do you think?”

Lanessa exhibited one of her rare smiles. “Yes.”

For an hour they played in the warm water—more real play than Lanessa had ever managed before. She even went for a brief ride on Jerry’s back, with Diver holding on to her.

By the time their hour was up, half the staff of the institute was standing by the edge of the pool, watching. They had all seen breakthroughs with the children, but no one had expected to see so rapid a change in Lanessa. Either that, Diana thought, just a bit annoyed, or they were ogling Diver.

She was still a little annoyed on the drive back to Crab Claw Key. On the one hand, she’d had the feeling Diver might make some special contact with the little girl. In a lot of ways Diver was just a big child himself. On the other hand, she hadn’t expected it to work as well as it had. On the way out, everyone had made a point of suggesting she bring Diver with her next time she came. It was enough to make her feel a little inferior.