Sexy Ink!

by Jamie Collins

  “This publisher—can you believe it? She’s interested in my life story. It’s all very flattering, but in just three months’ time, she’s expecting to see an outline, and frankly, dear heart, I don’t think that it’s possible to work such a miracle without one’s right arm. So, what do you say? I’ll give you a twenty percent raise, room and board, and all the bad fashion advice you can stand. I have a place in South Carolina, right on the beach—in Hilton Head. It was a family home passed down among my parents’ siblings throughout the years. In nineteen ninety, it became ours when my then last-living aunt passed away. It has been boarded up since Macklin’s death, but I’m ready to go back there now, for good. It’s beautiful, La Costa. Nothing but green trees and blue water. Not a neon sign in sight. No one to bother or even find you, if you wish to remain unfound. What do you say? Please say yes.”

  La Costa grimaced. Was it that obvious that she needed to run somewhere safe? Louis was nearly two, and the thought of Panther appearing out of nowhere to rip him from her life was one that kept her up at night. Plus, the thought of working with Georgia on creating a book for publication seemed like a dream come true. It was La Costa’s secret wish to write books of her own someday. Those were not the thoughts of single black women, especially unemployed ones!

  Georgia watched La Costa’s eyes slowly begin to flicker with excitement at the possibility, quickly adding, “It would be such a blessing to me, dear, if you and Louis would accompany me. It would be a perfect arrangement. I’m leaving on Sunday at dawn. Everything that fits into the U-Haul, goes. Everything else is yesterday’s news and can be left behind.”

  At that, she tossed a stack of useless modeling headshots into the trash bin with finality.

  La Costa glanced at Louis. He was a joyful little boy, playing contentedly with his building blocks on a blanket on the office floor. What if Panther came back? What if she wanted to take Louis with her? What, then?

  She thought about the odds of probability around the prospect and suddenly realized that Louis was now completely her reason for breathing and for the very life she was living. He was immutably, hers.

  What purpose would Panther’s coming back to reclaim her son have, other than to simply and undeniably kill La Costa dead. No, she wouldn’t have it! Not again—not ever again! There was no way she could ever trust Panther with Louis. There was no telling how he might be treated, by Panther, or her newest no-good boyfriend—she could never let that happen. Louis was her son, and he belonged with her, where he was loved and safe.

  She secured the last box with a strip of packing tape, and then sealed the deal between her and Georgia with a handshake, and then a hug. “We’d be honored to join you, Ms. Byrne. Yes! Thank you so much.”

  The Sunday morning dawn broke in the dusky Nevada sky. Georgia clapped with delight when she saw that La Costa hadn’t changed her mind and was rattling onto the driveway with her Nissan Sentra loaded to the gills with all of her and Louis’s worldly possessions.

  “I don’t know if this ole clunker will make it all the way to the coast,” La Costa said, concerned.

  “We’ll pull it, dear,” Georgia cajoled. “I don’t think you want to cross the country in a sardine can. I think I can wrestle up a hitch.”

  La Costa smiled, relieved in more ways than one. She was excited, scared, but duly prepared—for anything.

  * * *

  The old house was a historical landmark. It was over one hundred years old, but it had a kind of charm that beckoned one to sit on its massive broken-planked porches and stay a while. Georgia and her late husband, Macklin, had started remodeling it just two years before he died. Georgia had used it less frequently than she originally expected, which amounted to once every few years, not wanting, for the most part, to stir up memories of the past. That was now all about to change.

  It was originally owned by the heirs of a Charleston family dating back to the late nineteenth century, when it was built during the Carolina Cotton boom just after the devastating Sea Island Hurricane of 1893. Georgia did not want to part with it after her husband’s death, but she couldn’t imagine ever being able to enjoy it in her retirement, as had been her and Macklin’s plan. He had loved the ocean about as much as any man was capable. His dream was to rest in the tranquility of his golden years at the tip of the pier, baiting hooks and working in the shed, restoring his old fishing boat to pristine glory. They had started to renovate the house summer after summer and dreamt of the day when they would call it their permanent home.

  But Macklin had succumbed quickly after the prostate cancer was detected, dying later that fall in 1992. The old house remained shuttered and silent for three years before Georgia could finally bring herself to return to its paint-chipped and weathered porches and begin salvaging the vacant rooms and overgrown gardens.

  In 1995, she hired an architect to renovate the house top to bottom. She redesigned the kitchen, built a second bathroom, and expanded the rear porch into an exquisite sunroom. Georgia had every intention of restoring the old museum into a livable showplace, and then she planned to sell it for a king’s ransom.

  “So why didn’t you?” La Costa asked as she stroked Louis’s cheek. He was lulled into irrepressible sleep not twenty minutes after they rolled onto the interstate, propped snuggly in his little car seat.

  “Because . . . oh, it’s silly.” Georgia lowered the window to flick an ash. The Lincoln Continental felt sturdy and powerful on the road, pulling the heavy trailer and La Costa’s tiny car in tow. “I had this dream about a month after he died. In it, I see Macklin, and he’s standing by his boat. He’s just standin’ there in the sunshine on the dock, frowning like, I don’t know, like a little kid, I guess. I say, ‘Hey, Mack! Why are you so blue?’ Now I get closer and see that he’s got big ole crocodile tears in his eyes. He’s pointing out behind me, toward the house.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I ran over to him to say that I would—” Her eyes misted over as she choked on the words. “I said that I would never let it go. Our house. It was our dream. He smiled. I swear, he did. Just like he was so pleased, and then he turned back to his boat. That’s it. That’s all I remembered when I woke up. But a promise is a promise, and so I’m keeping it. Been renting it out to friends and tourists over the years. Our old neighbor, Lisle Teeters, has been looking after it for me. He lives in Beaufort just twenty miles away. He says I won’t believe what transients can do to a place.”

  “I’m sure it’s just beautiful,” La Costa assured her.

  “Well, I hope so, dear.” Georgia patted her chignon, which was pulled up high on her head and wrapped with a Hermes printed scarf that matched the aquamarine-beryl tones of her eyes. She looked striking, like a once-upon-a-time movie star.

  Georgia was a first-class lady, all right. Perhaps the classiest person La Costa had ever known. Once, she had seen photographs from Georgia’s old modeling album and could not believe how truly stunning she had been in her prime. Thin, yet curvaceous, with those hypnotizing eyes, high cheekbones, and flawless ivory skin. Her ash-blonde hair cascaded in thick, silken curls down her shoulders and back, swept off her forehead with a thin velvet bow. Even now, at sixty-nine, Georgia had the style of a well-preserved beauty.

  La Costa had no doubt that she and Macklin’s dream house would have withstood the assaults of time, emerging somewhat better for the journey.

  Just like Georgia.

  Chapter Twenty

  La Costa loved the way that Georgia could turn a phrase. She had a unique and delightful

  way—a grand Southern way of expression that was very different from the way folks in California or Nevada spoke. Georgia was a master storyteller and treated La Costa to hours of wonderful stories about growing up the last of five children on a stately plantation in South Carolina, recounting her own grandmother’s patchwork quilt of folk tales and fables; life lessons and captured dreams, every last sentence and detail of Georgia’s captivating memoirs.

&n
bsp; Sometimes, they would just drive without talking, and that’s when La Costa would stare out of the window, imagining the people and places in her mind that Georgia put there. Rich, complex histories of real people with hopeful hearts, triumphs, and tragedies. At a rest stop in Leupp, Arizona, La Costa purchased a collage-ruled composition book in which to capture notes on everything she could from Georgia’s wonderful tales. It gave her the most terrific idea for a story of her own.

  La Costa excitedly scribbled random and fragmented thoughts onto the pages from the back seat of the Lincoln, seated next to Louis as he played contentedly with his picture books.

  “What’s that?” Georgia said, peering curiously into the rearview mirror. “A journal?”

  “Sort of. Sometimes I just like to write down things I think about, or see, so as not to forget. I’ve got nearly twenty-five binders like this filled with notes. I’m keeping track of things for Louis now. Someday he can read it all and make of it what he will. Maybe even learn some lessons from my life mistakes and those of his mother.” Her voice trailed off awkwardly.

  “You are his mother!” Georgia declared sternly. “And that makes him one very lucky little boy.”

  “Louis lucky boy!” a fervent little voice interjected, causing Georgia to nearly bust a gut. Louis giggled too, quite pleased with himself.

  “Oh, that kid is a stitch, La Costa! We’re gonna have some FUN, aren’t we, Louie?”

  La Costa smiled.

  “Show me those notebooks sometime?” Georgia said. “Or better yet, write something from them. I’d bet your life would make a wonderful story.”

  This made La Costa recoil inside. If she only knew!

  But that was the thing about Georgia. It wouldn’t have mattered in the least, La Costa would later relay in her memoir. The woman was a catalyst to everything yet to happen, and La Costa could not have been more grateful for this incredible guardian angel ushering her to her dreams.

  “Maybe someday I will.” La Costa’s voice trailed as she watched the green trees go by. “Someday . . . ”

  Georgia drove until her bad knee got the better of her and La Costa had to take the wheel and continue until sundown, when they reached New Mexico and pulled off the interstate to find a room for the night in Albuquerque.

  The next day, they drove across the Texas panhandle, to Little Rock, Arkansas. It would be the longest of the three-day journey, and the two took turns in three-hour shifts. Georgia spent her back-seat time either entertaining Louis or catnapping.

  Georgia rose with the chickens, and so they were repacked and back on the road by four a.m. the following morning for the final leg across Alabama, nearly eight hundred miles, down to Savannah, Georgia, and finally into South Carolina.

  By five-thirty that night, road-weary and excited, they arrived at the spectacular shoreline of Hilton Head Island.

  * * *

  The first several days were dedicated to cleaning up the clutter, dust, and debris time and abuse had accumulated in the halls and rooms of the once-stunning beach house. Time and neglect, however, did little to taint its truly impressive aura. In La Costa’s eyes, it was magnificent.

  There was light painting to be done and brass fixtures to polish. The entire garden had to be cleared of weeds and years of overgrowth. The soil had to be re-tilled, and new seedlings planted. Bleached-out curtains came down, and fresh new ones went up. Bed linens were replaced, a youth bed erected for Louis in La Costa’s room. Carpets were beaten, paintings and fixtures were dusted, and windows were shined to perfection.

  The cupboards were filled with parcels of food from a local food-mart, the pilot light on the range lit, and soon the smells of home cooking permeated the air.

  It took them three full weeks to transform Georgia and Macklin’s dream house from an old boarded-up weathered beach house into a home.

  Georgia hung a framed photo of her with Macklin in the entrance hall. It had been taken on their wedding day, in front of a small chapel in Richmond. She also displayed several more throughout the house. It was sort of sweet and sad at the same time. La Costa soon learned that Georgia talked to Macklin at night—as if he were really there, in the house with them all. Since she and Macklin had never had any children of their own, La Costa imagined that Georgia was lonely, and probably had been for a very long time.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  (One Year Later)

  Weeks after a full and carefree summer and months well into the turning of the new century, La Costa began to wonder when she and Georgia would begin writing the manuscript. They had done nothing but work on the house since they arrived. Figuring it wasn’t right to pry, La Costa simply said nothing and continued to be a helpful assistant to her eccentric boss, who charged her with mundane household tasks, such as food shopping and sorting laundry. Georgia did not touch her ancient relic of a typewriter one time. Instead, she spent long, languid hours in her gardens, rocking blissfully on her wicker glider on the front porch, reading trade magazines and sipping iced tea.

  It had been a welcome reprieve from the bustle of the agency with its ringing phones and whirring fax machine. Yet, somehow, La Costa couldn’t help but feel slighted. Why, then, did Georgia bring her here? To be her paid housemaid? Louis was restless too, and keeping him quiet and content was a challenge. She worried constantly that his high-spiritedness and natural curiosity was making Georgia tense or annoyed.

  But the more La Costa apologized, the more reassuring Georgia was. “It’s all right, dear. Really, I enjoy Louis tremendously. The question is—are you happy here?”

  “Yes. I mean, who wouldn’t be? It’s more than beautiful. The house is extraordinary.”

  “I’m thinking about re-doing the bedrooms on the second floor and adding four more on the north side of the house,” Georgia said, her thoughts whirring.

  “What for?” La Costa was incredulous. “Why on earth would you want so many bedrooms? Are you thinking about opening a hotel?” La Costa chuckled.

  Georgia grinned. Her blue eyes twinkled as she twirled around to catch La Costa’s reaction.

  “Oh my God! You are! You are planning on running a hotel!”

  “A bed and breakfast, dear. They’re all the rage. I’ve been waiting for my accountant to finalize the figures. He says we’re ready anytime now to begin further renovations. The place should be completed and ready to open by this coming fall. Just in time for the snowbird tourists.”

  “And the book? What about your contract with the publisher? I thought—”

  “Oh, La Costa. That’s why you’re here, remember? I’ll surely need your help with getting the B&B up and running, but in the meantime, you write it. I’ve seen your journals. They’re full of terrific ideas and story lines. Really, La Costa, you’re bright and talented. You could finish writing it without half-trying.”

  “What? Those are your memories. Georgia, I can’t just—”

  Georgia cut her off by delving into a pile of tapestry samples, which were slated for the new guest rooms. “These just arrived today. Let’s take them upstairs and look at them in the natural light. C’mon!”

  La Costa was stunned. Just like that, she asked her to write the manuscript! What did she know about being a biographer? La Costa was not at all comfortable with the charge.

  “Can’t you get someone else to do it?” she pleaded, following Georgia upstairs from room to room as she darted around purposefully, eyeing ceiling heights and paying heed to door moldings. She held out one end of a measuring tape across an imaginary wall, where a window seat would go. “Nonsense, dear. Grab the other end of this, won’t you? You’re the one I want to be my ghost writer.”

  “Thanks, Georgia, but—”

  “But, nothing,” Georgia said, releasing the lever and causing the tape to recoil with a sharp snap back into the dispenser. “Case closed.”

  * * *

  Two days later La Costa woke early one morning and was shocked to find Georgia seated at the kitchen table, pounding on
an old manual typewriter, next to which, a full ashtray suggested that she had been at it all through the night, and was still there, greeting the dawn.

  “Manuscript?” La Costa asked, hopeful, from the kitchen doorway, looking on with her arms folded smugly across her chest.

  “Naw . . .” Georgia spat a shot of smoke. “Business plan,” she growled in her gravel-tinged morning voice. “By the way, we’re out of decaf.”

  Then she produced a notebook from a teetering stack of papers and charts in front of her. “Here, I did jot down some of my thoughts. Notes, for the book. I thought it would be helpful.”

  Georgia’s “notes” eventually filled five spiral binders.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  December 2002

  With the west wing sleeping rooms now finally finished, and all things holding to schedule, the B&B would be ready to open in summer of two thousand three. The kitchen still had to be expanded to accommodate another range and a large utility sink and a refrigerator and freezer unit. At first, Georgia and La Costa would be doing all the cooking, until the need to bring someone on full-time was warranted. One of the downstairs bedrooms was converted into a working office, from which Georgia would keep the financial books, register logs, and supply inventories. She invested in a high-speed computer processor with a laser jet printer, a fax machine, and a small copier. She had a separate phone line installed in the sitting parlor, as well as in each of the guest rooms.

  Georgia named the charming respite, Splendor Bay. Her dream was, within four or five years, to expand the bed and breakfast’s offerings to include full-service spa quarters with meditation rooms and a sun solarium and exercise room. “You think big—you do big things,” Georgia was always fond of saying. And in all her life, La Costa had never before or since, met anyone more capable of doing just that—big things.

  The weekends were already booked solid June first through winter of two thousand four when rugged vacationers would trickle in after Indian summer for one- to two-night stays sporadically, keeping Splendor Bay’s warmth and hospitality brimming when ocean waters chilled and boats and their owners spent more time tethered to their docks and the mainland. When winter skies settled over the water and jackets and hats were the order of the day.