by Mary Bowers
“Or two,” Coco slipped in.
“Or even two,” Michael said, with an attractive gesture of his free hand. The other one was holding the handle of a mug, and he took a little sip and gazed at me brightly over the rim.
I wanted to kill this monster baby in its crib, but I couldn’t think of a thing to say. While I hesitated, Michael made a move.
“We can talk it all over later. No need to make decisions now. I’ve got a City Council meeting downtown this morning, so I’m gonna go get ready. Y’all go ahead and catch up. Truly a pleasure meeting you, Coco, Patty.”
He left.
* * * * *
My former classmates followed Michael adoringly with their eyes and gave girly little sighs when he was gone. Still a couple of teeny boppers, in some ways.
Then Patty spoke up, leveling big blue eyes at me. “Are you two . . . ?” She made a lot of twitchy little hand jives, which looked like fluffing up a pillow, but probably meant something else.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “We are.”
“Oh.”
“After all, we are living together.”
The hands started going again, this time flinging the pillow. “I thought he might just be the caretaker or the squire or something. It’s a big place.”
“’Squire?’ Still reading those Regency romances you used to like?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve read one, but I think it’s about time. They take me to a happy place. Is there a bookstore around here? Now that you mention it, a Regency would make a perfect beach read.”
Pastel visions of book covers with wispy little women in gowns tied at the waist with pink ribbons flitted through my mind. “I think I saw one at Girlfriend’s. I’ll take you over there.”
“Who’s your girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend was my landlord’s dog. We named our resale shop after her and he’s still charging us the same rent we paid in 1990, which was cheap even then. He loved that dog.”
They didn’t seem interested in Girlfriend. Just at the moment, they had Michael on their minds.
“And you two are like, together together?” Coco asked, taking one last shot.
“We, like, sure are.” I said directly into her face.
“Shoot. Got another one laying around?”
“These days they don’t lay around. These days, you have to go hunt them down. It’s not like high school, where they were all lined up in gym shorts, grinning.”
“I don’t remember it being all that easy, even then,” Patty said.
“No, you’re right.”
“In fact, it was worse.”
“Yeah, I remember that, too. Michael golfs. I’ll ask him to see what he can dig up on the links.”
“Sounds yummy,” Coco said dismally. “Don’t bother. Or . . . at least clean them up first.”
I shot them a sideways glance. “You two are desperate. I didn’t mean dig up somebody literally. Oh, all right, I’ll see what I can do. Maybe we can triple date with some guys from the clubhouse while you’re here, but even if you do click with them, you don’t live here. It won’t lead to anything.”
“It’s a nice place,” Coco said. “I like St. Augustine. I lived a lot of places with my third husband before I divorced him and moved back home, and believe me, there’s worse. Got the ocean right there, and the country’s oldest city with a big Spanish fort and a lot of shopping. If I managed to hit on a winner, I’d just move here.”
“God! A date!” Patty said. “I haven’t been on one since I started dating George in my senior year. I’m not sure I still know how to behave on a date.”
Coco knew, of course. “Don’t get so drunk you can’t slap his hands away. Or, if you like him right away, don’t get so drunk that your aim is off when you go to grab him.”
Patty and I shared a two-second look, then she said, “Anyway, Tiffany and John still live in Chicago, and they count on me for babysitting. But maybe it is time I had a fling,” she added bravely.
I knew she wouldn’t. Patty wasn’t the flingy type. Coco was, but I figured it was the guy that was going to get flung. I wasn’t worried about her. I decided to wait and mull it over before I asked Michael to dig up a couple of guys. We had all grown up a lot since high school, and a quick note once a year in a Christmas card doesn’t give you a deep understanding of how a person finally grew up. I realized I needed to get to know these two all over again.
“I’ll let you know what I can do. In the meantime, I’ll take you into Tropical Breeze tomorrow and we’ll look for your book, Patty.”
“Why not today?”
“I’m busy today. Sorry, kids, but if I’d known you were coming I would’ve cleared my calendar. Doc Miller is coming today, and I need to be here.”
“Good lord, we are in the boonies,” Coco said. “Your doctors make house calls?”
“This one’s a veterinarian. She’ll be here to look over the shelter animals. She gives us a special rate for her services, and I’ve got a new little guy out in the barn that I want her to look at today. I can’t just traipse off when she’s doing us a favor. This is not negotiable,” I added, staring at each of them in turn.
“Well, at the very least you have to come to the party tonight,” Coco said.
“What party?”
Patty got grouchy. “We’re throwing a party tonight. At least, Coco is.”
“You are? Who’s coming? You don’t know anybody here but me.”
“Everybody’s coming. A bunch of strangers. We don’t even know how many. Coco threw out a blanket invitation to everybody who was sitting around at the pool last night.”
“The people at the condo development are so nice, I just had to.”
“She was bragging about what wonderful cooks we are. I was back at the condo behaving myself, unpacking, when I noticed that Coco wasn’t there any more. I was getting hungry and I wanted to walk over to that little restaurant for dinner, so I went looking for her and when I got outside I heard her laughing somewhere. I followed the sound of her voice and found her by the pool with about fifteen people gathered around her chaise longue, the center of attention, as usual.”
“Lots of people live there,” Coco told me. “Most of the units are rentals, but some are privately owned, and people live in them year-round. Retired people. Just lovely, all of them. After sunset, it’s adults only at the pool, and they all bring a drink and socialize for a while. I was telling them about our diet trip.”
“Wait – what?”
“We’re on a diet trip.”
I blinked. Coco had said it as if it made perfect sense. “Just what in the world is a diet trip?”
“It was all my idea. Patty and I are doing our own fat farm. We took a condo instead of a hotel room so we could cook our own healthy, low-calorie meals. I bought this book with a special diet and all these gourmet recipes, and we’re going to stay in the condo and cook, and then we’ll walk walk walk all over the town, and by the time we go home we’ll have lost maybe five pounds each.”
“It’d be a start,” Patty said. “It’s been two years since I got on the low-carb diet, and you know, even successful diets only work for two years. And they only work one time. Then you have to find a new trick, because after two years the weight’s coming back and you’re feeling desperate, and we’d already done the low-fat diet, the Mediterranean diet, the I-love-animals vegetarian diet and I don’t know what else.”
“All diets work,” Coco told me very seriously, as one who’d given the matter a lot of thought. “You just gotta stick to them, no matter how strange they are. It’s the maintenance plans that let you down.”
I nodded silently, remembering the cabbage soup diet of 1972. It got me into that little black dress, but by the next year I wasn’t wearing that dress anymore, because . . . well, let’s just say I only wore it for one summer. Eight years later, I finally gave up on ever getting into it again and got rid of it. I wept over that dress. But I knew that even if I ever got down to th
at size again, it would be out of style by then anyway.
“I know I should lose thirty pounds,” Patty said. “You don’t have to tell me – nobody who’s overweight doesn’t know it – but this diet book would be a new trick, and we were hoping you’d get on the plan with us, if you wanted.”
“You really ought to,” Coco added, looking me over. “I saw your picture on the Orphans of the Storm website, and right away I figured . . . and Michael’s not an ounce overweight. Think about it.”
I became aware of the puppy fat again. True, I’d gained a few careless pounds over the Holidays, and here it was August and they were still riding around on my middle like they meant to stay, maybe bring their friends for the next Holidays. Patty did need to lose at least thirty pounds, but Coco was her usual size 6.
“You aren’t trying to lose weight, are you Coco?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m always on a diet. It’s my normal life. If I’m not losing, I’m gaining. We were going to start on the plan right away, today. As soon as we checked in, we went right over to the Jewel –“
“The grocery store here is called Publix.”
“Yes. Public.” Coco never could get names right. She’d consistently called K-Mart, K-Mark. “We went right over and got all the fresh veggies and fruits and scallops and pork chops and everything we needed to do four new recipes from the book over the first two days.”
“Only now we’ve got this party to get ready for,” Patty said disgustedly. “Come on, Taylor, you gotta help us. The party’s at eight, and it’s already nearly lunchtime.”
“I’m sorry, guys, but my day is booked. Besides, you’re not throwing a wedding reception. A few party trays and four or five bottles of wine and you’re good to go. I tell you what – I’ll stay after the party and help you clean up.”
Coco started whine, but Patty hopped down from her chair and said, “Good enough. Now, where’s your computer?”
“My computer?”
“We only brought the diet book, and we’re giving a party. We need ideas for yummy stuff, full of bacon bits and cheese and pastry dough. Unless you’ve got some recipes we can use?”
“I’m not much of a cook, actually, but the computer’s in my office. Come on. Let’s take a look.”
Coco stayed in the kitchen and sipped her coffee like a visiting queen. She could throw out invitations like a kid blowing bubbles, but when it came down to doing the work involved, it was going to fall to Patty and me. Coco was going to be purely decorative.
Chapter 3
My office is in the northeast corner of the mansion, where the lady of the house had had her bedroom back in the grand old days of the Cadburys. It was pretty much glassed in with French doors on two sides. My desk was on the east side, overlooking the river. It was like being in an atrium. There was a tiny, blue-and-white-tiled fireplace on one wall and a solid, sturdy door topped by a generous transom on the other. The room had a nice shape to it, with a high ceiling and a worn, terra cotta floor. I loved that room, and the fact that it was where I went to do the less-fun work of running a shelter had never changed that. The room had a quiet, golden patina.
Patty came in and I could tell right away that its atmosphere affected her, too. She’d been fussing about the party, saying how it was something she didn’t need on the very first day of her vacation, and when she entered the office, she was immediately silent, looking around and settling down.
“How nice,” she said.
“I like it. Here’s the computer.” I booted it up, then moved for Patty to sit before the keyboard.
“Hey, I thought you said you didn’t cook.”
“I don’t,” I said, trailing off as I looked to see what she was pointing at.
That icon was still there. The one that I hadn’t put on my computer myself. It said “Recipes” – a little hacker humor from somebody who still made me kind of nervous. Victor Pacetti hadn’t bothered me since that little trouble we’d had during Halloween week the year before, but he’d also never removed the icon. I tried deleting it once, and the next day it was back again. I knew I could never defeat Victor in cyberspace; no computer expert I could hire would be able to defeat him either. He was world-class. And since he never bothered me, I decided to just leave it alone. I didn’t like having it there, though. Victor had his own set of moral principles, cleaving to them like a modern-day Lancelot, but he stepped over the line without hesitation whenever he figured he had a good reason.
For some reason, he liked me.
“Oh, that,” I said weakly. “That’s just a joke. No, don’t touch it!” One of the recipes had a link to Victor. “Let’s just look through the recipe sites on the Internet. Do you have a favorite?”
We managed to find a few simple and extremely unhealthy recipes, and printed them out to sort through with Coco.
When it came time for them to leave, Coco tried to make me feel guilty for not coming along to pitch in.
“Stop that,” Patty told her. “It’s your fault we’re going to be in the kitchen all day getting ready for a party instead of laying around on the beach. And if you hadn’t wanted to surprise Taylor, she wouldn’t have been busy on our first day here and we could have hung out with her. So get yourself out to the car; we’re going to Publix to blow our whole food budget for the vacation on a lot of crackers and booze.”
Coco hadn’t said her last word yet, though.
Fixing me with a dark eye fringed with a thick lace of mascara, she said, “You bring Michael.”
* * * * *
Doc Miller agreed with my layman’s guess that Gunther probably had heartworm. I had told her about him ahead of time, and she’d come prepared with a test kit. We’d have to wait for the results to be sure, but he had all the signs. For a dog that had been running around loose in the Florida coastal scrub, it even made sense. Heartworm is spread by mosquitoes.
It hit me hard. He was a smart little guy – well, maybe not so little – and he was young and playful and such a good dog! I wondered about adopting him myself and treating him, but I wonder about adopting every animal that comes in, and I know I can’t. The treatment for heartworm involved a series of three expensive shots, which were very hard on the dog. If need be, we’d treat him ourselves, and maybe Doc Miller could get us some kind of a break on the meds.
I always tell myself there’s an angel watching over them, and they’ll find the home they’re meant to find, with a little help from me and the Orphans volunteers. We can only wait. Believe. Trust that somehow, it’ll all work out.
But it cast a pall over the rest of the day, and I sure didn’t feel like going out partying that night. I got into my all-purpose green batik dress and low heels, threw a few ropes of sparkles and pearls around my neck and asked Michael how I looked.
He viewed me critically, looking photo-ready in his mid-level casual suit (good for plays and parties, but not up to banquets or coronations), and suggested long earrings.
“Not chandeliers,” he said. “Kinda long and sparkly.”
I held up a pair of drops with a faceted chain.
“Perfect.”
We grabbed a bottle from the wine cooler and left at about 8:15. I figured we’d be there before nine. The party had started at eight.
* * * * *
Most of the guests must have walked over from the condos, because the place was lit up and jumping, but there was an open parking space right in front of the door for us.
The Anastasia Resort isn’t one of those oceanfront high-rises with a huge parking lot behind it. It’s laid out like a little village, almost, with blocks of single-storey condos on the side closest to the ocean and two-storey townhouses at the other end, by Route A1A. It’s set back from the beach about a block, so there’s no ocean view, but there’s compensation in the fact that you can park right in front of your own door. Coco had rented a condo in the block closest to the gate leading to the beach.
We got out of the car, and Patty came out to greet us.
&nb
sp; “I’m so glad you could make it!” she said, embracing each of us in turn. “You missed the messy part, too. The kids and dogs just left five minutes ago.”
“Kids and dogs?”
“A family from the townhouses on the other end came with their three kids and their dog. It only seemed like dogs, plural. Little Smokey was all up into everything, trying to eat off everybody’s plates and running around.”
“Who would bring a dog to a party?” I wondered.
“Oh, they’re a nice family. Don’t get me wrong. I love those kids. They remind me of my grandkids. And Smokey’s a nice dog. I’m just getting a little frazzled. Parties aren’t my thing,” she said, holding the door for us. “Coco’s the one who loves parties.”
Only at that point did I begin to wonder if I’d see anybody I’d met before. I’d lived in the area for over 30 years, though I didn’t get up to St. Augustine much. Still, I knew people there, and I looked around with interest when we got past the kitchen and into the open area of the condo containing both the dining room and the living room. The bedrooms were through a little alcove off to the left.
It must have been a premonition, that moment of idle curiosity, wondering if I’d see anybody I knew. Considering how the rest of the night went, it should have been more Shakespearean, with thunder and lightning and witches.
“Gee, I wonder if I know anybody here?” I said, all innocent and dewy.
Somebody yelled “Taylor! Hey, everybody, there’s my old girlfriend, Taylor!” and for the second time that day, I was yanked back into the past, only not such a good part of my past.
It was Fred Rambo, somebody I’d dated back when I was new in town, just divorced, confused and lonely. He was one of those guys you decide to dump right away, but who decides you’ve just found the love of your life: him. You keep telling him good-bye, but he just grins and acts like he didn’t hear you.
