Glad was my friend. A friend to the end.
She loved us all. And she was purty tall.
I ain’t that tall but she never complained.
She never complained ’bout a gaul-dang thang.
A lady to the end, Glad made us all feel dear.
Always there to lend an ear – and a good cold beer!
They’s a word for Glad. And that word is Glad.
I was glad to know her. Y’all can yell now, if you wanner.”
And with that, Winky yelled the most countrified, “Woo hoo!” I’d ever heard, and I’ve heard plenty. We did our best to follow his lead, and bayed pathetically in the hot breeze like a pack of wormy hound dogs.
“Please now turn your attention to the water,” Winky’s voice cracked over the mic again like a carnival barker. The crowd grew silent. “Goober’s gonna put Miss Glad to rest in the sea.”
I turned toward the Gulf and saw Goober, six feet of skinny arms and stork legs, cussing and trying to balance himself on a stand-up paddleboard. I snorted back a laugh. From thirty feet offshore, Goober looked like a praying mantis afflicted with both Parkinson’s and Turret’s. A shirtless teenage boy paddled the board at the back while Goober did his best to stay upright, holding onto the gold box containing our girl Glad. Goober gave the crowd a stunted wave with his left hand, lost his balance, and somehow managed to pull off a spectacular recovery by wind-milling his left arm and right leg like a pair of yard whirligigs. We all gasped in horror as he teetered, then sighed in relief as his feet settled back on the board.
I held my breath as Goober took the lid off the glittering gold box. A light breeze blew a little swirl of ashes from the container right into Goober’s face as he swung the box first behind him, then forward and up, as if he were pitching a softball. As Glad’s ashes flew up and out over the Gulf, I saw what looked like a chicken thigh bone fly out of the box and arc against the late afternoon sun. A huge white seagull cried out and grabbed the bone midair. I shriveled for a microsecond in horror and shame.
But there was no time for self-loathing. With all eyes still on Goober’s lanky frame, he lost his balance again. After tossing the cremains, he lurched backward on the paddleboard like a deranged zombie, overcompensated forward, then leap-frogged face-first into the Gulf with a belly-flop splash. In a flash he surfaced for air, only to be beaned on the noggin by Glad’s gold box. The box found purchase on his bald head and sat there, on an angle, like an ill-designed square space helmet on a sunburned walrus. The crowd went wild with laughter and catcalls.
To his credit, without missing a hitch, Goober stood up in the thigh-high water, grabbed the box from his head and bowed like an orchestra maestro in top hat and tails. The crowd erupted again into a riot of catcalls, cheers and applause. I have to admit, I laughed so hard I peed my pants a little. I think Glad would have not only approved – she would have done the same.
Chapter Eight
After another lonely weekend made blurry by potent cocktails of Tanqueray and tears, on Monday I decided it was time to start getting my life back on track. I ponied up some courage, drove Maggie out to Sunset Beach, and walked through the picket fence toward the crystal blue Gulf. I stopped at the vacant spot in the sand where Glad used to sit. Her absence felt personal and mortifying and raw, like the empty socket of a freshly missing tooth. But like everything in life, it would just take some getting used to. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the pelicans and seagulls were already getting on with their lives, fishing and flying and preening their feathers as they had before Glad or I or mankind had ever walked the Earth.
Insignificance pressed down hard on my head, making me stare at my feet.
“You’re as significant as you wanna be, Val,” I heard my old friend say. I smiled sadly and unfolded my chair, then propped it where her lounger used to be. I set my bag on the chair and headed toward the shoreline. If life truly does go on, I might as well get to it.
After an hour of beachcombing I was a little perkier and a lot more parched. I slipped a beach cover-up over my suit and ducked into Caddy’s for a drink. Three days had passed since Glad’s memorial service, but it appeared that the good folks at Caddy’s were still in mourning. The waitresses were gathered around in a circle sobbing.
“I still can’t believe he’s gone. It’s just too much,” said Cindy, an impossibly blonde, impossibly tanned waitress who reminded me of Malibu Barbie.
“He? Don’t you mean she?” I coughed through my bone-dry throat.
“No…not Glad. Tony. Tony’s dead!” snuffled Cindy between sobs, her face a smear of soggy Cover Girl. “Two in a row. Norma, I can’t take it!”
Cindy collapsed into Norma’s manly arms.
“Tony was broke up real bad over Glad,” said Norma, her own rugged face stained with tears. Even though she sported a man’s short cropped hair and a face to match, the hard disguise couldn’t mask Norma’s soft interior. “He hadn’t showed up for work since Glad died a week ago Sunday. Her passin’ probably did him in.”
Norma patted Cindy’s back like a mother hen and shot me a glance over her shoulder. “Read it for yourself,” she said, pointing a meaty thumb toward a newspaper laying on a nearby table. “Cindy was checking the obits when she saw a familiar face.”
I knew Tony as the old guy who raked sand and picked up garbage on the beach around Caddy’s. The headline in the St. Petersburg Times article read, “Hoarder Dies Under Ton of Garbage.” Apparently, Tony had been really really into garbage. So much so that he had brought his work home with him. My warped sense of humor made it impossible for me to ignore the delectable irony that Tony had been killed by the very thing that had given his life meaning. Ambushed by a lifetime subscription to National Geographic, I presume. I didn’t really know Tony, and I wasn’t going to cry for him. I’d just learned the hard way that tears didn’t bring anyone back from the dead.
I leaned over the table and studied the article. A picture of Anthony B. Goldrich, Esq. looking decades younger and clean shaven was, nevertheless, still recognizable as good-old garbage-man Tony. The paper had had a field day with his nasty habit. Below his mugshot was an 8x6, color picture of his living room. Stacks upon stacks of newspapers, garbage bags and beer cans were heaped in huge piles, like an anti-consumerism display at some hip modern art gallery. Tony’s “art” had filled every corner of his home, leaving only narrow trails to squeeze through. As morbidly captivating as that picture was, the third shot was the one that really caught my eye. The backyard. Tucked in amongst hills of discarded chairs and doors and god knows what else, sat a vintage Minnie Winnie nearly concealed by junk. My heart pinged. Could this be the same RV Glad used to make her getaway from Bobby all those years ago?
I grabbed the paper off the table and read the article word for word. A line break in the news column reported with a comical pun not wasted on me that Tony had been dis-covered by a neighbor, dead of an apparent heart attack after being buried under an avalanche of periodicals. The article reported that Mr. A.B. Goldrich, Esq. had been a lawyer of some repute in Hawesville, Kentucky. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1985 and had worked “in maintenance” at Caddy’s since 1988. A will had been found taped to a bathroom mirror at his residence. According to his lawyer, J.D. Fellows, Anthony Goldrich, “Tony” to his friends, had left all his worldly possessions to someone named Thelma G. Goldrich. The will also stipulated he was to be cremated and buried at sea.
My heart skipped a beat. Thelma G. Goldrich. Could the G stand for Gladys?
I needed to find out. Thanks to my new friends in low places, I thought I knew somebody who might be able to help.
Chapter Nine
Most people living on the fringe didn’t start out that way. They’d given the world a try and got their spirits crushed. For some, the heartless rat race killed their compassion for anything – including themselves. For others, mindless materialism hollowed them out, making everything seem pointless. But if I had to bet on the number-one reason
people gave up and dropped out of normal society, I’d put my money on lost or betrayed love. It’s blown apart more people’s will to keep trying than all other things combined. I fell into this last category. So did Jorge.
After Glad’s memorial service, I’d learned that Jorge pulled his chips off the table after his wife and children were killed in an automobile accident on I-275. I was shocked to find out he’d been a traffic cop back then. He’d been the first help to arrive on the scene. That was all he had said to me about it, and that had been enough. Eight years had passed, but post-traumatic stress disorder and lack of will to live had kept him from holding down a steady job ever since.
Unlike Jorge, whose demise via lost love had come suddenly, mine had crept in more gradually, almost imperceptibly, like the first mild winter frost. Due to inattentiveness or, I can admit it now, not wanting to see, I had allowed the tapestry of my love life to unravel. Like a rug slowly stripped bare by a moth, thread by thread, until the pattern was compromised and the beauty threadbare, I’d let my life and my love erode away until their value was irretrievably lost. When both had become something no longer worth holding on to, I threw them away, along with a good portion of myself.
Jorge had told me about losing his family between lubricating slugs of Mr. Dude 20/20 – hands down the worst rotgut I’d ever tasted. Even though he was no longer a cop, I was hoping Jorge still had a couple of friends on the force.
I wanted to get a look inside that Minnie Winnie behind Tony’s house. Maybe it was Glad’s old escape vehicle from Bobby. Maybe she had still been living in it. Who knows? If it was her RV, then maybe there was something inside it that could put the mystery of Glad’s identity to an end. I needed to do it soon, too. I figured it wouldn’t be long before Pinellas County code enforcement came in and hauled away the RV and the other mountains of junk that made up Tony’s lifetime accumulation of crap.
***
I found Jorge in his usual spot, drinking in his parked car on a side street north of Water Loo’s. Too gun-shy to go into the dump of a restaurant alone, I was told Jorge always waited for backup – namely Goober or Winky – to arrive before making his move. Apparently, no amount of whiskey could help Jorge muster up enough courage to brave a solo run inside – not even to use the toilet. The guys told me Jorge had gotten busted for peeing in the parking lot three or four times already. So far, he’d gotten off with reprimands from sympathetic cops. But nowadays he parked stakeout-style down a side street, away from Water Loo’s greasy windows and the waitresses’ prying eyes.
As I pulled up behind Jorge, a thought dawned on me that I wished hadn’t. This is the guy you’re turning to for help, Val? Who’s more pathetic, you or him? I blew out a breath and cut the ignition.
Jorge was busy taking a slug from his pocket rocket when I tapped on the window of his grey-and-bondo colored Buick.
“Hola, Jorge, como estas?” I asked through the glass, pretty much using up all the Spanish I knew.
Jorge came to life like a puppy in a petting zoo. “Bien! Y tu?” He jumped out of the ratty Buick and gave me a hug. He smelled of Old Spice and whiskey, but he was steady on his feet. Good sign.
We walked into the depressingly dingy, greasy-spoon diner and slid into the usual corner booth. The waitress wiped her hands on her dirty apron and rolled her eyes. What’s with the ’tude? We’re paying customers. I shot her a look and turned back to Jorge.
“Jorge, we’ve got to do something about Glad.” I wiped sticky coffee rings off the table with a mysteriously damp paper napkin. “I think I found her Minnie Winnie. The one she said she lived in when she first came to St. Pete.”
“Yeah? So what? She’s dead.” I watched the fledgling spark falter in Jorge’s eyes.
“I know,” I said quickly, hoping to keep his interest alive. “So is Tony, the garbage guy at Caddy’s. It said in the paper that Tony left everything to Glad in his will.” I knew I was taking a leap on my “G” theory, but I didn’t want to complicate things too much for Jorge’s sloshed brain cells. My strategy seemed to work.
“No chit!” Jorge sat up. His mouth formed a smile, then a frown, then a smile, then a frown again. I guess he was trying to decide whether to be sad about Tony or happy about Glad. Then his mouth went still and he spoke woodenly. “Like I said before, Val. So what? Glad is dead.”
Jorge sunk back into the dilapidated booth. His dull eyes followed the plump waitress as she slammed two worn, brown plastic mugs of coffee down on the table. She rolled her eyes again, plastered on a fake, weary smile and asked the obligatory question, “Will there be anything else?”
“Not at the moment,” I answered. Again with the attitude. WTF!
I don’t like attitude. I waited tables to pay my way through college, and knew what a pain in the ass customers could be. We weren’t that type. We were nice enough. We just stayed for hours. No big deal most days. Who goes to Water Loo’s anyway? Nobody but drunks and assholes. We were mostly the former, so I didn’t get why the waitress found us so annoying.
“Alrighty, then,” she said dismissively, then padded off behind the serving station to get busy ignoring us. I tried to shrug off her negative vibe by turning my attention back to Jorge.
“Yes, Jorge. I know Glad’s dead. But she might have a family somewhere who could use the inheritance, whatever it might be.” I watched Jorge’s expression go from so-what to shut-down. Shit! I’d gone and used the “f” word – family. Big no-no. Based on his reaction I might as well have slapped Jorge in the chops. “Sorry! It just slipped out,” I whined, trying to backpedal.
Jorge turned away from me. He lowered his head and started nodding at some unseen object in the seat beside him. The moment felt surreal, and I felt like a turd. Then I remembered that I’d brought the ex-cop a bribe.
“Look what I got you!” I squealed with fake delight. I held up a green and silver can. Jorge stopped nodding at his invisible demons and cocked his ear in my direction. “Your favorite!” I teased. He ventured a glance my way. “Coco Rico!” I said in my best Spanish accent, wiggling my torso in a mock cha-cha. Jorge turned around and smiled tentatively. I handed him the can of coconut-flavored soda and beamed a smile at him big enough to be seen from an orbiting satellite.
He took the can, nodded and cracked the tab. “Salute,” he said solemnly, then slung his head back and took a deep draught. When he did, I could see three small crosses tattooed like a necklace into the crease where Jorge’s neck met his chest. One cross for his dead wife, two for his kids, I presumed. Jorge was a broken man, but as far as I could tell, he still enjoyed a few simple pleasures. Coco Rico and whiskey appeared to be the main two. As I studied Jorge, his blue-black wavy hair reminded me of a dark, tempestuous sea. A reflection of his tormented soul, perhaps. Winky’s arrival at Water Loo’s saved me from diving in too deep.
“Thar’s my peeps!” he crooned, swaggering shirtless over to the booth like a bulldog pimp. Winky’s chest was almost hairless, but he made up for it in freckles. In fact, the rusty orange spots looked as if they might overtake his skin completely one day.
As I studied the constellation of freckles that held Winky together, the plump waitress with the bad attitude came running over with a spare shirt. Winky puffed up like a movie star. “This fine establishment here keeps a few extra shirts on hand for us lackadaisical beach fellers.”
“When you gonna learn?” chided the chubby little hash slinger. She held up a huge yellow tee shirt that probably belonged to Big Bird from Sesame Street before he lost it in a drunken brawl. The arms of the young waitress were as tight as sausage casing and white as alabaster. The contrast was striking against her black hair and red glasses. “No shirt, no service, Winky. You know the rules.”
“Yes ma’am,” Winky said almost shyly. He winked salaciously at the waitress and took the wilted shirt with a dainty pinch of fingers. Redneck etiquette – rednetiquette! The waitress upped the ante on his wink with a slightly naughty, deeply dimpled smile. Intere
sting.
“You got somethin’ against clothes?” Jorge asked as he grudgingly slid over to make room for Winky’s pudgy and probably freckled butt.
“At least I can still park in the parkin’ lot, Peemeister,” Winky shot back.
Jorge opened his mouth to say something, but I wanted to nip this dogfight in the bud.
“Did you hear about Tony?” I blurted at Winky.
“Yep. Pummeled by a pile a pornos, I bet. All in all not a bad way for a feller to go.”
“Since when do you read the paper, Winky?” I asked, incredulous.
“Thay’s a lot you don’t know about me, Val. Still waters run deep, don’t cha know.”
“I got chore still waters right here,” Jorge said, grabbing his crotch.
“I bet you do…,” Winky shot back. He tried to stand up but was thwarted by lack of maneuvering space between the booth, the table and his impressive beer belly.
“Knock it off, guys!” I said, exasperated. I tried again to shift their focus. “Winky, did you see the picture of the backyard? There’s a Minnie Winnie in all that junk. I think it may be Glad’s. We might have a chance to find out more about her. Who she really was. If she had a fa…. If she had friends. Aren’t you guys curious at all?”
“Sure. Tell us more.” The baritone voice from overhead belonged to Goober. He’d snuck up on us during our enthralling intellectual exchange.
“I want to get inside that Minnie Winnie…” I began.
“Me too!” Winky hollered, cutting me off mid-sentence. Winky laughed like a deranged woodpecker. Jorge and Goober snickered and exchanged high-fives.
“What? I don’t get it,” I said with growing annoyance. What am I doing here? When did I sign up to be the butt end of a joke for a booth full of freaking homeless guys?
Goober edged into the booth beside me, absorbing me into his mushroom cloud of body odor. He picked up a spoon and used it as a pointer. He seemed to have a thing for spoons. “See that waitress over there? Chubby one with the red specs?”
Glad One: Starting Over is a %$#@&! (Val & Pals Book 2) Page 5
