by Mya Wood
Soon, she became settled in her life.
But she still hated August.
Chapter 1
And it was August again.
And Bianca waited for shit to start happening. She wasn’t surprised when it did. Small things at first – her bank card got demagnetized and she had to go through the hassle of getting a replacement. Then her mother called to say she’d had to have the cat put to sleep. The cat had arrived after Bianca’s departure for college, so they weren’t close, but still…it just had to happen in August.
Even so, none of that was the big August catastrophe. Bianca knew that was still looming – still lurking out there in the future waiting to pounce.
Bianca didn’t have to worry about it being a guy, though – that had been June’s disaster, breaking up with Vince. She hadn’t been that devastated – they’d only been seeing each other for a few months and it wasn’t going anywhere, but that didn’t make him any less of a cheat or a liar for finding someone else before breaking up with her.
Yes, it had been a long, hot summer with no dating, no romance, and no sex. Bianca’s regular group of friends were scattered, as always happened in summer, and those that were left in town were going through the ‘friend breakup syndrome’ – so afraid to embarrass Bianca by inadvertently putting her into a situation with Vince that they stopped seeing her altogether.
Only Valerie hung tough. But Valerie always did. She hadn’t liked Vince much anyhow and she had never shied away from telling Bianca so.
“He must be damned good in bed for you to be willing to put up with conversation with him beforehand,” was Valerie’s forthright take on the situation.
Bianca and Valerie often lamented the lack of men in their lives with both sex appeal and brains. They couldn’t seem to find someone with both, who wasn’t either gay or already taken by someone else. But Bianca never lamented the presence of Valerie in her life. She was her rock, her bullshit meter. Valerie wouldn’t allow Bianca to fool herself.
Valerie was a nurse. They met when Bianca moved into the same apartment complex in Fort Lauderdale. They were kindred spirits from their first meeting – in the laundry room. One had run out of soap and the other out of dryer softener sheets. They shared their stuff, and by the time the last towel was fluffed and folded, they were good friends.
They had helped each other weather the storms of romance, the unending quest for that set of arms that would hold them forever. They had both moved during the five years they had known each other; each had tried living with a guy for awhile, a situation that was irritating and short-lived in Bianca’s case and a total emotional disaster in Valerie’s. Now each had her own apartment a couple of miles away from the other. They talked, emailed or saw each other every day. Valerie knew how much Bianca hated August.
And it was August.
And it was hot!
The good news was that the beaches were nearly deserted; the bad news was, of course, the reason why – sand so hot you could blister the soles of your feet getting from beach towel to ocean, the stifling heat made bearable only by an offshore breeze, and when the breeze died…
And, of course, the only souls hardy or stupid enough to spend the day baking their body and brain were the teenagers and young twenty-somethings – bikini-clad nymphs and muscle-bound jocks, all vying for each other’s attention.
At twenty-nine, Bianca was losing interest in that lifestyle, especially since it interfered with that other thorn in her side – her job. Bianca hated her job. At least she hated this job, anyway. She knew if she could rise one rank higher in the corporate hierarchy, from Assistant Buyer to Head Buyer, that she would love her job. The ‘assistant’ part was what made it so crappy. Bianca got to do all the grunt work the head buyer didn’t want to do; work the hours the head buyer didn’t want to work; do all of the work and get none of the perks.
Valerie was always telling her to make up her mind. Did Bianca love the job or hate it? Was she going to go for a promotion or not?
And then the offer of a teaching job came along. Bianca still had her teaching certificate, but this was the ‘put-up or shut-up’ year. You only had five years from finishing Teacher’s College to validate your teaching license by actually teaching, and this was the final year that Bianca could do that. She had left her résumé with the various Boards of Education in the area but had had no offers.
Then, out of the blue, last week, a phone call, an interview, and a bona fide job offer – teaching math and history to junior high students in an inner-city neighborhood. Bianca needed to make up her mind. It was going to be a tough assignment. She got the feeling the principal was just looking for a warm body to start the year and would continue looking for the replacement he was sure he would need when the kids ate her alive in the first couple of months.
“Shit or get off the pot, Girl,” was Valerie’s sage advice. She got sick of listening to Bianca’s soul-searching and arrived one evening with a bottle of wine and a pad of paper. She thrust the pad at Bianca and said, “PROS and CONS! Write!”
Bianca wrote the words at the top of two columns on a page she headed ‘Shoes’ and also on a second headed ‘Kids’.
They drank the wine and filled out the charts. The pros and cons got wilder as the bottle got emptier, and when they couldn’t decide if ‘chance to meet men’ was a pro or con of either profession, they put down the pens and called it a night.
“Now,” said Valerie decisively, gathering the pages together and folding them. “Take these to the beach and think about it.”
“The beach?” said Bianca. “I don’t want to spend my vacation on the public beach. I’ll think at home.”
“No, you won’t think at home,” insisted Valerie. “You’ll obsess, and you’ll clean everything over and over, so you won’t have to think about it. Besides, I don’t mean the local beach, I mean the one up the coast – where we went last year. What was the name of that place?”
“The Hampton Inn?”
Bianca remembered vividly the weekend she and Valerie had spent there the previous year. Friday night had been beautiful with the most glorious sunset and the promise of a fabulous weekend. Then the clouds rolled in, and it started to rain. It rained and rained, and they spent the time in their room drinking wine and discussing important topics like movies and men until they finally gave up and went home early Sunday.
“Why would I want to go there?” Bianca asked.
“Because it will give you time to think,” said Valerie. “Walk on the beach, collect shells, whatever… and it’s low season, so you can easily get a reservation. There won’t be anybody there but old people. You can lie by the pool and just think. You’ll be too far away to phone anyone you know. You’ll be alone. You’ll be able to figure this out.”
Bianca had had too much wine to be able to argue rationally, and before she knew it, Valerie had booted up the computer and made an online reservation for the following week. Bianca exclaimed over the cost, but Valerie pointed out that it was really quite reasonable, and that besides, the rooms even had kitchenettes. Bianca could buy groceries and make her own meals to save money.
So here she was, headed north, hoping her clunker of a car would get her there before the AC died completely, the backseat full of a weird assortment of cans and boxes of dried food. A couple of bottles of wine were nestled in her suitcase, wrapped in sweatshirts. A third was in with the groceries, a parting gift from Valerie, given with the admonition to ‘make it last…you’ve been having a little too much of that lately’.
Bianca knew this was true, and she felt a little guilty about the two bottles she had packed. But she never told Valerie about them, and she never took them out of her luggage. She was determined to leave them be, however, and only allow herself one glass with dinner each evening.
She got lost on the way and passed the turn-off. Doubling back cost her time and cool air, as her AC gave up the ghost a couple of miles from the hotel. She
pulled into the parking lot hot and cranky.
God, she hated August!
Chapter 2
Bianca manhandled the window sunshade into place and pulled down both visors. She got out of the car and looked around. It was exactly as she remembered it. The Inn – actually a two-storey motel – ran back from the street straight to the ocean. At the front, you could only see the main office. It was on the right behind a shaded patio that served as the breakfast room. The view of the rest of the place was blocked by a large screened gazebo on the left side of the property.
As Bianca made her way to the office door, she heard a chirping noise and turned her head toward the sound. Oh yeah, right. I remember, she thought, looking at the large cage that held four cockatiels.
“Hi, guys!” she said, giving them a small wave and then opening the door to the office.
The receptionist was a friendly, perky lady who acted as if Bianca had made her day by walking through the door. And maybe she had, thought Bianca, it was low-season, after all.
“Welcome, welcome,” said the woman, whose name tag said Rose.
“Hi, I’m Bianca…” That was as far as she got.
“Bianca Watson. Yes, hello. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Why, wondered Bianca, am I late for charades or something?
Bianca handed over her credit card. Rose ran it through the machine and then went through the bill with Bianca, explaining every item.
Then Rose started in on the rules. “The office closes at nine o’clock, so if anyone is going to call you here, they need to know your room number in advance to punch it in on the phone. No one will be in the office to answer the phone. The owner’s wife’s nephew is staying here. He’s in the end unit on the second floor, but you only contact him in an emergency. Dial 40.”
Rose leaned toward Bianca after looking over each shoulder conspiratorially. “The owner had to have some surgery – minor, but still, surgery is surgery. He’s recuperating at his sister’s over in Stewart. His wife is there with him, so they got her nephew down from Kissimmee to help out. So he’s kind of the overnight guy, the nephew, I mean, but he’s only for emergencies.”
“Got it. Only for emergencies.”
“And the office closes at nine.”
“Closes at nine, got it,” said Bianca, picking up her key.
Room fifteen. The number didn’t speak to her either way, lucky or unlucky.
Bianca went back to the car and grabbed her suitcase. Number fifteen was on the main floor about halfway down.
Bianca was glad the room wasn’t on the second floor. She didn’t feel like dragging her suitcase and all the rest of the crap from the trunk up the stairs. And since it was only a two-storey building, there was no elevator. Bianca guessed that only the spryest of the seniors would want a room on the second level.
Bianca stopped outside her room and looked around. Great location, she thought, right across from the pool, steps to the beach.
Bianca liked the way they had designed it. There was a large hedge at the end of the property, separating the pool from the beach. It was a good idea. The hedge served as a windbreak from the ocean breezes and afforded a measure of privacy from passing pedestrian beach traffic.
There was also an opening in the hedge that led to a short set of steps. Beside it was a shower so that guests could wash the sand off their feet before coming back to the pristine, chlorinated environment of the pool.
Bianca slid her key into the lock and turned it. She remembered how wonderful it had been that time she had come with Valerie. Until the rains came, that is.
Bianca looked up at the bright, blue sky. It’s August, she thought. Anything can happen. Hell, there was probably a flippin’ hurricane just over the horizon.
The room was typical Florida hotel décor – rattan furniture, pale pink walls with dark green trim, floral bedspreads to match. There were two double beds, a chair and a desk – did anyone ever really write anything in a hotel? – and a couple of armchairs and a little table sat by the window.
It was a very comfortable room, and Bianca looked forward to spending the week in it. She didn’t see how people could live in it for a couple of months at a time, but she knew that’s what they did in high season. Maybe the patio furniture outside the door added to the living space.
Bianca threw her purse down on the bed nearest the door and heaved her suitcase up onto the other one. She unzipped it and threw back the lid, wondering whether to unpack first or just change into her bathing suit and fall into the pool.
You’re going to be here for five days, she told herself. Take your time.
Yeah, right, answered her brain. Five days of silence and organizing your thoughts. You just have to remember to get around to the thinking part before Friday.
Bianca pulled the two bottles of wine out of her suitcase and put them in the fridge. She opened the cupboard doors in the kitchenette. Wow! There was service for four…plates, cups, glasses, wine glasses, of course. She pulled open a drawer and found a full set of cutlery and utensils, including a corkscrew.
Good, all my needs are met, she mused and then felt guilty. She knew she’d been drinking too much lately, but it was only white wine and it was French – she hadn’t stooped to screw-top bottles.
Plus, it was August.
God, she hated August.
Bianca unpacked as far down as her bathing suit. She stripped off her clothes and put it on. Then she grabbed a towel and headed out to the pool. The water was warm, almost hot. It wasn’t as refreshing as the ocean would be, but she had plenty of time to get to that.
As she paddled and treaded water, Bianca looked around. She noticed that the gazebo was bigger than she first thought. She could see a variety of furniture…tables, chairs, sofas. And on the patio between the gazebo and the pool was a large gas barbecue.
It must be sort of a clubhouse in the winter, she thought. Where the old folks can really rock.
There was little evidence of the old folks now though. Must be nap time, thought Bianca. The only other people in the pool were a family – speaking French – probably from Quebec.
Bianca knew a lot of Quebeckers vacationed in Florida. The two kids, maybe four and five years old, took turns shouting, “Un, deux, trois…” and jumping into their father’s arms in the pool while Mom sat on a lounge chair reading her book and looking up occasionally to smile at their cries of “Maman! Regarde-moi!” Aka, ‘Look at me, Mom!’
Bianca flipped onto her back and floated. The water covered her ears, and she closed her eyes. Gradually, she began to feel like a disembodied being floating through space. She relaxed totally, and her mind went far away.
Suddenly, Bianca realized she was falling asleep and blinked her eyes open. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow move. Someone had stepped back from the window in the end room on the second floor. Wasn’t that where the handyman nephew was staying? Great! Some pervert watching her. Just what she needed!
Well, don’t we think a lot of ourselves, scolded her conscience. How do you know he was watching you?
Well, whispered the saucy part of her brain, if he is, then let’s give him an eyeful.
Bianca pulled her feet down under her and stood up. She walked up the steps in the shallow end and out of the pool like Venus Rising. She shook her hair and then ran her fingers through it, stretching her neck and then raising her arms above her head. She picked up her towel and bent over, drying one leg.
There, Mr. Pervert, she thought, have a nice long look down my top. Want to see the other side?
Bianca turned her back and bent over to dry the other leg. Then she patted herself gently all over with the towel. She could barely resist looking up at the window.
Up in the room, the nephew was indeed watching her. She was the first person he had seen in the three days he’d been there that was over six and under sixty. He was beginning to think he had entered the longest week of his entire life
. He couldn’t believe that he had agreed to do this.
Of course, I agreed, he told himself. I’m Landry, sweet sweet Landry. I’ll do anything to help someone out.
Yeah, well, there’s a fine line between being sweet and being a pushover, and I think maybe I crossed it this time, he told himself.
When his Aunt Nadine called, Kathy Hampton didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Landry can come,” she said. “He’s not doing anything right now.”
Just like that. No asking if Landry wanted to, or if maybe Landry was just a little busy preparing for the new season or having a life, for god sakes. No. There was none of that. Just, “Landry can come.”
