by Maria Geraci
Dimples met her gaze from across the room. He wasn’t smiling.
Baseball Cap caught the exchange. “You know that loser over there?” he said, motioning to Rosie Dimples. She wondered briefly what Dimples, or Rosie, or whatever his real name was (because it simply couldn’t be Rosie) would think of her nickname for him. She ignored Baseball Cap’s loser slur. It was probably just pumped-up macho rugby talk.
“I’ve never met him before but he was nice enough to point Brandon out for me.”
“Hey, Farrell, I think you should kick Rosenblum’s ass for talking to your woman!” Baseball Cap said.
“He’s already kicked Rosenblum’s ass!” said another one of the guys with a laugh.
“That was on the rugby field. I mean for real,” Baseball Cap said.
Grace waited for Brandon to say something civilized to counter the Neanderthal sitting across from her. But he didn’t.
Well, that was disappointing.
“So, Grace,” Baseball Cap continued, oblivious to her disgust. “How do you know our boy Brandon here?”
“We met in Zumba class,” Grace said.
Brandon began to cough violently. Grace slapped him on the back between his shoulder blades. “Are you okay?”
“What the hell is Zumba?” Baseball Cap asked.
“Did your beer go down the wrong way?” Grace asked Brandon.
Brandon tried to speak but nothing came out.
“Don’t worry,” Grace said in the calmest voice she could muster. “I’ve taken CPR. Do you need me to do the Heimlich?”
Brandon, whose face had gone the color of an eggplant, frantically shook his head.
Doing the Heimlich maneuver in Sarah’s too-short little black dress would probably prove indelicate but Grace might not have a choice. No one else at the table seemed the least bit concerned that Brandon could very well be choking to death. What was wrong with these hooligans?
“Just make the international choking sign,” Grace said, bringing her hands to her throat to demonstrate.
Brandon’s arms flailed at his sides, but he made no motion to do the choking sign that would give her permission to do the Heimlich.
For the love of God. Was he too proud to ask for help?
“I’m . . . I’m o-kay!” Brandon wheezed pathetically.
Grace tried to remember what she’d learned in her CPR class. If Brandon was talking, then he couldn’t be choking. She let herself relax a little and slid the beer into his hand. “Here, take a sip of this.”
Brandon downed half the glass.
Satisfied that he was all right, Grace turned her attention to Baseball Cap. “Zumba is aerobics done to salsa music. It’s a lot of fun. You should try it sometime.”
Baseball Cap snorted. “Brandon, my man, when did you grow a pussy?”
“What she meant to say was that we met at the gym. Right?” Brandon croaked, his expression part pleading, part embarrassed.
“Um, yeah, we met at the gym.”
Okay, so Brandon didn’t want to admit he did Zumba. Grace could sort of understand that. Especially in this testosterone-overloaded crowd. “Dancing is an excellent way to keep in shape,” she informed the guys at the table. “There are football players who take ballet, you know.”
“Yeah, well, the last time I looked, I had a dick,” Baseball Cap shot back. “I thought you did too, Farrell.”
Brandon didn’t say anything. Maybe his throat was still too raw from his near-death choking experience. If Brandon couldn’t stick up for himself, then Grace would just have to do it for him. “That kind of macho posturing usually indicates a big problem,” she said to Baseball Cap. “Or maybe in your case, it’s a small one.”
The guys at the table began to howl.
Baseball Cap gave a short laugh like he thought her joke was funny, but Grace could tell by the look in his eyes that he was seething. “Farrell, you didn’t tell us you were fucking Dr. Phil.” He turned his creepy smile on her. “So, honey, what do you do for a living?”
Honey?
“Are you kidding me?” Grace asked Brandon. “This guy is actually your friend?” Raw throat or not, how could he let Baseball Cap get away with this kind of talk?
“Grace, he’s drunk. Ignore him. Doug’s a good guy,” Brandon said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
Good guy, my ass, Grace thought. From the way Brandon’s words slurred together, it appeared Doug wasn’t the only one who’d had too much to drink. Well, Rosie Dimples had warned her. The place was full of drunk, horny rugby players. And Brandon was no exception.
A huge wave of disappointment (and lack of food) sent her head spinning. This was so not how she had imagined this evening. Five more minutes. That’s how long she was giving this date. Five more minutes, then she’d find an excuse to get out of here. Maybe Brandon would come to his senses and leave with her.
“So let me guess,” baseball-cap-wearing Doug said, like he just hadn’t heard the exchange between her and Brandon. He gave Grace a slow perusal that made her feel dirty. “Judging by that dress you have on, I’d say you’re a hostess at that new restaurant Farrell likes to go to. The one he keeps a standing reservation at . . . What’s it called?”
“I don’t work at Chez Louis,” Grace said.
“So where do you work, babe?” Doug asked.
Babe?
Somewhere inside her, Grace could hear Mal Genio begin to chuckle. Grace’s fingers began to twitch. “I manage a tourist shop.”
Brandon seemed to come alive. “Oh, yeah, which one?” he asked.
It occurred to her that Brandon didn’t know much about her. He’d been a dedicated member of the Thursday-night Zumba class for the past two months at Grace’s gym, the Total Package. He was one of only three guys taking the class, the other two being a couple. Brandon wasn’t very coordinated, but he tried, and Darlene, the instructor, loved him. Brandon and Grace had gone out for coffee last week after class. They’d chatted about which circuit machines were good for which muscle group, and Brandon told her all about his job as vice president of his family’s bank, but they hadn’t talked much about Grace.
“You’ve probably never been there,” Grace said, taking another sip of their shared beer. She glanced at the TV screen. Now would be a good time for the Bucs to do something good again. Or even something bad. Anything to divert the table’s attention from the current topic.
“Try me,” Brandon said.
Grace steeled herself for the inevitable jokes. “I work at Florida Charlie’s.”
Doug’s eyes widened. “The Florida Charlie’s? The shop with the stuffed alligator in front? The one off the interstate where all the employees dress in costume?”
“I thought that place closed down,” someone said.
“We stopped wearing costumes a few years ago,” Grace said.
Doug laughed like he’d just won the lottery. “Hey, Farrell! Remember those commercials Florida Charlie used to do when we were kids? The ones where he wore the giant orange-head costume and ran around the parking lot yelling ‘Ex-squeeze me’?”
Grace stiffened. The commercials featuring her father wearing the orange-head costume had been the scourge of her elementary school years. A vision of Richard Kasamati running around the playground doing an unflattering imitation of her father in the orange-head getup flashed through Grace’s head. “Your dad is weird and so are you!” Richard had chanted. Mal Genio had taken care of the situation. She’d punched Richard in the stomach and made him cry. It had earned Grace a trip to Sister Perpetua’s office, better known to the students at St. Bernadette’s as the chamber of horrors, but it had been worth it.
Brandon grinned. “I remember those orange-head commercials. But I thought they were kind of—”
“So you work for Florida Charlie,” Doug said. “It’d be worth the humiliation just to spend ten minutes talking to that guy. I saw him interviewed once on TV. He’s like something off another planet. Is the crazy Cuban lady still around? Isn’t
she the one who makes the alligator his costumes?”
Uh-oh. Mal Genio was fully awake now and begging to be let out to play. The hell with the five minutes. Grace was out of here.
“For your information, babe,” she said to Doug, “Florida Charlie is my father. And that crazy Cuban lady is my grandmother. Besides being an excellent seamstress, she also dabbles in brujería. That’s witchcraft, honey, in case you flunked high school Spanish. So you better watch out, or I’ll find a live chicken she can sacrifice to make a potion that shrinks your pecker even smaller than it already is.” Grace stood and looped her purse over her shoulder.
Doug’s eyes gleamed in satisfaction. “You’ve dated some crazy chicks in your time, Farrell, but I think this one’s my favorite!”
Brandon grabbed her by the wrist. “Hey, I told you, he doesn’t mean anything by it. Give me ten minutes—”
“I’m gone in the next five seconds. You can either come with me or not. At this point, I’d actually prefer you didn’t.”
“You’re joking, right?” Brandon looked confused. “No one’s ever walked out on me before.”
“Then consider me your first.”
“Tracy, I think you need to calm down.”
Grace froze. “What did you call me?”
Brandon frowned. “I meant to say . . . Grace.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Isn’t that what your friend with the blond hair calls you in class?” Brandon asked in the tone of someone who was being wronged. “I have no idea how you’d get the nickname Tracy from Grace, but hey—”
Despite the horribleness of it all, Grace started to laugh. It was a high-pitched, scary sounding laugh. Mal Genio wasn’t going to be stopped. Not tonight anyway.
“What’s so funny?” Brandon demanded.
“That’s Gracie, you idiot. My friend Sarah calls me Gracie. Not Tracy. You didn’t even know my friggin’ name!”
By comparison to just a few minutes ago, the room was now relatively quiet. Grace could feel at least a dozen pairs of eyes on them.
“Sit down, you’re embarrassing me,” Brandon whispered tightly. “Let me finish my beer and then we’ll leave.”
Grace could feel the rational, calm side of herself sliding into some dark abyss. She thought about how excited she’d been over tonight’s date. About how she and Sarah had spent the better part of an hour trying to decide what Grace should wear. And how she hadn’t eaten anything all day. And the humiliation she’d felt when Felix had figured out she’d been stood up. And how Brandon let his friend Doug make fun of Pop and Abuela . . .
“I’m embarrassing you? Brandon, I wouldn’t go anywhere with you if you were the last man on earth!”
And then something happened that Grace hadn’t exactly planned on. With a dramatic flair, she’d spun around to leave, causing her purse to knock over the pitcher of beer. Straight down the crotch of Daytona Beach’s most eligible bachelor.
3
Does Talking to a Plastic Alligator Mean You’re Crazy?
She hadn’t meant to do it. But somehow it would come back to bite her in the ass. Bad karma usually did. And while the person she would have really liked to douse in beer (baseball-cap-wearing Doug) only stood back with his mouth gaping open, seeing Brandon Farrell jump from his chair, his face silly with shock, had been extremely gratifying.
She could have offered to help dry him off (on the other hand, no—that wouldn’t have been a good idea). Instead, she turned on her heel, and with her head held high, marched straight out the front door of the Wobbly Duck. Chairs had instantly slid to clear a path. No weaving her way through the tables this time. She might not have made much of an impression walking in, but she’d definitely made an impression walking out. Too bad it wasn’t the impression she’d been going for.
Saturday evening traffic was still heavy. Grace turned on the radio, hoping to take her mind off the night’s disastrous events.
“Welcome to the Track, Daytona Beach’s hottest radio station! It’s Saturday night and we’re bringing you the best of the Speedway Gonzalez Show.” This was followed by the familiar sound of an engine revving up in the background, the show’s “theme music,” so to speak.
“Hel-lo, speedsters! This is Speedway Gonzalez taking you round and round Day-to-na Beach,” came the familiar obnoxious voice.
Ugh!
Speedway Gonzalez was Daytona’s Beach’s version of Tucker Max. He was obnoxious, chauvinistic, and just plain nasty. But it was also impossible to turn him off. Listening to his show was like rubbernecking on the radio.
“Today we’re talking to Donna, who says her boyfriend isn’t paying her enough attention.”
Grace cringed. She’d heard this one before.
“So, Donna, tell me. Are you fat?”
“What?” came a confused female voice.
“You heard me, baby. Are you fat? Okay, so you are. Have you ever thought that’s the reason your boyfriend has moved on?”
Grace rolled her car into her reserved parking spot behind the store just as Speedway was beginning to make mincemeat of poor Donna. Of course, it was no one’s fault but Donna’s. Everyone who called in to Speedway’s show ended up sounding like an ass. Grace wondered if the whole thing wasn’t just a big setup and the schmucks who called in nothing but wannabe actors trying to get discovered.
She switched off the radio. Florida Charlie’s officially closed at nine p.m., which was in five minutes, but the Closed sign was already out. Long gone were the days they’d had to stay open late to finish ringing up all the last-minute sales.
She walked around to the front of the store and stood back, trying to inspect the place with an objective eye. A ten-foot hot pink flamingo in flashing neon stood on top of the building next to the giant aqua-colored Florida Charlie’s sign. It was your typical tourist trap. Over five thousand square feet of wall-to-wall junk beckoning to wide-eyed children and their tired parents. Horny spring breakers need not enter. Florida Charlie’s was strictly G rated. It was her grandfather’s creation, given birth to some fifty years ago when Florida theme parks like Weeki Wachee and Silver Springs and Six Gun Territory had been booming attractions.
Grandpa O’Bryan had named the store after his only child, Charlie, and sold things like “mermaid-watching kits” and inflatable seahorses. They gave out free samples of fresh hand-squeezed orange juice and shipped citrus all over the States. But the shop’s real appeal had been its quirkiness. Gramps had insisted the employees dress in costume. It didn’t matter what the costume was, as long as it could be linked to something having to do with Florida. Billboards starting as far north as Virginia lined Highway 95, encouraging visitors to “Stop at the Flashing Flamingo!” Besides the must-have mermaid-watching kits and the prerequisite inflatable marine life, there was always something exotic on display. Currently, it was the infamous alligator tooth.
Her father had toiled alongside his father, and word of mouth, together with lots of blood, sweat, and tears (and all those billboards) had made Florida Charlie’s a central Florida landmark. When Pop graduated high school, he went off to college in nearby Gainesville to attend the University of Florida. That’s where he met Ana Alvarez, a Cuban emigrant from Miami majoring in elementary education. Pop had taken one look at Ana’s big brown eyes and fallen head over heels in amor (unlike Grace, Pop did believe in love at first sight). They were married six months later, and after graduation, Mami (pronounced ma-mee, what all good children called their Cuban mothers) gave up a potential teaching career to work in the store alongside Pop and Grandpa O’Bryan. Soon after, Mami’s widowed mother, Graciela Alvarez, fed up with the rising crime rate and horrific Miami traffic, came to Daytona Beach to live with her only daughter. Charlie Jr. was born a couple of years later, and three years after that, Grace had come along. Having Abuela in the house to help take care of two small children had made running a family business a lot easier.
When Gramps passed away, Pop inherited the store. Then two
years ago, Pop had a heart attack. His doctor told him if he didn’t slow down he wouldn’t live to see sixty. Pop said he couldn’t imagine putting Florida Charlie’s into the hands of an outsider, but Charlie Jr. wasn’t interested in the family business. Charlie was a tax attorney and in his seventh year at Lockett and Jones, Attorneys at Law, so the task had fallen on Grace. Pop still kept his finger in the pie, but Grace took over the day-to-day operations. As a kid she’d spent every possible free minute in the store. It had been like having her own personal playground. Despite the Richard Kasamatis of the world, Grace had been proud of Florida Charlie’s.
But times had changed. Florida tourism was now synonymous with Disney World and Universal Studios. Places like Weeki Wachee and Silver Springs had managed to hang on, but Six Gun Territory, like so many other roadside attractions, had been hit by a silver bullet. The gun had been in the hands of a cute little mouse with a squeaky voice, but those were the facts. The shop wasn’t so quirky anymore. It was now downright embarrassing. Pop still insisted on the billboards, but Grace had managed to convince him to let the employees wear the new standard outfit—khaki shorts or pants (if it was cold enough) and a bright aqua T-shirt with a Florida Charlie’s insignia. The Florida Charlie’s T-shirts had been Grace’s idea. Although they weren’t as popular as the Ron Jon Surf Shop T-shirts, they had been a mild success among tourists who were old enough to remember Florida Charlie’s in its heyday.
But the revamping of the employee uniform was just the tip of the iceberg. As far as Grace was concerned, the entire store needed a major overhaul, with the exception of one thing: a standing eight-foot alligator that kept watch outside the double glass doors waiting to welcome tourists. And their MasterCards and Visas and American Expresses.
The alligator had been a staple at the shop as long as Grace could remember. Currently, he was wearing his Santa costume, complete with hat and white pom-pom. When she was five, Grace had nicknamed him “Gator Claus.” No matter what time of the year it was, or what outfit he was decked out in, it was the name that had stuck, most likely since it was the costume he wore the longest. The Santa outfit went on November first and stayed on until January second. He was Gator Claus even when he was the Easter Bunny or wearing the Fourth of July Yankee Doodle costume Abuela had painstakingly sewn. The only holiday Gator Claus didn’t do was Thanksgiving. Pop always noted a slack in sales whenever he wore the pilgrim costume. Apparently, giving thanks didn’t put people in the spending mood.
