Life's a Beach

by Claire Cook

  “Is that a Crock-Pot?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s actually filled with vermiculite. I have a kiln in my studio at home, but this works fine for in here. The annealing process is the most important thing. You have to lower the temperature carefully, or the beads can break.”

  Riley pointed to one of the metal things sticking out of the Crock-Pot like an upside-down bouquet. “Is that a sparkler?” he asked.

  “Sorry. It’s just a metal rod. It’s called a mandrel.” Daria pointed to the contraption clamped to the table, with rubber hoses leading to the propane tank. “And this is called a minor bench burner.”

  Glass rods in all sorts of vibrant colors sat in clear Lucite boxes at one end of the table. I tried to imagine what it would be like to have my own inventory of glass rods, to order the colors I liked and arrange them any way I wanted to, to work in the back of my own little shop.

  I had what I thought might be a brilliant idea. “I was just wondering,” I said. “Has anybody ever tried to drizzle bits of colored glass onto sea glass?”

  She smiled. “Let’s try it.”

  There was no shortage of guinea pigs rolling around in the bottom of my shoulder bag. I let Riley pick out a small aquamarine piece. It had the weathered look of something that had been thrown around by the ocean for years and years.

  Daria chose an orange glass rod. She nodded at some pliers. “Pick it up with those and hold it over here and let’s give it a try. Put a pair of those goggles on first, though.”

  I held the sea glass in the flame and Daria heated the glass rod above it and then dotted it to the glass. “Okay,” she said. “Take it out and let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “How’d that happen?” Riley asked.

  My beautiful piece of sea glass had turned into an ordinary piece of glass with orange polka dots.

  “Yeah,” Daria said. “Isn’t that amazing? The etching just melts away. I really think the cosmetic people should know about this. Who knows, it might work on wrinkles.”

  Riley held his hands up to his cheeks and made a face like the kid in Home Alone. “Ouch,” he mouthed.

  I was thinking about how much I’d really liked that particular piece of sea glass. “I bet you could spend the rest of your life figuring this stuff out.”

  “That’s my plan,” Daria said. She picked up a mandrel. “Glass is really temperamental. Just when you think you know what you’re doing, you get another curveball. But, it’s all worth it because every once in a while you create something that’s so beautiful you don’t even know where it came from.”

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN all that glass, but now I was thinking about Noah again. I wondered if he’d ever done any glass beadwork. I wondered if he even knew I was gone. Riley and I pushed our way back through the tie-dyed curtain. There was a knock at the big display window at the front of the store. When we turned to look, the twins were side by side, pressing their faces against the glass.

  “Yikes,” Riley yelled. “Run for your life!”

  I saw at least one customer start to run. “Shh,” I whispered to Riley. I tried to catch Marnie’s eye to see if I’d blown my chances of ever selling her any earrings, but she didn’t look up. Maybe she’d missed it.

  The twins burst through the front door. Allison Flagg was right on their heels. “I take that back,” I whispered to Riley. “It was actually excellent advice.”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Allison Flagg asked.

  I’d been around the block enough to know this was a question that never led anywhere good. As further evidence, it sure looked like she was glaring at Riley. The twins each took one of her hands. One of them looked angelically up at her mother while the other crossed her eyes at Riley.

  I put my arm around Riley’s shoulders. “Sure,” I said. “Why don’t we step outside? We can all snack on my car or something.”

  “Thanks anyway,” Allison Flagg said. “But this isn’t a social visit. I think you should know what your nephew has been saying. It’s not the sort of thing I want my twins exposed to at this age. I’m very concerned. What did you mean by snack on your car?”

  I really wanted to punch her out. I hated everything about Allison Flagg, the way she walked, the way she talked, the stupid crisp white preppie blouse she was wearing with those dorky capris with the sailboats on them, or whatever they were.

  But I had Riley to think about. As a third child, and with two busy parents, who must have been pretty tired by the time he came along, he probably never had this much individual attention. I was essentially a parent figure, and this time together was a huge opportunity for me to set a good example for him.

  I looked Allison Flagg right in her nasty little eyes. “Your daughters vandalized our rental car with brownies, a crime punishable to the full extent of the law. And, we have witnesses.”

  The last part was a lie, but it worked great. The twins just hid behind her back and didn’t even try to deny it. Allison Flagg glared some more at Riley. “Well, I’m sure your nephew provoked them.”

  I forced myself to smile. “Listen,” I said. “How about if I take Riley and the girls to go buy a bucket and some sponges, and we’ll meet you back at the hotel. The kids can wash the car off together in the parking lot.”

  Allison Flagg checked her watch. “Actually, I wouldn’t mind getting a little shopping in before I head back to the hotel.”

  “I’ll take that as a thank-you,” I said.

  Once we got rid of their evil real mother, I was sure I could help the twins change their nasty ways. First I was a kid, then my sister had kids, so I’d been around kids practically all my life. I knew how they operated, I knew how their minds worked. Sometimes I felt like I was still one of them.

  It didn’t take us long to find three sponges and a bucket. We even found a Wiffle ball and bat set for Manny. While Riley and the twins chatted, I stopped at a huge bulletin board with little slots for flyers. I took one for every store that might possibly be interested in my earrings.

  I also grabbed a Childfree by Choice flyer, because it made me remember the first time I met Noah. Apparently the revolution had made it all the way across the bridge and onto the Cape. If the health club was the new singles bar, maybe Childfree by Choice was the new playgroup, just minus the kids. “Children Should Be Neither Seen Nor Heard at the Following Events,” I read before I tucked it behind the other flyers.

  “I thought you said I could drive,” Riley said when we all climbed into the rental car.

  “Talk to me in another eight years or so,” I said.

  The twins had started to giggle as soon as we came within sight of the car. I waited until they got themselves buckled into the backseat. “Okay,” I said. “Enough of this twin stuff. It’ll stunt your growth. I want names.”

  I looked at them in the rearview mirror. “Come on. We don’t have all day.”

  “Mackayla,” the one behind me said in a little voice.

  “Mackenzie,” the other one said, in pretty much the same voice.

  “All right, Mack and Mack, listen up. We’ll start with a simple apology, but I’m hoping for real redemption by the time this car is clean.”

  Chapter 20

  WHEN ALLISON FLAGG PULLED INTO THE HOTEL PARKing lot, my rental car was looking a tiny bit better and the kids were a whole lot wetter. For some crazy reason, the two Macks couldn’t wait to get back to their mother.

  “Mom,” one of the Macks yelled. “Save us!”

  “Can Riley eat over?” the other Mack yelled.

  Allison Flagg climbed out of her car and reached back in for two pizza boxes. “Sure,” she said. “I bought extra just in case. We can have dinner down by the pool.”

  “Well,” I said to give Riley an easy out. “It’s been kind of a long day. . . .”

  Riley started jumping up and down. “Key, please. Key, please,” he chanted.

  I pulled the room key card out of the pocket of my jeans. “See,” I said, “he’s really tired. Maybe
another time.”

  Riley was already running. “Bathing suit,” he yelled. “Be right back.”

  “Make sure he has his cell phone,” Allison Flagg said. “So he can call you when we’re done. My twins need their beauty sleep.” She tilted her head. “And don’t go too far. No hot dates or anything.”

  It seemed to me that there was plenty of pizza for all of us. “I don’t have any plans at all,” I said.

  “I’ll take that as a thank-you,” she said.

  After Riley got settled in at the pool, I headed out to my rental car to get the gaffer’s drill. It wasn’t as if I wanted to have pizza with Allison Flagg anyway, but she should have at least invited me.

  I was trying to decide whether to order room service for dinner, or go for a quick drive and pick something up. I clicked the car doors shut and headed back toward the hotel again. Maybe by the time I got the drill to my room, I’d be able to make up my mind.

  I heard a car door slam. I kept walking. “Hey, where’d you get that drill?” someone yelled behind me.

  I turned around. “Are you actually following me?” I yelled to Tim Kelly.

  “Yeah, that drill you’re carrying is implanted with a surveillance microchip. We call it the spy chip.”

  I looked at the drill, then turned around again and kept walking.

  Tim Kelly caught up to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “No,” he said. “Of course not. I’m staying here, too.”

  I stopped. “Really?”

  “Yeah, pretty much everybody is. It’s the only hotel they could get.”

  We looked at the back of the Fisherman’s Lodge, where an ice machine was surrounded by logs to make it look like a woodshed. Or maybe an outhouse. “Can’t imagine why this one was still available,” I said.

  “Got plans tonight?” the gaffer asked. His forehead wrinkled when he opened his hazel eyes wide, and there were streaks of blond and gray in his sandy curls.

  I started walking again. His arm stayed attached to my shoulders. “Yup,” I lied. “Planning to hang out with my nephew.”

  “Can’t you get a babysitter?” he asked.

  I started to slide out from under his arm, and he squeezed my shoulder with his hand.

  I elbowed him and ducked. “I am the babysitter,” I said.

  “Ouch,” he said. “Okay, truce. How about if you go get your nephew and I’ll meet you both in the hotel café. My treat. I bet they have great buffalo here. Although we might have to shoot it ourselves.”

  I looked at the long brown paper bag he was carrying. “Is that a sub?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But it’s okay. I can save it for breakfast.”

  “What kind is it?”

  It turned out Tim Kelly’s turkey sub had cranberry sauce on it, just the way I liked it. We were sitting down by the stocked fishpond, dangling our feet off the bridge. We’d grabbed two bottled waters from the vending machine next to the ice cabin. I handed him a bottle of water. He handed me half of the sub.

  “Thanks,” we both said. The gaffer took a long drink, then broke off a piece of sub roll and dropped it into the water. A school of fish immediately circled and attacked.

  “Geesh,” I said. “Remind me never to swim here. They look like piranha.”

  He gave me a tiny push.

  I grabbed his arm to keep from falling, then let go quick. “Cute,” I said.

  “Thanks. So tell me about this sorta boyfriend.”

  I threw the fish another piece of sub roll. “Not much to tell. We had a big fight, and I don’t really know where we stand. We both have lots of baggage, I guess.”

  Tim Kelly leaned back on his elbows. “Baggage? You want to talk baggage? Boy, have I got baggage.”

  “Well,” I said. “Not to be competitive, but I have the carry-on, the garment bag, the weekender, and the sports bag.” I counted them off on my fingers, then leaned back on my elbows. “The complete Louis Vuitton monogrammed collection of baggage. Whatever that is.”

  “I have a daughter,” he said quietly. “She’s six. Her name is Hannah.”

  “You win,” I said. I sat up and poured some water into the pond to see if it would attract the fish. They didn’t fall for it for a second. “Did she come with a wife?”

  “Ex.” He sat up and took another long drink from his water bottle, then carefully screwed the top back on. “We had no business being together in the first place. She wants someone who will be home for dinner, and I spend most of the year traveling, unless I luck out and get a movie close to home like this one. But Hannah’s amazing, and we’re doing a pretty good job coparenting her. I just called her a little while ago and she said, ‘Dad, I love you, but can I call you back later? I’m right in the middle of something.’ She’s six. Sorry, I didn’t mean to ramble.”

  “That’s really cute.”

  “Yeah, she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” He finished off his last bite of sub, then crumpled up the white paper wrapping. “Okay, there’s a woman I see, off and on. She has kids. It’s complicated. Her husband has her two boys on the weekends, and weekends are when I spend time with Hannah . . . Never mind. Anyway, we’re pretty much off, I think.”

  “Geesh,” I said. “You’re a really nice guy. Who knew?”

  “Don’t believe it for a second.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “I can’t wait for work tomorrow, so I can tell everybody I got you into bed.”

  “No way,” I said. “But you could probably get away with kissing me.”

  TIM KELLY WAS a seriously good kisser. It was a lucky thing Riley called when he did, or we might have been headed into OLA territory. An OLK was hazardous enough.

  “Be right there,” I said to Riley. I grabbed the empty water bottles while Tim Kelly stuffed the sub wrapper into the paper bag.

  “So,” I said. “Guess I better go get my nephew.”

  “So,” he said. “Guess I better go wait for my daughter to call back.”

  We looked at each other. “Take good care of my drill,” Tim Kelly said.

  As soon as Riley and I got back to our hotel room, I went into the bathroom to check the rock tumbler. The broken beer bottle was halfway to sea glass already. I managed to fish out a piece without cutting off my finger and showed it to Riley. “Do you think I should add some more sand to it, or just let it tumble for another day?”

  He wrinkled up his nose. “I wouldn’t mess with it. When the tumbler gets too heavy, it stops tumbling.”

  It seemed like there might be a message in there that I could apply to the rest of my life, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. “Hey,” I said. “Did everything go okay down at the pool?”

  Riley nodded.

  “Good,” I said. “Let me know if you need me to knock any twins together or anything.”

  Riley jumped up on his bed and arranged his pillows, then reached for the remote and turned on the TV.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to go drill for a while. Do you and your people have everything you need?”

  Riley was already lost in his show. I went back to the bathroom and picked out a dark green piece of sea glass, thinking it would be easier to see when I was drilling than something more translucent. Then I rolled a little piece of clay into a snake and made the snake into a circle. I pressed it onto the glass and filled it with water to create a miniature pool right where I wanted the hole to be. I put on Tim Kelly’s safety goggles. I plugged in his diamond bit drill. I turned his drill on.

  Almost immediately, the drill bit skittered off the sea glass and landed on the sink countertop. I pushed the off button and inspected the gold-veined Formica for signs of damage. It was hard to tell.

  There was a loud knock on the other side of the wall, over by the shower. I held the drill up in the air and turned it on again, just to see what would happen. The knock got louder.

  Apparently I had two problems. At the very least. I repaired my tiny clay pool, but before I refilled it with water, I twisted the diamond drill bi
t back and forth by hand, just to get enough of a hole started so the bit would stay in place.

  Then I unplugged the drill and headed out through the slider to our little cement balcony. “Excuse me,” I said when I walked between Riley and the televison. He didn’t even notice me.

  There was more room to work out on the balcony, and luckily Tim Kelly had been kind enough to throw in an extension cord. I looked at the drill and took a moment to relive that kiss. It was a great kiss. I pushed it away again.

  I plugged in the drill and turned it on.

  “Hey, keep it down,” a loud voice yelled. “Some of us are trying to have a vacation around here.”

  “Maintenance,” I yelled in a low voice. “Emergency structural repairs.”

  “This place sucks,” the voice yelled back. “When you finish out there, how about you do something to make our ceiling stop dripping. It’s not like we haven’t called the front desk three times about it.”

  “Will do,” I yelled.

  Eventually I managed to drill through a few pieces of sea glass, but it was work. I decided to save the rest for when I got back home. I’d found an old drill out in the garage, which was what I’d used the first time I tried drilling sea glass. Maybe I could buy a diamond drill bit for that. I hoped it only sounded expensive.

  I brought the drill inside and locked the slider, just in case anybody came hunting for that noisy repair person. All the commotion didn’t seem to have bothered Riley a bit. He was already asleep, curled up under the covers and hugging his stuffed shark. The remote was still in his hand. I peeled his fingers away and turned off the TV, and then I leaned down and gave him a kiss on his forehead. He made a funny face.

  I put the freshly drilled sea glass pieces on my bedside table. I found the frog bead and put that there, too, right next to the little greenish statue of St. Christopher.

  Under the glow of my clock radio, it looked like a shrine. If I’d had a candle to light, I would have. “Okay, help me out, you guys,” I whispered. “I’m looking for a little direction here.”