Glad’s expression never wavered. “So, Val, what changed your mind?”
“You did.”
“Little ol’ me?” Glad grinned and planted a hand on her hip, then jabbed an index finger into her dimpled cheek and twisted it provocatively like a pinup girl from back in her day.
I wanted to laugh but my throat was swollen tight with the pressure of unshed tears. “You’re the most worthwhile person I know, Glad,” I managed to choke out.
Glad’s arms dropped to her sides and her eyes grew as liquid as mine. “But I haven’t changed a peep since we met, Val.”
“I know,” I said. “What does that mean?”
Glad sat back in her lounger and grinned at me proudly. “It means you have.”
Chapter Five
Glad was right. I’d not only changed. I’d been turned upside-down and inside-out.
Before I met Glad, I’d read about six million self-help books trying to fix my broken life. But nothing ever cut through the crap like a single hour with her. I’d never laughed so hard or felt so totally accepted in my entire life. Over weeks of “drinkin’ and discussin’” as she called it, Glad had become my friend, my confidant, my surrogate mom, even. I could tell her anything and she’d find the bright side. I could be so down I didn’t know up and she’d get me laughing until I nearly peed my bathing-suit bottom.
“There ain’t no subject off limits to a good laugh,” she liked to say.
After six weeks of “Glad Therapy,” I had begun to see her point.
So I was surprised one Monday at the end of June when I dropped my beach bag by Glad’s lounger and she didn’t say a word. The orange glare of the rising sun reflected off her dark sunglasses, obscuring her eyes. I figured she was asleep.
Feeling lighter and more playful than I had in years, I decided to have some fun. I snuck up behind her and tried to catch her off guard. “Fuck you, Kiddo!” I yelled, and jumped flat-footed in front of her, my arms up Karate-chop style like in some bad ninja movie.
Glad didn’t respond. I touched her arm. Even in the summer heat she felt cold. I nudged her. Nothing. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck bristled. I squatted down beside her and shook Glad by her boney brown shoulders. Her sunglasses fell off. Her once bright-blue eyes were dull. The heat had already wicked them dry. Glad was dead.
A knife blade stabbed my heart, making my knees buckle. My mentor, my only friend, my touchstone was…gone. Not knowing what else to do, I folded Glad’s arms gently across her chest and covered her with my beach towel. Then I collapsed down on top of her and cried. I just let it rip through me, hot and heavy and draining. I cried for Glad and all the other people I’d lost along the way. “Thanks for being my friend,” I whispered in her cold, brown ear. “I know wherever you are now, they’re lucky to have you.”
I’m sure it was just my grieving mind, but I swear I heard her whisper back, “You bet your ass, Kiddo.”
I hugged Glad’s body tight one last time. She let out a long, flappy fart. I laughed involuntarily, which set me off on another crying jag, this time mostly for myself. Eventually, I pulled it together a bit and rubbed the dripping snot from my nose onto the beach towel. I whispered goodbye to Glad one more time, then got up and stumbled blindly toward Caddy’s beach bar. I told the first waitress I ran across what had happened.
“Not Glad!” she’d screamed. Two other waitresses had come running over to find out what was wrong. Within a minute or two, around twenty people had gathered up in a circle, hanging on each other’s shoulders and sobbing. Even the old guy who picked up trash on the beach broke down when he heard the news. It turned out that all the employees and half the customers at Caddy’s had known Glad. Why wouldn’t they? Unlike me, Glad had been an open book worth reading. Making friends had come easy for her.
Paralyzed with unfamiliarity, I watched through a yellow-grey haze as the usual stuff that happened next swirled around me. I saw an ambulance arrive. I heard them pronounce Glad dead. They loaded her on a stretcher. They zipped a grey bag up around her. They shoved her into the back of an ambulance. Its lights were off. There was no hurry.
Finally, one of the paramedics came up and asked who was going to identify and claim the body, as Glad had no ID on her. It was quiet for a moment, then several people all at once said, “I will.” I was one of those voices. The sad chorus that accompanied me belonged to three grungy guys I’d often seen hanging around Caddy’s. I didn’t know their names, so I felt obliged to introduce myself.
“I’m Val,” I said, squeezing the required breath out of my tight, empty lungs. My words wafted softly in the steamy air. My eyes wandered, unseeing, nowhere in particular.
“We know who you are,” one of the men answered.
The thick, Southern twang in his voice coaxed me back to attention. The first thing my watery eyes focused on was a herniated navel protruding from a swollen beer belly as tight as a satiated tick’s. The belly was attached to a short, thick man in a baggy, knee-length bathing suit. “I’m Wally,” he said, holding out a pudgy, freckled hand for me to shake. “But Glad liked to call me Winky.”
“Wee Willie Winky. Get it?” I heard Glad’s familiar voice whisper in my ear.
Instantly, the stabbing pain in my heart was forgotten. I struggled to stifle an unwelcome giggle rising up my throat like soda bubbles, pinging against my tonsils. I had the unfortunate habit of giggling when I was nervous, but this was something different. This was a real, honest-to-god laugh trying to get heard. I bit down hard and shook Wee Willie’s hand. Damn it, Glad! Won’t you let me be sad even at your passing?
“How do you know me? Have we met?” I asked Wee Willie – Wally – whatever!
“We seen you sittin’ with Glad all them times,” said Winky, scratching his bare belly with a dirty index finger. “But she told us not to bother you two. Said you had important thangs to discuss that didn’t need no man messin’ it up.”
“Oh. Well…thanks for that, I guess.” The words felt strange and sticky in my throat.
“I’m Stu,” said another man, sidelining Winky for my attention. He was taller. A good six feet at least. Thin build. Huge moustache. Head as bald and brown as a roasted peanut. Yeah, a peanut.
“But Glad called me Goober.”
I nearly choked. Another freaking inside joke! I made a pathetic attempt to pass my unwanted laughter off as crying. Failing that and not wanting to appear insane, I excused myself and bolted to the ladies room to compose myself. “Goddammit Glad!” I said under my breath as I closed the stall door. “This isn’t funny!” I collapsed onto the toilet and buried my face in my hands, laughing and crying and laughing and crying until I couldn’t tell one from the other anymore. God I’m going to miss that woman!
“You all right in there honey?” I heard a woman’s voice ask from the other side of the stall.
“Yes, thanks,” I answered, then blew my nose on some toilet roll.
“Okie dokie then. I’m here if you need me, you know.”
“Thanks Glad,” I said without thinking.
I sat there another second before the realization hit me. Glad! I jumped up off the toilet and slung open the stall door. No one was there. I knew I heard Glad’s voice, first outside and now in the restroom. I wondered if I might be going crazy. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and removed all doubt. Suffice it to say, Alice Cooper was not a good look for me. I smoothed my dark, afro-wannabe hair with my hands, then yanked a paper towel out of the dispenser on the wall. I reached over to turn on the tap and my hand jerked back involuntarily. A huge, greenish-blue dragonfly was perched on the faucet handle. Its iridescent wings spanned a good four or five inches.
It rested on the tap patiently as I cleaned an inch of smeary black mascara from under each eye. For some reason, the insect’s presence didn’t freak me out. Instead, I felt a strange calm wash over me. Once I was quasi-presentable again, I reached out my right index finger and the dragonfly crawled onboard. I carried i
t out of the bathroom. As soon as we hit the open air it flew off with a bee-like buzz of its rainbow wings.
“There she is!” I heard someone yell. I looked around, half expecting, as if by dragonfly magic, to see Glad appear out of a mist. Instead, I saw the three beach bums heading my way.
“There you are!” said Goober, formerly known as Stu. He hitched up his baggy beige cargo shorts. “We were worried about you.”
“You were?” I asked incredulously. “You don’t even know me.”
“We don’t stand on no gaul-dang formalities here, Miss Val,” said Winky. He folded his hands over his naked beer belly in a way that made me feel it was a display of redneck respect.
“Any friend of Glad’s is our friend, too,” said the third man in a shy, half-whisper. He was of medium height and build, with blue-black hair and café-con-leche skin. Nice looking in an Antonio-Banderas-hits-the-skids kind of way. “I’m Jorge,” he said, then looked at my sandals.
“I told the paramedics to take her to Grabb’s Funeral Home on Central Avenue,” Goober interrupted before I could say anything. He absently smoothed his huge moustache with a swipe of his right thumb and index finger. His eyes shifted left and right as if searching for something. “But without ID, they’ll only take her to the county morgue,” he continued. “We’ll have to figure something out. Meantime, we need to take up a collection for the cremation, pronto. Death doesn’t come cheap anymore. Once we get Glad’s remains back, we can have a little ceremony out at the beach. Scatter her ashes out in the Gulf and stuff.”
“I want to help,” I said. “What can I do?”
“Thanks, Val,” replied Goober. “Mighty nice of you. Well, first off we’re going to need a big coffee can. Anybody here got one?”
“We ain’t puttin’ her in no gaul-dang Folgers can like they did in The Big Lebowski!” yelled “Wee Willie” Winky. The pudgy little freckled guy’s lips were white. The rest of his face was the color of a Bloody Mary. “I won’t stand for it, I’m tellin’ ya right now, it will not stand!”
I studied Winky for a moment. Having come from a family that made The Jerry Springer Show look like The Sound of Music, I knew the difference between a bat-shit crazy redneck and a Southern man who just happened to have a red neck. (Neither one should be crossed, mind you. But while both would sleep with your sister to get back at you, only one would kill your dog to even the score.) When in doubt, I always looked for a ponytail. It was never a good sign. Wee Willie had a buzz cut, no tail. I quietly breathed a sigh of relief.
“Cool your jets, Winky,” said Goober, putting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I thought we could use the can to collect the donations in. Decorate it up nice. Put it by the cash register. Maybe glue a picture of Glad on it. We gotta to do something quick, you know. We gotta to pay the piper, sore to speak.”
Sore to speak. Shit. As a professional writer, I’d come to realize that being highly literate was definitely overrated. When applied too liberally, it could be the ruination of your life.
“I’ll take care of it,” I heard myself say. From the look of it, I was probably the only one among us with more than twenty bucks to my name. Relatively speaking, I wasn’t that short of cash at the moment. But I had been short on friendship. Glad had filled that hole for me for an amazing six weeks. I was grateful, and if she really was still hanging around, I wanted to let her know it. “I’ll have a nice donation container here in an hour. You can count on me.”
“That would be really great,” said Jorge. He batted back tears from his big, blackish-brown eyes and stared at my feet again.
“Okie dokie, then,” I said, involuntarily mimicking Glad like people do when they spend a lot of time together. I flushed with embarrassment at my faux pas and scanned the guys’ faces. They registered nothing but sad, wistful smiles. Relieved, I nodded and turned toward the parking lot. At my car, I slipped my shorts on over my bathing suit and inched my feet back into my flip-flops. To save time, I left Maggie’s convertible top down and headed to the nearest Target store.
***
The comforting nearness of Glad and her whispered inside jokes dissipated in the steamy heat during the drive to the store. In their wake my heart grew numb and hollow with shock. Walking into the fluorescent-lit retail extravaganza was an assault on my overwrought senses. Everything was hideously bright, garish and pointless. A cacophony of silent callousness, carelessness and cruelty. I rummaged half-heartedly, then angrily through the ludicrously large selection of storage containers and kitchen canisters. Nothing seemed right.
Who makes all this shit, anyway?
I was about to panic when an idea struck me. I padded over to the children’s section in search of a piggybank. I found a white ceramic one about a foot tall, complete with pink wings and a halo. The chubby cherub’s huge, hound-dog eyes looked up sweetly at the inscription, “For My Little Angel.” It was perfect. Perfectly fucking awful. I wanted to smash it to bits with a freaking pink hammer. But it was either that insipid angel or a Dalmatian-spotted cow that mooed and wagged its tail every time someone shoved a coin down its throat.
I was carrying the blasted angel thing up to the register when I felt something make contact with the top of my head. In Florida, that usually meant a bug had landed on you, and by bug I mean anything from a common housefly to an armored cockroach the size of a half-eaten Mars bar. I instinctively ducked my head down and swatted at my hair. Nothing.
Probably just my imagination. I really could be going crazy. How would I know?
I planned to contemplate the idea further but got distracted. From my bent-over vantage point I caught sight of something sitting at the register endcap that made me grin like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I shoved the sappy angel bank back onto a shelf between bags of charcoal briquettes and tubes of sunscreen. I grabbed my prize and was back at Caddy’s in under an hour, as promised.
“What on Earth ever made you pick that thing?” asked Goober.
He frowned at me as I sat the foot-and-a-half tall Mr. Peanut piggybank down by the cash register next to a picture of Glad. I stepped back and compared Mr. Peanut with Goober. Twins if I ever saw a set – except for the winking holographic monocle on the plastic peanut head. The fact that Goober didn’t make the connection raised the irony factor to damn near orgasmic for me. I could have sworn I heard Glad snickering in my ear.
Chapter Six
Glad had lived in a universe where last names didn’t matter. Come to think of it, neither had first ones. In her world, everyone had been free to make themselves up as they went along. It seemed to me that the practice had worked pretty well for her in life. Death, however, was proving to be another story.
The trouble was, no one knew Glad’s last name or where she lived. As weatherworn as she looked, she could have called that pink beach lounger home for all I knew. She’d had no ID on her when she died. A Jane Doe. That meant there was no known next of kin to notify of her death. Legally, I didn’t have any right to her remains. But there was just no way that I was going to let Glad’s body go unclaimed and forgotten. A corpse for the medical university or a body farm? No! Not for my precious friend Glad.
At a loss as to what to do next, I’d arranged to meet Goober, Winky and Jorge to discuss our options for springing Glad out of the morgue. I was supposed to meet them at a restaurant called Water Loo’s in St. Pete Beach. When I walked in the dive I knew instantly that the universe was having another laugh on me. And, truth be told, I hoped it pissed its own pants.
Even in its heyday, Water Loo’s couldn’t have hoped to be as respectable as, say, an inner-city Waffle House. The cockroach-hued, fake-wood paneling that covered every wall came in handy as camouflage for both filth and free-ranging cephalopods. The dirty linoleum floor bore a sad, worn-out trail to a row of dark-brown vinyl booths teetering on the edge of dilapidation. I would have fled if I’d had any place else to go.
“Hey Val!” shouted a voice from the corner booth. I recognized the Marlboro-
inspired baritone. It belonged to Goober. I shot a glance in that direction. The sight of the three men from Caddy’s sitting together in a booth caused me to suck in a short breath. I took a fumbling step in their direction like a tattered moth flittering headlong into a bug zapper.
Goober and his pals looked as if they’d just washed ashore from some catastrophic and idiotic sea voyage. Sunburned faces. Stubble beards. Tattered clothes pungent with the smell of booze and sweat. They were the kind of guys whose mere presence caused eyes to shift and minds to narrow. I had to admit, the first time I’d met them I had been no exception. But their redeeming desire to help Glad had softened my feelings toward them to something undefinable. Something between unease and resignation.
I sat down next to Goober and immediately went into shock. Glad’s unexpected departure had shoved me right into my own personal episode of The Twilight Zone – where the gods had snuck up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and as I turned around, they’d erased every landmark and touchstone I’d ever known. They snickered evilly as I looked around in horror, like a survivor in a war zone, having been left nothing…not one person or place or thing I could turn to. What a bunch of assholes!
“Off in Lady Lala Land?” Goober asked. He poked me to attention with a coffee spoon, then returned the dull silver utensil to his mouth. He sucked on it like a lollipop, clicking it against his teeth as he grinned at me through a bushy, brown moustache he probably lifted from an unsuspecting walrus. It didn’t suit his bald, bean-shaped head. Every time I looked at him I couldn’t help but think of that Mr. Peanut piggybank.
“What? Oh. Umm…just thinking,” I fumbled, giving myself a second to come up with a lie. “I was just thinking…about how we all met.” I flicked my curly brown hair off my shoulder and glanced at the spot on my arm where his spoon had made contact. I contained my disgust to discreet tightening of my jaw and looked back up at Peanut Head.
“Yeah, that was one hell of a day,” he said, nodding slowly. He flung a sideways glance across the booth in the direction of his buddies.
Glad One: Starting Over is a %$#@&! (Val & Pals Book 2) Page 3