Beach Town

by Mary Kay Andrews

  The sides of the pancake-flat blacktop road were still awash in puddles, and the air was syrupy thick with heat and humidity. Green walls of palmettos, stick-thin pine trees, and scrub oaks draped with Spanish moss were a blur as the Kia sped down the county road.

  She glanced nervously at the GPS, which claimed she should arrive at Cypress Key in 14.2 miles, and again at the dashboard, where the needle of the fuel gauge hovered dangerously below the quarter-full mark. She’d had zero bars on her cell phone for the last forty miles. If she ran out of gas on this godforsaken edge of nowhere, she was certain she’d be eaten alive either by the swarms of mosquitoes or by one of the black bears whose silhouette was featured on ominous-looking BEAR CROSSING signs posted every few miles.

  Finally, she began to see billboards. They urged her to eat at Tony’s—home of three-time world champion award-winning clam chowder. Or take a swamp boat ride. As if! Or stay at a motel called the Silver Sands, which boasted forty-two modern rooms, air conditioning, tile baths, and free television.

  Five minutes later she breathed a sigh of relief after spotting the CYPRESS KEY 5 MILES marker. The landscape changed suddenly. In the distance she saw the gleam of water, a swath of sand, and a metal bridge.

  Ahead, she saw a stretch of waterfront, with docks jutting out into what a sign told her was Choklawassee Bay. Fishing trawlers and sailboats bobbed in the calm water. Rooftops peeked above the tree line, and she spotted a handful of shrimp boats, far out on the horizon, in the Gulf.

  Spanish moss, shrimp boats, palm trees, and a beach. She felt the familiar serotonin buzz starting at the back of her skull, the one that told her she was onto something. Proceed to the route.

  * * *

  She pulled into the first gas station convenience store she found, filled up the Kia and, noting that she now had two bars on her phone, pulled up the Cypress Key Chamber of Commerce website. There were half a dozen motels in town, which came as a relief. Bryce’s assistant had e-mailed that she’d need to find housing for a cast and crew of at least sixty people.

  The Buccaneer Bay Motel consisted of a cluster of faded A-frame cedar units gathered around a cracked and drained swimming pool. There were four beat-up cars in the parking lot and a faded VACANCY sign swinging from another faded billboard leading to the motel’s entrance. She drove on, past a couple of ramshackle seafood processing plants. Promising, she thought. Totally gritty and atmospheric.

  A heavy chain-link fence with a NO TRESPASSING sign surrounded the Stephen Foster Memorial Elementary School, an Art Deco–era stucco building with a red tile roof and boarded-up windows. Rusting swings sat in a weed-covered playground.

  Two blocks over, she hit pay dirt.

  Cypress Key’s Main Street reminded her of a relic from an old Bogart movie. Was it Key Largo or To Have and Have Not? Two-story stucco and wood-framed buildings with rickety-looking balconies and front porches stretched for three blocks. There was a library, a barber shop, an old bank, and many vacant storefronts. But the Hometown Market lights were on and its plate glass windows promised fish bait, cold beer, milk, and Boar’s Head deli products. There was even a welcome center in the former movie house.

  Greer pulled to the curb, which she happily noted was free of parking meters, jumped out of the Kia, and began snapping photos, stopping only to e-mail them off to Bryce Levy.

  She pressed her face to the glass of what had most recently been the Smart Shoppe Women’s Boutique. The walls were bare and the floors littered with trash, but they were wooden, and if she stood back a ways, she saw that the high ceilings were made of pressed tin panels. She snapped a picture of the real estate sign in the window.

  FOR LEASE: CALL THIBADEAUX REALTY

  Her cell phone dinged and she smiled as she read the text message.

  LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT. SEND MORE PIX ASAP. ART DIRECTOR IS DROOLING.

  She walked back to the welcome center and tugged at the door. Locked. A sign on the door indicated that the center was only open Thursday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. But a wooden rack held an assortment of maps and brochures for local businesses. Greer helped herself and kept walking.

  When she came to a street marker for Pier Street, she inhaled a lungful of salt air. She followed the street for two blocks, past pastel-painted wooden cottages and yards full of exotic greenery spilling from every corner. Ahead, she saw the bay. And sure enough, the street narrowed and then morphed into a wooden pier.

  A handful of businesses, wooden huts, really, lined both sides of the pier. There was a kayak rental stand, a bait shack, a dock for Cypress Key boat tours, and another for golf cart rentals. She clicked off photos as she walked, pausing to e-mail them to Bryce and his art director.

  She had only the sketchiest sort of treatment for this movie, and Bryce hadn’t bothered to give her a list of sets he wanted, but Greer’s location scout antennae were beeping away. Every instinct she possessed told her she’d found exactly what Bryce didn’t even know he was seeking.

  The pier ended abruptly in yet another chain-link fence. But behind it she saw a hulking white elephant of a building, crouching at the water’s edge.

  Built in the same stucco design as the old elementary school, this building was much bigger, shaped almost like a Quonset hut, with a red tile roof and creamy yellow stucco walls. Big picture windows looked out on the pier at the front of the building, barely shaded by red and white striped canvas awnings, the frayed fabric flapping in the breeze coming off the bay. A fanciful crenellated parapet jutted out from the building’s front, and a pair of raggedy but still towering palm trees grew from stucco planters on either side of the entry.

  The red neon sign above the parapet was rusting, but the lettering was still readable. The sign said Cypress Key Casino, but Greer knew she’d found her director’s Alamo.

  She snapped away, e-mailed, and did her own abbreviated version of the happy dance when Bryce texted back immediately.

  Awesome! Send interiors!

  * * *

  It was close to six o’clock, but heat still shimmered off the concrete pier. Small groups of fishermen were knotted about, but they were concentrating on their quest for trout and redfish, not on her. She glanced back toward the waterfront. Children were playing along the narrow sand beach, splashing in the limpid waves while parents lolled on chairs.

  Greer strolled casually to the far edge of the chain-link fence. It wasn’t terribly high, but it was high enough that she’d definitely attract attention if she attempted to scale it. She leaned as far over the edge of the wooden safety railing as she could, and for the first time noticed that a short dock jutted out from the side of the casino. A small aluminum fishing boat bobbed at its mooring, alongside a weather-beaten sailboat.

  Five minutes later she handed her credit card and driver’s license to the teenager who was running the kayak rental stand.

  “Ever been in a kayak before?” the kid asked, looking her up and down.

  She wasn’t exactly dressed for a boating expedition. She wore white capris, a black sleeveless T-shirt, and her red Keds. She tucked her credit card in her pocket and her cell phone in her bra.

  “Lots of times,” she lied. He shrugged, handed her a neon orange life vest and an aluminum double-edged paddle. “We close at seven. If you’re not tied up here by ten of, I gotta charge another seventy-five bucks.”

  “I just want to take a little spin around, get my bearings for the week.”

  He hefted a kayak off the aluminum rack, dumped it in the water, and helped her climb down into what looked like nothing more than a pregnant blue banana.

  The kayak wobbled wildly, and she had to clamp her lips together to keep from screeching. He stuck his foot onto the end of it, steadying it. “Lots of times, huh?”

  “I’ve seen it done lots of times,” she said lamely.

  He gave her the short course on balancing and paddling. Ten minutes later, she was making for the end of the pier, glancing over her shoulder, praying th
e water would stay calm and that she wouldn’t be seen.

  As she nudged the kayak up to the landing, a huge pelican squawked and took off, landing a few yards away, giving her a malevolent stare. She paddled close to the pier, stood up, and the kayak began to wobble crazily.

  She dove desperately for the concrete pier, and somehow made an imperfect landing.

  Greer sat on the pier for a moment, gathering her wits and her courage. She checked her tied line to make sure it was secure, then dashed toward the casino building. A rope was stretched across the stairs leading up to the casino deck, and a faded NO TRESPASSING sign was fastened to it.

  She stepped nimbly over the rope and scampered up the steps. She was on the side of the building, in a sort of open-air pavilion. Round concrete picnic tables and concrete benches were spattered with bird droppings, and another faded red and white awning shaded what was left of a refreshment stand. But the windows were boarded up now. A plate glass door to the left of the stand had sheets of plywood nailed across it. She stood on tiptoes but couldn’t see inside.

  A narrow wooden catwalk ran across the back side of the casino, with large bay windows overlooking the water. Two windows had been broken out and ineffectively patched over with peeling strips of silver duct tape. She pulled at a strip and it came off in her hand.

  The window jamb was a good four feet up from the floor of the catwalk. The stucco walls offered no hint of a handhold, and it was definitely too high to jump. She walked a few yards down the catwalk, to a service door. Two galvanized steel trash cans were bolted to the wall, and a collection of old wooden milk crates was haphazardly stacked in the alcove that sheltered the door.

  She grabbed two crates. Using them as a step stool, she vaulted over the windowsill without looking, and promptly fell flat on her ass on the wooden floor, a good five feet below.

  If Greer hadn’t already had the breath knocked out by her fall, the interior of the Cypress Key Casino would have done the trick.

  She crawled to her hands and knees, and stood slowly. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through salt-streaked windows, casting a moody golden glow on the cracked plaster walls.

  This had once been a grand old place, Greer realized. The high, vaulted ceiling was set off by heavily carved wooden beams, and dust-covered ceiling fans hung from long metal rods. The floors beneath her feet were scarred and littered with what looked like more bird droppings, but at one time this had been a highly polished maple dance floor.

  On the south side of the cavernous room was a raised bandstand, with a threadbare fringed and swagged red velvet curtain pushed to one side. Behind the bandstand was an impressionistic painted pastel mural of jazz musicians, reminiscent of pre-Castro Havana.

  On the north wall, opposite the bandstand, stood a varnished dark wooden bar. Yellowing signs tacked to the wall behind it advertised snacks, sandwiches, beer, and something called setups. Nothing on the menu board cost more than fifty cents.

  Greer pulled her phone from her bra and began clicking photos, mindful of the time and the waning light. At first, she concentrated on the bandstand and its mural, and then the bar.

  When she rotated around to capture the rest of the ballroom, she noticed a large illuminated sign hanging by chains from the ceiling on the north end of the building—a sign for bingo. Thus explaining why this was called a casino.

  Rows of round wooden tabletops with fold-up legs, and wooden folding chairs, were stacked against the wall beneath the BINGO sign.

  On the opposite side of the room she spotted a door with an inset glass window. Crossing to it, she peered inside and glimpsed what must have been the casino’s office. A large metal desk stood on one wall, and in the middle of the room stood a rolling metal cart holding a huge, old-school movie projector. She spun around and saw that, mounted on the wall high above the bandstand mural, was what looked like a pull-down movie screen.

  At one time, this must have been the epicenter of culture for the community of Cypress Key.

  For a moment, she stood in the empty old building, imagining it in its heyday, picturing couples who looked suspiciously like Bogie and Bacall, or even Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, dancing cheek to cheek as an orchestra played big band tunes of the era.

  The light in the room changed, flaring orange. Alarmed, Greer glanced down at her phone. She had ten minutes to get back to the dock. She clicked off a few more photos on her phone and then, regretfully, pulled a folding chair up to the window to make her escape.

  3

  Job one was to find housing—for herself and the cast and crew of Beach Town. Cypress Key was only about a mile long, with two motels and a couple of condo complexes with several vacation rental signs posted out front.

  The Silver Sands looked like it might fit the bill.

  It wasn’t much to look at. A trio of mint-colored two-story concrete block units formed a horseshoe surrounding a courtyard with a small garden and an even smaller pool. But it was right on the Gulf, which was a plus, and it had a blinking neon VACANCY sign, which sealed the deal, since it was starting to get dark and she was hungry and tired. She snapped some photos and texted them to Bryce.

  She followed a wooden sign pointing to the motel’s office, which looked like it had actually been carved out of the last two ground-floor units on the far end of the motel.

  A buzzer sounded as she pushed open the door, and a silver-haired woman seated behind the desk looked up from the paperback book she’d been reading.

  “Need a room?”

  “Yes, please,” Greer said. “Just a single.”

  “Traveling alone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “In for the weekend?” The woman turned to an old-fashioned wooden mail rack mounted on the wall, and studied the numbers. “I don’t have anything right now with a Gulf view.”

  “That’s all right,” Greer said wearily. “I mostly just want a clean bed and a hot shower. Do you have a weekly rate?”

  “I can give you the AAA rate. That’s four hundred ninety dollars.”

  “Really?” Greer tried not to look shocked She’d paid half that for a single night back in Destin. “Okay, that would be fine.”

  She handed over her American Express card, but the woman shook her head. “We don’t take that one.”

  “Visa?”

  “That’ll work. I’ll need a driver’s license too.”

  Greer studied the older woman as she took down her billing information. She was rail thin, with leathery skin that bespoke a life spent in the Florida sun. Her silver hair was cropped in a pixie cut, and her gray eyes were flinty behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. She was dressed in a sleeveless white cotton blouse and neatly pressed blue jeans.

  “You got a car?”

  “Yes, a Kia.”

  She handed Greer a hot pink paper parking pass. “Put that on your windshield.”

  “Will do.”

  Now the woman passed her a clipboard with a single sheet of paper, which appeared to be a hundredth-generation photocopy. She tapped four different spaces on the paper. “Initial here, here, and here, and sign here, that you understand the rules.”

  Greer scanned the page, then initialed a statement that pledged that she was over the age of twenty-one, would not allow more than four guests to sleep in her room, would not smoke in her room or play loud music after 10:00 p.m. Lastly, she pledged not to clean fish anyplace other than the designated fish cleaning station.

  “College kids,” the woman said, by way of explanation.

  She handed Greer a key with a plastic Silver Sands Motel fob. “I’m Ginny Buckalew, the owner, manager, and head housekeeper.”

  “And I’m Greer. Is there a place nearby that I can get a quick dinner?”

  “Walk up one block and over another, and that’s Tony’s. Good clam chowder. Another block over, you got Wong’s, which is so-called Chinese. I never seen anybody Chinese coming or going from that place, so I’d skip it if I were you. Right next to them
is the pizza place. It’s fast and it’s cheap and that’s the best thing I can say for it. Captain Jack’s has decent seafood, but they water down the drinks. The Cypress Key Inn probably has the best food, but it’s not cheap.”

  “Where do you like to eat around town?” Greer asked.

  “At home,” Ginny said. And for a moment, Greer could swear the older woman cracked a smile.

  “Anyplace else?”

  “Captain Jack’s is okay,” Ginny relented. “And it’s fast. But they close at nine on weeknights, so you’d better get going if you want dinner.”

  “Got it,” Greer said.

  She was halfway down the walk toward her car, but doubled back to the office.

  “One more thing, Ginny. You’ve got Wi-Fi, right?”

  “Wi-Fi? We don’t even have caller ID.”

  * * *

  Room number seven was what some people would call Spartan. Ceramic tile floor, cinder block walls. Aluminum-framed jalousie windows looked out onto the courtyard, with a hulking air conditioner poking out the middle window.

  The decor was early thrift shop: a double bed with a polyester quilt in a Day-Glo floral pattern, mismatched brown laminate nightstands. A triple dresser held a television so old it actually had rabbit ear antennae. There was an Early American–style desk with a rickety wooden kitchen chair, and beside the desk stood a rusty dorm-size refrigerator topped with a microwave oven and a doll-sized coffeepot.

  Equally style impaired was the bathroom, with bubblegum pink tile floors, a turquoise sink and commode, and a narrow shower stall.

  Still, the room was scrupulously clean. She turned the faucet in the bathroom, and five minutes later the water got hot. She scrubbed her face and looked in the mirror. The humidity had turned her dark blond hair into a frizzy puffball. She pulled it into a tight ponytail and jammed a baseball cap on her head. Her career had taken her to lots of much better hotels, and a few that were much worse than this.

  * * *

  At Captain Jack’s she ordered broiled redfish, which the menu promised was locally caught, with sides of coleslaw and hush puppies and, mindful of Ginny’s warning, two glasses of the house white wine. She had the restaurant almost to herself, with only two other tables still occupied.