Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling

by Pamela Browning

  The Blue Moon was an art deco monstrosity built in the 1940s, and its roof garden was decorated for the occasion with potted palms and, as things progressed, equally potted people. Under the winking stars of a darkening twilit sky, Azure had dutifully kissed Karma on the cheek in a sisterly manner and shaken her new brother-in-law’s hand formally in a subdued but friendly way. She had edged away from the conversation in which her mother was explaining to a fascinated and wide-eyed Goldy, the desk clerk/mother hen at the Blue Moon, that her occupation was creating cakes modeled after parts of the human anatomy. She’d murmured something polite to her father’s latest conquest, a moneyed widow whom he’d met while he was teaching ballroom dancing on a Caribbean cruise ship. She’d listened to her grandmother’s lengthy account of her latest visit to her chiropractor. Then she’d checked her cell phone in case there were any messages, conscientiously entered Karma and Slade’s new address in her PalmPilot before she forgot, and unsuccessfully tried to remove the bird poop from her lapel with seltzer.

  “Azure, Mom wants to see you,” said a voice behind her, and Azure pivoted to face her sister Isis, who as Karma’s lone attendant was wearing an outfit that seemed to be made of opaque blue cobwebs cunningly draped to cover the essentials. Close behind Isis was an elderly friend of their grandmother, who appeared to be in distress. It didn’t take Azure long to find out why.

  “I seem to have broken the buckle on my shoe. Barefoot is okay for you young people, but for me? No way,” said Mrs. Hockleburg, wrinkling her forehead and knitting her brow.

  Azure felt sorry for the woman, who had driven Grandma Rose all the way from Connecticut for the wedding. “Would you like me to take a look at it?” she asked politely.

  Isis, looking happy to be off the hook, said, “I’ll go find Mom,” before rushing off.

  Mrs. Hockleburg slowly eased her considerable bulk onto a chair. Azure sat down beside her as the woman slipped off the shoe. It took only a few seconds of studying the buckle to find out what was wrong. “It’s okay. Look, the prong has slipped sideways. All I need to do is move it over, see?”

  As Azure handed the shoe back to Mrs. Hockleburg, she saw the tall man who had been staring at her at the wedding regarding her with interest. Not wanting to encourage him, she focused her attention on helping Mrs. Hockleburg with her shoe and was therefore trapped when her mother pounced.

  “Now, Azure, I hate it that our planes leave so early in the morning! I thought maybe we could get together for brunch, but all of us—Isis and the kids and her husband and me—have to be at the airport so long before boarding! Security, you know. Promise you’ll drop by Sedona to see me next time you fly to Flagstaff.”

  “I promise, Mom. It won’t be for a few months, though.” Her mother, who had changed her name from Lois to Saguaro, like the cactus, after her divorce from Azure’s father, patted her on the arm. “Whenever, whatever. And when you come, I’ll make your favorite bulgur-and-goat-cheese casserole.”

  Azure didn’t have the heart to tell her mother that bulgur and goat cheese had never been her favorite casserole. And, like her three sisters, she wasn’t a vegetarian anymore, which her mother also didn’t know.

  “I’m going to bug out of this reception, Mom. I’ll call you at your hotel before you leave in the morning, okay?”

  “Okay, sweetie.” Her mom hugged her before descending on Mrs. Hockleburg.

  Azure moved restlessly toward the door and away from a barechested waiter who was bearing down on her with some kind of macrobiotic hors d’oeuvre. She stopped once to comfort a stray moppet who was crying because she had dropped her cracker on the floor. Azure plucked a cracker off the waiter’s tray for the kid and packed her over to her parents, whose attention had been temporarily diverted from their offspring by Eamon O’Connor’s demonstration of a ballroom dance step with his merry widow friend. The sitar player had stopped momentarily and was watching with the others, though his expression was more disapproving than not.

  When the dance demo was over, Azure hugged her father, said goodbye to the widow, and refused her father’s request that she accompany them to Key West for a few days. “You’d like the Keys,” Dad said, but Azure doubted it.

  Sleep beckoned, and pleasantly after this rooftop reception, which, though the view of the ocean and Miami Beach was stunning, had turned into a real ordeal. Sleep, however, wasn’t the only thing beckoning. So was Paulette, who was wearing one of her most aggressive smiles as she accosted Azure slightly short of the escape route. That smile put Azure in mind of a set of shark’s teeth she had once seen at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

  “Azure, darling,” Paulette caroled, reminding her how much she hated her own name. And since when had Paulette ever called her darling, jealous as she was of Azure and her sisters, who had taken perverse pleasure in making Paulette’s life a living hell back in their old Connecticut neighborhood? It had been easy to drive Paulette up the wall in those days, unfettered as the four O’Connor sisters had been after their parents, reformed hippies, had summarily snatched them from their early life on the commune and set them down in suburbia.

  “Azure, darling,” Paulette repeated as if for effect. “Azure, this is my client Mr.—” Paulette began, which was when Azure realized that it was Lust Puppy, the same sandy-haired fellow who had stared at her on the beach.

  “Lee,” the man interjected smoothly, his twinkling gaze resting on Azure’s mouth before moving to her throat and even lower. Azure had the sudden and irrelevant notion that he was picturing her in a teddy or even less. Which was ridiculous because she didn’t even own a teddy and furthermore never intended to.

  She forced a grin and shuffled off to the right like a veteran vaudeville player. “Got to go grab some sleep! Jetlagged from trip! Nice to meet you! ’Bye!” was what she blurted; at least that’s what she thought she said. A path appeared through the crowd, a miraculous welcome path to the door, and she fled. At that moment, another miracle: An instant wall of people rose up between her and Paulette and Mr. Lee, and Azure made it through the door to the inside hall without being stopped.

  She executed a quick beeline down the stairs to Paulette’s apartment, where, as her cousin’s house guest, she occupied the fold-out couch. She soon fell asleep to the sound of chatter and laughter from the party overhead. She couldn’t hear the sitar music, but maybe that was just as well.

  Memo to Self on morning after wedding: I’m never getting married. Major inconvenience for everyone else in family. Hate Miami Beach. Hot and humid and buggy. Can’t wait to get back to Boston traffic jams where I can get high on fossil fuel fumes on way to office and work out at gym on way home. Hitting gym as soon as I arrive at airport. Didn’t work out while in London and can feel abs flapping against ribs. Also, butt jiggles. Horrified to feel it yesterday when walking back to Blue Moon from wedding.

  AZURE STUCK HER PALMPILOT back under her pillow and stretched in an attempt to wake herself all the way up. Paulette was making way too much noise in the kitchen, slamming doors, crumpling paper, running the disposal.

  “Azure?” Her cousin came to the kitchen door, a pink sleep mask pushed up over her hair, which was colored Outrageous Raspberry to coordinate with her dress for yesterday’s wedding. “I’m so glad you’re an early riser. I knew we’d get along great.”

  Azure wasn’t so sure, and she would have liked to point out to Paulette that she wouldn’t have been an early riser if Paulette hadn’t been making enough noise to wake a zombie.

  “I’ve made coffee,” Paulette said. “Come and have a cup. And then if you’d like, you can take my car and drive to Haulover Beach. It won’t be as crowded as the beach here, and I won’t need the car today anyway since I’m going to be going over the Rent-a-Yenta books.”

  Translation: Paulette wanted her out of the apartment. Getting out on her own sounded like a great idea, though.

  “Mmm, okay, I’d like that,” Azure said, going into the kitchen and helping herself from the M
r. Coffee. Out of politeness she added, “Why don’t you go with me?”

  Paulette waved her hand around, indicating too much to do. “Busy,” she said. “Want me to fix you a scrambled egg or something?”

  “Not necessary,” Azure said after she gulped her usual breakfast of two stress vitamins.

  Paulette downed the last dregs from her cup and wandered off in the direction of the crowded bedroom where she’d wedged a desk into a corner for working at home. “Car keys on the table beside the door. The beach is south on—what’s the name of that road? Hmm, I don’t recall. Just follow the signs to Haulover Beach. You’ll find it.”

  Azure needed no more urging. After a quick goodbye phone call to her mother and her sister during which Isis’s terminally cute youngest stepson recited a long and boring poem that he had written about a sand crab encounter on the beach, Azure folded up the couch bed and dug her swimsuit out of her suitcase. In less than half an hour, she was speeding south in Paulette’s yellow Volkswagen bug, which was no more her style than, say, sitar music.

  Boy, she reflected on the way, would she be glad to leave this place tomorrow and get back to Boston and her tidy little apartment, her conservative gray Camry sedan, and all her classical CDs. Plus, no one called her Azure there. They called her A.J., a truncated version of her given name, which, due to the folly of her parents, was Azure Jonquille. She’d been rebelling against it—and them—most of her life.

  At Haulover Beach she jockeyed the bug into a slot in the parking lot, followed the tunnel under the road, and emerged into sunlight. The sight of the glassy ocean, the scent of brine wafting on the breeze, the wheeling of gulls overhead, were all so exhilarating that she didn’t mind the trudge down the beach to a deserted area where she could bask in peace. She staked her claim on a few square feet of sand, slathered on a handful of suntan lotion, plopped down on her stomach, and pulled the baseball hat loaned to her by Paulette over her face, after which she promptly fell into a doze.

  Azure was awakened by the laughter of people who were involved in setting up a volleyball net. She didn’t look. She didn’t have to. She already knew that they were placing the net much too close, and if she ignored them, maybe they’d move it. But they didn’t. They went on talking and laughing, and when they started to play a game, the sand began to fly and she knew she’d have to vacate.

  She eased over onto her back and pushed her hat back from her face. Aghast at what she saw, she blinked, sure that her eyes weren’t focusing correctly. The volleyball game was proceeding full speed ahead, but every participant, male and female, was completely nude. Embarrassingly nude. Upsettingly and floppingly and wigglingly nude, and she wanted out of there.

  That Paulette! Azure never should have trusted her. Not only was her cousin annoying in the extreme, but she clearly had an ax to grind, maybe because she resented all those jokes the O’Connors had played on her when they were kids. All the same, Azure would give Paulette a piece of her mind. She would—

  Her attention was drawn to a handsome male specimen who was now sauntering out of the ocean. Openmouthed, she couldn’t help but admire his physique, his deeply bronzed skin, his muscular structure. While she gawked, he stopped beside her blanket, showering droplets of water on her skin that, just from looking at him, had reached sizzling temperature. “C’mon,” he said easily. “They need a couple more players.”

  Oh, no! She knew this guy. She hadn’t recognized him at first because—well, the obvious answer was that he was stark naked. But his hair was slicked back and darker from swimming, and here on the beach he seemed even taller than he had yesterday. Also, she couldn’t help but notice a sexy gap between his top two front teeth, and that those teeth were the whitest of whites. This was the guy who had kept trying to fix an eye-lock on her at the wedding, the guy Paulette had introduced her to in the moments before she fled the reception. Lust Puppy.

  Speechless though she was, Azure knew she couldn’t go on sitting with her eyes on a level with—well! From somewhere in the back of her mind emerged the thought that she did crave symmetry in all things in her life, and she did have to say this for the guy—he was symmetrical, all right. Two eyes, gray with silvery sparkles, already noted yesterday. Two ears, nicely formed, ditto. One thing she definitely had not had access to before was the tattoo slightly south of his navel. It looked like—it definitely was—a frog.

  Warning herself not to get any further interested in this Mr. Lee’s anatomy, she scrambled to her feet. He seemed to interpret this as assent to his suggestion and immediately grabbed her hand, propelling her toward the game.

  “But I—I—” She objected to his appropriating her without her permission, though even as she offered it, she knew her objection was not as strenuous as it probably should have been.

  “Watch out!” someone shouted. The volleyball was flying through the air with a pretty good chance of bonking her on the head, so thinking concussion, Azure warded it off in self-defense. It was what anyone would have done under the circumstances, but people clapped and cheered as if she’d joined the game.

  Approval didn’t seem so bad after the last couple of days spent fielding her family’s tart questions about her love life, her work life, and her lack of hobbies—none of which she had answered to their satisfaction. But still. These people weren’t wearing clothes!

  “Don’t you want to relax a bit more?” The guy who got her into this was staring down at her from his six-foot-plus height, laugh lines crinkling around those remarkable eyes that were both humorous and wry.

  Translation: He thought she should shed her swimsuit, a staid and respectable flowery-print job. As if she would! Her mushy abs and jiggly butt were uppermost in her mind.

  “Actually I’ve got to go,” she blurted, marching with determination back toward her blanket where she gathered up her things, telling herself she’d better keep an eye on this man yet not look at him.

  “Go where?” he asked, planting himself and his froggy tattoo and all his other considerable attributes directly in front of her.

  “Um—” she started to say, thinking fast. She had the absurd idea that he didn’t have to worry about jiggling, but when he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, she discerned that she’d been wrong about that. She felt a blush beginning below her jawline and moving upward.

  “We could meet for a drink later,” he suggested, layering on the charm, which was a mistake. She distrusted charm after her experience with the faithless Paco.

  She drew herself up to her full five-foot-seven height. “I don’t think so, Mr. Lee.”

  “Lee’s my first name, not my last,” he said, his words interrupted by a beach-grooming machine that made a lot of noise and flung sand in their faces. It was a perfect opportunity to flee, which she did, noting too late the sign that she hadn’t spotted as she arrived: Warning! Nude Sunbathing Ahead.

  There are all kinds of fruitcakes around here, she thought to herself as she jammed the baseball cap on her head and charged toward the parking lot. Oh, she’d known from the beginning that there’d be a whole slew of oddballs at Karma’s wedding. Thus this Lee character. Thus her present annoyance. Thus her murderous thoughts aimed directly at Paulette.

  In fact, Azure was spitting fire by the time she cornered Paulette back at the apartment. Paulette, however, had a phone wedged against her shoulder and waved Azure away as she continued the conversation with an unknown client.

  “She has one of those diseases that makes all her hair fall out. Her brother’s a tattoo artist and he’s tattooed all these little black scrolls all over her head.” A pause while Paulette rolled her eyes. “No, it doesn’t look like barbed wire. Scrolls, I said, and she’s very attractive.” Another pause. “Sure, Client Number 1799 loves to pull weeds. I’m sure she’ll be happy to help you in your garden. I’ll give you her phone number,” and Paulette reeled it off, finally hanging up. “Whew,” she said, heading toward the bathroom. “What some people will endure to get spousally en
hanced.”

  Azure followed hard on her heels. “How could you send me to a nude beach?” she sputtered. “People playing volleyball with no clothes on, and—”

  Paulette picked up a bottle of Evian water and began spraying it on her face. “It was a nude beach?”

  “Oh, it was nude, all right. Nude boobs. Nude stomachs. Nude—”

  Paulette stopped spraying and frowned. “Stop, I get the picture. Hmm, did you meet anyone?”

  “Only that Lee fellow, and I wasn’t too thrilled to see him there, particularly since he was stark naked. And speaking of tattoos, he had one. Right below his navel.”

  “I see. Or rather, I didn’t see, which is probably all to the good. So how should I know that was a nude beach? I’ve never had time to go there myself.” Paulette was maddeningly nonchalant. She set the Evian bottle down among the jumble of cosmetics on the vanity and, looking completely self-absorbed, pulled a few pixielike tendrils of hair to the front of her ears.

  Slightly mollified, Azure sank down on a chair outside the bathroom door. “You didn’t send me there to get back at me? For all the things my sisters and I used to do to you as kids?”

  Paulette eyed her warily. “No, that’s not why I sent you there. Anyway, I thought we’d forgotten about all that,” she said pointedly.

  “Well,” Azure began, not sure what she was going to say.

  “I hope you’re not seriously thinking of telling me to put my tongue on the metal flagpole again when the temperature is only a few degrees above zero. If you are, look outside. It doesn’t get down to zero here in South Florida. For which I thank my lucky stars.” Paulette sauntered to her desk and began ticking numbers off on a notepad, clearly finished with the subject.

  “Um, your tongue on the flagpole—did it hurt much?” Azure had always wanted to know, and truth be told, she had always felt some regret for that caper, which had earned her and her sisters a major restriction for a month when they were kids.