From Beer to Eternity Read online

  As I walked back to the bar Joaquín’s hips swayed to the island music playing over an old speaker system. He was in perpetual motion, with his hips moving like some suave combination of Elvis and Ricky Martin. My hips didn’t move like that even on my best day—even if I’d had a couple of drinks. Joaquín glanced at me as he added gin, tonic, and lime to a rocks glass. I’d learned that term a couple of days ago. Bars had names for everything, and “the short glasses” didn’t cut it in the eyes of my boss, Vivi Jo Slidell. And yeah, she was as Southern as her name sounded. I watched with interest as Joaquín grabbed a cocktail shaker, adding gin, dry vermouth, and olive brine.

  “Want to do the honors?” Joaquín asked, holding up the cocktail shaker.

  I glanced at the row of women sitting at the bar, one almost drooling over Joaquín. One had winked at him so much it looked like she had an eye twitch, and one was now looking at me with an openly hostile expression. Far be it from me to deprive anyone from watching Joaquín’s hips while he shook the cocktail.

  “You go ahead,” I said with a grin and a small tilt of my head toward his audience. The hostile woman started smiling again. “Have you ever thought about dancing professionally?”

  “Been there, danced that,” Joaquín answered.

  “Really?” the winker asked.

  “Oh, honey, I shook my bootie with Beyoncé, Ricky Martin, and Justin Timberlake among others when I was a backup dancer.”

  “What are you doing here, then?” I was astonished.

  “My husband and I didn’t like being apart.” Joaquín started shaking the cocktail, but threw in some extra moves, finishing with a twirl. “Besides, I get to be outside way more than I did when I was living out in LA. There, I was always stuck under hot lights on a soundstage. Here, it’s a hot sun out on the ocean. Much better.” He winked at the winker, and she blushed.

  The women had looked disappointed when he mentioned his husband, but that explained Joaquín’s immunity to the women who threw themselves at him. He didn’t wear a ring, but maybe as a fisherman it was a danger. My father didn’t wear one because of his plumbing, but he couldn’t be more devoted to my mom.

  “Put three olives on a pick, please,” Joaquín asked. While he finished his thing with the shaker, I grabbed one of the picks—not the kind for guitars; these were little sticks with sharp points on one end—fancy plastic toothpicks really. Ours were pink, topped with a little flamingo, and I strung the olives on as Joaquín strained the drink into a martini glass.

  “One dirty martini,” Joaquín said with a hand flourish.

  I popped open a beer and poured it into a glass, holding the glass at an angle so the beer had only a skiff of foam on the top. It was a skill I was proud of because my father had taught me when I was fourteen. Other fathers taught their daughters how to play chess. My friends knew the difference between a king and a rook. Mine made sure I knew the importance of low foam. You can guess which skill was more popular at frat parties in college.

  As I distributed the drinks, I thought about Boone Slidell, my best friend since my first day of college. The promise that brought me here? I’d made it to him one night at the Italian Village’s bar in downtown Chicago. We’d had so much fun that night, acting silly before his deployment to Afghanistan with the National Guard. But later that night he’d asked me, should anything happen to him on his deployment, would I come help his grandmother, Vivi. He had a caveat. I couldn’t tell her he’d asked me to.

  “Yes,” I’d said. “Of course.” We’d toasted with shots of tequila and laughter, never dreaming nine months later that my best friend in the world would be gone. Twenty-eight years old and gone. I’d gotten a leave of absence from my job as a children’s librarian and had come for the memorial service, planning to stay for as long as Boone’s grandmother needed me. But Vivi wasn’t the bent-over, pathetic figure I’d been expecting to save. In fact, she was glaring at me now from across the room, making it perfectly clear that she neither needed nor wanted my help. I smiled at her as I went back behind the bar.

  Vivi was a beautiful woman with thick silver hair and a gym-perfect body. Seventy had never looked so good. She wore gold, strappy wedge sandals that made my feet ache just looking at them, cropped white skinny jeans, and an off-the-shoulder, gauzy aqua top. I always felt a little messy when I was with her.

  “A promise made is a promise kept.” I could hear my dad’s voice in my head as clear as if he were standing next to me. It was what kept me rooted here, even with Vivi’s dismissive attitude. I’d win her over sooner or later. Few hadn’t eventually succumbed to my winning personality or my big brown eyes. Eyes that various men had described as liquid chocolate, doelike, and one jerk who said they looked like mud pies after I turned him down for a date.

  In my dreams, everyone succumbed to my personality. Reality was such a different story. Some people apparently thought I was an acquired taste. Kind of like ouzo, an anise-flavored aperitif from Greece, that Boone used to drink sometimes. I smiled at the memory.

  “What are you grinning about?” Joaquín asked. Today he wore a neon-green Hawaiian shirt with a hot-pink hibiscus print.

  “Nothing.” I couldn’t admit it was the thought of people succumbing to me. “Am I supposed to be wearing Hawaiian shirts to work?” I asked. He wore one every day. I’d been wearing T-shirts and shorts. No one had mentioned a dress code.

  “You can wear whatever your little heart desires, as long as you don’t flash too much skin. Vivi wouldn’t like that.” He glanced over my blue tank top and shorts.

  “But you wear Hawaiian shirts every day,” I said.

  “Honey, you can’t put a peacock in beige.”

  I laughed and started cutting the lemons and limes we used as garnishes. The juice from both managed to find the tiniest cut and burn in my fingers. But Vivi—don’t dare put a “Miss” in front of “Vivi,” despite the tradition here in the South—wasn’t going to chase me away by assigning me all the menial tasks, including cleaning the toilets, mopping the floors, and cutting the fruit. I was made of tougher stuff than that and had been since I was ten. To paraphrase the Blues Brothers movie, I was “on a mission from” Boone.

  “What’d those poor little limes ever do to you?”

  I looked up. Joaquín stood next to me with a garbage bag in his hand and a devilish grin on his face. He’d been a bright spot in a somber time. He smiled at me and headed out the back door of the bar.

  “You’re cheating,” Buford yelled from his table near the retractable doors. He leaped up, knocking over his chair just as Vivi passed behind him. The chair bounced into Vivi, she teetered on her heels and then slammed to the ground, her head barely missing the concrete floor. The Sea Glass wasn’t exactly fancy.

  Oh, no. Maybe incidents like this were why Boone thought I needed to be here. Why Vivi needed help. The man didn’t notice Vivi, still on the floor. Probably didn’t even realize he’d done it. Everyone else froze, while Buford grabbed the man across from him by the collar and dragged him out of his chair knocking cards off the table as he did.

  I put down the knife and hustled around the bar. “Buford. You stop that right now.” I used the firm voice I occasionally had to use at the library. Vivi wouldn’t allow any gambling in here. Up to this point there hadn’t been any trouble.

  Buford let go of his friend. I kept steaming toward him. “You knocked over Vivi.” I lowered my voice, a technique I’d learned as a librarian to diffuse situations. “Now, help her up and apologize.”

  He looked down at me, his face red. I jammed my hands on my hips and lifted my chin. He was a good foot taller than me and outweighed me by at least one hundred pounds. I stood my ground. That would teach him to mess with a children’s librarian, even one on a leave of absence. I’d dealt with tougher guys than him. Okay, they had been five years old, but it still counted.

  He turned to Vivi and helped her up. “I’m sorry, Vivi. How about I buy a round for the house?”

  Oh, th
ank heavens. For a minute there, I thought he was going to punch me. Vivi looked down at her palms, red from where they’d broken her fall. “Okay. But you pull something like that again and you’re banned for life.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I expected a thanks from Vivi—that wasn’t asking too much, right?—but she swept by me to the back, and I heard her office door close. Soundly. Winning her over, figuring her out for that matter, wasn’t going to be easy. Joaquín had returned and looked at me, eyes wide. I took more orders and he started mixing drinks—not that there were that many people in here midafternoon. I was more of a beer and wine drinker, so I’d only made a couple of cocktails since I’d started here. And always under Joaquín’s watchful eye, so I stood aside again today. Because the drinks were on Buford’s tab, everyone had ordered expensive gins, bourbons, and rums. Buford complained loudly about that, but everyone ignored him.

  I probably wasn’t the best person to work in a bar because the smell of whiskey nauseated me. That was thanks to a bad experience in high school instigated by my two older brothers, who thought they were hilarious. They weren’t. Instead of thinking about that,

  I focused on Joaquín’s strong hands. They were a blur of motion as he fixed the drinks. In no time, everyone was back in their seats, most facing the ocean. Except for the women at the bar, who continued to flirt with Joaquín. And Elwell, who nursed his beer.

  Fans whirled and wobbled above, causing the warm ocean breeze to mingle with the arctic air blasting from air conditioners in the back of the bar. The resulting mix made it quite pleasant in here. I added lemons, limes, or cherries to garnish the drinks, as instructed by Joaquín.

  “Good work, by the way,” he said.

  “I just stood out of your way and watched.” Being praised for adding fruit to drinks was demoralizing after finishing college, getting a master’s degree in library science, and working in the library full-time.

  “I meant with Buford.” Joaquín pointed at the man who’d knocked over Vivi.

  “Vivi didn’t seem to think so.”

  Joaquín turned his beautiful eyes to me. “She doesn’t like to think she needs help. If she could run this place by herself, she would. But deep down, she’s grateful.”

  “Yeah, deep, deep down.” But it must be why Boone wanted me to come here. When we were in college, where we’d met, he spent all his holidays and summers working here. He loved this beach and his grandmother. The beach I understood. Maybe his grandmother would grow on me. Or me on her.

  Elwell cocked his head toward me. The armadillo shell didn’t move. “What’s keeping you here?”

  I guess he’d overheard my conversation with Joaquín. “I’m waiting for a part for my car.” I shrugged. “Finding parts for a vintage car isn’t easy or cheap. And they take forever to arrive.” It was a big fat lie. The one I’d been telling over and over. It was what convinced Vivi to let me work here after Boone’s memorial service once I realized things weren’t going the way I’d planned.

  I’d inherited my vintage Volkswagen Beetle from my grandmother. It was actually fine, but Vivi didn’t need to know that, or anyone else for that matter. “It’s limping along for now, but no way would it make it all the way back to Chicago.” I was almost starting to believe my cover story. I’d had to do something when I realized Vivi didn’t want me here and Boone did. Talk about a conundrum.

  Elwell studied my face, which I knew would give away nothing—thanks, brothers. Their years of torment turned “show no pain” into my personal motto, and had enabled me to quickly end their one-sided tickle wars when I was a kid.

  I served the drinks. My last stop was at Buford and his partner’s table. They were back to playing cards as if nothing had happened. I dropped off Buford’s beer. His shaggy-haired partner cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes at Buford.

  Buford turned to me. “My apologies.” He shrugged. “I don’t normally let things get to me. No hard feelings?”

  “I have two brothers. I learned long ago that hard feelings are a waste of time.”

  Buford ducked his head. “Thanks.” Then he busied himself shuffling a deck of cards.

  I bused the tables, taking dirty glasses back to the kitchen behind the bar. It was more of a kitchenette than an actual kitchen, with an industrial-strength dishwasher and a refrigerator/freezer combination. We didn’t serve food. We left that to the Briny Pirate, the restaurant next door, which delivered the food here. Wow, I was already thinking of this place in “we” terms. Well, that would be short-lived. Eventually, I’d click my heels and return home to Chicago, just as soon as I gave Vivi the help she didn’t want. As I returned to Joaquín’s side, a group of sunburned beachgoers came in. At least the Sea Glass was never dull.

  * * *

  At nine thirty I stood on the deck of the Sea Glass, holding a broom. The last customer had left reluctantly a few minutes before. Our hours, unlike most bars, were from eleven a.m. to nine p.m. No late-night, wild crowds, bands, or karaoke here. Joaquín had told me it cut down on the number of obnoxious drunks and fights. And when Vivi’s grandfather opened the bar it mostly served fisherman. They left by nine because they had to be up early. No one had ever bothered to try anything different. It was fine with me.

  The Gulf stretched out before me, the half-moon played hide-and-seek with fast-moving clouds, the waves sucking, lapping, softly whooshing in and out. I was antsy. I’d landed here in July, the height of the summer tourist season, so I hadn’t been able to find a place to stay. At least no place I could afford for long, or that was close enough that my whole “car needs a part” story held up.

  I’d spent one night in a high-end hotel, but my savings wouldn’t take very much of that. And I’d spent one night in a dive motel. My sanity wouldn’t take much of that. It had been like a scene out of a bad movie, only real—loud music, louder arguments, and what sounded like a drug deal going down right outside my door. Do I know how to live life to the fullest or what? Two nights I’d slept in my car in small increments in well-lit parking lots. Moving from one lot to another in a game of keep-away, trying to stay ahead of the security guards or deputies who might shoo me away or, even worse, arrest me for loitering. Vivi had taken pity on me and hired me, but I had no confidence she’d bail me out.

  Okay, she probably would. But still, I had my pride. That’s why I wasn’t sleeping in the parking lot east of the Sea Glass. It would have been safer, but I didn’t want Vivi to find out about my accommodations problem, even knowing that whole pride goeth before a fall thing. I’d been searching for an apartment, but at this time of year, most were filled and rented on weekly rates well out of my price range.

  Last night I was feeling a little desperate—more than desperate. So I’d snuck onto Boone’s boat, Fair Winds, parked in the marina behind the bar. It wasn’t a huge boat—a twenty-footer with a center console. It didn’t have a cabin, but did have cushioned benches, and at least last night I could stretch out. But it was hot under the tarp. I’d unhooked it just enough to squeeze through and left before dawn so no one would see me. I planned to sleep there again tonight.

  Boone had loved that boat as much as anything. I’d seen many a picture of it. The motor was big enough to take the boat out on the Gulf when it was calm or to tool around Choctawhatchee Bay. Boone had wanted me to come with him to visit Vivi and the boat, but we’d never made it, and now, of course, we never would. Talk about wanting to kick myself. I knew better than to put things off. I hoped I didn’t have any more lessons on that topic from the universe in the future.

  Loud, angry voices from the kitchen jarred me back to the present. I could tell one voice was Vivi’s. The other was male. Well, this was awkward. I clung to the broom, wondering if I should check on her or grab my purse, which was sitting on a nearby table, and make a run for it. I listened for a few minutes but couldn’t hear any actual words. A door slammed, and footsteps—Vivi’s—crossed the kitchen toward the bar. I started sweeping sand off the deck, listeni
ng to the whack of Vivi’s wedges slapping the floor, heading toward me. If footsteps could sound angry, these certainly did. They stopped right behind me.

  “I didn’t realize you were still here,” Vivi said. She sounded short of breath.

  I quit sweeping and turned to her. Perspiration shone on her brow and upper lip. She held her shoulders stiffly, but her chest rose up and down in quick, angry pants. Vivi had a bottle of bourbon in one hand, a rocks glass in the other. I’d never seen her take a drink of anything stronger than sparkling water. She set both on the nearest table.

  “Just finishing up,” I said. Vivi’s shirt was askew, and I wondered what had happened back there, and with whom.

  “You can go.”

  “Okay, I’ll just take the broom to the back.”

  “I’ll do it.” Vivi held out her hand until I gave her the broom.

  “I need to get my purse.” I pointed to one of the tables. “It’s right there.”

  “Okay. Then go out the front. I just finished mopping the kitchen floor.”

  Maybe that’s what caused the perspiration and short breath. But I didn’t think so. I grabbed my purse. “Good night.”

  Vivi ignored me, pouring herself a glass of bourbon. I left, slung my purse over my shoulder, walked down to the edge of the water, and plopped down in the warm sand. By now only a few stragglers remained on the beach. Soft laughs and bits of conversation drifted around. Farther to the west, because of how the shoreline curved, I could see the lights of the high-rises in Destin. The putter of a boat’s engine sounded in the harbor.

  I sat for fifteen minutes, hands wrapped around my knees, wondering if I should go back to talk to Vivi about the argument I’d just overheard. What would I say? We were hardly bosom buddies. I finally got up and trekked back toward my car. Vivi sat, hand on head, looking down into an empty glass as I sneaked by the Sea Glass, hoping she wouldn’t see me.