Sunset Beach(9)

Drue stuffed the sandwich remains in the paper bag. “Are we done here? If so, I think I need to get back to my training manual.”

“Oh, we’re more than done,” Wendy said. She looked at her watch. “When you’re finished with the manual, go out to the reception area. We’re so shorthanded I can’t spare anybody to train you on the phone the way I’d planned, but Geoff can show you how everything works. He’s got a copy of your phone script too. And they’re expecting you at Medical Associates on Fourth Street no later than five. No test, no job.”

“I’ll be there.”





4


Drue was walking out the office door for her drug testing appointment when the black Mercedes zoomed up to the curb and Brice leaned out the open passenger window.

“How’d it go today?” he asked.

“Okay. I’m just headed over to the testing lab.”

“Good,” he said. “Hey, did Wendy tell you about happy hour tonight?”

“No.”

He laughed. “She’s so focused, probably slipped her mind. Anyway, Monday nights we have staff happy hour at Sharky’s. This is perfect timing. You can meet your coworkers outside the office, let your hair down a little.”

Drue was instantly wary. “It’s been a really long day for me, Dad. I was gonna go check out of the motel and start moving stuff into the cottage—which I haven’t even seen yet. If it’s okay with you, I’ll take a rain check.”

“Hey,” he said earnestly. “It’s gonna be a little awkward, at first anyway. You’re the boss’s daughter, and the office manager’s stepdaughter.”

She cringed at the stepdaughter description, but kept quiet.

“If you want to get off on the right foot, get yourself over to Sharky’s tonight, six o’clock.”

“I don’t even know where that is,” Drue protested, making one last stab at bowing out. She hated everything about happy hour. Hated the mindless boozing, the forced camaraderie, the vision of over-served guys pawing every woman in sight, and shit-faced girls facedown in their own vomit by the end of the evening.

“You don’t remember Sharky’s?” Her father was incredulous. “It’s that big bar just down the beach from the cottage. You can’t miss the place. There’s a giant fiberglass shark head out in the parking lot.”

“Oh, that place.”

Sharky’s had been a Sunset Beach landmark for decades. She’d been fascinated with the place as a young teen. Music blared out of their deck-mounted speakers, from eight in the morning ’til 3:00 A.M. It was a something-for-everyone kind of swim-up beach bar, with sprawling decks, sand volleyball courts and rows of roped-off lounge chairs pointing toward the Gulf.

“Just come,” Brice said. “And that’s an order from the boss.”

As he drove away she noticed her father’s vanity license tag: ISUE-4U.



* * *



Back at the motel, Drue picked through the meager offerings in her suitcase until she found her designated “casual date” outfit, which consisted of white skinny jeans and a black halter top with large white buttons down the back. She peered into the steam-clouded bathroom mirror, trying to evaluate her appearance. She pulled her dark shoulder-length hair into a high ponytail, brushed on some mascara, and after careful consideration, added lipstick and a pair of gold palm-frond earrings.

Okay, she told herself. Not “trying too hard” but also not “currently living in a van down by the river.” She stuck her cell phone, motel key card, driver’s license and some folded bills in her back pocket and set out walking along the beach, her best flip-flops hooked over her thumb.

She hadn’t realized how nervous she was until she was standing at the water’s edge, looking up at the orange traffic cones that demarcated Sharky’s beach zone. The palms of her hands were damp and she felt a trickle of perspiration slide down the side of her face and between her breasts.

For a moment, she was transported back to middle school, to that horrible first day in her new school when she stood in the cafeteria, looked around and realized she was the only girl wearing bib overalls in a high-waist acid-washed-jeans world.

“Chill out,” she muttered to herself now. “It’s just happy hour. You own happy hour, damnit.”

Brice must have been waiting for her, because he walked out to meet her the moment she stepped onto the deck. He was dressed in sharply pressed golf shorts, and a polo shirt with an embroidered yacht club logo.

“Hey!” he said, looking genuinely pleased to see her. “I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

“Sorry. It’s a long bus ride out here,” she said.

“Why didn’t you say something? I could have given you a ride home.”

“I’ve got a car, it just didn’t choose to start this morning. It’s fine now, though.” This was a bald-faced lie, but she couldn’t risk the hideous proposition of having to ride to work in the morning with Brice and Wendy.

“Okay, but let me know if it acts up again.” He pressed a drink into her hand. “Here. Tonight’s drink special. The Kinky Dolphin.”

She could see the layers of viscous blue and green liquors through the sides of the plastic cup. “What’s in this?”