“Who the fuck does she think she is?” the letter-sweater boy called Dick said.
“Really I have no idea,” Newp answered. “And again, language.”
Dick grabbed Newp by the collar of his white work shirt, “And who the fuck do you think you are?” He dragged Newp towards him, stepping back as he did so. Frannie stuck out a foot. It seemed like the logical thing to do.
Dick went sailing backwards into a tray of Coke bottles and straws.
Mutt and Jeff, the two undercover cops, rose, and then looked at one another as they realized there wasn’t really a reason for them to get involved in a drunk teen falling over himself. Frannie and Newp both gave Mutt and Jeff hand-waved permission to recede once again.
Dick was flailing in a rage on the floor and Newp immediately reached forward to help him up, and the boy shook off his help, crawling up and wet with coke, red in the face and staggering drunk.
Dick shook a finger at Newp and pulled off his letter sweater, then put up his fists, ready to go for Round 2. Frannie put her hand on Newp’s chest to hold him back and also kind of because she really wanted to.
“Out, Mr. Stewart,” came the voice of Uncle Saul, who grabbed Dick by the shoulder and steered him towards the door. As they went Saul winked at her, and Frannie could hear him telling Dick he was welcome to come back when he was sober.
Frannie took Newp’s towel and dropped to start to sop up the soda.
“That was crazy!” said Betty, who came down from the stage and crouched next to Frannie.
“You don’t have to do that,” Newp offered.
“No, I feel like it’s my fault.”
Betty looked at Newp. “Did you see what she did? She sent him across the room.”
“She tripped him is what she did,” Truly agreed as she arrived.
“Is that normal?” Frannie looked up as Truly and Betty and Newp started stacking fallen glasses. “The drunk part.”
“Eh,” Newp said. “But hey, you haven’t even had a shift yet and you know how to run the place.”
“Well, I have mean cousins,” Frannie said.
“That’s a lie,” Saul said as he returned with a tub and a broom for the broken glass.
Betty looked at her brother. “You’re gonna do something nice for her.”
“O…kay,” Newp said. “I can get you something.”
“No, you goof,” Betty said. “Surfing. Take her surfing.”
Newp nodded. “Okay.” He turned back to Frannie. “Tomorrow, before work. We take you surfing.”
Chapter 12
Forrest, the man who had had the vivid memory of his time in France, pulled his jacket closer about him, still shaken and haunted by what he had read in the book. He walked for an hour along the beach, then strode slowly back to his car amid the big noise of the waves, and drove away.
Nearby, a ghost stalked once more.
There was no bonfire tonight, but there were a bunch of kids hanging out by and in their cars, perched near a hot dog stand not far from the Laguna Riviera, on the cliff above the beach, across the street from the Cafe Monstro.
At 11:45, Darla Delaney, who wore her black hair short and up like a Busby Berkley swimmer, sipped a coke that one of the boys had brought her. Hooky, a lean, bronze-colored surfer who seemed older than everyone else but whose voice gave her shivers, chatted her up until she broke off from the cars and they wandered down the stairs next to the hotel and out near the water.
“So you’re a student?” Hooky had his muscular arm around her shoulder.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, tiptoeing in the sand, her shoes in one hand and the other brushing against his flat stomach, walking so close that she could feel the hairs of his brown legs against hers.
“What do you study?” They stopped at the edge of the water and he kissed her neck, the surf crashing so loudly she could hardly hear him.
“Sociology,” she said, and breathed as he kissed her jaw. “You?”
“I’m studying right now,” he said.
She pulled away, laughing. “Let’s swim.”
They ran into the waves, Darla dropping her shoes and laughing giddily as foam lapped at her legs. She dove and swam, and came up again, and after a moment Hooky broke through the surface. He held her waist and kissed her, their mouths searching, and then they broke away and dove like porpoises.
Darla swam through dim light, seeing Hooky’s muscular legs pumping in the water away from her. She hung in the water for a moment, letting the bubbles go from her mouth, sinking a little.
A faint shimmer rose in the water far below her where the sand swept away into the dark. She floated, brushing her arms sideways to keep her place, transfixed by the strange glow as it came closer.
A girl with long, black hair and glowing white skin rose towards her. Her hair floating around her like an undulating mane. She had black eyes that glimmered in the dark and as the stranger reached out her arms, Darla had visions of an octopus she had seen in a film in grade school.
The stranger’s shape began to flow and change. Darla screamed as it showed its razor teeth and pulled her into the deep.
Chapter 13
Frannie pedaled home far later than she had expected, bursting with energy—she had been offered a job and a surfing lesson in one night! She barely noticed the miles go by, the busy Ocean Highway giving way to quieter streets with white-washed houses, people turned in for the evening. There were still a few kids, real kids as opposed to the ones on the beach, playing in the street, but any moms calling them home had fussed and given up hours ago. summer yielded soft discipline in the suburbs.
A job and a surf lesson. It was as though the people at her uncle’s place had just handed her a life.
“Over my dead body!” her father wailed. Marc Cohn, who had come to the United States as an adult, spoke fantastic English but was a great student of clichés and tried them out on Frannie whenever he found one. He would tell her daily to not take any wooden nickels, and disappointments were cookies that crumbled.
“Who are these people?” her mother looked at her from the kitchen table, her wire-rimmed glasses up over her head. Sally Cohn was a serious looking but seriously beautiful woman. She had a past that Frannie only vaguely understood. Now she was a professor of physics at the same place where her pop taught.
The scientist and the literature professor looked to Frannie like tired old people who didn’t have the faintest clue why their daughter was bouncing up and down and chattering to them about Saul and the Legionnaires and the singers and the beach. Pop was eating an egg and onion sandwich and he set it down, waiting for Frannie to answer the question.
“They’re Uncle Saul’s people,” Frannie said. “Come on. He wants me to work for him.”
Pop shrugged. “That’s not so bad. A girl should work for her uncle; it’s good business.”
“I’m saying,” Frannie said.
“What kind of place is this?” Mom asked. “Marc, don’t get ahead of yourself. We’ve never even been there.”
“We’ve only been here a while,” Frannie offered.
Mom continued, “Well, Saul had that other place up the coast when he was married. I went there once before we moved here. But this new place. They don’t have dancing girls, do they?”