Death's Excellent Vacation (29 page)

Brenda Narramore was beautiful.

A dark pyramid of wavy hair tumbled over her shoulders in a cascade of kinky corkscrews. Her body was perfectly proportioned, up top and down below. She even wore sexy librarian glasses before they became fashionable. That’s why Belinda Nightingale always accents her skintight leather breastplate with horn-rimmed reading glasses.

That first night, however, the real Brenda was not costumed as an Amazon princess. I remember she wore an embroidered peasant blouse tied off with a sash, the shirttails barely covering her bikini bottom. It looked like she was wearing the tiniest miniskirt ever sewn. She also carried a canvas flower-power beach bag.

“Hi, guys,” said Donna. “This is Brenda.”

Donna more or less said that to me, officially pairing us up for the evening.

“Hey,” I said.

Brenda Narramore smirked. Her raven-black eyes sized me up. I don’t think they liked what they saw.

“Shall we?” said Jerry, who was lugging the clinking bag of Boone’s Farm bottles under his arm. He held out his free hand and Kimberly, the lanky girl who tottered like she was already wasted on cheap wine, took it.

“Need a hand?” Donna said to Kevin, who carried the case of Schlitz.

“I’m good.”

She squeezed his bulging upper arm. “Strong, too.”

He shrugged. “I work out a little.”

“A little?” She was kneading his arm like some Italian women work over cantaloupes in the produce aisle.

“C’mon,” said Kevin with a well-practiced shake of his shaggy hair. “Let’s boogie.”

They headed down to the beach.

Brenda Narramore looked at me. I never felt so scrawny or childish, standing there soaked in Hai Karate, wearing my best Orange Sunkist “Good Vibrations” T-shirt and denim cut-offs, straining to hold on to that case of Schlitz without all the cans tumbling out because, somehow, maybe from the condensation dripping down the sides of the aluminum tallboys, the cardboard bottom had become sopping wet.

Brenda pulled a pack of Doral Menthol cigarettes out of her beach bag. Stuck one between her plump lips. Flicked her Bic and lit up.

I guess I was gawking at her.

“Dream on,” she sneered on the exhale.

She ambled down to the beach.

I followed. A safe distance behind her.

WE scraped up some driftwood and used the brown paper wine bag to start a small beach fire.

Not a raging bonfire, just enough extra warmth to help the beer and wine make everybody feel good ’n’ toasty. Intoxicated after chugging three tepid cans of Falstaff (the beer that promised “man size pleasure”), I became hypnotized by the fire. I saw chattering mouths and contorted faces dancing in the flickering flames, not to mention a flock of shadowy witch doctors leaping across the sand, furiously stretching out their twitching limbs to reach the not-too-distant dunes where, it seemed to me, more nefarious shadow friends might lie in wait.

Remembering Kevin’s sage words about beer and wine being considered mighty fine, I unscrewed the cap off a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill and started guzzling.

It’s no wonder, not much later, I started seeing real phantoms. The demon in the dunes.

I gulped the wine, because I was nervous, sitting scant inches from Brenda Narramore, who kept lighting up Doral Menthol cigarettes while exhaling her own hazy cloud of specters, adding them to the mustering swarm of ghosts sent swirling skyward by our smoky campfire. One time, when I shifted in the sand, our thighs actually brushed. I don’t think Brenda Narramore felt it, but I was extremely glad I had worn the tight cotton cutoffs instead of my J.C. Penney polyester shorts, which would not have done a very good job concealing that night’s rising adolescent fantasies.

Then, believe it or not, Brenda actually turned, pushed a few bouncy hair coils out of her eyes, and smiled at me like she knew every secret I had ever had.

“Ciggy-boo?” she said, holding out her crinkled Doral pack.

“He’s a wimp,” sniggered Kevin, who was bogarting one of his dad’s Kents on the other side of the fire circle, letting the cigarette dangle limply off his lips. “Dave doesn’t smoke.”

I reached out for Brenda’s proffered pack. “Hey, there’s a first time for everything, bro.”

“What it is, what it is,” said Jerry, admiring my sense of adventure.

I pulled a white, filtered tube of tobacco out of its wrinkled cellophane container. “Dorals, huh?”

Brenda nodded. “They’re menthol,” she whispered, her voice husky and helpful.

“Cool.”

For some reason, that made Brenda laugh.

Maybe she thought I’d said, “Kool.”

“Need a light?” she asked.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She found her Bic in the breast pocket of that gossamer peasant blouse, which, when backlit by the fire, was basically see-through. I could see she was round and firm and perfect.

“Thanks.” I took the lighter. Rolled the little ribbed wheel with my thumb a few times. It sparked against the flint.

“Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” said Kevin, my buddy the expert smoker. “Hold down the button, spaz.”

I did as suggested. Heard butane gas hiss up from the tiny plastic tank.

“Now flick it.”

I flicked.

The flame torched up six inches and scorched my nasal hairs.

“Here,” said Brenda. She braced a warm hand on my thigh and plucked the unlit cigarette out of my mouth. “I’ll light it for you.”

She smacked hard on the Doral she had already had going in her mouth until its tip glowed as bright as the dashboard cigarette lighter when it popped out of its hole in my dad’s Buick. Red hot, she plucked her cigarette from her lips, put mine in its place, and lit it off the end of the glowing one.

This wasn’t just my first cigarette—it was also my first lesson in chain smoking.

“Since it’s your first, just puff it,” Brenda said as she handed the smoldering ciggy-boo back to me. “Don’t inhale right away.”

“Cool.”

But I did.

Hacking and coughing and choking, I ignored Kevin’s laughs and took another sip of that horrible strawberry wine, grimaced, and tried again.

This time, the smoke filled my lungs a little easier. Slid down my wind-pipe a little smoother. Maybe it was the menthol. It felt like I was sucking on a hot candy cane. And man, did I feel good. Something powerful shot through my veins, made me feel as funny and clever as Jerry and Kevin combined.

“Taste me, taste me.” I raised my cigarette and recited Doral’s famous TV jingle as if it were Shakespearean verse. “Come on and taste me!”

Everybody laughed. The three girls. My two buddies. Jerry McMillan even winked at me just to let me know I was finally catching on to how to play the game, finally growing up.

Finally joining the fraternity of the tight and the cool.

So I smacked down some more smoke. Stifled some more coughs. Felt a rush of nicotine that made me feel like a jolly genius with superhuman powers. I jumped up and did my best to impersonate the jazz chanteuse voice of the singing cigarette pack in Doral’s cheesiest TV commercial:
“Taste me, taste me. C’mon and taste me! Take a puff and let me do my stuff!”

Everybody was doubled up, laughing, holding their sides.

Brenda Narramore included.

Blurry from beer and wine, dizzy from tar and nicotine, I stumbled sideways and accidentally dropped my “ciggy-boo” in the sand.

“Here,” said Brenda. She was already firing up its replacement for me.

I plopped down next to her. Took my second smoldering stick. I coughed like I had bronchitis. Felt dizzy. My brain was all kind of fuzzy, but I think Brenda Narramore had moved closer to me. Our thighs kissed.

I couldn’t follow up on whatever that might mean because Kevin wanted to tell ghost stories.

Understandable.

We were sitting around a hypnotic driftwood fire under a full moon. The three girls were giddy and loose thanks to the beer and wine. In fact, Kimberly had already crawled into Jerry’s lap wearing nothing but her bikini.

A good ghost story would force the other ladies to leap into the first available pair of strong, manly arms they could find (such as the ones Kevin had spent the winter and spring sculpting in his garage).

And so Kevin started spinning his tale.

“My uncle Rocco works for the Verona Volunteer Rescue Squad. One night, they get this call from over in Montclair. Now, Montclair is a bigger town, has a professional ambulance crew, firefighters, the whole nine yards. But, last March, there was this
huge
accident. A horrible wreck. Seven girls in a station wagon, cheerleaders on their way home from a basketball game, wrap themselves around a telephone pole.”

Donna gasped. It was all the encouragement Kevin needed.

“Anyway, my uncle Rocco and his partner hit the siren and lights because it’s all-hands-on-deck time, you know? There’s only one problem: They’re from Verona and don’t know the roads over in Montclair too good. So they pull over to the side of the road. Whip out a map. Can’t figure out where the hell they are. All of a sudden, Uncle Rocco senses somebody staring at him through his window. It’s freaking him out, but he turns around and sees this old black dude standing right outside his door.”

“What’d he do?”

“He rolled down his window.”

Donna gasped again.

“Remember, it’s early March. Technically still winter. So when Uncle Rocco rolls down that window, he’s hit with a blast of cold air. He can see his breath steaming out of his mouth, it’s so frigging chilly out. Anyways, he sizes up the old black dude. The guy doesn’t look like trouble. Kind of dapper, a college professor type, you know? Wire-rimmed glasses, tweedy sport coat with the patches on the sleeves, neatly trimmed goatee. The works. Anyways, the professor standing outside their vehicle asks Uncle Rocco if he’s looking for the car wreck. ‘Yeah,’ he says. The old black guy nods. ‘It’s about a mile east of here.’ ”

When he was doing the black man’s voice, Kevin made him sound all warbly and spooky. The girls moved closer to their guys. Well, Donna and Kimberly. Brenda just sat there smoking Dorals, staring into the fire.

“ ‘You sure?’ my uncle Rocco asks. ‘Yes,’ says the black man. ‘Take the next right, then turn left at the second traffic light. The second, mind you. Not the first. The second!’ ”

“So what happened?” Even Jerry McMillan was mesmerized.

“They take off. Siren wailing. Lights spinning. They do the right, hit a major highway, count the traffic lights. Long story short, they find the wreck right where the old man said it would be. They set to work. The station wagon is totaled. Buckled up on itself like an accordion. So they get out their power saws and pry bars. Work off the doors. Cut open the roof.”

“Are the girls all dead?” asked Kimberly.

“No, they’re rushed to the hospital. All seven of them.”

“They didn’t die and turn into ghosts?” Kimberly whined. “I thought this was supposed to be a ghost story.”

“It is. Hang on.”

Donna scooched closer to Kevin. Kimberly wrapped her arms around Jerry’s neck. Brenda fired up two fresh Dorals at the same time. A double-barreled shotgun. Offered one to me.

“Thanks.” I took it. They were getting easier and easier, milder and milder. I took a puff and let the Doral do its stuff.

“Anyways,” Kevin continues, “after they run the girls to the hospital, all the ambulance crews are hanging out in the ER parking lot, shooting the breeze. Uncle Rocco asks some guys from the other volunteer squads how they found the wreck. Most bust his chops; say they used a frigging map. One or two, though, one or two say this old black dude walked out of the shadows and told them where to go. Black guy in glasses with a goatee. ‘We couldn’t see his breath,’ says this one paramedic from another town near Montclair. ‘What?’ my uncle asks. ‘It’s freaking cold out,’ says the other rescue worker. ‘My breath was steaming out of my mouth, but this black guy? You couldn’t see no breath.’ My uncle suddenly remembers: He couldn’t see the black dude’s breath, either!”

Donna is too scared to gasp again. So she shivers. Her teeth chatter.

“A week later,” Kevin continues, “Uncle Rocco goes to visit the girls in the hospital, wants to see how they’re doing. They’re all fine. One of the girls, though, is black, and she’s got stuffed animals and flowers and a couple of framed pictures propped up on her bedside table there. ‘Who’s that?’ my uncle asks, pointing at one of the pictures. ‘My grandpa,’ says the girl. ‘He died last November.’ And the guy in the picture? Dig this: He’s wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a goatee, and a tweed sport coat. Just like the black dude with the invisible breath. To this day, Uncle Rocco swears it was the girl’s grandfather who told them how to find that wreck! The old man came back from the dead so his granddaughter wouldn’t have to die, too! He was like her guardian angel!”

Nobody said anything for about ten seconds.

The fire popped and crackled.

“That’s freaky,” whispered Donna. She hugged herself. I could see whole patches of goose bumps sprouting on her arms.

“You cold?” Kevin, ever the gentleman, offered her his leisure suit jacket.

“I know a better way to warm up.” She took Kevin’s hand. “You ever done it in the dunes?”

“Not with a fox like you!” Kevin grabbed a fresh six-pack and a beach blanket. The two of them headed for the privacy on the other side of the sand mounds.

Meanwhile, the totally trashed Kimberly, teetering in Jerry’s lap, was so stoned she had become fixated on the glowing tracers trailing behind the bright red embers drifting up inside the fire’s curling smoke.

“You know,” said Jerry, seizing the moment, “if you were the new burger at McDonald’s, you’d be the McGorgeous.”

“Shut up,” said Kimberly, stumbling up, noisily slapping some sand off her bikini-bottomed butt. Then she burped. “Let’s go screw.”

And they left us, too.

Brenda Narramore and I were all alone.

We silently smoked more of her Dorals. She twirled off the plastic wrap on a second pack. The sand around us started to resemble one of those ashtrays near the elevators at a fancy hotel. Stubbed-out butts stood at attention like tiny tombstones all around us. My chest ached.