Florida Heatwave (32 page)

“
Blooms away!”
Lizzie called as she sped off. It simultaneously annoyed and fascinated Maura. She had come to like Lizzie best when her mother was working in the shop, cheerful and artistic. But Maura wondered where
that
woman had been when she’d been growing up under lock and key, withering under with stern glances, bracing for hard words. She tried not to resent it.

Entering the building with her key, Maura was slightly depressed by the Florida cliché of it all, the white tile floors, the bad art—palm trees, boats in a marina, frolicking dolphins—the bank of faux wood-paneled elevators. It was one of those buildings that must have looked just nifty when it was built a million years ago. But now, to Maura it looked like a place where hopes had faded and dreams had passed by without stopping.

Maura and Emma shared the ride up to her mother’s condo with an elderly lady pushing a walker. She smelled of honeysuckle, and something else, something medicinal.

“Look at that red hair,” the woman said. She gazed at Emma with watery green eyes. Her voice was soft and youthful. “What a pretty girl!”

“Thank you,” Emma said. Pout forgotten, she offered her brightest smile, preening under the attention. The older woman let out a girlish giggle, and Emma followed suit.

“Goodbye,” Emma said when the woman exited before them. “Have a nice night!”

“Oh, what an angel!”

When the door closed, Emma went back to sulking. She was four years old and she already knew the power of her sweetness and beauty. Maura wasn’t entirely sure this was a good thing. But she supposed she was to blame, adoring her daughter as she did. Emma was her only love-at-first-sight, her only ever head-over-heels.

They walked down the hallway, passing a row of blue doors until they reached number 333 and pushed inside, the door left unlocked for them.

“Hi, Mom!” Maura called.

“Hello, girls,” her mother answered.

They followed her voice to the kitchen, where Lizzie stood at the counter, preparing a salad. In the five years since Maura’s father died, her mother had put on an unhealthy amount of weight, though she never seemed to eat very much. And it looked to Maura like she was having trouble getting around, leaning heavily on things to get up, reaching out for support when she moved about the apartment. Lizzie’s legs were a road map of spider and varicose veins, which didn’t stop her from wearing gigantic shorts she bought at Target. Maura wanted to say something, but didn’t know how. She didn’t know how to offer her mother help; Lizzie had always been so strong, so in-charge. There was no script written with Maura doing the care giving, so she found months passing, still saying nothing.

“Hungry?” Lizzie asked. Emma was settled in front of the television, momentarily distracted from her misery by
The Wonder Pets.
“Want to eat before work?”

Maura felt her mother’s eyes on her body, taking in the tight jeans and clinging black top. Not slutty, not
cheap
—which is what Lizzie would say if she dared—but suggestive enough. She needed tips; wearing baggy clothes to her bartending job at a bar on the beach was not the way to get them. Like Emma, she too knew the power of her sweetness and beauty.

“No, thanks,” Maura said. She hated the way she felt self-conscious and tense around her mother, always preparing for some criticism. “I’ll get something there.”

“Nothing good,” Lizzie said. She wiped her hands on her apron and turned down the volume on the small television on the counter. “What will you eat there? Chicken wings at ten?”

Maura smiled, walked over and grabbed a baby carrot from the cutting board. She leaned in and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek and was surprised when her mother grabbed onto her and pulled her into a tight embrace.

Lizzie was not normally an affectionate woman. Maura could count the number of kisses and bear hugs, the times her mother had told her she loved her, on the fingers of one hand. But Maura gave her mother a squeeze back, liked the comfort of Lizzie’s soft body. Her mother still felt strong, solid. She was glad for it.

“I’ll have a little something with Emma,” Maura said when her mother released her.

“Good girl,” Lizzie said.

It was just five minutes over the causeway from her mother’s condo to the Rockin’ Iguana, the bar on the beach where Maura worked, a proximity that made her happy. She liked being that close to Emma, knowing she could be back in a heartbeat if she was needed. When her shift was over at two AM, she’d go back to her mother’s where the pull-out couch would be waiting, made up for her.

She’d be there when the munchkin woke up, and then take her to school. After that she’d go back to bed at home for a while. Around eleven, she’d get up again, do the laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning—whatever needed doing—then go back and get Emma at school. She’d have the next two days off from the restaurant, so she’d put in some time at her mother’s flower shop.

She thought about this as she walked in the near darkness through the lot and into the bar. She didn’t have time to think about what kind of life it was or how she was going to change it, do something better. She wouldn’t think about those things until she was lying in bed trying to sleep. Instead, she said her hellos and took over for Kate, the afternoon bartender.

“How was it today?” Maura asked. She tied the green, Iguana-shaped apron around her waist. The other girl, a willowy blonde with washed denim eyes, was young, maybe twenty, paying her way through community college. Kate had aspirations to be a physical therapist, work with stroke victims. Maura always thought
she
should do something like that, too. Something that had meaning. But she hadn’t. She didn’t know if she ever would.

You’ve just thrown your whole life away,
Lizzie had said the afternoon Maura told her she was pregnant. She’d since apologized, claimed she hadn’t meant it and had been speaking out of fear for Maura’s future. But she’d been right. Maura got pregnant in her junior year of college and hadn’t finished her degree. She’d been planning to write; was studying journalism. But all of it just got washed away in a tide of sleepless nights and milk-soaked days. For the first two years of Emma’s life, her mother nagged and nagged for her to go back to school.
You’ve been dealt a wild card, kid. It changed your hand but you don’t have to fold. Go back to school. I’ll help you.

Maura promised she would go back. But she didn’t, and eventually Lizzie stopped saying anything. Maura almost wished she’d start nagging again. Otherwise, what would keep her from working in a dump like the Rockin’ Iguana for the rest of her life?

“Busy today,” said Kate. “But lousy tips. Recession doesn’t keep people from drinking, but they’re definitely holding on to their spare change.”

“I know it.”

When the real estate market was booming and everyone’s house was worth a fortune, people were feeling flush, tipping generously. Now, even her mother’s island—once the jewel of the area with its big waterfront homes — was studded with foreclosure properties, overgrown lawns, tipping mailboxes, and algae-filled pools.

“Damn fools,” Lizzie would complain. “Don’t people know what they can afford? Since when is it up to the bank to tell you what you can pay?”

Maura thought it was a bit more complicated than all that, but social issues were just one of the many topics she avoided discussing with her mother.

“And watch out for Bill,” said Kate. She rolled her eyes as she threw her apron in the hamper under the sink. “He is in a foul, foul, ugly mood.”

“Great.”

The Rockin’ Iguana
was
a dump. It pretended not to be with a big laminated menu featuring things like “Spring Rolls with Fancy Asian Dipping Sauce!” and “Bourbon Marinated Shrimp!” But the food was all frozen crap, the well liquor was just north of nail polish remover. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Bill encouraged them to pass off the cheap stuff as top shelf and see if they could get away with it—which they usually did.

“I’m outta here,” said Kate, shouldering her backpack. And something about the way she said it made Maura feel so sad for a flash, so oddly desperate, that she had to blink back a sudden rush of tears.

It was a Friday night, so when the clock passed nine, the place got packed. And Maura was glad she’d eaten at her mother’s place, because she didn’t have even a minute to get someone to cover so she could run to the bathroom. It was the usual crowd—vacationers who couldn’t afford any place better, locals tying one on, some loud-mouthed college boys. She just served the drinks, smiled, laughed at any stupid joke that was tossed her way, and occasionally pulled down the neckline on her shirt ever so slightly. The hours flew by; the tips piled up.

It was past midnight when she saw him come in. Something about the way he entered and didn’t look around, just came straight to the bar and took a seat near the end made her look at him twice. He had a body that was built for the jeans he was wearing—tall, strong thighs, lean waist. He wore a distressed black tee shirt with some kind of faded white design, boots in spite of the heat. He had a leather jacket with him, a large canvas duffle bag. He had the look of someone who’d just arrived from somewhere else and who wouldn’t be staying long. A sheen of sweat on his brow told her that he wasn’t from Florida. The humidity was getting to him, even though the air was on.

When you see trouble coming, cross the street.
Advice from her mother that had never quite taken hold.

“Patrón,” he said to her. “Anjeo.” Tequila. The good stuff.

“Salt and a lime?”

He shook his head. He wasn’t partying. He was medicating. She poured him a shot from the Patrón bottle that actually contained Cuervo, thinking as she did that he might notice the difference. He tossed it back, and then gave her a look.

“I’m not paying for that,” he said. He rubbed the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. He had close-cropped dark hair, receding a touch, just a whisper of widow’s peaks. A good face, strong jaw, full lips. Dark, dark eyes. Trouble. At least she knew it when she saw it these days. That was an improvement, wasn’t it?

“Sorry about that,” she said. “My mistake.”

She returned with the real deal. He drank that down, too.

“That’s better,” he said.

“On the house.”

He lifted the glass again, placed a twenty on the bar. She brought the squat, thick bottle over. As she poured, she saw that the knuckles on his right hand were split.

“I’m looking for Bill,” he said.

Maura realized she hadn’t seen her boss all night, which was rare. He was usually hovering over her, trying to tell her how to do her job, striving to graze her ass or breasts, as he pretended to reach for this or that. He was a pig —a nasty, sweaty, functioning alcoholic. God help you if you did anything wrong. He’d ream you in front of everyone—staff, customers, anyone in ear shot. Her mother actually knew him; he’d attended the high school where she’d been principal.
Bill Lowenstein? That kid was a loser from the day he was born,
Lizzie said when Maura mentioned him.
Always in trouble. Barely a C student. If he had half a brain in his head, he’d be dangerous.

“I haven’t seen him,” she said. “But I can call up to his office.”

She pointed to the stairway that led to the hot windowless space, which Bill called the Lion’s Den and everyone else called the Rat’s Nest. The stranger turned around and looked in the direction she was pointing.

“What’s your name?” she asked. “I’ll see if I can get him for you.”

“Jake.”

Filling a tray with Coronas for one of the servers, mixing two margaritas for a couple at the bar, she tried the intercom to Bill’s office, then left a message on his cell.

“I left word for him,” she said, returning to Jake.

“Okay,” he said. But he barely seemed to hear her. He looked past her, past the bar into the darkness outside. During the day, you could see the white sand beaches and jewel green water. But now it was just black. She wondered what he was looking at; she was about to ask him, just because of the look on his face—something wistful, something far away. But then he said, “Can I get a Corona with a lime?”

“Sure thing.”

When she finally made her way back to him, he was gone. She left the beer by the money he’d put on the bar, figuring he’d headed to the restroom. But an hour later, he had not returned. She watched the bottle sweat, moisture collecting in the coaster, lime sinking to the bottom. Finally, she dumped it in the metal sink. She pocketed the change, not without a twinge of disappointment. What did she think? She hadn’t had a date since Emma was born. She’d had plenty of offers—an occupational hazard.

But Maura had an impulse control problem, a problem with the moment—it washed her over, swept her away. She could get caught up in a fantasy, make foolish mistakes that wound up costing her everything. It was best to avoid any temptation, better to just walk the line for Emma. Her mom was paying for Emma’s fancy private preschool. And even though they didn’t have much right now, they had everything they needed. That was enough. Maybe if she saved more, or could bring herself to talk to her mother, she’d go back to school so that they’d have a brighter future. She definitely didn’t need a man to mix things up. Emma’s on-again, off-again father was bad enough, confusing and upsetting for her little girl. She didn’t need some other dog sniffing around.

By 2:15, the place had cleared out. She was wiping the counter, rinsing the sink, closing out the till, and counting her tips. The waitresses were gone; the cleaning crew hadn’t arrived yet. The evening had passed without an encounter with Bill. She stared at the narrow staircase leading up to his office. He could be up there, passed out. It had happened before. She needed to ask him for next Thursday off so that she could go to Parent’s Night at Emma’s school. But, oh, she dreaded how he’d make her sweat for it. He was the kind of man who loved being in the position of deciding whether or not to grant favors; it was the closest he ever came to respect.

She could always call, or drop him an email. She’d already asked Kate if they could trade shifts but Kate couldn’t; she had an exam the following day. Maura really needed that evening off; she didn’t want to be the kind of parent that missed events at the school. She decided she’d suck it up, though she was dead on her feet, ready for bed. At least she could see if he was up there. And if he said no? Well, she’d call in sick. And if he fired her? Well, maybe that would force her to make some decisions.