From The Dead (39 page)

Not that Danny could pinpoint a definition for
success.

At first, he had defined it as freedom—one he could
obtain by spending his late twenties seaside and inspired. In
truth, Danny’s heart had departed for the beach long before he did.
Prior to his arrival, Danny had invested four years in the college
scene, where he had conformed to an uninspired status quo disguised
as a ladder to breakthrough. It seemed a lifetime ago.

And now, by age twenty-eight, he’d grown
exhausted.

An elusive notion, success.

As he eyed his beaded necklace and linen shirt, Danny
wondered how he’d managed to spend another four years of his life
at McGrady’s. On weekdays and weeknights, he engaged in the mundane
work of a cook. But on weekends, McGrady’s slated him as its
featured entertainment. Danny would strum his acoustic guitar and
sing the songs of Bob Dylan, James Taylor, and some original pieces
of his own. It provided Danny with a performance outlet. And by the
time McGrady’s closed for the night, Danny figured, half of the
drinkers wouldn’t know the difference between songwriters
anyway.

Danny jumped at the sudden burst of the restroom
door.

“Danny Boy! How’s it going, chief?”

Even when he dabbled with subtlety, you couldn’t help
but notice Jay McGrady’s presence. Forgoing college and opting
instead for a family business that would one day become his own,
Jay earned his living as the McGrady’s manager and oddity
specialist. On any given day, you could spot him fixing a water
pipe or grilling a burger, taking out the trash or chewing out a
waitress. But Jay approached it all in good fun.

Danny rubbed his eyes. “Never better. I mean, you’ve
got the water, the ladies. This is paradise, right?”

Jay made his way to the sink and started to wash his
hands. As luck would have it this evening, he would assume the role
of senior chef, a title he’d created on the fly.

“Man, you should see the woman out there at table
eleven,” Jay said with a knowing chuckle. “Mmm, she’s hot. I’ll
betcha she’s about fifty years old, too.” Flipping water from his
hands, he wiped them with a paper towel until they were damp at
best, then shook his head. “But that guy she’s with—I don’t
understand it, man. What a slob! I mean, his knockers are bigger
than hers, my hands were probably cleaner before I started washing
‘em—and some dudes are just not meant for biker shorts, you know
what I mean?”

“Geez, Jay!” Danny snickered, gritting his teeth. “I
hate when you do that. I have to look at these people when I’m out
there singing, you know.”

“I’m serious, man! How could a woman like that be so
hard up?” Jay stretched his arms toward the dingy walls surrounding
him. “A prince like me and an inheritance like this place. What
more could a woman want!”

“That slob probably owns a hotel down here, Jay!”

A quick chuckle and the fortunate son headed toward
the door. “You coming?”

Danny nodded. “Yeah, I’m on my way.”

Jay and his mouth departed as swiftly as they had
burst in, and a few seconds later, Danny could hear him joking with
customers in the hall. An amiable guy, you could always count on
Jay for a stupid laugh. Not the intention Jay had in mind, per se,
but his speech tended to accelerate faster than his tact. To his
credit, the benevolent Jay was also responsible for complimentary
rounds of beers among the staff, McGrady’s profit-sharing program
in its most primitive form. Danny, unlike the other staff members,
had developed a solid friendship with Jay over time.

Pounding his fist into his other hand with
determination, Danny shook the heaviness from his eyes and walked
out the restroom door.

Danny didn’t get far. Jay caught him by the sleeve of
his shirt and tugged him toward a pair of patrons. “Guys, this is
Danny Bale. He’s our entertainment for the weekend,” Jay said.
“Danny, this is Chris Clark and Kyle Clark, two brothers I met on
my way to the dining area.”

Danny exchanged handshakes with Chris, the older
brother, who had blue eyes, brown hair, and an athletic build.
“Nice to meet you, Chris. What do you do for a living?”

“I sell document management software,” Chris said.
“Sales are great, but I was ready for a vacation and convinced my
brother to hang out for a week at the beach.”

At that, Jay gestured to Kyle with his thumb. “Kyle
and I discovered we share some common ground. Tell him, Kyle.”

Kyle, who had brown eyes and light red hair,
chuckled. “I’m a chef in New York.”

“I told him not to be intimidated by the ol’
five-star establishment he set foot into here,” Jay joshed.

Despite numerous attempts by competitors to challenge
its dominance throughout the years, McGrady’s remained the most
visited restaurant at Destiny Landing, a tourist dive in the heart
of Sunset Beach, South Carolina, referred to as “The Landing” by
local residents. One of the first businesses to set up shop at the
development, McGrady’s remained the standard bearer for
out-of-towner attraction, though no one could ascertain its
appeal—other than the fact that it didn’t
have
a niche
appeal. A catch-all establishment, management identified its
clientele as casual dates and families, who would arrive sunburned
in flip-flops and printed T-shirts purchased at hole-in-the-wall
souvenir shops. McGrady’s made no effort to impress, and its
patrons sunk to meet the challenge.

With a final handshake, Danny wished them well and
headed out to the dining area.

With the convergence of the dinner crowd, Danny
figured the number of voices had doubled. In the narrow hallway, he
nodded to a man and woman engaged in a conversation. A pair of
human lobsters, their skin had burned to a wow-that-must-hurt
degree. When he entered the dining area and surveyed the range of
people in the audience, tiredness dissipated from his body. He
sensed a rush of energy, an aggressive rise in the rate at which
his blood coursed through his veins.

Danny was home.

He hummed to Dave Matthews Band’s “The Best of What’s
Around,” which blared through speakers hung years ago by two
teenagers with a roll of twine and a questionable sense of safety.
Perched upon metal rafters, the speakers loomed like crows over the
talking customers, who ignored them. From a distance, Danny waved
at a group of waitresses, tanned beauties who came to Sunset Beach
during Spring Break but never bothered to return to the world of
academia.

Toward the kitchen, Danny counted a handful of
patrons sitting at the bar, but the majority of his audience
partook of faux-rustic cuisine at the hut-shaped restaurant. Along
the perimeter and throughout the midsection, he watched them eat at
tables of various sizes and matching brown tint. Ashen fumes dimmed
the room as they crept in a hypnotic blur beneath the overhead
lights. In a front corner sat a small platform, occupied by an
empty stool and an acoustic guitar, which sat behind a microphone.
Two large speakers sat on the stage floor. Tonight it would be
Danny’s stage.

As Danny walked up the steps and onto the platform,
the heat from a single row of tracking lights invigorated his skin
like a candle flame. Danny nodded at Jay, who meandered to the side
of the room and faded the music to silence. With a thumbs-up
signal, Jay departed for the kitchen, leaving Danny alone with the
crowd. Danny couldn’t help but grin. Grabbing the guitar and
tossing the strap over his shoulder, he plugged the instrument into
an amplifier and turned toward the microphone.

“Hey everybody, I’m Danny Bale. Welcome to
McGrady’s!” When he spoke into a microphone, mysterious warmth
ensued within him. He couldn’t explain its rationale, but something
about it always felt right. Unable to determine if he was bathing
the air with his voice or vice versa, he perceived a connection
with the audience and possessed a keen awareness of when it was
mutual.

The audience applauded.

“How you all doing tonight?” Glancing around and
catching eyes with a few regulars, his pulse now raced. This was
his drug. “Either it’s dinner time, or you all heard that Jay
McGrady wasn’t your entertainment for the night.”

As the audience snickered at the lackluster pun,
Danny shot a mischievous glare over at Jay, who bowed from behind
the kitchen window.

“All right,” Danny said. “Let’s get cooking.”

With delicate care, he began caressing the guitar
strings in the key of G. On most occasions, he would launch the
evening with a classic rock song—something buzzing with adrenaline,
a personification befitting beer and hot wings. Tonight, however,
he felt inspired to start slow with a song of his own. And after a
few introductory measures, he slid his hot-buttered vocals into the
microphone and bore his heart. Danny inhaled the smoke-saturated
air and ignited it with the sweet aroma of words on fire.

There’s something about her eyes

I can’t put my fingers on

It’s in the way she looks at me

That keeps me oh so strong

There’s something about her eyes

That takes the best of me

It reaches down inside my heart

And conquers me easily

Whenever he gazed at a crowd, he observed the
reactions of those who listened. The romantic songs never ceased to
amaze him, because with them he witnessed how a casual crowd could
morph into a captivated audience. In reality, most customers
allowed the music to sweep over their heads and into the hazy
milieu. But as he studied through discerning eyes, Danny could spot
his music’s effect on a handful of people, who would become his
core fans for the minutes that followed. He searched for subtle
gestures that suggested mood alterations: a tilted head, an arm
sliding around a girlfriend’s waist, two eyes glimpsing past his
guitar and into the depths of his soul. Perhaps his greatest
compliment was the woman who failed to notice the delivery of a
meal because of an undivided focus on the musical message that
emanated. One by one, audience members found themselves distracted
from their Friday night conversations and swept into Danny’s
personal world. Their attention spurred him on. Danny could see his
future when he received such feedback—silent, yet undeniable.

Climaxing with a high note and free-falling to a
final chord, Danny blushed as the song ended and the muted applause
arose.

“Thank you,” he said.

As much as he hated to do it, it was inevitable. The
mood needed to be broken and an emotional balance maintained—a
reminder of why McGrady’s drew capacity crowds on Friday nights.
After all, this was Sunset Beach, and its visitors had flocked here
for two reasons: to get their senses teased and their skin
fried.

Danny picked up the tempo and continued his song set
as the blend of conversational tones resumed at full volume.

CHAPTER 2--MAY 2007

Her office was located on the far edge of Oxford,
Ohio. Today, Meghan Harting would take her time getting there.

A quiet town about a half-hour from Cincinnati,
Oxford was home to thousands of Miami University students, as well
as a smattering of local residents who observed the migration of
young adults to their hometown every autumn. As the community’s
largest source of revenue and employment, Miami had positioned
itself as a force to be reckoned with. Plus, with a greater
concentration on academics than a splashy athletic program, the
university’s football games provided an avenue for family
entertainment that remained affordable.

A visitor to the town might imagine the significant
slowdown the town must have experienced during the summer months.
But Meghan had seen it firsthand. An Oxford native, Meghan had
spent her entire life walking around campus with her dad. But these
days, she found herself on site as a non-traditional, part-time
student: part-time hours, part-time academic years, part-time class
attendance. Since childhood, her casual attitude had surfaced much
to her father’s dismay, but he had grown to accept it as a distinct
feature of her personality. Besides, with Travis Harting a
professor at the institution, Meghan’s tuition carried a hefty
discount. And perhaps she would even locate a career path in the
process.

Career direction was the least of Meghan’s concerns
at the moment, however. Today she wanted to stroll down the campus
streets and fill her lungs with a dose of medicinal life. In the
last few minutes, she had overcome a minor case of nausea
stimulated by the strange odor that filled some of the aging
buildings. She couldn’t put her finger on the cause—ointment and
cotton balls or something. She shivered at the thought of it. As
the sun’s cozy rays lathered her hair, Meghan watched green leaves
rustle from the tickle of a warm breeze. Who could rush to work on
such a May afternoon?

As Meghan wandered down a side street and past a
series of classroom buildings, red brick and Ivy Leaguish, she
noticed the roads had become less cluttered as students returned to
their hometowns after final exams. An occasional car broke the calm
as it weaved and honked its way off of university grounds,
announcing its arrival to the outside world.

Homes fated to decades of student leasing lined
Oxford’s streets. Meghan rolled her eyes at a group of howling
fraternity guys who sat on their porch steps with nothing better to
do than to flash “8.5” signs in her direction to rate her
appearance. Meghan figured they had probably just finished drinks
and pizza from the night before. She supposed they had chosen to
savor their final days of boyhood jests before a white-collar world
forced them to swap pizza-stained T-shirts for coffee-stained
neckties. Amused at the thought, she wondered how many years these
cocky guys would remain juveniles.

She shot them a look of disdain and kept walking,
eventually catching a university shuttle bus bound for the opposite
side of town.