Gorilla Beach (8 page)

Gia woke up with
a ferocious cake hangover. Bacardi plus chocolate equaled a death-by-sugar headache. Added to the throbbing skull, the shock of waking up within the cinder-block walls of her bedroom gave Gia a flashback to her short but traumatic afternoon in the Seaside Heights jail last summer. She ate three peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches while behind bars. God as her witness, Gia would never touch sugar again.

Although, an ice cream sandwich would really hit the spot.

Crawling into the living room, Gia found a note on the kitchen counter:
Went for a run. XXOO.

How the hell could Bella drink all night, then subject her body to torture? Only way Gia would go running in this heat? If Sasquatches were chasing her. What Gia needed was her instant hangover helper: a vodka-and-cranberry smoothie. She opened the fridge door, hoping the ingredients would magically appear. But the shelves were as bare as her bottom.

The plan: Get dressed. Go to the Starlite Diner for breakfast. Since Tantastic was no longer an option, she'd have to march up and down the boardwalk, looking for a job. She'd take anything. Standards? Low. Having landed and lost two dozen jobs in the last few years, Gia knew it was easier to trade up for a better job if you already had one.

Agenda settled, Gia put on a camo tube skirt, a T-shirt that said
DOWN WITH CLIMAX CONTROL,
and a pair of pink flip-flops. In the bathroom, she washed her face, brushed, flossed, and twisted her patriotic hair into a model's day-off topknot. Next, Gia's version of a five-minute face: two sets of false lashes on top, one on the bottom, black liquid liner all the way around. Pink frosty lips. Stepping back, she appraised her look in the full-length mirror. Simple yet slammin'.

One problem, though. Gia hadn't gone tanning in a week. Her skin was barely darker than a paper grocery bag. She'd planned on getting a custom full-body myst at Tantastic. Biting back a sob, Gia mourned losing a full summer of free tanning. She'd have to find a new salon. But in the meantime, she'd tide herself over with a bronzer blast.

Closing her eyes and pressing her lips closed, Gia held the tan-in-a-can spray bottle twelve inches from the tip of her nose and pressed the nozzle.

Nothing happened.

Friggin' thing. She pressed harder.

The nozzle broke off under her thumb, and the aerosol erupted, coating the cinder-block ceiling with creamy foam. It looked as if the wall were sweating cappuccino. The brown splatter rained onto the floor. Should she clean up? More to the point, like,
how
? With a wad of toilet paper, she dabbed, but that was like trying to soak up the Atlantic Ocean with a tampon.

Fuck it,
she decided. She was too hungover and hungry to deal. She'd clean up later. Or, maybe, if she ignored it hard enough, the mess would disappear. Ten minutes later, she sat down at a table at the diner. She waited for someone to take her order.

And waited.

Finally, a server noticed her. “Breakfast's over. We reopen for lunch in an hour.”

Starving and disappointed, Gia walked out, dragging her
Hello Kitty purse on the sidewalk, feeling as if she were cursed. Honestly? From the minute they arrived in Seaside, their luck had been all bad. Was destiny trying to tell her something? Gia refused to believe that.

“I'm a good person,” she said to herself. “I deserve to have a good time.”

Commitment to fun affirmed, Gia went to a food stand and bought a box of fries and a strawberry daiquiri in a plastic cup. The sun was strong. Gia would go old school—dawn-of-time old—and lie out under the sun for a tan. She headed for the beach entry ramp with her goodies.

A kid in a ramp booth stopped her. “Badge.”

“I left it in my room,” she said.

“No badge, no beach.”

Hating to sound like a name-dropping douche bag, Gia went for it anyway. “Do you know Rick Shapiro? The head lifeguard in the Seaside Heights Beach Patrol? He's a really good friend of mine.”

“Then you know he's spending the summer in Alaska.”

Shit. “I
did
know that. And he told me to tell anyone to let me on the beach until he got back.”

“I'll vouch for her,” said a familiar voice.

Gia cringed. Destiny was kicking her ass today. It was almost cruel.

Seaside Heights was pretty freakin' small, even at peak summer season. Spend an hour on the boardwalk or the beach, you'd run into just about everyone in town, including the police. Captain Morgan, officer of the law, looked pretty much the same as last summer. “You grew your mustache back,” she said. “Looks Hitlerish.”

“I had a nightmare last night that the entire town burned to the ground. I woke up in a cold sweat, and I thought, ‘Pink Slippers must be back in town.'”

He called her Pink Slippers. Long, cute story. “I promise I'm not gonna destroy Seaside this year,” she said. “I mean, I'm totally gonna destroy it. But I won't damage private property. I hope.” Last summer, she'd burned down a house. By accident!

“Stanley Crumbi told me he parked you and your cousin in a fireproof building on Hancock.”

Stanley, that scumbag! “Yeah, he's a real sweetheart.”

“I'd tell you to stay out of trouble, but we both know that's the impossible dream. I'll be keeping my eye on you. No alcohol on the beach.”

Captain Morgan ambled away. The kid in the booth smirked at her.

Oh, God damn it.
Now she had a foul taste in her mouth. She dumped the daiquiri in the trash.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. “Gia!” screamed Bella. “What the fuck? You sprayed bronzer all over the bathroom!”

“The frickin' bottle blew up in my hand. I'm suing the manufacturer! It wasn't my fault!”

“Giuseppe Troublino left a message on my cell phone. I can't face him or Tony. You have to go to the body shop and pick up the Honda.”

“But … I need a tan.”

“Get the car, then get the tan.”

Bella hung up.
Jeez, you paint the room bronze and your best friend goes apeshit.
Gia headed for Boulevard, hailed a cab, and sulked in the backseat all the way to Giuseppe's garage.

She walked through the open bay doors. The garage was what she expected. Tools, rags, grime, nudie pinup calendar on the wall. In the back, an office with a window. A car was up on the hydraulic lift. Another parked below had its hood open. No sign of the Honda, or any people. “Hello! I'm here!”

An old man rolled out from underneath a car. He was wearing jeans that were more grease than denim, a T-shirt that might've
been white in the seventies, and an American-flag bandanna around his wrinkled neck. He sat upright and wiped off his hands with an oil-saturated rag. Gia noticed that the half-moons of his fingernails were black.

When he saw Gia, though, he grinned brightly. Took a decade off his craggy face. “How can I help you?”

“Are you Tony Troublino's grandfather?”

“I prefer to call myself Anthony's handsome and virile father's father. But, yeah. Who's asking?”

“I'm Gia, Bella's cousin. I'm here about the Honda.”

Giuseppe frowned. Uh-oh. “About that, I've got some sad news. The Honda died this morning. I'm sorry. We did everything we could.”

Gia was overcome. She'd killed Bella's car! This was unforgivable. How could she ever make it up to her? “Can I see the body?” she asked. Paying her respects was the decent thing to do.

“Are you sure you're up for it?”

She nodded, and braced herself. He brought her behind the garage, to the car morgue. There was the Honda, the bumper off, side door crushed, and the roof dented.

“I told Tony last summer that this car wouldn't make it another thousand miles,” Giuseppe said. “I can give you a couple hundred for the scrap and parts.”

Jesus. One day you had wheels. The next day, you had lunch money. “Cash would be good,” she said, wiping away a single tear.

“You're very brave. If there's anything I can do …”

“Yeah.”

“My wife Tina should be in the office. She'll give you the money.”

Gia found the place all right, but instead of Tina, Tony, Bella's ex, sat at the desk. He wore Air Jordans, gray track pants, and a red tank top ironed to a neat crispness. The hair was trimmed short. His bulging, muscular arms and chest were waxed and oiled to a
fine sheen. Tony was an advertisement for the GTL lifestyle. Gia was momentarily blinded by the buff.

“You look good, Gia,” he said, smiling, standing to give her a hug. “Sorry about the Honda.”

What would she tell Bella?
“Still managing the gym?”

“Sure am,” he said. “You?”

“Currently between dead-end jobs.”

“I hear you.” He paused for a beat. “How's Bella? I'd ask her myself, but she refuses to talk to me after she dumped my ass for no friggin' reason.”

Whoa! He cut right to the heart of the matter. He must miss her bad. “You don't have a clue what you're talking about.”

He held up his hands. “Fill me in.”

Gia bit her frosted-pink lip. What to do? Bella had made her swear not to tell Tony about Aunt Marissa's cancer because Bella didn't want his pity. Gia would have told everyone she knew because that's what friends are for, right? To give you sympathy and support. But it was Bella's decision to keep her family's crisis to herself. Out of respect for Bella, Gia had to stay silent.

But the desperation on Tony's face! It'd been nine months since Bella had broken up with him, and he still didn't know why.

Gia took mercy on the poor bastard. “You know that Bella's parents sold their deli and planned to spend the money traveling in Italy, right?” He nodded. “They never left Brooklyn. Aunt Marissa went for a checkup two days before their flight, and the doctor noticed something. They postponed the trip so she could get some tests. It turned out she had cancer. She had surgery, chemo. Bella gave up her dorm room to stay home and take care of Aunt Marissa. We all pitched in, but Bella did the most. She insisted on it. Doing a double shift—school and home—would have been okay. Bella can handle just about anything. But Uncle Charlie completely freaked out. He couldn't handle the stress. When Aunt Marissa had her first surgery, he wasn't even at the hospital. He
ran off to the nearest bar and stayed for three days. When she started chemo, Uncle Charlie made excuses not to take her to her appointments. He acted like nothing was wrong, as if she was completely healthy. He yelled at Marissa if the laundry wasn't done or if dinner wasn't on the table. It was psycho.”

“Prick,” said Tony under his breath.

Gia remembered that Tony had had his share of family hardship. He'd lost his parents when he was five and was raised by Giuseppe and Tina. “That's not the worst of it. In February, Charlie left. Packed his bags and moved out. They're getting a divorce.”

Tony sucked in his breath. Fighting in families was to be expected. Treating a spouse horribly? Feeling disappointed and disillusioned? It happened in the best of marriages. But divorce? It was rare in the Italian-American community. Not so rare in the Spumanti/Rizzoli family, though. Gia's parents had divorced, too.

“Help me with the timing,” said Tony.

“Remember the day you called Bella and started yelling at her about some bullshit? Aunt Marissa had just come home from the hospital after surgery.”

“No wonder she told me to drop dead and never call her again. Why didn't she say what was really going on?”

Good question. “Bella's like her dad in some ways. He refused to acknowledge that anything was wrong. And she refused to talk about it.”

“I don't even remember what pissed me off that day, or why I went off on her. She was right to dump me. I should've been in tune with her feelings and sensed something was wrong.” Tony covered his face with his hands. “I feel like a piece of shit.”

“You have to swear not to say anything to Bella. I only told you because you looked so pathetic.”

He thought about it. And thought some more.

“Tony,” Gia warned. “You better not screw me over. Bella thinks I've got a big mouth as it is.”

“You do have a big mouth. Don't worry. I won't say anything.”

“Good. Now. Can I get two hundred dollars for the Honda?”

He mumbled, “Sure.”

“And a can of Coke from the machine?”

“Okay.”

“And a lift back to the boardwalk?”

Not a nibble after
nearly a week of job hunting. Bella must have filled out twenty job applications, from funnel-cake fryer to skee-ball ticket taker. Gia had been searching, too. No luck.

They'd burned through Giuseppe Troublino's $200 on the basics—food, vodka, beach badges, and laundry. Gia was starting to have withdrawal symptoms from tanning deprivation. To save money, Bella was attempting to cook dinners in the toaster oven.

A vacation wasn't fun when you were broke. A week in Seaside, and they'd seen the inside of only one club: the Cowboy Club. As for cocktails, they were stuck mixing their own cheap vodka cranberries in the Prison Condo. If one of them didn't find a job—any job—soon … Bella didn't want to think about it.

Bella's cell phone vibrated on the condo's living room table. She grabbed it, doing a silent prayer the call was from her future employer. “Hello?”

“It's Mrs. Stanley Crumbi. The sexually satisfied newlywed.”

Cringe. “TMI.”

“What're you girls doing tonight?”

“IDK. Making frozen pizza at the Prison Condo, I guess.”

“The Prison Condo? Come on. It's not that bad.”

“I bought a plant, to add some life to the place.”