Harbor Street runs perpendicular to the shoreline, and it runs in front of Pete’s on the Beach. All of us girls park our cars in the lot a block away, and when we leave, we do so in a group to make sure we are all safe. The heat is heavy in the air, even so early in the spring. The smell of the sea—of the salt and sea life and the seaweed that sometimes rolls up on the sand—is thick in the air and feels like a pressure against my skin. There is always dampness in the air, the spray of water that moves inland from the beach. I’ve given up on controlling my hair and just braid it now, every night, so it doesn’t grow bigger as the night passes, developing curls that I haven’t had since I was a small child. The salty air settles in my hair and mists my skin. Harbor Street is barely more than a paved lane, with no sidewalks along the edges, just tumbled white rock and scrub grass. The lawns that break out from these shaggy grasses are trimmed and manicured and treated to daily sprinklings at sunrise.
The neon signs glow from the Pete’s blackened windows, Budweiser King of Beers, High Life, Corona, Tecate, Open. It’s Thursday night, and Billy Reed and his band are playing. They are a good rock-and-roll band with lots guitar and drums. Billy, the lead guitarist, does all the singing, and he has a raspy voice, likely from too many cigarettes and songs. He is dark haired and lean, and every time his band plays, I can’t get Warren out of my mind.
Warren must be doing good, playing for the MTV Bash and all. I hadn’t noticed the name of the band he was with, and I have never looked for information on him. I let him go before I came here, and he is less than a stranger to me. He looked drugged-up and strung out on that stage, in the split second when I actually looked at him. Skinny in the way of addicts. I push him out of my mind. He is probably dead by now. He’s his own kind of trouble.
Billy Reed is in his forties, and by day, he is an accountant. He’s been married and divorced at least four times, and currently he is working on making Molly his next bride—or at least his next conquest. Molly is thirty-three, and she tends the bar because she likes to keep a handle on the booze. She has dark-brown hair that she, like me, usually wears in a braid. Her eyes are brown, and her thin lips draw apart often into an easy smile. She came to California from Kentucky and still holds on to her Southern accent, and I suspect it is more pronounced now than when she lived back in Kentucky. Her accent is part of her identity now, not just a manner of speaking. She spent some time in LA before moving to Oceanside. Molly dates a lot of men and a few women. Molly does exactly who and what she wants when she wants. So far, Billy is not on that list, but he is working hard to get there.
“Hey, Mol,” I say, grabbing my apron from behind the counter and punching my time card. She nods but doesn’t stop her conversation with a patron. I step through to the bathroom and take off the loose jeans and t-shirt, folding them into a square. I peel down the skirt, which I had just hitched up under the jeans—it is so stretchy and tight that there wasn’t even a bulge. It lands at my mid-thigh, and the shirt stops just above the waist of my skirt and gives a peekaboo of my stomach. The shirt is a white, sleeveless mock turtleneck. I give myself a look in the mirror, then stash my cover clothes in a cubbyhole under the bar.
“Janine called in. Theresa’s in the back, and Annie is going to be late.” Molly is busy serving up drinks and barely glances at me as she speaks. Janice often calls in, and Annie is almost always late. But between Theresa, Janice, and me, we usually manage pretty well. I make my way through the bar, picking up drinks and wiping down tables.
“Jade!” The word ricochets around me, meaning nothing until a hand touches my arm. I turn to find a statuesque woman with large, almond-shaped eyes. She is familiar, but the way a picture in a magazine is familiar, and it isn’t until she stands to her full height, towering above me that my memory begins to unlock. I suddenly remember the picture hung above the sofa in her living room, the arc of her back, the curve of her hip, the sweep of her hair. Sage, the beautiful woman I had met at the first party I ever went to with Cici in Escondido. She is elegant and beautiful as always, her sleek, black hair shimmering, reflecting lights throughout the bar.
“I thought that was you,” she says.
I click my mouth shut, reconciling her being here.
“Hi!” I finally say, and the word sounds foreign and wrong on my tongue. I clear my throat and try again. “Hi. Sage, right?” She nods. “Wow, great to see you.”
She leans in and gives me a hug and a little air kiss at my cheek. I am astonished that she would recognize me after all of this time; it was almost a year ago that I’d met her, and then only the one time.
“Look at you, showing some skin,” she says, like I’ve accomplished something, like I have managed to do something great. She could be saying, “Wow, you got your master’s degree,” she is so proud of me, but I don’t feel proud about my skin showing and have to restrain myself from pulling the little shirt down to cover my waist.
“Yeah,” I say, swallowing a lump rising in my throat. “You alone?” I ask, glancing near her to see if Cici might be with her, not that I think they were that close, but the pieces of my life are bumping into each other, and I never like that.
“No, silly.” She taps her fingertips on my bare arm, letting her fingers slip down it. She has enormous hands with long, narrow fingers and gleaming polish on her nails. Of course, she isn’t alone. “John is here. He likes this band.” She rolls her eyes, and there is so much of Cici in the eye roll that I almost jerk away from her touch.
“Oh.” I glance around and see him up at the bar, getting a drink. I almost want to ask about Cici, to know she is okay, but then I remember why I don’t care. “Well, hey, if you need anything, let me know.” I hold up the corner of my apron, and her eyes get big.
“Oh, like, you’re working here? I thought you were, uh, modeling or something.”
“Yeah, I was.” My nose crinkles, and I offer her a smile, my “I’m working for you, baby, leave a good tip” smile. Then I shrug past her and take a glass from a table. My face burns as I wonder what she knows. Does she know about the MTV party and what happened there?
Annie shows up about twenty minutes late, spinning like a cyclone. Like me and Molly, Annie is a transplant from the Midwest. She came as soon as she hit eighteen and has been here for three years. She just turned twenty-one. She is high energy from the word go, and I don’t know that it is all natural. Her white-blond hair is flat to her head, like a skull cap, the bangs and sides gelled to points, making her face look enveloped by seething white flame. Her eyes are lined by dark pencil, and her lips glisten red and lush from a tube of L’Oreal. Annie has a thousand-watt smile that rarely leaves her face. She has a bright and vivacious personality that can’t be hidden beneath her makeup. She makes no excuses for being late, just bustles in and sets to work, swirling through the room and making up for time lost.
Later, when I pass through the room delivering drinks, John has returned, but doesn’t look at me as I pause at his table. “Tecate and lime, please.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the band, into his music,
“Sure thing, John.” I turn to Sage but feel his eyes snapping to me. I smile to see his reaction. His mouth gapes.
“Ali! You . . .” He stammers. “What the hell happened to you?” He puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes.
“Good to see you.”
“Where you been?” A crease furrows his brow. “Last I heard you were in Mexico with Dom. Then just . . . poof.”
“Yeah, I’m taking a break.”
“Did something happen in Mexico?” He leans close.
“No! Mexico was great.”
“You’re so thin.” Sage leans in, not comfortable outside of the conversation.
“Thanks. I’m practicing the Karis Wooland method.” She doesn’t understand but says I’ll have to share it with her.
“It’s easy. You just don’t eat. Anything.”
“When you’re ready to come back, let me know.” I nod as if I will, but I think I’m finished trading on my looks.
When I make my way back to their table several minutes later and hand them drinks, Sage asks, “Did you hear about Cici and Amber?”
I shake my head. A small knot grows in my stomach. What does it mean that she is asking me about Cici? Is she gone? Has something happened to her? I open my mouth to ask but close it again and raise my eyebrows.
“They’re in Vegas, doing the showgirl thing.”
“That’s awesome.” I nod, smiling but not meaning it. “Sounds like the life.”
“She’s gonna burn out.” Sage says, tapping her nose, “She can’t stay clean.”
“Last I heard, they had hooked up with an agent by the name of Zyke. He’s got a decent reputation. Mostly works out of the Tropicana, if I remember right. He’ll get them some work,” John says, looking back up to the band.
By the time Billy’s band closes out their last set for the night, my ears are ringing, John and Sage have built up a hefty tab, even with the round I didn’t put in, and I pass the check to them as I make my way around the room, clearing tabs with all the people I took as mine tonight. The room is hot and acrid with the smell of perfumes sweated off, left to linger on the motionless air. It’s nearing two o’clock, and Molly calls from behind the bar that it’s ten minutes to closing time. The revelers and drunks begin to wend their way into the night. Some of them cross over to the beach, to lie in the sand and make out, or to just sit and watch the roaring waves until the alcohol evaporates out of their blood enough to allow safe passage home. I make my way through the vacating bar, gathering empties and swiping the rings of sweat that have collected from the bases of the glasses on the black-lacquered tabletops.
A touch on my arm draws me around, and I stand face to face with Sage. Her cheeks are flushed with the exertion of the dancing and the heat of the room. She is more beautiful than even the first time I saw her. Whatever lipstick she’d been wearing has faded off, but her lips are still red, ripe.
“Hey, it was great to see you again,” she says, letting her hand slide down my arm like she had done earlier.
“Good to see you, too.” I smile. She is drunk, and in the I love you phase.
“Do you work Sunday?”
I shake my head.
“Good, come to our house. We’re having people over. It’ll be fun.” Her short sentences are abrupt, softened only by the smile on her face and the small gasps of breath as she recovers from the last wild dance. “It’ll be like old times.”
I purse my lips and give her my best I’m sorry look. “Yeah, I can’t make it.” I am not ready to be back amongst people in a social way. It is easier to stay in my little basement apartment, healing, than to try to go back to where I started.
“Try. Cici might be there. I know she’d love to see you. It’s been so long. It’ll be fun.”
I’m stunned that she thinks having Cici there would make it more appealing. But of course, Sage may not know what has happened. Then again, knowing Cici, she might have sent Sage on this mission to invite me. Is Cici trying to reconnect after all this time? Has she realized what a horrible friend she was and she is too embarrassed to find me herself?
Sage is still feeling the thrill of the music. “Come on, come on. Say you’ll come. John will be SO disappointed if you don’t.”
I feel manipulated and start putting up the walls a little faster. “Thanks for the offer. I’ll see what I can do.”
She reaches over, her arm encircling my neck, and before I realize it, she plants a warm, friendly kiss on my cheek. “John will be thrilled,” she purrs. I stand for a second, seeing John through the crowd, coming our way from where he has stopped to say something to Billy. “He likes to keep the girls he discovers close.”
My skin crawls, and I step away from Sage. I never got a creepy vibe from John until Sage said that.
John rejoins Sage, and I hear her say, “She says she’ll try to come.”
“Good,” he says, “I hope she does.”
I work my way back to the bar, bussing tables as I go. I don’t see Sage and John leave, but I know they are gone because the small prickles down my arm have faded. There is no way in hell I am going to be counted as one of his discoveries.
I help with the counting of the till, and we pass all the receipts over to Markus and Molly, the owners, and our waitressing group of three walks out the door together and down the street to our cars. I can’t help but scan up and down the street, looking for signs of Cici’s black Thunderbird.