I waited until we were out of Harry’s line of vision to ask the question burning in my feverish little brain. “So,” I said, drawing BeBe closer. “What’s going on with you two? You looked pretty cozy when I walked in on you back there.”
BeBe stopped dead in her tracks. “Nothing! Nothing’s going on with us. Give me a break, Weezie. I’d just escaped assault by this lunatic, and I was hysterical. Harry was just trying to calm me down. God! The man works for me, you know.”
“I know,” I said, grinning. “But the two of you have been practically living together for weeks now. It was inevitable.”
“Stop looking at me like that!” she demanded. “There is nothing going on between me and Harry Sorrentino. You, of all people, should know better. He is so totally not my type that it doesn’t even bear discussing.”
“BeBe, when it comes to men, everything bears discussing. Anyway, I think he’s adorable.”
“He’s too old,” BeBe said. We were approaching the unit I’d been working on all afternoon. BeBe had her hand on the doorknob.
“He’s not old at all,” I protested. I clamped my hand over hers, to keep her from spoiling my surprise. “How old do you think he is?”
“I feel sure he’s pushing fifty,” BeBe said. “It’s obscene to even think about it. Are you going to let me in there now? So we can stop discussing this ridiculous subject?”
“No,” I said, blocking the doorway. “I bet Harry’s not even forty yet. He just looks older because he’s one of those rugged outdoors types. Not like all those pretty boys you usually go for.”
“Pretty boys!” BeBe exclaimed. “All the men I’ve ever been involved with have been totally virile. Maybe a little on the young side—unfortunately, where Reddy was concerned. Anyway, you never met Reddy, so it’s not fair for you to make any generalization at all concerning him.”
“Daniel told me all about him,” I said. “And if I had met Reddy, you can bet I would have warned you against him. I know his type. BeBe, forgive me for saying so, but he’s the kind you always fall for. Handsome, slick, sophisticated. Style over substance. Maybe you should vary the menu a little? Considering your unfortunate history with that type?”
“I think I should just skip men altogether, after my last unfortunate involvement,” BeBe admitted. “Hey, can we just look at the room now?”
“Close your eyes first,” I ordered. “I want you to take it all in at once.”
“Ridiculous,” she muttered. But she closed her eyes anyway, and I opened the door and gave her a gentle push.
“Now open,” I said.
“Oh my,” BeBe said, stepping farther inside.
Her reaction was a letdown. I’d been planning this room ever since the first day I’d seen the Breeze Inn. Even before that, from the first time I’d seen my favorite Elvis Presley movie, Blue Hawaii.
“We’ll call it the Tiki Suite,” I told her. “Do you love it?”
“Wow,” was all she said. “Where’d you get all this stuff?”
“I’ve been buying Hawaiiana for ages,” I told her. “But I never had a place to put it till now. It’s not the kind of stuff I can sell in the shop. It’s a little over the top.”
I pointed out the four-poster bed, which was made up of huge bamboo poles, nailed and lashed together with raffia strips. “Daniel copied this from an old movie still. I added the palmetto thatching on the top. Kind of my take on Tybee on the Pacific.”
BeBe pinched the gauzy fabric of the bed curtains. “This is nice.”
“It’s the cheapest unbleached muslin I could find. I got the bolt for twenty bucks. Then I washed it in really hot water and draped it while it was still damp, so it would keep that crinkly look.”
She ran her hand over the bed’s hand-stitched coverlet, which was a brilliant splash of tropical color against the limeade-colored walls.
“Mama made that,” I told her. “I’ve been buying old Hawaiian shirts for ages at thrift stores and yard sales. I think she did a nice job, even if she did claim all those clashing prints were starting to make her hallucinate.”
“It’s wonderful,” BeBe said. “An heirloom.”
“If you decide to sell the place, I’m taking that quilt back.”
“Indian giver.” She drifted into the bathroom, and broke out laughing.
“Honest to goodness, Weezie,” she said, her voice echoing off the tile walls. “Only you could have thought of this. I love it. I really do. It’s nothing like I expected. Nothing I ever thought I’d like, but I could move in here tomorrow.”
I poked my head around the bathroom doorway. She pointed at the grass hula skirt I’d hot-glued to the edge of the pedestal sink. “Where on earth did you get that?”
“Thank God for Chu’s department store,” I told her. “I picked up all the Chinese paper lanterns in the bedroom there too. And the seashells I hot-glued around the mirror frame.”
She burst out laughing again when she spotted what was hung over the bathtub.
It was a matted and framed album cover. Don Ho’s Tiny Bubbles.
“The inspiration for the whole room,” I told her. “I’ve been looking for it for years, and I finally resorted to an online auction. It just came in the mail today.”
She gave me a hug. “I love it. I can never repay you for everything you’ve done around here. You and Daniel. And yeah, even Harry. You guys literally saved my life.”
“I haven’t even come close to paying you back for everything you did to help get me through my divorce and then that mess with Caroline DeSantos,” I said, squirming out of her grasp. “And as for Harry, I think you need to relax your standards a little bit. Hell, just relax in general. That one’s a keeper, babe.”
She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. “I am not interested in Harry Sorrentino. I am not interested in any man right now. I am only interested in wringing some profits out of this money pit so I can sell it and get back to my real life downtown.”
Speaking of keepers, we could both hear Harry’s voice booming from across the parking lot. “BeBe!” he hollered. “You’ve got a phone call in the office.”
She went to the door, stuck out her head and hollered back, “Can I call them back later?”
“It’s some woman who says she’s calling long distance from Vero Beach, Florida. Says she’s returning your call.”
“I’ll be right there,” BeBe yelled, and she took off running with a speed I didn’t know she possessed.
I walked around the room, picking up the tacky pottery tiki mugs and putting them back down again, straightening the shades of the tiki-god lamps, and just generally fluffing the place up. And then I stretched out on the Hawaiian-shirt-covered bed and yawned. I plugged in the strand of twinkle lights I’d woven through the palmetto bed canopy and smiled. Maybe Daniel and I would need to spend a night here ourselves. I could see us toasting each other with mai tais on the little porch. I drifted off to sleep thinking about my own adventures in paradise.