By Tuesday, I’d sold Cousin Lucy’s furniture for seven hundred dollars, and in two days of frantic wheeling and dealing I’d raised a total of five thousand dollars in cash, most of it from my one-hundred-dollar toolshed investment. It was the biggest score I’d ever made in my picking career. I felt light-headed with my own power and success.
When my phone rang I sang out, “Hellooo.”
“Aren’t we in a happy mood,” BeBe said.
“Actually, we are,” I said. “I’ve got a seventeen-thousand-dollar stash, and I still have four or five more boxes of stuff to sell from the toolshed. I’m in the money, Babe.”
“Perfect,” she said. “What are you doing right now?”
“Getting ready to take a box of sterling silver out to a dealer at Tybee. He refuses to come into town, so I’m going out there to meet him.”
“The silver can wait,” BeBe said. “Meet me at the restaurant in half an hour.”
“I can’t,” I started to say, but she’d already hung up the phone.
I looked down at my ensemble. Cutoff army fatigue pants, a white ribbed tank top, and green flip-flops. If I went to the restaurant, I might see Daniel. I got a nice little tingling feeling thinking about Daniel.
I jumped in the shower, then, while toweling off, I tried to decide what to wear. Nothing too fancy. After all, this was just a casual drop-by. But nothing too sloppy either. No raggedy-ass shirts or threadbare cutoffs. I pulled on a pair of black Capris. Fine. Just fine. The hot pink sleeveless top would go good, but damn, my pink bra was missing in action. Black, I decided. Black would be right. I picked out a cropped black boat-neck top with three-quarter sleeves. I slid into a pair of cork-soled black slides. Dangly silver shell earrings. Nice, casual, not too horny.
It was after noon when I pulled up to Guale. I found an open space at the curb. Odd. The restaurant is usually packed at lunch.
I walked to the front door. There was a handwritten sign on the door. “Closed for Remodeling.”
Since when?
The lights were on inside, but the venetian blind on the door was pulled down. Through the slats of the blind I could see BeBe inside, standing at the reception desk, talking on the phone. I tried the door, but it was locked. I rapped on the glass.
“We’re closed,” she hollered.
“It’s me, you fool,” I hollered back. “Open up.”
She was still talking on the cell phone as she unlocked the door and waved me inside.
“All right,” she was saying. “But you understand this: if he shows up here drunk again tomorrow, I’ll cut off his balls with an oyster knife. You tell him that for me.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Painters,” she said, clicking off the phone. “Find me one sober painter in south Georgia and I’ll pay anything he asks.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s this about redecorating?”
“I’ve lost my mind,” she agreed, running her hands through her already tousled blond hair. “But yes, it’s true. Come on now, I’ve got something I want to show you.”
She went to the maître d’ stand and picked up a ring bristling with keys. I followed her outside and waited while she locked the door to Guale. Seven paces to the right, and we were standing in front of the Rose Tattoo Parlor.
There was a sign on the window: “Closed. Lost Our Fucking Lease.”
“They didn’t take it well,” BeBe said. “I’ve got to take that sign down before our customers get the wrong idea.”
“What is the idea?” I asked as she unlocked the door.
“My lounge,” she said excitedly. “Remember? Little Sisters Lounge? Isn’t it dreamy?”
She stepped inside and gestured around. “Incredible.”
“Gross,” I said. It smelled like backed-up sewage. “You can’t put a lounge in here.”
Her face fell. “I thought you, of all people, could see the possibilities.”
The floors were gummy linoleum. The dropped ceiling was water-stained and sagging. A cockroach scuttled across the floor, probably eager to make a quick escape.
“I see the possibility of multiple forms of airborne disease, starting with hepatitis A,” I said. “This place is a disaster.”
“You wait,” BeBe said. “It’ll be divine. I’ve had a vision.”
She locked up the tattoo parlor and we went back to the restaurant, where she fixed me a glass of iced tea.
“Oh.” BeBe whipped a piece of paper out of the pocket of her dress. “I’d almost forgotten. Look. This came in the mail.” It was a flyer. For the Beaulieu estate sale.
“I didn’t get one of these,” I said.
“Can you really blame them for taking you off the mailing list?” she asked. “You kind of put a damper on the last sale they tried to have.”
I read the flyer. It listed all the stuff the original advertisements listed. But not the cupboard, which hadn’t been listed the first time around.
“The cupboard might not even be there,” I told BeBe. “There are rumors floating around town. I heard Lewis Hargreaves might have already bought the best pieces.”
“Who cares?” BeBe said breezily. “If the cupboard’s there, you buy it, and make a killing on it. If it’s not, you’ve still got your stash. That’s more than enough to get your shop going.”
“But I don’t have any inventory. I’ve sold everything, even some of my own furniture, to raise money to buy the cupboard. I’d have to go out of town, maybe down to Florida, for a buying trip.”
“Stop with the gloom and doom,” she ordered, putting her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear another word.”
“Where’s Daniel?” I asked, looking around the darkened restaurant.
“You little minx!” BeBe said, looking me up and down. “I should have known you didn’t put mousse in your hair just for me. I bet you douched too. Well, you’re out of luck. He’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“On vacation,” she said, shrugging. “It’s our slow time anyway, and I’ve got to get this place painted and recarpeted, and the wall knocked down for the new lounge. So we’ve shut down for two weeks. Assuming, that is, that my painters sober up sometime soon.”
“He didn’t mention going on vacation the other day,” I said.
“I didn’t really decide to go ahead and close down until Sunday night,” BeBe said. “And what other day did you see him, may I ask?”
“Sunday,” I said, smiling at the memory of our kitchen encounter.
“Details,” she said, snapping her fingers impatiently. “I need details.”
“He bought my cousin’s bed. And now he wants me to play house,” I said dreamily.
“Horizontal?” she asked. “Was there any horizontality?”
“We were vertical,” I said. “But in a good way.”