The Boyfriend of the Month Club (5 page)

But times had changed. Florida tourism was now synonymous with Disney World and Universal Studios. Places like Weeki Wachee and Silver Springs had managed to hang on, but Six Gun Territory, like so many other roadside attractions, had been hit by a silver bullet. The gun had been in the hands of a cute little mouse with a squeaky voice, but those were the facts. The shop wasn’t so quirky anymore. It was now downright embarrassing. Pop still insisted on the billboards, but Grace had managed to convince him to let the employees wear the new standard outfit—khaki shorts or pants (if it was cold enough) and a bright aqua T-shirt with a Florida Charlie’s insignia. The Florida Charlie’s T-shirts had been Grace’s idea. Although they weren’t as popular as the Ron Jon Surf Shop T-shirts, they had been a mild success among tourists who were old enough to remember Florida Charlie’s in its heyday.

But the revamping of the employee uniform was just the tip of the iceberg. As far as Grace was concerned, the entire store needed a major overhaul, with the exception of one thing: a standing eight-foot alligator that kept watch outside the double glass doors waiting to welcome tourists. And their MasterCards and Visas and American Expresses.

The alligator had been a staple at the shop as long as Grace could remember. Currently, he was wearing his Santa costume, complete with hat and white pom-pom. When she was five, Grace had nicknamed him “Gator Claus.” No matter what time of the year it was, or what outfit he was decked out in, it was the name that had stuck, most likely since it was the costume he wore the longest. The Santa outfit went on November first and stayed on until January second. He was Gator Claus even when he was the Easter Bunny or wearing the Fourth of July Yankee Doodle costume Abuela had painstakingly sewn. The only holiday Gator Claus didn’t do was Thanksgiving. Pop always noted a slack in sales whenever he wore the pilgrim costume. Apparently, giving thanks didn’t put people in the spending mood.

Grace loved Gator Claus. Boyfriends came and went, but you could always count on a stationary eight-foot plastic alligator to be there when you needed him.

She looked up into Gator Claus’s beady glass eyes. “What’s a nice alligator like you doing in a place like this?”

No response.

Not that Grace was expecting one. Plastic alligators weren’t real. Hence they didn’t talk back. But every once in a while, if Grace concentrated very hard, she could swear Gator Claus was trying to communicate with her. The idea was unsettling. But there it was. Besides her belief in curses, it was the one other tiny blip on her logic radar.

“Yeah, I thought that was a pretty cheesy line.”

Gator Claus stared down at her with a frozen, semisardonic half-snarl/half-smile on his face.

“Don’t look at me like that! You would have walked out on Brandon too. And the beer thing was an accident. Although
Mal Genio
wishes she’d done it on purpose.”

Silence.

“I’m half Cuban, half Irish. Can I help it if I got the bad temper gene? I was defending your honor, you ingrate! They laughed at you, you know. And Pop and his orange-head commercials. One of them even called Abuela a crazy old lady.”

Gator Claus frowned.

Finally
, a response.

“I know what you’re going to say. I should have known better than to go to a bar named after a drunken bird.” Grace sighed. “Why does this keep happening to me, Gator Claus? Am I picking the wrong guys? Or . . . do you think it’s me? Do you think maybe I’m cursed?”

“Um, Grace?” a gravelly female voice asked. “Are you talking to the alligator again?”

Grace turned to see Penny Starr, the shop’s assistant manager. Penny was tall and skinny with jet-black hair that came out of a box. She wore the shop’s signature uniform—khaki shorts and aqua T-shirt. She tossed a half-smoked cigarette onto the asphalt and smashed it with the sole of her aqua high topped sneakers.

Penny was a crisis smoker. As far as Grace knew, this was Penny’s first cigarette in six months.

“What’s wrong?” Grace asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Grace raised a brow.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the one talking to a dead reptile.”

“Gator Claus was never alive. He’s plastic.” Grace paused. “Penny, do you think talking to the alligator means I’m crazy?”

“No, but it definitely makes you weird. You’d only be crazy if you expected him to answer you.” Penny’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t expect him to answer, do you?”

“Not exactly.”

Penny took in Grace’s dress and mud-caked stilettos. “I thought you had a hot date tonight.”

“If you don’t have to talk about it, then neither do I.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “I closed the shop early. I didn’t think you’d mind. We haven’t had a customer in the last hour.”

“You mean the world’s largest alligator tooth isn’t bringing them in by the carloads?”

“Actually, I had a few people ask to see it. They were kind of disappointed when I showed it to them.”

“Isn’t that a surprise.”

“Your dad dropped by this evening right after you left. He told me he wanted the alligator tooth displayed up front in a glass case, by the cash registers.”

“Sunscreen and visors go by the cash registers, Pen. They’re our biggest sellers. Don’t worry, I’ll handle Pop.”

“Okay,” Penny said, but she looked unconvinced. “We’re about to start the book club meeting. Sarah brought oatmeal cookies and Ellen brought vodka. We can raid the fresh-squeezed orange juice section and make screwdrivers.”

“Sounds like a plan. What are we discussing tonight?”

“
The Great Gatsby.
Did you read it? It was on the list.”

“I must have read it in high school. And I’m pretty certain I’ve seen the movie. Robert Redford, right?”

“High school for you was thirteen years ago. And watching the movie is
not
the same as reading the book. The movie version always sucks. Unless it’s like
Gone With the Wind
or
The Wizard of Oz
or something.”

“Can’t we pretend I read it? Just for tonight?”

“I won’t tell on you. But Ellen might figure it out.”

Ellen Ames taught English at Daytona State College. She was forever trying to get them to figure out the theme or the recurring motifs of a book. Ellen could talk about theme for hours. Grace just liked to go around in a circle and have everyone give the book a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

She opened the front door to the store and was welcomed by a blast of delicious cold air-conditioning. Pop insisted on keeping the store’s thermostat at seventy degrees. The temperature outside was probably only in the low seventies, not untypical for early November in central Florida, but the humidity was still high. The air-conditioning felt like heaven.

“Pen, do you ever wish it would like . . . snow or something?”

Penny gave her an odd look. “What’s with you tonight?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me why you’ve started smoking again.”

“I already told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That means we don’t have anything to talk about then. Right?”

“Right.”

Grace bit back a retort. The thing was, she
did
want to talk about it. Spilling your guts to Gator Claus was only partially liberating. Sometimes it was nice to actually get a real response.

They snaked their way through the T-shirt racks to the back of the store where Sarah and Ellen were setting up folding chairs in the Hemingway corner. At least, that’s what Pop liked to call it. In reality, it was a mismatched little section filled with books mostly featuring anything to do with Florida—from cooking to architecture to the history of the space shuttle. But the corner’s crowning glory was an entire row of novels written by Hemingway. Ernest might not have been born in the sunshine state but he was Pop’s favorite author. Pop could quote from
The Old Man and the Sea
as easily as Grace could quote Carrie from
Sex and the City
. As far as Grace was concerned, the Hemingway corner was two hundred square feet of wasted space. Tourists weren’t looking to stop on their way to Disney and buy a book about Florida or a novel they were forced to read in high school.

They wanted cheap T-shirts, sunscreen, and hats. But trying to convince Pop of that was like trying to keep your hair from frizzing in the middle of a July afternoon.

Sarah was popping a cookie in her mouth when she spotted Grace. “I thought you had a hot date,” she said, her voice muffled by crumbs. Sarah Douglas née Riley had been Grace’s best friend since the first day of first grade at St. Bernadette’s Catholic School, where they’d had the honorary distinction of being the tallest and the shortest girl in class. They’d been in Girl Scouts together, had plucked each other’s eyebrows for the first time, and had been college roommates at Florida State. Grace had also been Sarah’s maid of honor two years ago at her wedding to Craig the Cad, as well as the first person to know of their impending divorce. Sarah was an interior designer and always looked perfect, even now with her mouth stuffed full of high-calorie baked goods.

Ellen wrinkled her nose. “Does it smell like beer in here?”

“That would be me.” Grace grabbed a handful of the oatmeal cookies. “Brandon spilled beer on the dress.” She gave Sarah an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I’ll have it dry-cleaned.”

Sarah’s blue eyes widened. “He spilled beer on you? I thought you were going to Chez Louis!”

“She doesn’t want to talk about it,” Penny said.

Grace stuffed two cookies into her mouth.

There was an awkward silence before Ellen said, “Maybe we should just start the book club meeting. I’ve been looking forward to discussing
The Great Gatsby
all month.”

The Florida Charlie’s book club had been formed three years ago after Grace decided she and Penny needed to inject some culture into their otherwise glamorous life of selling plastic seashells. The addition of Sarah was a given. And Ellen, whom Grace and Sarah had both known since high school, was an obvious match for the group. They’d started out with seven members. Then last year, Ellen (who had somehow taken over as their unspoken leader) switched the focus off popular book club selections to traditional literary classics. “How can we understand literature if we don’t have a proper foundation?” she’d said. Gradually, the three other members had dropped out and now it was just the four of them.

They each took a seat. Ellen pulled a legal pad from her satchel and balanced it across her lap. Ellen always insisted on taking notes. She claimed it enhanced the book club experience. “Penny, would you like to—”

“I hated the book,” Penny blurted.

Ellen looked like she’d just been smacked up the side of her head with a two-by-four. “How can you hate it? It’s considered one of the most beautiful pieces of literature!”

“By who? A bunch of dried-up old men? You asked what I thought of it and I told you. Isn’t that the purpose of the club? To discuss what we did and didn’t like?”

Ellen frowned. “All right,” she conceded. “But you just can’t say you hate it. You have to tell us
exactly
why you didn’t like it. And be specific in your examples.”

Grace sighed. This was Ellen going into English teacher mode again.

“Okay, I’ll be specific. I hated the ending,” Penny said.

“It had to end that way!” Ellen said. “Fitzgerald had no choice.”

“Sure he did. Old Daisy could have been the one who ended up with a bullet instead of that sad sack Gatsby. Man, what a loser.”

“I’m with Penny,” said Sarah. “All that production just to impress a woman like Daisy? She’s the kind of twit who gives women a bad name.”

“But don’t you
see
? That’s the whole tragedy of it! Gatsby’s love for Daisy drove him to ruin. Fitzgerald was trying to make a correlation between Gatsby’s dream of Daisy and the corruption of society.” Ellen began scribbling in her notepad. “What did you think of the book, Grace?”

A fuzzy image of Robert Redford in a white tuxedo popped into Grace’s head. “I have to agree with Penny and Sarah. Gatsby was a loser. But he sure knew how to dress.”

Ellen stopped writing. “What do you mean?”

Sarah gave Grace a warning look.

“Um, you know, there was all that great description about his clothes. He had great style. Isn’t that why they called him the Great Gatsby?”

Sarah started to giggle.

“You didn’t read the book, did you?” Ellen said. “You’re going off the movie version. Just like you did in September when we discussed
The Last of the Mohicans
.”

“I already admitted I didn’t read
The Last of the Mohicans
,” Grace said, starting to feel testy. How many times was Ellen going to bring that up? “Sorry, but two hours of watching Daniel Day-Lewis without his shirt on was a lot better way to spend a night than reading that boring book. So maybe I did see the movie version of
The Great Gatsby
, but I promise you, I read the book too.” She nudged Sarah’s crossed legs with the edge of her muddy stilettos. “We read it in Mrs. Schumaker’s class, back in eleventh grade, didn’t we?”

“That was the week of swim team tryouts so I think you read the CliffsNotes instead,” Sarah said.

Grace blinked. “Oh, yeah, I remember now.”

Ellen slapped the legal pad against her knee, startling them all. In another lifetime, Ellen would have made a terrific nun. “What’s the point of a having a book club if we aren’t really going to read the books?”

“I’ve read some of the books,” Grace said hotly. “Like
Little Women
. I loved that book!” She’d also loved the movie version starring Wynona Ryder and Christian Bale. But how Jo could have turned down Laurie’s proposal still puzzled her.

“Maybe we aren’t reading the right books,” Sarah suggested gently.

“We could read
Wuthering Heights
again,” said Ellen. “That was one we all agreed we liked.”
Wuthering Heights
was Ellen’s favorite book, mainly because she thought Heathcliff was the perfect romantic hero. Personally, Grace found Heathcliff to be a little on the psycho side.