Wavehouse by Alice Kaltman

Author:Alice Kaltman [Kaltman, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2018-08-30T19:16:20+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

The post-lunch crowd began to descend at 1 p.m. The shop filled with whiny kids drawn to the most breakable and expensive Shellys. I wanted to tell everyone to go back to their hotel rooms, turn on their AC’s and take nice, long family naps. I was fried and starving, and felt now that it had been stupid not to have taken Sara’s offer of a lunch break. Now a break was impossible because Shellys, towels, and sweatshirts were flying off the shelves. We were raking it in—it seemed like people couldn’t buy enough. With Sara manning the over-active cash register, I had to pick up discarded sunglasses, re-fold towels, re-stack flip-flops in size order and, most importantly, catch kid-handled Shellys before they crashed to the floor.

At two, Myra arrived—or at least it looked vaguely like Myra.

“Um…hi,” I said slowly. “What exactly are you wearing?”

It wasn’t that Myra was wearing anything particularly outlandish, but her outfit, which was so normal for Kendall’s Watch, was so abnormal for Myra. Instead of her usual flouncy skirt and pedal pushers, Myra now boasted a pair of super tiny, tight red board shorts. Gone were the quasi-old lady orthopedic sandals with the bows that she loved to wear in summer, and instead she wore a pair of flip-flops—footwear she was continually telling me led to fallen arches and back problems. It was her tee shirt, however, that really caught my eye—a cropped pink number featuring a goofy cartoon surfer on the front with a word bubble coming out of his mouth that said, “Surf’s up, Dude!”

Myra frowned. “I thought I would try and tone it down for our talk with Jimmy.” There was something odd about the way she was standing—all tight, with shoulders hunched and knees locked. “Dress like the natives.”

“But you look so, um, uncomfortable.” And totally doofus-y, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

“You’re right,” she sighed. “These stupid shorts are about to cut off my circulation.”

“It’s just so totally not you.”

“What do you mean?” Myra asked, tugging at the bottom of her tee shirt.

“You look better in your own clothes,” I said. “Myra-type clothes.”

“Argh. What was I thinking?” she cried. “I’m gonna go home right now and forget the whole thing.”

“Well, let’s not forget the whole thing; let’s just postpone it, okay? Besides, it’s a madhouse in here and I probably shouldn’t leave, even just to go across the street.”

“Okay. Tomorrow then?”

Word on the street must have been that we were giving stuff away for free—the shop was so packed. “I might be stuck here if it’s like this tomorrow. Can we play it by ear?”

“Sure,” Myra said brightly, the tiny furrow in her brow betraying her disappointment.

“I’ll really try. I promise. I’ll call you either way. Just don’t come dressed like that.”

“Don’t worry,” Myra sighed. “Momentary insanity. Won’t happen again. See you later.”

“Yeah, see you later. And Myra, that comb you have stuck in your hair?”

“What about it?”

“It’s a comb for scraping old, dirty surf wax off a surfboard.

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