Chapter One
Some people lead lives under a dark cloud. Others, under a lucky star. As far as I could tell, my life was under the control of a sadist brandishing a cattle prod and a whoopee cushion.
***
The plane from Frankfurt, Germany wobbled erratically as it hit heavy turbulence just north of Orlando. My drooping head lurched forward, and I startled myself awake with a piggish snort. I shot an apologetic smile at the man wedged in the seat next to me.
“Sorry. I must have dozed off for a second.”
“Right. Lady, that snore of yours could put a jackhammer to shame.”
I shrunk back in my seat and groaned. My feet hadn’t even touched the ground back in the US, and already I’d had my first rude awakening. What else should I have expected? My whole life to date had been akin to one long, never-ending, rude awakening.
But all that was about to change.
After all, it was New Year’s Eve.
I glanced around at the other bleary-eyed passengers around me. They probably had their minds on fresh beginnings, too. As for me, I had no other choice. The past I’d just fled was still too raw and painful to touch. I studied the pale strip of flesh encircling my now-naked ring finger. The ghostly reminder of yet another failed attempt at love sent a hot jolt of desperation racing through my gut.
A puff of jaded air forced its way between my pursed lips, like steam from a relief valve. I needed a good cry. But this was not the time or place for it. To distract myself, I decided to count my blessings.
One decimated pocketbook. Two cottage-cheese thighs. Three maladjusted ex-husbands.... Crap!
Whoever was running the show up there had a wicked sense of humor – and I was getting darn tired of being the punchline. I scrounged around for my powder compact and opened it, intent on repairing my makeup after the nine-hour flight. One glance in the mirror at my worn-out face made me snap it shut.
Why bother?
In forty-five years, I’d accumulated a good portion of wrinkles, a fair amount of belly fat, and, apparently, precious little wisdom. These questionable assets, along with $5,726 and a suitcase full of inappropriate clothes, were all I had left to launch my latest life makeover. I slumped back into my seat. I was bone-dragging tired. Even so, a wry grin snuck across my lips, like a stolen kiss from a stranger.
I was not defeated. Not yet, anyway.
The way I saw it, I still had two viable options. One, I could finally learn to laugh at myself. Or two, I could drink myself into oblivion.
I fished around the bottom of my purse for a coin to determine my fate. I flipped a tarnished nickel into the air. It did a triple gainer, plunged into my coffee cup, and splashed a nasty brown stain onto the crotch of my white stretch pants.
Awesome. Let the festivities begin.
***
My last life makeover had begun a little over seven years ago, and had turned out to be a spectacular, downward spiral akin to diving off a cliff with a bowling ball in my pants. Drowning in dullness and fueled by movie-inspired stupidity, I’d ditched a tiresome marriage and lucrative writing career, sold all my belongings, and took off for Europe.
In Italy, I’d met a German and fell in love with the idea of life with a stranger in a strange land. Things had been great for a while. But then the shiny wore off and the cracks showed up…like they always did.
On my arrival back in St. Petersburg, Florida, I’d quickly discovered that seven wasn’t such a lucky number. In fact, seven years abroad had been just exactly long enough for my entire credit history to be erased – just like most of my money. I’d gotten off the plane in Tampa with no driver’s license. No place to live. No credit card. No phone. No job. And, worst of all, no friends.
Incredibly, I’d somehow managed to become a foreigner in my own homeland.
As a lifelong lover of irony, I’d had to shake my head in wonder at my own warped ingenuity.
How many other people on the planet could claim such a monumental screw-up?
Over the next few weeks, my solo climb back aboard the American dream had required counting pennies and swallowing more than just pride. After that, I’d had to scrounge around for a tire jack and lower my expectations to half a notch above gutter level. That’s how I ended up in a “no credit check” hovel of an apartment, living a “no foreseeable future” scrabble of a life.
A few months into what I’d sarcastically dubbed “my adjustment period,” I’d been contemplating a Smith & Wesson retirement plan when something unforeseeable happened.
I met an old woman named Glad.
I’d been in desperate need of a life coach. Glad had fit the bill perfectly. The fact that she was a crazy, homeless woman had been the icing on the cake.
I could afford her fees.
Chapter Two
St. Petersburg only had two seasons – summer and not-summer-yet. It was not-summer-yet, but just barely. I first met Glad on May 10, 2009. I remember because I was trying to make the most of “the end of days.” I called the first two weeks of May that because anybody with any sense (translation, not a tourist or a transplant), didn’t venture out in the Florida sun between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. from the middle of May to the end of October. Not if they could help it, that is. And with no job at the time, I could help it.
As usual, I was determined to get to Sunset Beach early that Sunday. Not just to beat the heat, but the five-dollar parking fee as well. If I got there before the lot attendant, I could sneak into the lot at Caddy’s, my favorite beach bar.
Sunset Beach was attractive to me for three reasons. One, it was gorgeous – sugar-white sand and water the color of a fresh robin’s egg. Two, the tourists hadn’t discovered it yet. And three, it was the only local strip of beach that allowed open containers (aka BYOB alcohol). Caddy’s bar sat right on gorgeous Sunset Beach, sandwiched between a patch of virgin sand dunes and a recently erected, three-story McMansion the color of pumpkin puke.
In stunning contrast to the prissy new house, Caddy’s was pure, relaxed, old-school Florida. To be honest, it wasn’t much more than an old beach shack with a front porch and a rooftop deck scabbed onto it with bent nails and duct tape. The bottom floor facing the Gulf didn’t even have an exterior wall. If it rained hard or the temperature dropped below sixty-five degrees, the easy-going folks at Caddy’s would unfurl plastic flaps like tent windows against the inclement weather.
But on good days, which were most days, there’d be nothing between Caddy’s tipsy patrons and the turquoise Gulf of Mexico but a hundred feet of squeaky, blindingly white sand. Caddy’s fit right in with its laid-back vibe, good food, live music, and full liquor bar. Being a native Floridian, I appreciated that it wasn’t a tiki bar. After all, this was not freaking Hawaii.
When I got to the beach that Sunday morning, I’d planned on getting in a stroll before the humidity turned the air to soup and the sun heated that soup to steam. I even thought about splurging for breakfast at one of Caddy’s picnic tables on the beach afterward. But, being a loner and on a budget as tight as last year’s jeans, I decided against it.
I got lucky and pulled into the lot in time to avoid the attendant. I slipped off my flip-flops and shorts and put them on the floorboard of Shabby Maggie, my 1963 Ford Falcon Sprint convertible.
Maggie was the perfect car for me. Modern vehicles all looked the same. I couldn’t have told a Prius from a Pontiac to save my life. But older cars like Maggie had style. With her curvy, Batmobile rear-end, cherry-red upholstery and Wimbledon-white exterior, Maggie was a classic beauty. All the nicks and dents and faded spots reminded her she’d seen better days. Boy, could I relate.
As I reached into the backseat for my beach bag and chair, a loud wolf whistle rang out over the rumble of a diesel engine. I didn’t waste the energy to look up. Instead, my head shook in sympathy for the desperate soul who’d found the sight of my flabby butt in a bathing suit worth that much effort. I snorted a laugh, hoisted my beach chair under one arm, hooked my bag over the other, and picked my way across the crushed-shell parking lot.
It was Mother’s Day. Not being a mother myself, or having one I was keen to celebrate, I planned to let the day go by as unnoticed as possible.
As I reached the white picket fence leading out to the beach, I spied an old woman lying on a lounger a good fifty feet from the shoreline. I’d seen her there countless times over the last few months. She was a wiry, leather-skinned old bat who, had I met on the street, I’d have labeled a bag lady. But there at the beach she fit right in.
Maybe stripping down to a bathing suit somehow leveled the playing field.
From outward appearances, the old woman reminded me a lot of my friend Berta, a crusty old psychologist from New York. We’d shared some laughs together in Italy, and she’d helped me get through some tough times in Germany. Before she’d died, Berta had warned me about making friends with strangers. I hadn’t heeded her advice then, but I was trying to now. Heaven knew I couldn’t afford another disastrous mistake.
The old woman always set up camp near the same wispy clump of sea oats, so it had been easy to avoid her so far. That Sunday, however, my luck finally ran out. The wind blew sand in my eye, and as I fumbled along trying to get it out, I wandered blindly within earshot of her.
“Nice toe rings,” she croaked in a scarred, toady voice that perfectly matched her appearance.
Sprawled out on a pink, plastic beach lounger, she reminded me of one of those dried-up frogs you can still find now and then in politically incorrect souvenir shops.
I was running on just one cup of coffee that morning, so it took a moment to realize she was talking to me. I sighed and wiped my eye again.
“Thanks.”
I turned to take a step toward the water, but the old woman wasn’t having it.
“Wanna beer?”
She grinned at me from under a pink Gilligan hat. Her oversized dentures looked clownish, wedged between two wide smears of bright-red lipstick.
“It’s Sunday, you know. They ain’t servin’ booze ’til ’leven today.”
Her salty-sweet Southern accent had a familiar ring. I’d spent three decades trying to rid myself of one just like it. She tilted her head and motioned toward a small cooler nestled in the sand beside her. I shook my head.
“No thanks. I’m good.”
I forced a smile and gave her a quick once-over. The old lady was one shade up from mahogany and as wrinkled as a linen pantsuit after a high-stakes game of Twister. Her arms and legs looked like four Slim Jims sticking out of a neon green bathing suit. It was the kind of simple, one-piece suit women over forty wore. One that supported the boobs and hid the belly.
I was grateful for her modesty.
Freckles and white spots covered the old woman’s dark-brown arms and legs. The Florida sun hadn’t been kind. She could have been fifty-five or ninety-five. With hard-core beach bums, it was impossible to tell. But given the full-on dentures, I placed her in her late sixties – at the youngest.
“Okie dokie then, have it your way,” Slim Jim said.
She watched me carefully from behind black, bug-eyed sunglasses. Her gaze never shifted as she reached instinctively into the cooler, pulled out a can, then cracked the tab on a family-size Fosters. I seized the opportunity and turned to take another step toward the water. That’s when I thought I heard her say, “Screw you, kiddo.”
I whirled around to face her.
“What?” I asked, thinking I must have heard her wrong.
“Screw you, kiddo!” she repeated, flashing her denture-cream smile.
She hoisted up the pint-sized beer between her boney fingers, causing half a pound of costume jewelry to cascade toward her elbows and twinkle in the glaring sunlight.
Uncertain if the woman was a witch or a comedian, I tilted my head and cautiously mirrored her ear-to-ear grin. “That’s what I thought you said,” I replied. “Well, screw you, too.”
“Love it!” she shot back. “Where you from?”
I let go of my grip on my fake grin. “Someplace you’ve never heard of.” I turned and took a getaway step toward the shore.
“Try me.”
I sighed and turned back to face her. “Greenville, Florida, okay?”
“No kiddin’! I know exactly where that is.”
My mouth fell open. “You and three other people. How on earth do you know about Greenville?”
“Well, kiddo, that’s a long story. Used to travel around a lot. I think I’ve been to every two-bit town east of the Mississippi. Sit down and I’ll tell you about it. You don’t look like you’re in no hurry, now. Are you?”
I thought about taking off running, but the heat had zapped my will to flee. Besides, it would have been rude, even for me. So I plopped my bag onto the powdered-sugar sand, unfolded my chair and sat my flabby butt down.
So much for a walk. Maybe tomorrow.
***
She told me her name was Gladys, a dirt-poor Kentucky girl who’d escaped a life of farm labor by marrying a traveling revival preacher named Bobby.
“I used Bobby the way he used the Lord – as a ticket out of Nowheresville,” she said with a cackle. “After the weddin’ I spent the better part of a decade traveling the country with Bobby, pitching revival tents and per-tendin’ to be the perfect wife. Pious Patty, I called myself.”
“Why?” I asked, more out of Southern hospitality than curiosity.
Gladys shrugged and fortified herself with a slug of beer.
“I had to do somethin’ to cope with those dang church people and their mindless jabber over endless, Sunday-go-to-eatin’ buffets of tuna casserole, squash casserole, green-bean casserole and some kind of godawful dessert casserole they called a trifle.”
The old woman explained that back then, staying overnight in random parishioners’ homes was part and parcel to the life of a traveling preacher and his wife.
“Even over the dad-burn tedium of pot ‘piss out of luck’ dinners, I dreaded havin’ to stay in other people’s houses,” she said. “After a while, I just stashed myself away and per-tended to be what others expected. It was just easier that a way.”
“I know what you mean,” I said absently.
Gladys eyed me dubiously from behind her sunglasses.
“Do you, now? Well, I took it to a whole new level, kiddo. Even started watchin’ soap operas for acting tips, you know? But after a few years starrin’ in The Pious Patty Show, I was bored outta my gourd. That all ended one night in Hoboken when I got up to sneak a late-night smoke. Ran right into the husband of the house. One look at me in my nightgown caused that man to ‘revive’ somethin’ of his own, if you know what I mean.”
I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear what came next. But I was powerless to stop the old lady. Gladys was barreling down memory lane in a Mack truck with no brakes.
“I tell you what!” she cackled with glee. “When that dirty old man tried to hit on me, I flat-out told him ‘No sir!’ Then I hit him up – for fifty bucks!” She laughed. “Quick as a flash, I went from Pious Patty to Blackmail Betty.”
“You don’t say,” I offered.
“A guilty conscience can be an expensive liability – if you hit the right target,” she said proudly, without a hint of embarrassment.
I had to hand it to her, Gladys was a good storyteller. Crude, but entertaining. I relaxed back into my chair, and my desire to flee slowly dissipated in the late-morning heat.
“What’n long before I had my own revival business goin’,” she continued with unabashed entrepreneurial pride. “I started savin’ ev’ry dollar Blackmail Betty earned me. Tucked the cash away in my J.C. Penney jewelry box. Hid the money in the secret compartment under that dancing ballerina, don’t you know. When I’d cashed up to nearly a grand, I was getting’ ready to cash out and leave Bobby’s old butt behind.”
Gladys took another swig from her Fosters and looked out at the Gulf. Her face was devoid of emotion. I watched her carefully, glued to my cheap beach chair by a fast-holding mixture of curiosity, disgust and morbid fascination. That, and I had absolutely nothing else to do with my life.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“That’s when Bobby told me he’d landed a revival gig at a church in St. Petersburg, Florida. We were in butt-crack Alabama at the time. I remember thinking, ‘What the hell.’ I tell you, kiddo, when me and Bobby got to St. Pete, it only took me one look to know I’d been right to hang on for one more of his stupid gigs.”
Gladys sat up, slapped her knee and laughed.
“Woo hoo! I was hooked like a snook, kiddo! Blue sky. No chance of snow! There was even a place that gave away free ice cream if the sun didn’t shine on any given day. I liked that. St. Pete had – what ’cha call it – an optimistic vibe about it.”
I shook my head in admiration. Over the years, I’d heard countless tourists tell how, after taking a gander at the sugar-white sands and turquoise waters of St. Pete Beach, they’d decided to ditch their old lives like losing lottery tickets. But nobody had ever matched Gladys for grit and gusto.
The old woman stood up.
“Honey, I grabbed onto the Sunshine State’s butt with both hands.” Gladys’ hands latched onto her own scrawny butt cheeks in a way-too-literal visual accompaniment. She grinned, shook her boney hips for good measure, then lowered her arms and sat back down.
“Nope. It didn’t take me long to hatch my escape plan, kiddo. Last day of Bobby’s dang revival, I snuck out the back of that church tent and into the driver’s seat of a 1966 Minnie Winnie RV.”
She winked at me salaciously. “I’d done got it real cheap off the guilty husband me and Bobby been staying with.”
I watched sparks dance in Gladys’s eyes as she recalled that day.
“Kiddo, I climbed into that Minnie Winnie and shifted gears in more ways than one, you know? Drove to Sunset Beach and never looked back. It was 1974, by golly. Back then a body could do that. Just up and disappear.”
Gladys drained her Fosters and shook her head wistfully. “Nowadays, they ain’t no good place to be a vagabond. Some uptight jerk with property rights always shows up to chase you away.”
I thought back to all the quaint little beach houses I’d seen bulldozed over the years in the name of so-called progress.
“Yeah, you’re right about that, Gladys.”
The old woman flipped back her sunglasses and locked her beady eyes with mine.
“Name’s Glad, kiddo. Not Gladys. I ain’t that scared young woman no more. No more Pious Patty. No more Blackmail Betty. No more Gladys. I’m just Glad now. Plain and simple.”
I studied her a moment. A smile crept across my lips.
“The name suits you.”
Glad beamed at the compliment. “That’s mighty nice a you. What’s your name, sugar?”
“Name’s Val. It’s nice to meet you, Glad,” I said, surprised to find I actually meant it.
Since my disastrous return to my hometown of St. Pete Beach, friends had been hard to come by. Glad didn’t fit the usual profile of who I would have considered for a new pal, but as the saying went, beggars couldn’t be choosers.
I reached over and shook Glad’s boney brown hand. She grinned from ear to ear.
“Sure you won’t have a beer?” she asked. She let go of my hand and tempted me with a wink and a frosty silver can.
I bit my lip as I weighed the consequences.
Since that fateful coin toss in the plane on New Year’s Eve, I’d tried to retain some kind of standards as to how low I’d allow myself sink in this latest incarnation of my tattered life. I’d broken them all except one; No drinking before 8 a.m.
I checked the time on my cellphone. It was 8:03.
I smiled at the old woman and took the pint of Fosters she offered. I cracked the tab, tilted my head back, and took a long, deep draught.
Author’s Note: If you’d like to know the whole story about how Val went from top-of-the-world business woman to down-and-out amateur sleuth, check out the Val Fremden prequel novel, Absolute Zero: Misadventures from a Broad.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZXYK776
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