Drive Me Wild

“Well, you know how I was working in my dad’s shop last month when he and Mom went on that cruise?”

“Sure, I remember.” Jenna’s father was the only jeweler in Blue Moon Bay, and his shop had been there since his own father had established it in the forties. “What do you have in mind? Knocking off a jewelry shop and pawning the stuff at your dad’s?” Grace laughed.

Jenna laughed with her. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. But no, there was a woman who came in like three times while I was working, and she must have spent at least three grand just on big tacky rings and things. Know what she does for a living?”

“What?”

“She reads tarot cards.”

Grace groaned. “Oh, no, you want to be a fortune teller?”

“Wait a minute, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I think I could make a mint off the summer tourists. Probably even enough to keep us going the rest of the year, if that woman is any indication. Although she did say she works in Atlantic City, which, granted, has a bit more tourist traffic. But still, I might be able to make a living off it.”

“Right. You, Bob and the twins, all living off the telling of nineteen people’s fortunes.” Grace shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“There are more tourists in Blue Moon Bay than that and you know it. The town’s going to be mobbed in a couple of weeks, just you wait.”

“Mobbed by Blue Moon Bay standards, anyway.” Since leaving town, Grace had seen “mobbed” on a grand scale. Atlantic City in summer. Walt Disney World in summer. Blue Moon Bay did get a fair amount of tourists and beach-goers, but its reputation as a family-beach town kept the wild singles and college kids away. They went to Ocean City, forty miles from here, for their fun, leaving Blue Moon Bay comparatively quiet. “But it’s not like it’s going to be mobbed with the kind of people who go to fortune tellers.”

“Everyone likes fortune tellers. You should do it too,” Jenna went on, unperturbed. “Say thirty bucks a reading, two readings an hour, ten hours a day, six days a week, that’s…” She paused, thinking.

“Unlikely?” Grace supplied.

She shot Grace a look. “Thirty-six hundred bucks a week, right? With virtually no overhead. I could live with that.” She shifted on her barstool, nearly slipping off. The bartender approached and she shouted an order to him, then turned back to Grace and said, “Now where was I?”

“Dreaming.”

“No.” Jenna speared an olive from the bartender’s supply with a toothpick, then popped it into her mouth. “Tarot cards. Seriously, think about it.”

“How about if you try it and let me know how it works out. In the meantime, I’m going to find a real job.”

“Well, you haven’t so far. I would think you’d be willing to at least consider some untraditional alternative possibilities.”

“You’d be surprised at some of the untraditional alternatives I’ve thought of.” Grace took a swig of the Mexican beer Jenna had ordered for her, but the lime slice got caught in the neck of the bottle. She poked it down and tried again, appreciating the cold, sour taste. Michael would never have come to Harley’s bar and had bottled beer with fruit in it. He’d always preferred the muted cocktail scene at the Seahorse by the bay.

Somehow the fact that her ex-husband wouldn’t like it here made the beer taste even better.

“I hate to ask this,” Jenna started carefully, “but have you thought of borrowing money from your mom?”

Grace shook her head. “Dad’s pension is good, but not so good she that she can support Jimmy and me.” She sighed. “Besides, then I’d be in debt to her, and I’d have to make the money to pay her back, so what’s the difference?”

“All right, but I wish you could just stay here indefinitely. If only there was a job.”

Grace shook her head. “You can’t go back home.”

“But you are back home.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.” In truth, nothing felt like home at the moment. Grace felt completely and utterly lost.

She leaned back against the bar and let her eyes fall on the people playing pool across the room. The music of the band pounded through her, and she willed it to shake loose the tension that had become a constant hum inside her head. She had to take at least an hour or two off from worrying, or she was going to have a nervous breakdown. There was nothing she had to think about right now, she told herself, nothing she had to take care of right this moment. Jimmy was home with Jenna’s husband and kids, and there was nothing Grace could do about her job situation tonight. This was a great opportunity to loosen up, and she was going to enjoy it, no matter how hard it was.

As if testing her resolve on that cue, the band started playing “Stand By Your Man.”

Jenna clucked her tongue against her teeth. “They’ve got to be joking.”

“No, God is.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth, than the glass door to Harley’s opened and Luke Stewart strolled in. “Uh-oh. Time to leave.” She set her bottle down and hopped off the barstool.

“What?” Jenna asked, looking in the area of the door. “What’s wrong?”

“That’s wrong.” Grace said in a low voice, pointing to Luke.

“Oh, my God, it’s Luke Stewart,” Jenna gasped. “You haven’t talked to him since high school, have you?”

“As a matter of fact, I talked to him a few days ago. I had to beg him for a job driving a bus at Connor School, and he turned me down.”

Jenna looked at her, surprised. “You had to ask Luke? Why? Is he in charge of the buses?”

“He’s in charge of everything,” Grace said, popping an olive into her mouth. “Headmaster.”

“Oh, my. That must have been hard. How come you didn’t tell me earlier?”

Grace chewed and kept narrowed eyes on Luke. The sight of him brought a warm flush to her cheeks. Residual humiliation and anger, no doubt. “If you’d been turned down as a bus driver, you probably wouldn’t be talking about it much either.”

“Wow. I guess he’s still mad about you picking Michael over him.”

“I didn’t pick Michael over him. I stayed with Michael rather than throw the relationship away over a small, brief, untested crush on someone else.”

“On Luke, you mean.” Jenna pulled the bowl of peanuts across the bar and took a handful.

Grace kept her eyes on Luke. “It doesn’t matter who it was, it would have been stupid for me to throw away a secure relationship because of some silly infatuation.”

“I don’t know. It might have spared you a lot of trouble.”

“And bought me a whole new brand of trouble.”

Jenna nodded her agreement. “Probably so. And you wouldn’t have Jimmy.”

“That’s right. He’s worth it all.” Grace sighed. “Too bad he’s going to have to live on bread and water because his mother can’t get a job, even as a bus driver.”

“Well, why would you want to drive a bus anyway? And why there? Wouldn’t it be weird to go back to your alma mater that way?”

Of course it would be weird. It felt weird even before she knew Luke was part of the deal. “There’s no other work in this town,” Grace said dully.

“Oh, come on, I’m sure someone would hire you. One of your dad’s old friends? You know, as a favor to him?”

Grace winced inwardly. “I’d sooner die than shame Daddy by taking charity from one of his friends. They’d feel obligated, I’d feel pathetic…it would be the same as asking for a handout.”

Jenna shook her head. “You’re just as stubborn as you’ve always been.”