Chapter 3

“You call D’ante,” Scooter said. “I’ll put a sign up and call down to the paper.” Who knew, maybe someone in this town had a teenager who needed some work. That wasn’t likely—there wasn’t any public transportation that stopped close to the restaurant, and teens who had cars also had access to better-paying jobs. But who knew? Someday, one day, Scooter’s luck would change. Maybe

Not today, though. The side door creaked on its busted hinge as Kat went through it to dump the mop water outside, reminding Scooter of all the chores still to do. “And I still need to run into town and get those errands done before we open.” There was still time. Dockside opened at four on weekdays—they wouldn’t switch over to summer hours until Memorial Day weekend—and it wasn’t much past one now.

Scooter went to the supply closet and cussed for a while. Part of Jeff’s job had been keeping that room neat, but of course he hadn’t done it. Mostly he did dishes and flirted with customers and stole food and table scraps for his dog—oh, Christ, that was another thing to check. Had he left Trick, or had he and Debbie remembered to take the dog with them? Jeff wasn’t a bad guy, he was just…directionless.

On the other hand, Jeff was on his way to Nevada with the love of his life and he’d probably come back in four months with a lot of amazing stories, which was more than Scooter had ever done. Dockside had been his parents’ place—a beach restaurant that served greasy burgers, fries, crab cakes, and whatever catch of the day Scooter could buy off the boats before the bigger places crowded him out—and Scooter had never been more than two hundred miles from home in his whole life. So, maybe Jeff had a better life philosophy than Scooter did. It was just inconvenient for the rest of them.

Finally, Scooter found the signs: Help Wantedand Room for Rent. He brushed them off; Jeff had obviously been eating in the closet, since there were crumbs everywhere. Scooter made a mental note to get more insecticide while he was at the hardware store for the door hinges. The last thing he needed at the beginning of tourist season was an infestation of palmetto bugs. Palmetto bugs were enormous, flying cousins to roaches, fully an inch and a half long, and they freaked the tourists right out. Not that Scooter would blame them at all; he’d been known to shriek when one of them scuttered out from under something, too. And then there’d be problems with the local Health Inspector.

Scooter hung the signs in the window, then took the broom from Kat. The porch should be swept, too, even though that was a hopeless task. The beach sand always ended up everywhere. But it gave him a few minutes to be outdoors, breathing in the brackish scent of the sea, combined with a mild odor of seaweed and dead fish. It was home. He couldn’t give up now.

Turned out D’ante had managed to win two hundred dollars on a scratcher, and while he was willing to help Scooter while the Dockside was shorthanded, he didn’t need a second job. Scooter would send Kat out to the S-turn later in the afternoon. The local teens hung out there near the little inlet, and they might know someone who needed the work. 2

Andy couldn’t quite get over how short all the buildings were—only a few of them topped three stories. It was like being in the suburbs without having a city to attach to. And parking seemed almost absurdly abundant, though that didn’t do Andy any good.

Worse, public transportation was…not robust. And Andy had to make what was left of his money count. He’d left the Greyhound station and headed east, toward the beach, but he’d been walking down this road for what seemed like hours. He wasn’t sure if he’d actually come far enough south for the weather to be this much hotter, or if it was just that he wasn’t usually outside for this long at a stretch. Andy finally stopped when his vision filled with sparkles. He hadn’t eaten or drunk more than bus-stop coffee for most of a day.

He was standing in front of a tiny little mom-and-pop hardware store; mulch and sawdust scented the air. Worth a try, he thought. He was familiar with tools, enough to use them, certainly enough to sell them. He waited until his head had stopped swimming, then walked into the little store.

There was an honest-to-God set of physical chimes hanging on the inside of the door. Andy would have smirked at it, but the burst of air conditioning and sudden shift in temperature made him feel dizzy again. He paused to blink away the spots in front of his eyes, leaning casually on a display of gardening tools.