CHAPTER 2

      “Whatta ya gotta do to get a drink round here?” a man yelled from the front of the bar. He was one of two men playing a game of rummy at a high top. They were in here almost every day.

      “Not shout for a drink, Buford,” Joaquín yelled back. “Or get your lazy as—” he caught himself as he glanced at Vivi, the owner and our boss, who frowned at him from across the room, “asteroid up here.”

      Vivi’s face relaxed into a smile. She would have made a good children’s librarian considering how she tried to keep things PG around here. Joaquín tilted his head toward me. I took a pad out of the little black apron wrapped around my waist and trotted over to Buford.

      “Would you like another Bud?” I asked Buford. “Or something else?”

      “Sure would,” Buford said. There was a “duh” note in his voice suggesting why else would he be yelling to Joaquín.

      “Another Maker’s Mark whiskey?” I looked at Buford’s card playing partner as I wrote his beer order on my pad.

      “You have a good memory,” he said looking at his half empty glass. “But I’m good.”

      Good grief, I’d been serving him the same drink all week, I’d hoped I could remember his order. I made the rounds of the other tables. By each drink I wrote a brief description of who ordered it: beer, black hair rummy player; martini, dirty, yellow Hawaiian shirt; gin and tonic, needs a bigger bikini. I’d seen way more oiled-up, sweaty, sandy body parts than I cared to in the week I’d been here. Not even my dad, a retired plumber, had seen this many cracks at a meeting of the Chicago plumbers union.

      Those images kept haunting my dreams, along with giant beach balls knocking me down, talking dolphins, and tidal waves. I’d yet to figure out what any of them meant—well, maybe I’d figured out one of them. But I wasn’t going to think about that now.

      Nope, I preferred to focus on the scenery, because, boy, this place had atmosphere—and that didn’t even include Elwell and his armadillo shell hat. The Sea Glass Saloon I’d pictured before I’d arrived had swinging, saloon-style doors, bawdy dancing girls, and wagon-wheel chandeliers. This was more like a tiki hut than an old western saloon, though thankfully I didn’t have to wear a sarong and coconut bra top. I could fill one out, but I preferred comfortable tank tops. Besides, the Gulf of Mexico was the real star of the show. The whole front of the bar was open to it, with retractable glass doors leading to a covered deck.

      The Sea Glass catered to locals who needed a break from the masses of tourists who descended on Emerald Cove and Destin, the bigger town next door, every summer. Not that Vivi would turn down tourists’ money. She needed their money to stay open, as far as I could tell.

      Like Dorothy, I was up for a new adventure and finding my way in a place that was so totally different from my life in Chicago. I only hoped that I’d find my own versions of Dorothy’s Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion to help me on the way. So far, the only friend I’d made—and I wasn’t too sure about that—was Joaquín. He, and everybody, seemed nice enough, but I was still trying to adjust to the relaxed Southern attitude that prevailed among the locals in the Panhandle of Florida. It was also called the Emerald Coast, LA—lower Alabama, and get this—the Redneck Riviera.

      You could have knocked me over with a palm frond when I heard that nickname. The chamber of commerce never used it, nor would you see the name in a TV ad. But the locals used it with a mixture of pride and disdain. Some wanted to brush it under the proverbial rug, while others embraced it in its modern-day form—people who were proud of their local roots.

      The Emerald Coast stretched from Panama City, Florida, fifty miles east of here, to Pensacola, Florida, fifty miles to the west. The rhythm and flow was such a contrast from the go, go, go lifestyle in Chicago, where I’d lived my entire life. The local attitude matched the blue-green waves of the Gulf of Mexico, which lapped gently on sand so white you’d think Mr. Clean came by every night to tidy up.

      As I walked back to the bar Joaquín’s hips swayed to the island music playing over an old speaker system. He was in perpetual motion, with his hips moving like some suave combination of Elvis and Ricky Martin. My hips didn’t move like that even on my best day—even if I’d had a couple of drinks. Joaquín glanced at me as he added gin, tonic, and lime to a rocks glass. I’d learned that term a couple of days ago. Bars had names for everything, and “the short glasses” didn’t cut it in the eyes of my boss, Vivi Jo Slidell. And yeah, she was as Southern as her name sounded. I watched with interest as Joaquín grabbed a cocktail shaker, adding gin, dry vermouth, and olive brine.

      “Want to do the honors?” Joaquín asked, holding up the cocktail shaker.

      I glanced at the row of women sitting at the bar, one almost drooling over Joaquín. One had winked at him so much it looked like she had an eye twitch, and one was now looking at me with an openly hostile expression. Far be it from me to deprive anyone from watching Joaquín’s hips while he shook the cocktail.

      “You go ahead,” I said with a grin and a small tilt of my head toward his audience. The hostile woman started smiling again. “Have you ever thought about dancing professionally?”

      “Been there, danced that,” Joaquín answered.

      “Really?” the winker asked.

      “Oh, honey, I shook my bootie with Beyoncé, Ricky Martin, and Justin Timberlake among others when I was a backup dancer.”

      “What are you doing here, then?” I was astonished.

      “My husband and I didn’t like being apart.” Joaquín started shaking the cocktail, but threw in some extra moves, finishing with a twirl. “Besides, I get to be outside way more than I did when I was living out in LA. There, I was always stuck under hot lights on a soundstage. Here, it’s a hot sun out on the ocean. Much better.” He winked at the winker, and she blushed.

      The women had looked disappointed when he mentioned his husband, but that explained Joaquín’s immunity to the women who threw themselves at him. He didn’t wear a ring, but maybe as a fisherman it was a danger. My father didn’t wear one because of his plumbing, but he couldn’t be more devoted to my mom.

      “Put three olives on a pick, please,” Joaquín asked. While he finished his thing with the shaker, I grabbed one of the picks—not the kind for guitars; these were little sticks with sharp points on one end—fancy plastic toothpicks really. Ours were pink, topped with a little flamingo, and I strung the olives on as Joaquín strained the drink into a martini glass.

      “One dirty martini,” Joaquín said with a hand flourish.

      I popped open a beer and poured it into a glass, holding the glass at an angle so the beer had only a skiff of foam on the top. It was a skill I was proud of because my father had taught me when I was fourteen. Other fathers taught their daughters how to play chess. My friends knew the difference between a king and a rook. Mine made sure I knew the importance of low foam. You can guess which skill was more popular at frat parties in college.

      As I distributed the drinks, I thought about Boone Slidell, my best friend since my first day of college. The promise that brought me here? I’d made it to him one night at the Italian Village’s bar in downtown Chicago. We’d had so much fun that night, acting silly before his deployment to Afghanistan with the National Guard. But later that night he’d asked me, should anything happen to him on his deployment, would I come help his grandmother, Vivi. He had a caveat. I couldn’t tell her he’d asked me to.

      “Yes,” I’d said. “Of course.” We’d toasted with shots of tequila and laughter, never dreaming nine months later that my best friend in the world would be gone. Twenty-eight years old and gone. I’d gotten a leave of absence from my job as a children’s librarian and had come for the memorial service, planning to stay for as long as Boone’s grandmother needed me. But