Cure for the Common Breakup (10 page)

“I don't know.” Ingrid hunched down again. “It just seems kind of frivolous.”

“That's the whole point.”

“You spend all that money and then the polish chips off.”

“Yeah.” Summer took Ingrid's elbow and steered her toward the Rebound Salon. “And then you get another manicure.”

“An endless, futile cycle. I'd rather spend the money on books and the time reading.”

“Did you just use the word ‘futile' in reference to a manicure?” Summer held open the door and waved to Cori. “You are way overdue for a day with someone like me.”

—

“Why do you look like you're having a nervous breakdown?” Summer watched Ingrid peruse the rows of nail polish.

“There's too many colors.” Ingrid looked vaguely panicked. “I don't know which one to pick.”

“Is there a shade called ‘futile fuchsia'?” Summer asked Cori. She turned back to Ingrid. “Look, I know you're new to this, so here's a tip: Mani-pedis are supposed to be fun. If you're angsting over color choices, you're doing it wrong.”

“Well, what are you getting?” Ingrid asked.

“Maroon. But I'm kind of a brazen hussy like that.”

“I'll get the same color,” Ingrid said.

“You sure you're ready for red? Maybe you should start out with something a little more low-key. Peach? Pink? Bronze?”

“Maroon.” Ingrid set her jaw.

“Maroon it is.” Summer settled into a cushy massage chair and kicked off her flip-flops. “After this, we'll hit the drugstore and do a quick cosmetic application tutorial.”

“Can we take the convertible when we go to the drugstore?”

“Sure.”

Ingrid's face lit up for a moment, but then she said, “Well, it's only a few blocks, so it's kind of a waste of gas.”

“Not only will we take the convertible, we'll put the top down. You can drive, if you want.”

“Oh, I can't drive.” Ingrid perched in a massage chair, her posture prim and perfect.

Summer gave her a look. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Why can't you drive?”

“I have to tell you something.” Ingrid glanced from side to side, looking guilty. “I Googled you.”

“Do I even want to know what came up?” Summer braced herself for questions about the plane crash and Aaron and that one YouTube video she'd made a few years ago after a particularly rowdy night in Vegas.

“Are you really Jules Benson's daughter?”

“You've heard of him?”

“Of course!” Ingrid looked as though she was gearing up to ask for an autograph. “He's a literary genius.”

Summer laughed. “He would agree with you there. And yes, I'm his daughter.”

Ingrid lowered her voice as Alyssa got to work with the nail file. “I can't believe I'm sitting here getting my nails done with Jules Benson's daughter.”

“Believe it.” Summer yawned.

“But you're not a writer?”

Summer made a face. “God forbid.”

“Really?” Ingrid looked incredulous. “You never wanted to be a poet?”

“Nope. I don't have a poetic bone in my body. Although I do know all the words to Jay Z's ‘Ninety-nine Problems.'”

Ingrid flopped back, chagrined. “I wish
I
had a famous poet in my family.”

“No, you don't. Trust me.”

When it became apparent Summer wasn't going to elaborate, Ingrid shot her a knowing little smile. “So I heard about you and Dutch at the Whinery.”

Summer froze. “What about me and Dutch?”

“You asked him out.”

“Can't anyone in this town keep their mouth shut?” Summer lamented.

“Nope,” Cori, Alyssa, and Ingrid chorused.

“Fine. If you must know, I did ask him out. He said no.”

“He always says no.” Alyssa gave a wistful sigh.

Ingrid's gray eyes sparkled. “You should try again.”

“Why?” Cori asked. “He's just going to reject her again.”

“And again and again and again.” Alyssa pouted as she uncapped the cuticle oil.

“Don't take it personally,” Cori said. “Dutch is just like that.”

“He wouldn't even let the Friends of the Library auction off a dinner date with him,” Alyssa grumbled. “And that was for
charity
.”

“The country club has a big holiday party every winter, and he brought a date once. Once in, like, ten years. And she was some boring banker from Dover.”

While Cori and Alyssa went on and on, Ingrid motioned Summer closer.

“Try again.” She smiled down at her newly maroon nails. “Trust me.”

“Fine.” Summer slipped her feet back into her sandals and stood up. “I will.”

“Where are you going?” Cori asked.

“I'll be right back. Don't spread any salacious gossip without me.” She marched out of the salon and into the Retail Therapy boutique.

Beryl looked up from the stack of sweaters she was folding. “Back so soon? Good for you. Ready to move your wardrobe to the next stage?”

“We'll be skipping a few stages, actually.” Summer strode over to the underwear display. “I need the most scandalous piece of lingerie you have. The smaller, the better.”

Beryl browsed the display case, her lips pursed. Then she reached down and selected a tiny scrap of silk edged with lace. “Will this do?”

“Yes. Yes, it will.”

“Do you have a color preference?”

“The time for subtlety has passed.” Summer glanced down at her naked fingernails. “I'm thinking red. Dark red. The color of a nice Cabernet.”

O
n Tuesday night, Summer wandered into the Whinery with a stack of fashion magazines, planning to set up camp at a café table and work her way through
Vogue
and a chilled glass of Chardonnay.

But a busload of heartbreak tourists had just arrived and Jenna was slammed, pouring reds and whites and rosés as fast as she could. Hollis was helping out, too, and Summer noticed that while Jenna had a clean dish towel tucked into the front pocket of her apron, Hollis had a paperback copy of
The Best of Dorothy Parker
tucked into hers.

Over the buzz of female chatter and the clinking of glassware, Summer could hear the harmonica solo at the end of Liz Phair's “Divorce Song.”

“Need some help?” Summer stepped behind the bar and handed a clean goblet to Jenna. “What am I pouring first?”

“Thank you so much for offering, but you're not allowed to be back here.” Jenna tilted her head toward the trio of framed health inspection certificates on the back wall. “You don't have your food handler's license.”

“Neither does Hollis and she's back here,” Summer pointed out. “Besides, I'm an excellent bartender.”

“But you—”

“Let her help,” Hollis told Jenna. She turned to Summer and said, “She's been on her feet all day and she's getting a migraine.”

“I'm fine,” Jenna insisted.

“Stand down. If I can mix amaretto sours at thirty thousand feet in major turbulence, I can handle a few glasses of Merlot.” Summer washed her hands in the stainless steel sink.

As the song changed from Liz Phair to the Velvelettes' “Needle in a Haystack,” Jenna and Hollis gasped.

“Don't look now.” Jenna tightened the knot of her apron. “It's Miss Huntington.”

Summer stood on tiptoe and craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the woman who'd just walked through the door. All she could see through the throng of sunburned, teary-eyed tourists was the back of a sleek, white pageboy haircut.

“Hattie Huntington.” Hollis's face was even paler than usual.

“
That's
the biggest bully in Black Dog Bay? She's teeny tiny,” Summer scoffed. “You could snap her like a twig.”

“Think so? Go take her order and see for yourself,” Hollis said.

“Yeah, go handle her the way you handled Mimi Sinclair.” Jenna pinched the bridge of her nose. “I cannot deal with her. Not today.”

Summer leaned over the bar, trying to get a better view. “That lady can't be over five feet tall.”

Jenna produced a bottle of Advil and tapped a pair of pills into her hand. “She runs this town with an iron fist.”

“She's been here for decades. Owns half the land up and down the shore,” Hollis said. “And she's mean.”

“Really mean.”

“
So
mean.”

The crowd shifted, and Summer finally got a good look at the wisp of a woman wearing lemon yellow linen and carrying a Hermès satchel. “She's all frail and birdlike.”

“Ha! More like a pterodactyl,” Jenna said. “She's bitter and sour and spiteful.”

Summer had to smile at this. “Sounds like me.”

Hollis shook her head. “No. Hattie Huntington has taken bitter to a whole new level. She's estranged from everybody she's ever known. Her sister, her cousins, her old friends—”

“Not the senator,” Jenna said.

“True,” Hollis said. “She managed to hold on to her old pal the senator, but only so she can terrorize the rest of us with his political influence.”

Jenna tried to dry-swallow the ibuprofen, and Summer gave her a glass of water.

Hollis was on a roll. “She stopped speaking to both her parents before they died, even though they left her this enormous estate with all this money and land.”

“And beach rights,” Jenna said.

“Yeah. And for the last few years, she's been telling us all she's going to die any day.”

“But she never does.” Jenna crossed her arms. “She'll probably live forever.”

“The bitter ones always do.”

“She's immortal.” Jenna resumed pouring glasses of wine. “Now that I think about it, she's probably an actual demon. It would explain a lot of things.”

“Listen to you two.” Summer tsk-tsked them. “Wishing death on a harmless old biddy.”

“Pterodactyl,” Jenna corrected.

“You're racking up some bad karma.”

Hollis stopped serving long enough to do a shot of Shiraz. “No. Bad karma is constantly threatening to restrict beach access for half the length of the boardwalk.”

“Bad karma is showing up at city council meetings and mentioning that you're thinking of selling off some of your downtown real estate and letting a big-box store come in and wipe out the local merchants.”

“Bad karma is handing out lawsuits like they're Smarties at Halloween.”

“But you know what's good karma? Waiting on the harmless old biddy.” Jenna shoved a wine list and a pen into Summer's hands. “Good luck.”

“I don't need luck.” Summer tucked the pen behind her ear. “I've worked flights from Newark to Vegas. I once had an entire coach section full of slot machine enthusiasts over seventy. Watch and learn, ladies. Watch and learn.” She waved the wine list at Hollis. “Hey! You can't watch and learn while you're rolling your eyes.”

She made her way through the clusters of women drinking and laughing and crying and singing along to the Velvelettes.

“Good afternoon!” She put on her friendliest flight attendant smile as she sauntered up to the pterodactyl in yellow linen. “Welcome to the Whinery. Would you like to hear about our specials?”

Miss Hattie Huntington was even more diminutive up close. Although her white hair was thick and well coiffed, the face beneath it looked gaunt and pinched. Her skin was pale and thin almost to the point of translucency, and her suit, which couldn't have been bigger than a size two, hung off her bony frame. She met Summer's cheery greeting with a dour, flat-eyed sneer. “When, exactly, did this establishment turn into Fort Lauderdale during spring break?”

Summer smiled even wider and leaned in closer. “Pardon?”

“This is disgraceful.” Hattie shuddered. “Ladies wearing shower shoes in a restaurant? Unseemly.”

“Flip-flops aren't shower shoes when they're bedazzled and made in Spain,” Summer said.

Hattie's gaze went glacial. “Are you contradicting me, young lady?”

“That's a lovely handbag.” Summer offered up the wine list. “May I suggest a Chardonnay?”

“You may not,” Hattie harrumphed. “I've got half a mind to leave right now.”

Summer jerked her thumb toward the exit, her smile never wavering. “Door's right where you left it.”

“You're very rude.” But Hattie sat down at a table and settled her handbag on the chair next to hers.

“Part of my charm.” Summer helped push her chair in. “So you're not leaving?”

“I'll go when I'm good and ready. And in the meantime, I suppose it's too much to ask for a half-decent red?” Hattie scanned the wine list. “Hmm. The Stag's Leap Cabernet will suffice.”

“Coming right up.” Summer grabbed the list back and be-bopped away. She could feel the old lady glaring at her back.

Jenna and Hollis were still distributing drinks as fast as they could.

“Well, you were right,” Summer told them. “She hates me.”

“Are you kidding?” Jenna elbowed Hollis. “She actually spoke to you.”

“Miss Huntington doesn't deign to speak to just anyone,” Hollis explained. “Half the time, she pretends the unwashed masses don't exist.”

“You haven't really been snubbed till you've been snubbed by Miss Huntington,” Jenna agreed. “You must have charmed the Hermès handbag off her. What's your secret?”

Summer shrugged. “Oh, I told her it's fine to wear flip-flops and to get the hell out if she didn't like the ambience. Same old, same old.”

Hollis's jaw dropped. “And you're still alive?”

“Bossy people secretly liked to be bossed,” Summer informed them. “All that scraping and bowing gets old. And she doesn't like me; I just took her off guard.”

“If you're still alive, she likes you.” Jenna blew out her breath. “So what did she order?”

“The Stag's Leap.”

“
Of course
she did.” Jenna rubbed her temples again. “I think we have one bottle left, but it's going to take me forever to find it.”

“Have no fear. We've got you covered.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jenna had located the wine, uncorked the bottle, and approached Miss Huntington with the demeanor of a wayward puppy expecting to get a rolled-up newspaper to the nose.

“I'm pretty sure she turned that wine into vinegar with her look of death,” Jenna said when she retreated to safety behind the bar. “But at least she didn't talk to me. Thank God I'm part of the unwashed masses.”

A few minutes later, Summer looked up and noticed that Hattie was no longer seated at the wrought iron table. The elderly lady was standing, swaying on her feet, both hands braced on the tabletop. She wasn't sneering or berating anyone. She wasn't even breathing.

“Oh shit.” Summer slammed down her wine bottle. “She's choking.”

She vaulted over the bar, charged through the sea of customers, and placed her hand on Hattie's shoulder.

“Are you all right?” she yelled into the elderly woman's face. “Can you breathe?”

Hattie didn't respond, just kept clutching the table and gaping at Summer with wide, terrified eyes.

The crowd went silent for a moment, then erupted into a flurry of gasps and murmurs and worried questions:

“Is she okay?”

“What should we do?”

“Hang on—the bartender looks like she knows what to do.”

And indeed, Summer knew exactly what to do.

“Brace yourself.” She stepped behind Hattie, wrapped her arms around the old woman's rib cage, and made a fist with her left hand. She covered her fist with her other hand, then pulled sharply upward and inward on Hattie's sternum, hoping she wouldn't snap any brittle ribs.

Hattie made a low gurgling sound, then went back to silence. Summer positioned her hands for round two, but then Hattie's entire body shuddered with the force of a coughing fit.

A small, dark chunk flew out of Hattie's mouth and landed on somebody's bedazzled flip-flop.

Summer got right up in Hattie's face and again demanded, “Are you okay?”

Hattie shoved her away. “Yes! For heaven's sake, yes! Stop accosting me!”

Summer exhaled with relief. “Oh, good. I was really hoping I wouldn't have to do an emergency tracheotomy with a corkscrew.”

“I've got half a mind to have you arrested for assault and battery.” Hattie patted her ribs with a grimace. Her pallid complexion regained a touch of pink.

Summer offered her hand to Hattie. “You're welcome. Why don't you sit down and I'll bring you some ice water?”

“Not so fast.” Hattie raised one bony index finger. “I want to know what I choked on.”

The owner of the sequined flip-flop crinkled her nose and used a napkin to collect the evidence. “Here.”

She passed the napkin to Summer, who unfolded it to reveal . . .

“Oh no,” Summer murmured.

“A piece of cork!” Hattie snatched the napkin away and bundled it into her handbag. “I nearly died because of somebody's carelessness. Inexcusable.” The crowd parted before her as she marched up to the bar.

“Who poured this drink?” She brandished her wineglass, spilling a few drops of the dark red liquid on her sleeve.

Jenna stepped forward. “I did.”

“Do you make a habit of serving your patrons chunks of cork?”

“No, Miss Huntington. I am
so
sorry. It was an old bottle, and the wine was so dark. . . .” Even in the dim lighting, Jenna's cheeks glowed red. “But that's no excuse.”

“It certainly is not.” Hattie's eyes gleamed.

“Truly, I am so, so sorry.”

“Don't blame her.” Hollis stepped in front of her friend. “Blame me. I was distracting her with questions and jostling her and stealing her corkscrew since I dropped mine. That's why she didn't notice the bottom of the cork had fallen off.”

“Gross negligence on both your parts,” Hattie concluded with grim satisfaction.

Summer cleared her throat. “But luckily, it all turned out fine. And FYI, the next time someone asks you if you can breathe, and you can't, you should shake your head no. Takes the guesswork out of it.”

Hattie kept glaring at the bartenders.

Jenna's lower lip trembled. “Please, let me pay for your dry cleaning.”

“Oh, you'll pay for my dry cleaning,” Hattie assured her. “You'll pay for much more than that.”

Summer put her hands on her hips and asked Hattie, “Are you going to pay for that woman's flip-flops? Because you totally spat on them.”