1
TUESDAY
JUNE 1932
SEA BLUE BEACH, FLORIDA
The sight of the Starlight just on the edge of her kitchen window eased her lingering regret over her fight with Leroy last week.
Even though she deserved an answer, she hated his pained expression as she called him a scallywag, declaring how he’d let her and their boys down.“I’ve never been more disappointed. Where do yougo each week? Tell me now.”
More disappointed?Those words were not true. Tuesday Knight had been disappointed plenty in her life. Leroy was least of them all.
Still, after three years of his clandestine activity, she had a right to know, didn’t she? He must work hard at whatever he was getting up to because he brought home cash, enough to pay the grocer and keep the lights on. And in these lean times, that was saying something.
Ever since the Crash and the Depression sat down on everyone, Leroy Knight had changed. Her hero, her knight in shining armor,a Great War soldier with chest full of medals, had becomewaytoo friendly with the Memphis and Chicago gangsters passing through their beloved Sea Blue Beach.
Wiping her hands on a stained dish towel, she stepped onto the porch and into the humid evening heat of Florida summer. At six o’clock, the day remained summery bright, with a bit of the Starlight’s neon light in its ribbons.
“It’s been too long since I visited you with my skates.” She’d been speaking to the rink as a friend ever since she was a girl. Shoot, the rink was herfamilybefore Lee and the boys.
The Starlight gave her comfort. Skating helped her think through things. And she needed torollher way through this turmoil with Leroy.
“Why can’t I knowwhere you go every week? I’m your wife,the mother of your sons. Is that too much to ask?”
“Well it is,Tooz,so drop it. I’m herenow,aren’t I?”He’d pulled a few greenbacks from his pocket.“This ought to square our account withOld Man Biggs at the grocery store. There’s abit more here to stock up on what you need.”
“I won’t touch a penny of that until youtell me where it came from. ’Cause if it’sblood money or from running booze—”
“It ain’t bloodmoney. Holy shamoly, Tooz, can’t a man provide forhis family without the third degree?”
That’s when he’d left without a by-your-leave. Since they didn’t have a phone, he couldn’t call. And Leroy was not one for writing letters. So she had no idea if he’d return home as usual this Friday.
“Beg pardon, Tooz.” She glanced around to see Drunk Dirk, as everyone called him, coming up the shell-and-sand driveway.
“Dirk. What can I do you for?”
Not much older than Leroy, Dirk was also a Great War veteran who played the Wurlitzer at the Starlight. It was a darn shame his reputation, lovely wife and two sons, along with his touted musical ability, was eclipsed by his drunkenness. Lord only knew where he got the hooch in the first place. Sea Blue Beach was a dry town.
“I’s just wondering if Lee was around. You seen him lately?”
“Sure haven’t.” Giving Dirk the once-over, she wondered if it was her husband supplying Dirk’s habit. Another second passed before she pointed to the kitchen’s screen door. “Care for some dinner?”
“Naw, naw, Tooz, but thanky. I got a hankering for . . . something else.” He sloughed off without another word, tripping as he entered the street, turning left, then right toward the Starlight.
That’s it, Drunk Dirk, get to the Starlight. That’ll sootheyour soul.Maybe help you to stop drinking. Besides, the evening session started in an hour, and Dirk was scheduled to play.
Back in the warm kitchen, Tuesday removed the pork and beans from the old potbelly, which glowed with burning logs and turned the whole house into an oven. She set the table and stirred up a pitcher of iced tea, using the last bit of ice from the icebox. She’d have to make up a list, send Leroy Junior to Biggs tomorrow.
Speaking of LJ, where was he? And Dupree? Her old dinner bell had blown away during some storm or another. Back out on the porch, she looked toward the horizon for signs of her boys, thirteen and eleven, respectively. They’d probably lost track of time.
Well, she’d wait. Tuesday sat on the old stone step and faced the beautiful, beautiful Starlight—she would love that place till the day she died—and wondered if Dirk had made it to the organ.
He had to know, as she and everyone in Sea Blue Beach, that no town in all of America, maybe the world, had a skating rink as grand and lovely as the Starlight. After all, it was built by a prince—Prince Rein Titus Alexander Blue, or Prince Blue as they called him—from faraway Lauchtenland, a tiny North Sea nation.
Tuesday hoped to go there one day, see where Prince Blue had lived before he crashed on their North Florida shore. He’d built the Starlight on the very spot, on the bedrock that held everything together—the sand and shells, the dirt and grass, trees, maybe even the Gulf itself. Certainly all of Sea Blue Beach.
“Ma, Ma.” LJ, tall and lanky, sprinted down the driveway. Trailing behind was Dupree, pumping his still-short legs to keep up.“Can we skate tonight at the Starlight? Mr. Hoboth ain’t there, but Burt says we can skate for free if we help clean up.”
