A-LISTER MATT KNIGHT GOING TO TRIAL
WRECKING BALL SKATE TO BE
THE LAST NIGHT AT THE STARLIGHT
These two salaciousGazetteheadlines have the whole town talking. Gossip fills our streets. Matt’s upcoming trial made national news. ABC, NBC,Entertainment Tonight. A new network called CNN had trucks lined up outside the Starlight for a week.
For now, he’s headed back to LA, leaving his defense up to his crackerjack lawyer, Bodie Nickle. Folks are still awaiting the trial date. What’s taking so long?
Harlow has remained in town, and we couldn’t be happier to see her jogging Sea Blue Way every other morning. Trina Bevel noticed the supermodel stepping up on the big green scale in Biggs yesterday. We’ve also noticed her on the skating rink floor now and then, toddling along in Tuesday’s old skates. HH, we’re all with you.
Spike told Audra at the Blue Plate that the Starlight’s phone is ringing off the hook.
“Tuesday, say it isn’t so! The rink is closing? What ... demolished?”
“I toldmy family we’re headed to Sea Blue Beach. Mykids have never skated there!”
Every day, more and more cars line our streets and avenues. Old-timers, former Sea Blue Beach citizens, and children of deceased former Starlighters who’d heard the stories of the rink built by a prince on a rock by the ocean but had never visited.
The cottages at Sands Motor Motel announced a waiting list, and every beach cabin and summer-only home is rented out. Even the dilapidated fishing shacks have lodgers. Tents pop up in yards and along the beach.
Phil, the postman, disappears every other day inside the Starlight with bags of letters from all over the world, from former tourists passing through, to those who’d booked a week’s vacation, to spring breakers across the Panhandle and LA—that is, lower Alabama.
Then, to our delight, Harriet Nickle and her sister Jubilee arrived. What a treat. We almost think it’s worth the ruckus over the Starlight to see those gals back home.
Most nights, the rink bursts at the seams, with lines snaking around the octagon-shaped building. Spike convinced Tuesday to add a ten o’clock to midnight session just to accommodate everyone.
We’ll get all the life we can out of our dear Starlight until the mayor calls for the wrecking ball. Wrecking ball. Two words that make some of us want to cry.
In this time of sentiment, we remember our friend Doc, who’d settled down in Sea Blue Beach after the second war. Said his old bones were too weary to keep on trucking. He told Dear Dirk he dreamt his wife was talking to “the man on the wall of the Starlight” and took it to mean he needed to roost near the rink for his final days.
However, he got restless, and at the age of eighty, bought a boat, christened it theBetsy, and set out to sail the path of theTitanic. We stood by the dock as he shoved off, saying, “I’ll be back after I drop flowers over my wife and daughters’ graves. It’s long overdue.”
Word came back how the Coast Guard found him and theBetsyadrift over the site of the wreck, Doc gone peacefully in his sleep, a nautical map and a picture of his girls on his chest.
It tore Tuesday up something fierce, but she put on a memorial at the Starlight worthy of her friend. All of Sea Blue Beach turned out.
In light of our memories, the orange demolition sign seems a slap in the face. But we know, deep down, that all small towns have a secret. Ours might just save the Starlight.
HARLOW
June flowed into July, with Harlow’s days anchored by the rink. She marveled at how Tuesday rebounded from the demolition news to reign as queen over her kingdom, paying no mind to surveyors and contractors milling around inside and out.
“Tuesday, can I borrow some of your mojo?” Harlow said one afternoon.
After her prison cell conversation with Matt, she was determined not to sabotage herself. Especially when Jinx called to say Charlotte Winthrop was still committed to Harlow being her next CCW It Girl.
So, she told Blaire and Miss Beulah at the Blue Plate not to let her order tater tots with her spinach and tomato omelet and lightly buttered toast.
Matt called every morning and evening. “How’s Granny doing?”
“Like the rink will go on forever. Any final word on your court date? Have you called Booker?”
“No.”
“That’s it? No?”
“It answers both questions.”
