“But look at you now. Learning to skate. Getting married. Even prettier. You’ve changed.”
“Okay, flatterer, did Matt send you over here?”
“No, this is me talking.”
“Thank you, Simon. I mean it.”
“Just so you know, I like this you better than the Harlow Hayes in the poster on my brother’s wall.” He nudged her with his elbow.
“Me too, Simon. Me too.”
TUESDAY
Wrecking Ball Skate at the Starlight turned into Wrecking Ball Month.
Audra had a line outside the Blue Plate Diner, and the food trucks on the beaches closed up in the afternoon, completely out of food for the day.
Folks she’d not seen in years, decades, arrived on the hour. The Starlight hosted a reunion every night.
Two of the old-timers, sisters Georgia and Maria from ’73, ’74, and ’75, had rushed in. “Miss Tuesday! We had to come back. We’re here to help. What can we do?” Spike handed them aprons and now they baked pizza and doctored hot dogs, alongside Ernie, another old-timer from—oh, let’s see, ’68 and ’69—yes, because he’d fried half his brain in San Francisco during the Summer of Love. His parents yanked him back home and asked Tuesday to give him a job.“He needs responsibility. Don’t go easy on him. Make him do his job, show up on time.”
Ernie turned out to be one of the best hires in her Starlight career. Then the war in ’Nam got him for a year, but he’d matured, became a leader, graduated college, and now ran a successful cleaning business in Jackson, Mississippi.
“I got my work ethic from the Starlight, Tuesday, mopping and sweeping. Spike, hand me a broom! Is that little Georgia Zimmerman? Hey, and Maria!”
Tuesday added a ten a.m. session and still had skaters lined around the rink all day. Dupree came every night, laced up his old black boots, donned a whistle, and served as floor guard.
“Ma, did you see?” Dupree rolled behind the ticket booth for a sip of his drink. “Griff and Joannie are here, and Dennis too.” Classmates of Dup’s from high school and some of his best friends.
Griff and Joannie were proof the Starlight was a place for miracles. High school sweethearts who broke up for good right before graduation, then loathed each other all through college. One summer, while home on vacation, they met up at the rink. He asked her to couple’s skate, and since he was the only boy in the place that night who knew how to do more than hold hands and go ’round and ’round, she said yes, eager to refresh her dance skills.
He kissed her when the song ended—Tuesday witnessed the whole thing—and now they were the parents of three, grandparents of ten.
Dennis never married, but Dup said, “He’s skated with KathleenDiMarco three times, and I saw them at the Blue Plate the other night.”
“What about you, son? Is there a love for you?” Tuesday said.
“Don’t know, Ma. It might take a miracle, but if she’s out there, she’ll come to the Starlight.” With that, he returned to the floor, blowing his whistle on a couple of speedsters.
“She better come before Labor Day weekend,” Tuesday whispered to herself with a glance at Immanuel. If He planned on saving the Starlight, He was taking His sweet time.
Harry stopped asking Tuesday for the deed. Yesterday he asked her to sign some papers so he could“just go ahead and give you the moneyfor the rink.”
“No thanks,”she’d said.“I’ll wait until the bitter end.”
She wished she had the deed just to show off how how fancy and regal it was bearing the prince’s signature. But LJ had taken its whereabouts to a watery grave.
A man and a woman about Dupree’s age approached the ticket booth. “We’re looking for Tuesday Knight.”
“You’re talking to her, but I’m afraid we’re at capacity for this session, and the line for the next is a mile long.”
“No, no, we don’t want tickets. Not right now. We’re Sissy and Mikey, children of a couple you helped out during the Depression, Norvel and Elise Brandley. You put us up in the back room and fed us for a week.”
“My mother was on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Sissy added, “and my father, well, he may have walked into the ocean if you’d not let us harbor at the Starlight.”
“I remember you.” Tuesday came around the booth and embraced them. Sissy held her tight, and Mikey, a big strapping man in his fifties, rested his head on her shoulder for a long, long moment. “Look at you now,” Tuesday said. “Are you married, with children and grandchildren?”
They were, as was their youngest sibling, Elias, who lived in South Dakota and planned to come next week, if at all possible.Married with eleven children between them and fourteen grandchildren.
