This morning, Tex is heading out to meet with the insurance adjuster. Again. The third meeting in two weeks. Another meeting about documentation, receipts, and a supplemental claim that needs to be filed in person. Apparently, the insurance company decided that surviving a Category 5 hurricane wasn't sufficient inconvenience and has added bureaucratic torture to the recovery process.
"I'll be back by two," he says over breakfast. Our plates, our stools, our kitchen. I've stopped thinking of these things as his. They're ours. I don't know when that happened. "Maybeearlier if the adjuster doesn't make me want to drive into the Gulf. Which he might. He's a very tedious man, Stormy. He wears a short-sleeve dress shirt with a tie. That tells you everything you need to know about his character."
"Take the receipts from the red folder," I say. "Not the blue one. The blue one is the original estimates. He needs the actuals."
"See, this is why I need you. I would have brought the blue folder and spent thirty minutes arguing about numbers that don't exist anymore." He grabs the red folder from the counter where I left it for him because I knew he'd grab the wrong one. "Hold down the fort. Help Sheila with setup. I'll be back."
He leaves. The truck rumbles out of the lot and I listen to it fade down the beach road and the bar gets quiet. Sheila is upstairs doing inventory, her footsteps moving back and forth above me.
I clean up breakfast, wash the dishes, wipe the counters, put everything away. Then I go outside to start setting up tables for tonight.
The heat sucks all the oxygen out of the air.
It's ten in the morning and the temperature is already in the mid-nineties, the humidity so high that my shirt is stuck to my back within three minutes of stepping outside. The parking lot concrete is hot enough to feel through my shoes. The air shimmers above the asphalt in waves that make the world look liquid.
I drag tables out and set them up in the usual configuration. I check the propane on Big Bertha and wipe down the serving station. By the time I'm done, I'm drenched. Every piece of clothing I'm wearing is soaked through and thesweat is running into my eyes. My throat is dry despite the two bottles of water I've already gone through.
I need to cool off before I pass out. The beach is right there. A hundred yards from where I'm standing, the water stretches out flat and endless. It's the only thing in the world that isn't trying to cook me alive today.
I go inside and find Sheila on the second floor.
"Setup's done," I say. "I'm going to take a walk on the beach for a few minutes. To cool off."
She looks up. "Take water with you. And don't be gone too long. I need you to help me with the bar stock when you get back."
"Twenty minutes, tops."
"Take a cap too. The sun out there will fry that pretty blonde head of yours in a heartbeat."
I don't take a hat. I go upstairs to my room and stand there for a second, looking at the dresser where the hot pink bathing suit has been sitting, folded, unworn, since the Walmart trip weeks ago. Tex picked it for me because I live on a beach now, and that's what people who live on beaches do. They swim. They go in the water. They don't hover at the waterline, afraid of getting their feet wet.
I put on the bathing suit. It's violently pink. I look like a flamingo. But it fits, and when I head out toward the beach, something about wearing it feels like a small act of bravery. Saying yes to a new thing instead of no for a change.
The beach is mostly empty this early in the morning. On a Wednesday morning in August there's nobody around except a few people way down the shore, maybe a quarter mile east, small figures in the distance. No lifeguards. Just sand and water stretching to the horizon.
The sand is hot under my feet. Too hot, the kind of hot that makes you walk fast and wish you'd worn the flip-flops. I don't know why I thought I'd be walking on the beach to cool off. It's hotter on the sand than it was in the parking lot, especially on my bare feet.
The water looks enticing though. The waves aren't too big. Just the normal size whitecaps I'm used to seeing from the bar balcony. I look for the best spot to go in and pick a calm place where the waves aren't cresting.
I wade in knee-deep. The water is warm. Not cold, not refreshing the way I imagined, but warm and soft. The salt smell fills my nose and the waves circle around my ankles. It feels good. The heat is still everywhere but the water is taking the edge off, pulling the sting out of the sun, and for the first time all morning I feel like I can breathe.
I wade a little deeper, still trying to stay away from the cresting waves. They look rougher from here than they did from the bar and I'm worried they might knock me down. The bottom is sandy and gradual, sloping down in a gentle line, and the water comes up to my knees, then my thighs. I stop at mid-thigh. This feels about right.
Deep enough to cool off, shallow enough to feel the bottom under my feet. There aren't any waves where I'm standing, just gentle swells that push against my legs and retreat. There are a few out toward the horizon that look bigger, but they're far away and this close to shore everything is calm.
I stand there, letting the water move around me and I relax for a minute. I should've done this before now. It's nice. I wonder if Tex would come swimming with me if I asked him to. Then I wonder how his meeting with the insurance adjuster is going, fighting for every dime of money to rebuild his dad'sbar. He'll be back soon and then we'll be getting ready for tonight. It'll be hot as hell in the parking lot this evening. The bikers don't seem to mind though and the heat keeps them buying beer. Maybe I can hook up more fans to blow on them.
The wave hits me hard from behind.
I didn't have a clue it was coming and it crashed over me when I turned to glance up at the bar.
It's not a small wave, not the gentle swells I've been standing in. A bigger one, a rogue that built up further out and traveled fast and silent, then broke right where I was standing. It hits my back with a force I wasn't braced for and my feet go out from under me.
I go down, face-first in the water, salt in my nose and mouth. The strong undercurrent pulls me backwards into the water. I scramble to try to stand up.
The bottom is gone.
Not gradually gone, not a gentle slope into deeper water. Gone. Like someone dug a hole where the sand used to be. My feet are kicking and there's nothing under them, and the water is over my head. The wave that knocked me down has pulled me backwards, past whatever shelf I was standing on, and into deeper water.
