CHAPTER SIX
SYLVIA
Sylvia didn’t know exactly what she was looking for. She opened the desk drawers in Walter’s office at the club and rifled through his papers. She pulled open a filing cabinet and flicked through the folders hoping to find some clue as to what was causing him such distress, and some indication why he was talking to the real estate agent about the house. She sat down at his desk and scanned it, finding everything in place—a fountain pen and ink, an ashtray, the Waterford paperweight she’d bought him for his birthday. No hints, no clues.
Glenda, Walter’s secretary, opened his office door. “Good morning, dear. Is there something I can help you with?”
“No, Glenda, thank you. I can find it.”
“OK,” she said, hovering, clearly uncomfortable with Sylvia being there without her husband.
“Can I bring you a coffee or a pastry from the restaurant kitchen? They start baking them around this time to get ready for the lunch crowd. I often sneak one for Walter,” she said with a wink.
“I’m fine,” Sylvia said, wanting more time alone to poke around.
She was only seventeen when she’d met Walter. Her friend Karen Boston had convinced her to go to Balboa Island for Bal Week, where Karen planned to meet a nice college boy. Sylvia lived in Barstow, twohours inland, and rarely saw the ocean, so she jumped at the chance. There was to be a bathing beauty contest, and Karen was determined to win both the contest and a husband, and she insisted that Sylvia enter too, for moral support. They’d pooled their meager savings together to purchase new swimsuits; they’d borrowed clothes suitable for beach activities, and they’d sewn whatever they didn’t have. By the time they packed their suitcases and were ready to set off for their weeklong adventure, they had just enough money to share a two-bedroom cottage with twelve other girls they’d never met, with not a penny to spare. They were going to have to work really hard for those dinners and drinks. But as Sylvia walked out the door, her grandmother had pulled her aside.
“You go and have yourself some fun,” she’d said, placing a five-dollar bill in her hand and closing her fingers over it. “And you be the kind, honest young lady I raised you to be. There’s gonna be some flashy people down that way, rich people, that might make you question what you got back home.” Her grandmother stood up straighter, smoothing down the clean yet permanently stained apron she had tied around her waist. “Just you remember now, none of that matters; what matters is your integrity, you understand me?”
“Yes, Ma,” she’d said, staring down at the money in her hand. “Thank you.”
Her grandparents had raised her. There’d never been any mention of who her father was, though when she was old enough to understand a few things, she’d overheard late-night conversations that implied that the act between her mother and whoever he was had not been consensual. When Sylvia was a toddler, her mother met John—tall and serious with a steady job. He lived in a nice house in a decent part of town, but he wanted nothing to do with an illegitimate child. Sylvia was sent to live with her grandparents. Her own mother went on to have two more children with John, but Sylvia rarely saw them.
Except for the occasional sting when some kid made a comment about how old her “parents” were or how worn down her clothes looked, shedidn’t feel all that different from everyone else she grew up with. As she got older, though, she realized that her prince was not going to find her working the cash register at Dottie’s in the small, dusty town of Barstow. She was going to have to get out of there quickly if she wanted a chance at love. Except, instead of meeting a nineteen-year-old college boy that week on Balboa Island, as her friend Karen had predicted, she met thirty-two-year-old Walter.
She’d left her spot on the crowded sand and was standing in line at the frozen banana stand in the Fun Zone to get a chocolate-dipped frozen banana when Walter had approached, dabbing at his forehead with a white linen handkerchief.
“You look like you’re at the wrong party,” Sylvia said to him as he got in line behind her, wearing a pale-blue suit and button-down shirt, the only suit among hundreds, maybe even thousands, of swimsuit-clad men and women packed like sardines on the beach by the amusement park.
“I’m working, unfortunately,” he said, pulling at his collar.
“Working on a beautiful day like today?” Sylvia asked.
“When you live here, you see that pretty much every day is beautiful.”
“Then maybe you have the wrong kind of job,” she said. “If you were a lifeguard”—she pointed to the strapping young men perched atop shaded chairs overlooking the beachgoers—“then you’d have a far more suitable uniform.”
“This is true,” he said, chuckling. “But until I land myself a job like that, I’m just looking for ways to cool down.” He turned to the man at the banana stand. “Two frozen bananas, dipped, no nuts; one for me, one for the lady.”
“How do you know what I want?”
“An educated guess. This is a banana stand.”
She laughed. “That’s true, but I can buy my own,” Sylvia addedinstinctively, handing the man at the stand fifteen cents. “And I’ll take the nuts, please.”
Walter seemed to consider this for a moment. “Well, if I can’t buy you a frozen banana, nuts or no nuts, perhaps I could take you to dinner tonight?”
Sylvia smiled. He was devilishly handsome and successful looking, despite the fact that it seemed as if he might burst into flames in that suit in the hot sun, and he had a hopeful smile that lifted on one side. She looked into his hazel eyes and really wanted to say yes, but then she knew she’d have to leave Karen all alone, and they’d planned to eat like birds for the rest of the day to prepare for the Bathing Beauty Contest.
“I’m Walter, by the way, Walter Johnson,” he said. “I seem to have forgotten my manners, asking a young lady out for a date without even introducing myself.” He put his hand on his heart and bowed his head a little, which made Sylvia laugh.
“Well, nice to meet you, Walter. I’m Sylvia, and while I would like to take you up on your kind offer, I’m afraid I can’t tonight because my friend and I have to get our beauty sleep for the beauty contest tomorrow.”
“You’re entering the Bathing Beauty Contest?” he asked. “Of course you are. And I am quite sure you will win.”
“And what makes you so sure?”
“Because you’re the most beautiful woman on this island.” Then growing bolder, he said, “Heck, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever set my eyes on.”
