Page 4 of An Unfinished Story
Firm on her decision, she turned the page and read the first line:
The boy first came to me in a dream, a bolt striking from the sky.
Not the typical entry into a whodunit. Claire kept reading. Though there were still corrections and erased passages, the sentences were easy to follow. As her eyes bounced from word to word, beautiful images appeared in her mind. She flew through the first chapter and, at once, felt sad that David wasn’t here but also glad that he had left this treasure. David had written something far from a mystery, taking a piece of his soul and putting it onto the page.
He wasn’t writing about the city of Orlando. Set in modern-day Sarasota, the story began with a single man in his late thirties named Kevin catching an eleven-year-old boy breaking into his car. The boy’s name was Orlando.
Howhad David never mentioned this story? She was desperate to keep reading, desperate to find out what happened. But she had to get back to the café, the only stable piece of her life. If she let that slip, she was sure she’d lose her last, white-knuckled grip on life.
Chapter 2
UNHAPPYCUSTOMERS
As she crossed from Tampa Bay to the Gulf along the southern end of St. Pete, “96 Degrees in the Shade” by Third World easing through the speakers of her open-topped convertible, Claire stewed over the contents of David’s book. What was she about to read?
At a stoplight, she dug into her purse and found the pack of American Spirit cigarettes hidden in the secret pocket. Setting them in the cup holder, she wrapped a scarf around her hair, the first step in hiding the cigarette smell from everyone in her life, especially her employees. She slipped on the windbreaker she kept for such occasions, zipped it up, and then pulled a latex glove over her hand.
Once Claire was moving again, her hair blowing in the salty breeze, she lit up. Smoke filled her lungs, a sweet taste amid the bitter. Today was one of those days when she could easily justify this nasty new habit of hers.
As she puffed away, she caught herself thinking of the overall unfairness of being human. Sometimes, all you wanted was a good cry, but life rarely gave you the space. Claire should have been able to go home and lie in bed all day reading David’s book, curled up with an arm around a pillow as if he were still there—as if he were that pillow. There were still tears that needed purging.
That was not how life worked, though. Not only did she need to finish cleaning out his office (and read his novel), but she needed to keep her café running. Wasn’t it funny and painful at the same time that in addition to the struggles of life—death, sickness, even simple house chores, the never-ending lack of time—you still had to keep up a day job to survive? Not that her café was just a day job. It was her dream, but sometimes she wished she could push the “Pause” button on it for a few days. As the owner, she couldn’t be gone for long or the whole place would fall apart. That was life. We had to put on our best happy face, close the door on all the troubles that do their best to pull us down, and somehow pretend that everything was all right. One big Bob Marley song.
Claire loved her occupation and probably would have been bored otherwise. In fact, on the right day, she’d admit to herself that she had a nearly unhealthy obsession with the café she’d opened almost a decade before. What saddened Claire today, and all these days, was that she knew she wasn’t some strange exception. Her life wasn’t any more painful than the next. No, not everyone had lost a husband or a spouse, but the planet was a jumble of struggling people fighting to keep the roof from falling down on their heads.
Maybe there was some comfort in knowing and remembering that everyone suffered. At least, she thought, amid all the pain, everyone was in it together. Whether you lived in Boulder, Santa Barbara, Santa Fe, heck, even Bangkok, or, in this case, St. Pete, life dealt you blows that sometimes made it hard to get out of bed.
Taking a last puff and dropping her cigarette butt into a nearly empty bottle of water, she drove the Pinellas Bayway over the bridge leading to Pass-a-Grille, a beach town that, for most of the last ten thousand years, had been a Native American fishing village. Compared to its northerly neighbors closer to Clearwater, Pass-a-Grille was sleepy and tranquil, just the way Claire liked it. And just the way she remembered it from when she first came to visit her grandmother here as a teenager. She removed the scarf and glove and crammed them into the glove compartment. After taking off the windbreaker, she stuffed it under the seat. Then, with a deep breath of salt air, she soaked in the view. Surely she could find some energy and healing in the divinity of the Gulf.
Ahead, the grand Don CeSar hotel, the big pink palace that defined the landscape and had served as a beach stay for such legends as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Franklin Roosevelt, stood proud and tall against the backdrop of the various shades of blue water. Like a warm breeze, the beach atmosphere brought Claire a tiny serving of peace.
Swinging a hard left, Claire drove along the beach, passing between the giant palm trees that lined the main thoroughfare. Pass-a-Grille was a peninsula, a tiny piece of land with the Gulf waters on one side and the channel on the other. A decent golfer could knock a ball from the sand over into the channel on the other side from even the widest stretch.
Claire stopped along the channel a block short of her café to perform her typical regimen after sneaking a cigarette. A pelican was sunbathing with open wings on an old wooden post jutting out of the glittery water. No one other than a couple of widows at her meetings knew Claire smoked, and she was intent on keeping it that way. After rubbing her hands together with the organic hand sanitizer made of lavender essential oils, she sprayed two pumps of natural mint freshener into her mouth and then popped in a piece of Spry peppermint gum.
She flipped down the visor and looked at herself in the mirror. Retiring her contact lenses, the oversize designer glasses were part of her new identity, the one she’d adopted upon leaving Chicago in her twenties. A new look for a new Claire. She touched up her shiny lip gloss and dusted her cheeks to give some more color to her sun-kissed skin.
Named in honor of her father’s old diner in Chicago, which she’d helped run until he’d died in her midtwenties, Leo’s South was tucked into a small lot on the channel side of the peninsula. After parking in the owner’s spot, she looked out over the water, out to the stunning houses on Tierra Verde with their long wooden docks boasting gazebos and beautiful yachts at the end. That kind of beauty made her believe she might see David again, even if that meant they both came back as seabirds in the next life.
Ever since opening nearly a decade ago, Leo’s South had been an institution. In the wake of their inability to have children, this café had become Claire’s baby, and she wished her father could have seen it come to life. She wasn’t solving the world’s problems, but she was adding a little light to this already colorful blip on the map. Novelists had penned fine books here. Artists had sold their first works. Eckerd College students had collected their first paychecks. Business deals had been hashed out over avocado toast and huevos rancheros. Countless families had connected for their first meal after arriving for their weeklong beach retreat. No, she wasn’t curing cancer, but she’d created a place that was as much a part of Pass-a-Grille as the dolphins, the seahorses, the stingrays, and even the sand upon which it was built.
David had helped design the building. Though his expertise had been in designing modern condominiums and office buildings for the budding downtown of St. Pete, she wanted beach-town simplicity. Where he was worried about hurricanes and would have designed some sort of Category Five hurricane-proof structure ready to handle anything from weather events to nuclear disaster, she wanted something light and airy with barely any structure at all, a posh tiki hut with sand on the floor.
Her lenses lightened as Claire started into the café. The ping of silverware hitting plates and the laughter of the happy guests met her ears in a glorious symphony. Her father would be so proud of her. Leo had taught her everything, most of all the importance of simplicity. The same one-page menu, along with a fresh catch of the day, was served from seven to two, every day but Mondays, and they were all out the door by three. Keep it simple. Keep it amazing.
She was happy to hear Jimmy Cliff singing through the speakers. Some of the servers had been changing the music when Claire left, and she didn’t particularly share their taste. Leo’s South had a laid-back air, and the music needed to fit the ambience. She played mostly reggae, though she allowed some old-school soul from time to time.
Her café was an extension of her own style: colorful boho chic. The floor was white, powdery sand, and on one wall hung a NOSHOESALLOWEDsign, which Claire had assured the inspector from the health department was a joke. Potted tropical plants filled every available space. One of her favorite ideas to date, an Oriental rug stretched out over the sand, enhanced by an overhead crystal chandelier. The driftwood tables on the rug offered the best seats in the house.
“How we doing?” Claire asked the teenage hostess, who was three days into the first job of her life.
“It hasn’t slowed down once,” she said, wide eyed and short of breath.
Claire flashed a smile. “’Tis the season.” February was the height of snowbird season and was typically one of their best two months.
She walked behind the bar, waved at Chef Jackson frying eggs on the stove and Paulie pulling a tray of biscuits out of the oven. She said hello to Jevaun from Jamaica, who was mixing up a line of screwdrivers, the aroma of fresh Florida citrus rising brightly into the air. His long dreads were tied up and wrapped in a net.
In a heavy accent, he said, “That Jimmy Cliff sounds good, yeah?”
