inside now,” one of them said.
“Do you mind if I tag along?” Laurel spoke to Shannon. A couple of the girls exchanged strained looks. Karen stared pointedly at Shannon. It was one of those long moments of telling silence and Laurel felt awful, but she kept a plastic smile on her face.
“Sure,” Shannon said without much enthusiasm. “Come on.”
The lobby was crowded and the concession counter hummed with activity, surrounded with the crackle of popcorn popping, the hollow rattle of ice in an empty cup, and the whirring of the drink dispenser. It smelled like popcorn and hot dogs and Laurel was hungry almost instantly. A pack of local boys joined them and swept the girls toward the counter. Laurel ordered Coke, popcorn, and Butterfingers, and when she turned around, the two groups had all paired off. Five boys. Five girls. And her. While the others were talking, she edged her way to Shannon and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know we were meeting them.”
“I’ll just ease away. I don’t mind sitting alone,” she lied.
“No,” Shannon grabbed her arm and turned to her boyfriend. “Jake? This is Laurel Peyton. I work for her mom.”
He seemed genuinely nice and before she could sneak away, he introduced Laurel to the other boys. She made some lame excuse and turned to leave, but they stopped her.
“You can’t sit alone.”
The girls weren’t happy. She wasn’t alone, but a few minutes later, when the heavy red curtains parted and the lights dimmed, she decided even sitting alone would have been better than sitting in the middle of a long row of seats with snuggling couples on either side of her.
M*A*S*H flashed on the screen, and by the time Sally Kellerman was Hot Lips, the couple on her right was making out. Laurel set her Coke down and bumped into Karen’s knee. “Sorry.”
A boy’s hand closed over her thigh. Karen’s boyfriend had the wrong girl’s leg. She removed his hand, but they shifted positions and now were leaning on her arm. On her other side, Shannon was locked in a long, deep kiss with her boyfriend. Hunched in the center of her seat, surrounded by lovers, Laurel shoveled handfuls of popcorn into her mouth, ignoring the soft whispers and moans next to her.
The film suddenly fluttered over the screen, then snapped off. The audience groaned and everyone sat in the dark. The lights came on and the manager came out to a round of boos. “Sorry. Sorry. The film’s broken, so there will be free passes for everyone at the box office. But don’t leave your seats. We will be showing Love Story.”
The audience clapped and whistled as the lights dimmed and Ryan O’Neal stood on the huge screen. Both Laurel and her mother had watched every single episode of Peyton Place, her mom always joking that they had to be loyal to the name.
Laurel settled into her seat with the jumbo Coke, the tub of popcorn, and the huge yellow box of Butterfingers to hold on to instead of a boyfriend’s arm. Instead of being in a romance, she would watch one, forced by lousy luck to dream of happily-ever-afters.
The camera panned in on O’Neal, sitting alone in the bleachers as he said, “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died.”
It seemed a cliché, a man sitting at a bar drowning his troubles. But bars supplied the perfect environment to beat yourself up for making stupid mistakes, so Jud was living the cliché in a small beachside bar in Avalon that night. The bartender whipped through drink orders and Three Dog Night blasted from the requisite jukebox in a smoky corner. Deep in the recesses of the place, couples played pool and drank.
In under an hour, the place had swelled with people until the noise level measured many decibels. Jud sipped the foam off a new beer, trying to shut out the obnoxious noise from a nearby table, where a group of college guys from University of California at San Diego were slamming back shooters and singing their college fight song in a key that didn’t exist. They acted as if the world was theirs. That kind of partying had lost its appeal before his third year of college. He felt suddenly old. Today he’d hounded after a young girl who was jailbait, and he’d managed to convince his grandfather he was a first-class fuckup. This morning he’d thought the world was his. Now he felt like the world had him by the balls.
Right after he’d left the company offices with his crushed pride and his tail between his legs, he’d wondered bitterly if what happened this morning was another way for his grandfather to manipulate him. Victor was happiest when he stirred up trouble. But now, when he wasn’t angry anymore, Jud knew Victor didn’t play games with his business deals.
Earlier, Jud had called his connections and scheduled a lunch for the next week, but he felt skittish about it. As much as he’d hated to hear the truth from his grandfather’s mouth, those men would not have welcomed him into their business ventures. He had been so full of himself, so glad to be accepted, he couldn’t see their motive anymore than he could see that that girl today was under twenty. Seventeen? Could have been real trouble there.
He stared into the bottom of his beer glass, still chewing over the mysteries of Victor versus Marvetti until he decided none of it was going to solve itself tonight. He scanned the place. Bars never seemed to change much, still smoky, still smelly, still one of the few places on earth where you could be in a crowd and feel completely alone. The empty summer house on the cove held more appeal for him than a smoke-filled bar, where too many college kids on spring break needed to let loose. He downed his beer, paid, and went outside, where he could breathe again.
It was dark and cool in the shadow of the door, and the air tasted salty with the water just a hundred feet away. Neon light from the beer signs in the front window fell onto the bricked street like brightly colored snakes. Along the beach, palm trees cast shadows that looked like giant forearms with splayed hands, and beyond, the water was cavern black out into the harbor, until the running lights flickered in a staggered chain from where the weekend boat traffic moored. The smell of the tide made it seem like summer, and it was warm for April, maybe sixty-five degrees.
There were no cars about, only the occasional electric hum of a golf cart or the clicking spokes of a bicycle. On a bench next to the sand, a couple made out. Jud lit a cigarette, took a drag, then remembered he was going to quit. He took another hit then crushed it out with his foot.
At the north point, where the street ended with the old casino, people spilled out from the movie theater. Ahead of the crowd, a girl walked faster than most, wearing a car coat, her hands shoved deep in the pockets. She had great legs. A group of kids sped past in two golf carts, shouting and waving as they passed by her. She waved and watched them disappear, then she shoved her hands back in her coat pockets and walked on, staring down at the ground as she passed under a streetlamp.
In the warm light, her brown hair brushed her shoulders; her face was distinct and familiar, because she looked so much like Jacqueline Bisset. It was Jailbait, and this was his chance to apologize, but he hesitated. The bar door swung open and almost clipped him, forcing him back and into the shadows. Jukebox music blared into the night and the UCSD guys stumbled out like a family of apes, laughing loudly and shoving one another around.
They began to giggle and took him back to those times when he acted like an asshole for fun. In a haze of mind-numbing tequila they turned and immediately zeroed in on Jailbait. She kept walking, sidestepping away from them and nearer the sand. To her credit she looked straight ahead as they surrounded her. “Excuse me,” she said too brightly and squeezed between two of them.
“Hey, there, sweet thing.” The group tightened
