Meet Me at the Starlight

Chapter 34

HARLOW

AUGUST

If she heard it once after the trial, she’d heard it a thousand times.

“Meet me at the Starlight. Late session.”

“Are you going to the Starlight? Meet you there.”

The Gazette published a special issue detailing the history of the Starlight. Tuesday didn’t love the name “Wrecking Ball Skate” for Labor Weekend. She preferred “Last Night at the Starlight.”

Harlow was old hat around the place these days. Just a regular Sea Blue Beacher, who attended a girls’ night at the Fish Hook and hosted a book club at her house.

Skates laced up, she entered the rink to Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.” The shufflers were cruising around the outside of the rink, and she ached to join them. But first, she had to make it a whole session without stumbling.

After her dinner with Immanuel three weeks ago, she became more peaceful. The stride of her morning jog was longer. Even more surprising, she’d not rolled off the diet bandwagon once. Temptation still existed, but after Immanuel’s bread and fish, her emotions changed.

She took to asking Him for help when she felt weak. Last night, while closing the rink, the stragglers informed her the vending machine dispensed candy bars if you bumped it just right. Got to be honest, the Snickers bars were calling her name. She peered up at Immanuel’s mural and said, “Can you help a girl out?”

A second later, Simon said he was good to go and asked if he could walk her home. She forgot all about the Snickers.

Even more miraculous, she told Mom she’d forgiven her. To which she replied, “For what?” Even if Anne Hayes didn’t get it, Harlow needed to say it. She ended the call with a soft “I love you.” For the first time in her life, she was inching along her personal rink, free to fall and get up again.

Dad wanted to know if she’d like to open a Hayes Cookie retail space in Sea Blue Beach. As it happened, she’d jogged by an empty space next to the future Starlight museum that same day.

Matt’s firm, warm hand landed on her back. “Look at you, skating.” He’d come home for the weekend. More and more, she knew she belonged with him. He drew her close for a couple’s skate.

“Don’t look at your feet,” he said. “Look at me. Feel the music. Don’t overthink it. Roll, push, roll, push. There you go. Glide, glide, glide.”

She curled her right hand around his and settled her left on his thick shoulder. The rink lights dimmed, and the disco ball cast a romantic prism across the floor. The melodic sound of a piano, guitar, and drums preceded the velvet voice of Elvis. “For I can’t help falling in love with you.”

“They’re playing our song,” Matt said.

Harlow scooted into him and breathed him in. Then bump, her skate rammed into his. Stumbling backward, Matt’s foot kicked hers, which launched her tripping and stumbling, arms pinwheeling, toward the half-wall.

“Help, I’m doing the splits. Dial 9-1-1.”

“Work your feet together,” Matt called.

“You work your feet together.” She shooed away the six-year-olds hobbling along. “Pardon me, excuse me. So sorry.” She crashed into the wall, arms and legs flailing.

Matt rescued her, trying very hard not to laugh as she straightened her shirt, squared the waist of her jeans, and tossed her hair over her shoulder.

“Well, that was fun,” she said, sweat trickling down her back. “Where’s a video camera when you need one?”

“Guess we got tangled up.” Matt took her hand as Nora continued the couple’s skate with the Eagles’ “Best of My Love.”

“You’re laughing,” she said, settling into Matt’s movements, thinking about how goofy she must’ve looked.

“No, not laughing.”

“Then you’re over-smiling.”

Now he laughed and kissed her. “We’re going to be great together, Harlow.”

“We’d better be, or I’m telling Immanuel on you.” She adjusted her feet and rolled along, smiling, feeling all the shy yet glorious sensations of being so close to someone who saw through her.

Harlow enjoyed her unhindered free fall into love. When she’d fallen in love with Xander, she wasn’t free on the inside. Now she was.

On his first day back in LA after the trial, Matt met a man on set who knew a lot about Immanuel, and he started teaching Matt from the Good Book.

Harlow’s skate ran into Matt’s again, and she fell against his chest. He kissed her cheek and eased his hand around to her hip. As awkward as it was to skate so close, she stayed against him, swaying side to side.

After his courtroom victory, Matt bought steaks and corn on the cob from Biggs and grilled out at Dupree’s, who carried home an apple pie from Sweet Conversations. Tuesday tossed a lovely garden salad, and they ate that night with Bodie and his family at Dupree’s dining room table.

“Harlow, welcome to the family,” Dupree said when he’d poured the wine. “If you ever need any help at your place, something fixed or looked at, just call Ma.”

“Tuesday?”

His laugh rang through the kitchen. “Naw, just pulling your leg. Call me. If I can’t come, I’ll send one of my guys.”

“Don’t pull my leg, Dupree. I’m tall enough as it is.”

Laughter was truly a healing balm.

The techno dance beat of Shannon’s “Let the Music Play” revved up the rink.

“Babe, I got to skate!” Matt shoved off to join a couple of teens in the shuffle line, and in his haste, kind of, sort of, gave Harlow a little push.

“Matt, hey...” She flailed, again, teetering, then tottering, skates clicking and clacking against the floor. “What happened to Elvis and take my hand? Remember the half-wall incident of 1987?” Harlow grabbed at the air, straining to stay on her feet. “Somebody, anybody ... hey . . . take my hand.”

Matt zoomed by, miming a dropped bomb on his heart.

“I’m going to bomb you with these skates when I take them off. No, I’m not even going to take them off.”

Suddenly, a gaggle of girls swarmed around her. One of them grabbed her right hand, and another her left, and they held her steady as she worked her skates into alignment.

They talked like she was part of their crowd, ignoring the beat of the music, leisurely skating with one foot extended and tipped up to roll on the back wheels. Round and round she went, finding a smoothness in it all, even managed to do that thing with one foot forward, rolling on the back wheels. Did the Starlight pass out gold medals?

They chatted about the upcoming school year and how so-and-so was the predicted homecoming queen. Two of the girls were going out for volleyball, while the other two planned to audition for the school play.

When the Commodores’ “Brick House” poured through the speakers, the girls came to life and skated away, singing and pointing to one another. “She’s mighty, mighty . . .”

They motioned for Harlow to join them, but she wasn’t quite ready for “Brick House” tomfoolery.

“Well, well, we meet again.” Simon skated next to her. “Know what I was thinking, Harlow? The first day you came to Sea Blue Beach, you seemed sort of broken.”

“I thought I was hiding it so well.”

“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 Kathleen DiMarco 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 money for 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.

“All our lives, our parents pointed to you, Tuesday Knight, as an example of how to love, how to be generous. We know we weren’t the first family to ask for your help or the last. We came all this way to tell you our family never forgot you.”

“You have to skate. Come through the back door next session.”

“We accept, if you accept this from our parents.” Mikey pressed an envelope into Tuesday’s hand. “Dad invented an electrical component used in radar during the war. He went on to work for GE and NASA, then started his own business. He’s retired now, but”—he squeezed her hand—“he wanted you to have this. He thought it might help save the Starlight.”

“There’s no saving the Starlight. I can’t accept.” She could not take the man’s money. “The city has made the decision. You see the demolition signs.” She held out the envelope, but no one reached for it. “The wrecking crew comes next week, so it won’t be used for what your father intended.”

“Doesn’t matter, Tuesday. It’s a gift from our parents. They never, ever forgot you, Sea Blue Beach, the Starlight, or that image of Immanuel.” Sissy pointed to the mural. “So please, keep the money, use it for yourself and your family.”

“Dad will disown us if we come back with that check,” Mikey said.

Tuesday brushed away tears. “I don’t know what to say—”

The Brandley kids left for the Blue Plate to grab a bite before the evening skate.

“Who were you talking to, Ma?” Dupree grabbed his soda again.

“Children of a family I helped during the Depression.” She handed the envelope to her son. “Their parents sent this to help save the Starlight. I tried to give it back, but they insist it was a gift. I’m so overwhelmed with all the folks coming home only to say good-bye. So much joy in the sadness.”

Dupree tore the back flap and read the check. His expression told her nothing. “It’s for twenty grand, Ma.”

“Let me see.” Sure enough, handwritten by Norvel Brandley. Two zero, zero, zero, zero. “I can’t take this. How preposterous.”

“You can if it’s a gift.”

“Dup, I gave them a bed and bath for a week, a couple of meals, nothing much fancier than bean soup. That doesn’t merit twenty thousand dollars.”

“What is it you say? ‘Who knew so much could come from so little’? It’s the story of the Starlight, Ma.” He pressed the check into her hand. “All the years you stuck with it, hung in there, fought for the rink, survived storms and economic crashes. You warded off Pa and his gambling goons. You stood up for what was right. So much came from your small efforts.”

“All right, get out onto the floor. You’re making me cry.” She yanked open the center drawer for a tissue, finding nothing but her old shears—the ones she used to cut up linens for Doc to bandage Leroy.

Dupree had one thing wrong. All of this wasn’t because of her. Not even the Starlight. This was the handiwork of Immanuel of the Starlight.

He was sending her out in style.