7. Shedding the Gloss
Shedding the Gloss
Piper
By the time I turned off the highway and onto the crushed-seashell drive, I had been traveling south for two days.
The Florida Keys greeted me with ninety-degree heat that poured through the open car door before I had both feet on the ground.
Humidity settled against my skin, carrying saltwater, diesel, and something unmistakably dead from the docks.
After years of climate-controlled garages and spotless NFL facilities, the smell should have sent me straight back into the car.
Instead, I stood there and looked around.
Osprey Bluff Marina had none of the glossy charm advertised on vacation brochures.
The bait shack near the water had sun-faded siding and a tin roof that looked as if it had survived several arguments with hurricane season.
Working boats crowded the slips beyond it, their hulls streaked from use rather than polished for photographs.
Hoses crossed the dock, buckets sat where somebody had last needed them, and the afternoon glare came off the water hard enough to make me squint.
It was the first place I had reached in two days that wasn’t trying to sell me anything.
My suitcase stayed in the trunk. The purse holding my phone and the sonogram envelope remained on the passenger seat, tucked out of sight beneath an old sweatshirt. I shut the car door and started across the drive with empty hands.
The shells ground beneath my canvas shoes, catching in the soles with every few steps. One edge snagged my shoe before I had made it halfway to the shack.
“Great,” I muttered. “Excellent start.”
Going back to the car would have been easier. The air conditioning still worked, the tank held enough gas to keep moving, and somewhere farther south there was probably a motel where nobody would ask questions.
But I hadn’t driven this far to keep running from one parking lot to the next.
A man stepped out of the shack, wiping his hands on a rag.
Sun had baked his face and forearms until his skin looked permanently weathered, and his fishing shirt carried grease stains that no laundry detergent was ever going to defeat.
He studied me, then glanced toward the car as if he expected a family of tourists to emerge behind me.
“You looking for fuel or bait?”
“Neither.” I stopped at the edge of the dock. “I was looking for whoever owns the place.”
He looked back at me.
“Depends who’s asking.”
Not friendly, exactly. But direct.
Direct was manageable.
“I saw the flyer in town that said you were looking for someone to manage the bait shack.” The words came out steadier once I started. “I don’t have marine experience, but I need a job.”
His hands went still.
For a moment, he just looked me over. Not the lingering, appraising stare I had learned to expect at sponsor events, where somebody always wanted to know what designer I was wearing or whether Nolan would appear beside me.
He checked my clothes, then my shoes, before turning back to the working dock.
One of my shoes sank into a loose patch of shells when I shifted my weight. I pulled it free and scraped the pieces off against my other shoe.
His mouth twitched.
“Those shoes won’t last long out here.”
“Then I’ll ruin them first and replace them after I get paid.”
That earned me another look.
“My name is Skipper.” He tucked the rag into his waistband. “And honey, you look like a tourist who got lost on her way to a resort.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He nodded toward the shack. “But this isn’t some cute little waterfront shop where you sell sunscreen and postcards. The days here are boiling hot, the tourists are rude, and the smell of chum never washes out.”
A gull cried somewhere beyond the fuel dock. Behind Skipper, somebody started an engine, and diesel exhaust rolled across the marina before the wind pushed it toward open water.
None of it bothered me.
Maybe it should have.
Two days earlier, I had lived behind security gates in a house with rooms I barely used. My groceries appeared after somebody else carried them inside. I had left expensive clothes hanging in my closet because none of them had ever seemed like mine in the first place.
Here, nobody knew whose wife I was.
Nobody had asked.
Skipper folded his arms and waited.
There was a challenge in that silence, but it wasn’t cruel. He was giving me the truth about the job and expecting me to decide whether I could tolerate it.
That alone made me want it more.
“I am not afraid of hard work or bad smells, Skipper.” I tipped my chin toward the shack behind him. “If you show me what needs to be done, I promise I’ll pull my own weight.”
Skipper let my answer sit between us while the bait aerators buzzed inside the shack. He looked me over once more, taking in whatever two days on the highway had left behind. I waited for another warning about the heat, or maybe a polite dismissal that would send me back toward the car.
Instead, he jerked his head toward the open doorway. “Come inside before this sun cooks you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve got road written all over you.” He turned before I could argue. “Come inside anyway.”
The shade inside the shack took the worst of the glare out of my eyes, though the heat followed us through the doorway.
Brine churned in a pair of bait tanks against one wall, their aerators producing a constant hum beneath the slap of water.
Shelves held tackle, line, gloves, and enough fishing gear to make it obvious that nobody here cared much about presentation as long as everything could be found when somebody needed it.
Skipper went behind the counter and reached underneath.
I stayed near the doorway, uncertain whether I had been invited inside for an actual conversation or just given a few minutes out of the sun before he sent me away.
The car remained visible through the entrance, parked where I had left it.
My suitcase was still in the trunk. My purse, phone, and sonogram were still inside.
For the first time since leaving the house, all of it could stay exactly where it was while I decided what came next.
Skipper straightened with a faded Osprey Bluff Marina T-shirt and set it on the counter.
“Try that. If it doesn’t fit right, make it work until laundry day.”
I picked it up. “You mean I’m hired?”
“I mean I’m willing to find out whether you know how to work.” Skipper tapped the counter. “There’s a difference.”
That was fair.
“I can make a T-shirt work.”
“Good. That’s one crisis handled.”
His dry delivery almost pulled a laugh out of me. I folded the shirt over my arm and waited.
Skipper leaned on the counter. “You know how to write legibly?”
“Well enough to keep a charter log.”
“Basic numbers?”
“I can count.”
“Tourists yell at you because they forgot to order bait ahead of time?”
“I assume that’s their problem.”
He gave a dry half-smile.
“Wrong. Once they walk through that door, they become your problem until you get them back out.”
“I can live with that.”
He pointed toward the tanks. “Those stay stocked. Charter logs stay current. Deliveries get counted before anybody signs for them. If a captain says he took four flats of bait and your sheet says six, I expect you to figure out which one of you can’t count before I lose money.”
The list should have intimidated me.
Instead, every item had an answer. Count the delivery. Record the charter. Stock the tanks. Solve the discrepancy. There was no hidden camera waiting outside, no campaign strategy disguised as a favor, no requirement to smile while somebody else decided which parts of my life could be made public.
Just work.
“I can do that.”
Skipper studied me again, then pushed away from the counter and nodded toward the ceiling.
“There’s an empty efficiency apartment above the shack. Rent comes directly out of your weekly paycheck. If you can keep the charter logs straight and the bait tanks full, you can stay.”
I looked up at the ceiling.
An apartment.
Not a motel for another night. Not another stretch of highway tomorrow morning while I tried to decide how much farther south I could go before I ran out of Florida. A room attached to honest work, with terms laid out before I accepted them.
He must have mistaken my silence for hesitation.
“It’s small,” Skipper said. “Don’t expect anything fancy. There’s a bed, a shower, a little kitchen setup, and an air conditioner that complains every time you turn it on but usually does the job.”
“Usually?”
“If it dies, you tell me before you start taking it apart yourself.”
“I wasn’t planning to repair the air conditioner.”
“Good. You’re already smarter than the last guy who stayed up there.”
That time, I smiled.
“Thank you. That is more than fair.” I looked past him toward the docks. “Where do you need me first?”
Skipper grabbed his rag from the counter and headed for the door.
“Leave your bags in the car for now. Follow me out to the main docks. We have a charter coming in, and they need the cleaning tables hosed down.”
Weeks later, I could tell what kind of morning we were going to have by how many charter captains appeared before seven.
That morning, every slip seemed occupied.
The bait aerators buzzed behind me while I lifted the lid of the commercial freezer.
Icy air rolled over my arms, cutting through the heat trapped beneath the tin roof.
Rows of frozen ballyhoo sat packed in plastic, their silver bodies stiff beneath a skin of frost. I hooked my fingers into the edge of the next flat and pulled.
“Come on.”
The frozen bundle caught against the side of the freezer before giving way. I hoisted it onto the prep table, where frost immediately began to sweat against the warm steel. A metal bucket waited beside the cutting area, and four more sat lined against the wall.
Just get these last five bait buckets prepped before the offshore boats pull up.
That was manageable.
Everything here had become manageable once I learned the order of it.