Chapter Twelve
The food in the cafeteria at Starlight Palms was so good it had no business calling itself a cafeteria.
My meal of choice for my first week was chicken Caesar salad and a side of Parmesan truffle Tater Tots.
I also got into the habit of picking up whatever green juice concoction was available because it made me feel like I had my shit together.
Since Morgan or a resident would search me out in the cafeteria, I’d begun taking my lunch back to my office, where I could enjoy it behind the safety of a locked door.
Today, though, Hollis beckoned me over before I could make my exit and invited me to sit with her, Ruby, and their table of friends.
“Sort of feels like I’m the new girl at the lunch table,” I joked as I sat down between Hollis and Ruby.
Gwen, the woman from the bus with the hearing aid, leaned over and whispered, “We heard you saw the coffin.”
I scooted my chair back, the legs scraping against the floor. “Oh no, I’m not here to gossip.”
Ruby pulled me by the wrist back into my seat.
“It’s not gossip if it’s public knowledge,” said Gwen.
The man next to her kissed her cheek and let out a little growl. He wore a button-down knit top and white shorts, like he’d chosen a signature style in the sixties and hadn’t looked back.
I turned to Hollis. “Do they need a room?”
She rolled her eyes. “Gwen and Harvey have needed their own room since we were all twenty-two and shacking up in one hotel room here because that’s all we could afford.”
“The four of you have known each other since your twenties? And you used to come here?” I knew Ruby had been a patron of Starlight Palms, but I hadn’t imagined that she could have lifelong friends I didn’t even know about.
Ruby sipped her smoothie. “Quite a few of us are old lovers of the Palms. And the Palms has always loved us back.”
“Except that one time we were kicked out for skinny-dipping during a wedding,” Gwen said, her voice light and far off.
Hollis nodded. “That was unfortunate, but none of us had ever tried acid before. How were we to know that we’d end up bathing under the flamingo fountain naked because Ruby said we were baby flamingos, and the flamingo was our mother?”
My brain didn’t know which detail to latch on to first.
“I put down my and Gwen’s deposit for this place the moment they announced the Starlight Palms was coming back as a retirement community,” Harvey said.
“Have you two been together that long?” I asked Harvey.
Gwen turned to him, like she was waiting for him to recite a story they’d argued over many times.
“It was love at first sight,” he said.
Gwen pelted him with her napkin. “That’s a load of horse shit and you know it.” Then she turned to me. “I was head of costumes on the set of Married to the Devil.”
“I auditioned for that one, but lost out to Mary Quinn,” Ruby said as she slowly drummed her long fingernails on the table. Leonard walked through the door and Ruby’s eyes watched him for a moment before flitting away.
Hollis cocked her head to the side. “Was that the same Mary Quinn who joined a cult and killed her husband?”
“Yes!” Gwen told her. “She died a few years ago, but I sent her yearly Christmas cards in prison.”
Ruby shook her head. “Leave it to you to befriend a convicted murderer.”
“We were friends before the murder,” Gwen pointed out. “Besides, she got me out of a real bind that one time in Santa Fe.”
Harvey huffed. “Don’t say the name of that city out loud. It’s bad luck.”
The rest of the table nodded knowingly, and before I could ask what the hell happened in Santa Fe, Harvey continued. “Anyway, I was the prop master and the only crew members who feud as intensely as hair and makeup are costumes and props.”
Gwen jumped in. “My actor had a bloody letter jacket that kept going missing, and I kept having to replicate the blood splatters, which wasn’t easy back then. I was going off of blurry Polaroids.”
Harvey slung an arm over Gwen’s shoulder. “Well, maybe if you would have realized the jacket was a prop and not a costume, you would have known it was right where it was supposed to be—in the props trailer.”
“You know goddamn well that jacket was costume department property,” Gwen told him, bristling to the extent that she was wiggling out of his reach.
But Harvey wasn’t about to let her go so quickly. Instead, he pulled her in tight and said, “Either way, I wore her down and she eventually agreed to a date after the wrap party.”
Gwen rolled her eyes and leaned into him. “Well, first came the hate sex and then came the date—”
“I think Vera gets the picture,” Hollis said.
“A very clear picture,” I confirmed
Harvey waggled his eyebrows and did something with one of his hands under the table that I thankfully could not see, causing Gwen to shriek.
Once she’d recovered, she focused back on me. “So. What was the coffin like?”
“You know,” I said, “if you’re all so interested, maybe you should just go befriend Leonard and see for yourself.”
“I know better than to cross that line in the sand,” Gwen announced.
Ruby rolled her eyes and scoffed.
Harvey leaned in. “Ruby and Lenny haven’t been on speaking terms for the last thirty years.”
My grandmother was not known to keep things to herself, especially anything salacious. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other that well.”
Ruby pursed her lips. “There’s plenty you don’t know, Vera.”
I sat up straighter, taken aback by her tone.
Hollis patted her knee. “That’s the past,” she said softly.
“Back to Lenny and his coffin,” Gwen said.
“All right, all right, back off,” Hollis piped in, still rubbing comforting circles on Ruby’s thigh. “Let the young lady enjoy her lunch without hounding her for information.”
I smiled at Hollis, but I had a feeling her intervention wasn’t on my behalf at all.
EXT. ABANDONED LIFEGUARD TOWER—MIDNIGHT
They sit side by side in matching uniforms except he is wearing a zip-up hoodie. She’s cold. He forgets to offer his sweatshirt.
POPPY (V.O.)
I never expected for him to find me interesting.
But every time he looked over at me, I felt like I could be. Like I held secrets unknown to even myself.
June 3, 2013
Vera S.
Is the secret that you’re constipated, Poppy?
Arlo looks over like he’s heard her voice in his head and offers his hoodie.