CHAPTER TWELVE
“Enough of being a spy.” Shanelle shuts down Tiffany’s laptop. “I’m ready for a drink.”
I glance at my watch. “It’s getting to be that time.”
On Oahu, things go from wonderful to magnificent as the sun descends each evening into the sea. The Royal Hibiscus does it up in style, what with His Highness Keola Kalakaua making his half-naked torch-lighting run while guests gather at the lobby lounge to nurse a cold one and watch the sky turn glorious shades of purple, orange and pink.
“I need to shower,” I tell Shanelle. I’m still in my bikini cover-up and my skin is tacky from my 30 SPF sunblock.
“Make it quick.”
I dutifully run to the bathroom. “By the way, my mom is coming over.”
“She’s a card, your mom. What about Jason?”
“He met some other guy who’s into NASCAR and they’re going out for a beer.”
In twenty minutes I’m showered and wearing a tropical print strapless dress with a sweetheart neckline and an Empire waist with a sparkly row of sequin trim. My feet slide into my best strappy sandals and I tie my hair into a damp chignon. I do a ten-minute makeup and I’m good to go. Since by beauty-queen standards I’ve been fast, Shanelle’s happy. She’s wearing an adorable cocoa-colored halter-style tiered dress with a deep V neck and a low-cut back.
By the time my mom appears, we’ve repacked Tiffany’s laptop and hidden the shipping box. My mom is wearing white polyester pants and a daisy-print blouse. Her earrings are two porcelain clip-on daisies. And as always, she is in what she calls comfortable shoes, code for ugly. I dread the day my aging feet demand I give up heels.
We hug. “It’s nice to see you,” she says. “It’s hard to believe we’ve been on the same island these last few days.”
“Hello, Mrs. Przybyszewski!” Shanelle whips off those four syllables as if they were her own. She pushes past me to hug my mom. “And don’t you go making Happy feel bad for being busy. You know what it’s gonna be like now that she’s Ms. America.”
Judging from the last few days, it will involve breaking the law, downing cocktails, and soaking up the sun. No wonder so many women enter this pageant.
“I suppose so.” My mom’s tone is grudging. She’s just inside the room when she spies the yellow roses on the desk. She makes a beeline, then gives the bouquet a thorough inspection. I suspect she’s trying to locate the note card. “Gorgeous,” she pronounces, then she glances at Shanelle. “From your husband?”
“No, they’re Happy’s.”
My mother’s glance drifts toward me. “Sure as the day is long, these did not come from
your
husband.”
I start to protest but Shanelle interrupts. “They’re from Mario Suave.” She has a mischievous glint in her eye.
My mother arches her brows. “He’s a little dark-skinned but he’s a good-looking Latin man.”
Shanelle whoops.
“And he’s done very well for himself,” my mother goes on. “He came from poor beginnings but pulled himself up by his bootstraps. More of those immigrants who come to this country should take a page from his book.”
I grab my white envelope clutch with its faux tortoiseshell details. “Since when did you become an expert on Mario Suave?”
“I read,” she says smugly. I note she doesn’t specify
what
she reads. She’s not exactly a
New Yorker
subscriber. More like
People
and
In Touch Weekly
. “He did have a child out of wedlock but I suppose we’ve all had to deal with that problem at one time or another.”
Shanelle and I exchange a glance. I remain silent until I process what my mom said. “Really? Mario’s a dad?”
“He has a daughter named Mariela who lives with her mother Consuela in Miami.”
“How old is his daughter?” Shanelle asks.
“Sixteen,” my mother answers.
A teenager like Rachel. “Are he and Consuela married?” I try to sound casual but I’m not sure I succeed.
“Not to my knowledge,” my mother says.
I’m trying to picture Mario’s ring finger on his left hand. I’m not seeing a gold band there. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though.
Nor does it mean anything that he sent me roses, I’m sure. I bet he considered it part of his duties as emcee.
“If he’s not married, he’s ripe for the picking,” Shanelle says.
“Not for me,” I say primly. “I’m married.”
“That can be easily remedied,” my mother points out.
Shanelle claps her hands. “You’re full of piss and vinegar today! Let’s go put a cocktail in you.”
I make a move for the door. “I hope we can still get seats.”
My mother grimaces. “Will it be crowded down there? You know how crowds give me headaches.”
“It’ll be just enough people to be interesting,” Shanelle opines, and she turns out to be right.
There isn’t so much of a horde that we can’t get seated, and at the Royal Hibiscus the service is mainland quick. I get a Bing Cherry Daiquiri, Shanelle a Banana Colada, and my mom a Bee’s Knees. We order a coconut shrimp appetizer and settle into our overstuffed chairs to watch the sun go down and the sky get painted a myriad of colors.
“If I keep eating like this,” Shanelle says, double-dipping in the tamarind ginger sauce, “my hips will be as wide as Pearl Harbor.”
“It’s okay, we’re on vacation,” I proclaim.
“Vacation?” My mother’s expression darkens. “What about all that work you’re doing for the pageant?”
“It’s always vacation in Hawaii,” Shanelle says, “whether you’re working or not. Look who’s coming.” She raises a shrimp in the direction of the lobby. My mother and I peer over our shoulders to see.
“You remember Sally Anne Gibbons,” I tell my mom. “She owns the Crowning Glory Pageant Shoppe in Las Vegas.” Why Sally Anne needs an extra P and an extra E in her store name, I cannot tell you. Maybe it’s in tribute to the extra E in Anne.
Shanelle mimics Sally Anne’s cigarette-ravaged voice. “Crowning Glory is the only full-service pageant boutique west of the Mississippi.”
We both giggle and watch Sally drop her heft into a wicker chaise positioned in front of the giant open windows that front the ocean.
“She’s blocking my view of the sunset,” my mother says.
Shanelle and I shush her in unison.
“I think Sally Anne’s already had a few,” Shanelle murmurs a few seconds later, sipping from her own adult beverage.
There is certainly evidence to that effect. For example, Sally Anne is not exactly sitting up straight. She’s sprawled, and her face is red in a way that looks more booze-induced than sun-kissed. Her copper hair, which is usually arranged into a sort of hairsprayed dome, is slightly askew this evening. None of this, however, stops her from raising her finger to summon a server. A minute later a Mai Tai is in her hand. Another minute later, the glass is empty. Again her finger rises in the air.
“That woman drinks like a fish,” my mother says.
“Mom, lower your voice.”
“What, I can’t call a spade a spade?”
“Just do it quietly.”
By now Sally Anne has been served her second cocktail, at least by our count. It disappears down her gullet as fast as the first one did.
“She’s not going to be able to walk out of here,” my mother says. “She better be wearing sensible shoes.”
She appears to be. Given Sally’s recumbent state, we have a full view of her footgear.
“She’s really taken to muumuus since she’s been here,” Shanelle observes.
“I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything else the entire time.” I analyze Sally Anne’s black floral muumuu as my hand reaches for the coconut shrimp. My willpower here has gone to zilch.
Apparently so has Sally Anne’s. I watch her finger go back up in the air.
“How is a muumuu different from a caftan?” Shanelle wants to know.
This is the sort of fashion question I love. “Isn’t a muumuu always short-sleeved? And I think they almost always have a flounce.”
“I’ve never seen a caftan with a flounce,” my mother puts in.
“Then what’s a tunic?” Shanelle asks.
“It’s a butt-length caftan. Look.” We watch as the young male server who gave Sally Anne her two drinks huddles with the older bar manager. “I bet they’re going to cut Sally Anne off.”
“They better. She’s inebriated,” my mother says.
“This should be good.” I can’t tear my eyes from the scene. The server takes a deep breath and approaches Sally Anne. He bends down to speak quietly to her.
“What?” she bellows. “I insist on speaking to your manager.” It takes Sally Anne three attempts to pronounce manager correctly. Eventually she gets her wish and the manager does walk over. I’d say he appears reluctant to do so.
He has good instincts, because when he bends toward her, she slaps his face. The onlookers, of whom there are a goodly number, gasp.
My mother’s next observation rings out over the hushed lounge. “She keeps this up, she’ll find herself in the hoosegow.”
That provokes a twitter or two. But not from Sally Anne, whose tormentors now include a third male hotel staffer. The men raise her from the chaise, which would be a crane-worthy task even if she weren’t resisting, and begin to lead her away.
But the drama is not yet over. Sally Anne is halfway across the lounge when she halts, jerks her fleshy right arm away from the young server, and points toward the lobby. “You!” she cries.
Everyone in the lounge pivots to see the next object of her ire. It’s Rex Rexford, Tiffany’s pageant consultant, in blue madras walking shorts, a white linen campshirt, and brown leather sandals. His normally bouffant blond hair is slightly wilted, whether from humidity or grief over his deceased client, I cannot say. Like all of us, he seems mesmerized by Sally Anne’s quivering index finger.
“Your client was a bitch!” Sally Anne screams. It comes out a little slurred but I think we all get the gist. “I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Well, I speak the truth about everybody, dead or alive. And Tiffany Amber was a lying, scheming bitch, pure and simple. I’m glad she’s gone to the great beyond. So there!”
Rex’s face blanches beneath his salon tan. I bet he regrets his innocent sunset amble across the lobby’s central courtyard. Even the macaw is upset. It’s shrieking loud enough to wake Tiffany, if she were in earshot.
My mother, however, is silenced by this diatribe. We all watch mutely as Sally Anne totters away, not quite under her own power.
“Wow.” Trixie joins us, breathless. She’s in turquoise cuff shorts and a cotton voile halter top. Her normally pale skin is a tad rosy, probably from the poolside sunbathing I cut short. “Can you believe that? Boy, Mrs. P, you really saw a show.”
“We don’t have to pay to see the luau after this,” my mom says. “What’s that woman’s beef with the dead California contestant, anyway?”
Trixie looks at me, obviously aghast. “You didn’t tell your mother the story? Mrs. P, it was the biggest scandal of the pageant before Tiffany Amber died. Two of the girls showed up on Oahu with the exact same gown, color and all, for the evening-gown competition. Can you believe that? And guess where they both bought their gowns? Crowning Glory.”
My mother is enough of a pageant aficionado to understand immediately. “Did Sally Anne mess up the registration?”
Every pageant shop worth its salt participates in the national registry, designed to prevent exactly this disaster. When a gown or swimsuit is purchased for competition, the seller inputs the style and color into the database for that pageant, so no other contestant makes the mistake of purchasing the same outfit.
Trixie goes on. “Sally Anne claims that it was Tiffany Amber who messed up the registration, by changing the entries.”
My mom looks confused. I take the story over. “Tiffany bought her gown at Crowning Glory, too, and Sally Anne says that when Tiffany was at the store, Sally Anne happened to be inputting data, and Tiffany expressed curiosity about how she did it, and then when Sally Anne went to wrap Tiffany’s items, Tiffany changed the entries.”
Shanelle and I glance at one another. We both know Tiffany had expertise with computers. And I believe she was both competitive and malevolent enough to have done exactly that of which she was accused.
Shanelle pipes up. “Then Sally Anne had to scramble to get new gowns to Oahu in time. Both girls wanted new gowns because they both felt tainted.”
“I would have felt that way,” Trixie says.
“And I bet,” I say, “that Sally Anne had to eat the cost.” Those gowns can be terribly expensive, too. I know.
“It’s a huge blow to Crowning Glory,” Shanelle adds. “Because now every contestant will wonder whether she can trust Sally Anne not to bollix up the registration.”
“You should have heard the screaming fights those two had!” Trixie slaps her thigh. “Right here, in this very lobby.”
“And there’s no love lost between Sally Anne and Rex Rexford, either,” I point out. “Even before this whole thing with Tiffany, the two of them were rivals, because they both do pageant consulting.”
“I think Rex’s girls do better than Sally Anne’s,” Shanelle says.
