I never know how long these little “serials” will run, but I’ve decided to add a category anyway. This one is called Snooty and the Book Cover, for reasons you will discover. One you’ll discover in this installment; the next will probably give you the other. As always, I am more than open to hearing your thoughts and opinions. 🙂

I Gotta Get Out!

What does one wear to go out for a beer in Virginia Beach? I only know DC so I opt for a turquoise sheath and as soon as I step into the parking lot in front of the beach house, I know I am overdressed.

Brittany is in the shortest shorts I’ve ever seen. I could believe that she bought the denim daisy dukes from the junior or children’s section. She has on a white gauzy top that floats around her, but cups her breasts the way a couple of the men seem to want to do. The four men who just stopped constructing the house next door look like they’ve been constructing the house next door and me, well, I look like I’m ready for a DC cocktail. Inside I cringe. If my grandmother has a webcam set up anywhere (I wouldn’t put it past her), she is probably literally hooting and hollering at me.

Brittany smirks at me. “Where are you from, Princess?” she asks.

Great, a nickname. And not only a nickname but a derogatory one. I almost raise an eyebrow at her and give her my look that I always think of as freezing, but then figure, what the carp?

“DC.”

She nods as if that explains everything and maybe it does.

She climbs into a pickup truck with the blonde cutie and another man slides in after her. I look at the two remaining. The older one looks like he tends to have rough evenings with a liquor bottle while the other looks like a refugee from ZZ Top with a long beard and tattoos covering all visible parts except his legs and face.

“Figures we’d get the snooty one,” the older one says.

“You don’t know nothing, old man,” the younger one says softly with a hypnotic accent.

“I know plenty. Enough to write a book.”

The younger one grins. He opens the passenger door and gestures for me to slide in. When I hesitate, he raises an eyebrow at me, like a dare. Am I going to confirm the older man’s opinion that I am snooty? No. I slide in and then I find I am holding my breath as the young one slides in behind the steering wheel and the older one next to me. I am snooty. I am totally thinking that they are going to be stinking from working outside during the hot summer day.

“I’m Steve and that’s Clayton,” the younger one says, his voice like velvet.

“I’m Callie.”

“What’s Callie short for?” Steve asks.

I hesitate because this will assuredly make them think I’m snooty, but not answering isn’t really an option either. “Calista. It’s from the—”

“Greek,” he says.

I stare at him, nodding. “That’s right.”

Clayton snorts.

Steve drives along the winding road. He tells me that some of this used to be cornfields and farms not too long ago, but those have given way to development. He pulls into a strip mall and we follow the others into what looks like a saloon.

Brittany is hopping up and down and patting her hands together the way I remember learning how to clap when I was five. “If we stay long enough, it’s karaoke night.”

Clayton snorts again and this time I join him.

Well, I have come to Virginia Beach as part of a writer’s retreat and what better way to find source material than hanging out with people I would never in a million years hang out with in DC. And the night’s young. And there’s a cute blonde guy who is still looking at me, maybe a little less enthusiastically than before. And there is Brittany, tracing little patterns over his bronzed arm. And I wish I were back on my balcony with my nice glass of wine. Peaceful and alone, oh, so very alone.

 

end 6/25/2017

Sascha Darlington