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  I am deserving of love.

  It is at this moment that Carlotta doubles over.

  While it wasn’t exactly the reaction Trot was hoping for, he couldn’t really say he was surprised.

  “You okay?” he asks gently.

  Carlotta nods, but isn’t okay at all. Schnapps and cream are rising up in her belly like white-water rapids. She starts to gag.

  “It’s okay,” he says and carefully gathers her hair in his hand. It is so soft that it surprises him. He holds it away from her face. Steps back a bit.

  “Let her fly, gal,” he says softly.

  And she does.

  When the moment passes Trot takes off his jacket, Sheriff Department issue, and hands it to her. “Wipe your mouth on this,” he says. “Everybody does. Department pays for dry cleaning.”

  Everybody does? Her stomach does a backflip.

  “You better now?”

  “Not really.”

  “Hang on. I’ll be right back. There’s Coca-Cola in the squad,” he says and runs down Main Street, back to his car.

  Reluctantly, Carlotta wipes her mouth on the nylon shell of his jacket. It smells of gasoline and Brut. She watches Trot running full stride down the street, not jogging. He runs like an athlete. His shoes are polished to a new-car sheen. They glint in the streetlights. Carlotta’s never had anyone run for her before. It feels like a heroic and beautiful act, even though he’s only going a block.

  When Trot arrives at his car, he looks back at Carlotta. She seems so far away. His hand rises up in a wave. Then down again, quickly, as if unsure. But when she waves back, he smiles. Then feels guilty.

  Strictly professional, he reminds himself. But runs back even faster.

  And of course, as he runs, the warm can of carbonated soda shakes in his hand. Shakes hard.

  Carlotta is still smiling when he reaches her. He can feel himself blush, the heat spread over his chest. It makes the tops of his ears turn red. “I always carry a six-pack of cola in the car,” he says. “It’s warm, but it really settles the stomach.”

  “You get a lot of people throwing up around here?”

  “If you were driving a ’72 Mustang without a muffler, you’d be my usual Friday night.”

  He hands her the can. “Take a swig,” he says. “Then spit it out. You’ll feel better.”

  Carlotta tries to open it, but it’s difficult. Her nails are long and manicured. Trot watches her struggle for a moment, then takes the can and pops the top for her.

  Cola-Cola sprays over them, hissing like a geyser.

  “Damn it. Sorry.”

  Cola drips off his eyebrows and onto his badge. Drips down her face, and down the front of her red sequined dress. Trot tries to brush it off her cheek with the paw of his hand. She looks a little shocked. He shudders. Winces.

  Just kill me now, God, he thinks. Get it over with.

  But then Carlotta does something unexpected—she laughs. Not at Trot, but at the pleasure of the moment. She laughs at how sweet it is to have someone run for you, to wipe your face, to take care of you, just because. How kind. How amazing.

  Her laughter is like wind chimes, uncomplicated in its beauty.

  And so Trot laughs, too. At that moment, watching Carlotta standing on the edge of the contents of her stomach, a sense of joy rushes over him. For the first time in a long time, he feels like a happy man. She isn’t angry. She understands. He can see that in her face.

  “You make me want cotton candy,” he says and isn’t sure what he means, or if it is the right thing to say, but he feels it, so he says it. Figures she’ll somehow understand.

  And she does. And stops laughing. She is Leon’s girl, after all.

  What an idiot I am, Trot thinks.

  Carlotta takes the can from his hand. Sips. Spits it out. “Sorry about the jacket,” she says quietly and hands it back to him. Takes another sip of the warm soda.

  The two walk the rest of the street in silence. But every now and then their bodies knock against each other like bumper cars, give off sparks.

  When they finally end up at Lucky’s RV Round-Up, the showroom lights are on. They press their faces against the dirty glass of the office window. There, in the fluorescent hum, Leon is sitting across from what seems to be a woman. The long brown hair. The narrow shoulders.

  “That SOB,” Carlotta says, angry.

  That predictable SOB, Trot thinks. Leon’s got a new girl. God bless him.

  But as soon as Trot thinks this he feels ashamed, feels sorry for Carlotta. She’s a nice girl. Probably been through a lot. Deserves better. So he drives her home, even though “home” is Leon’s trailer. Trot tries not to think about that too much. The trailer is a 1963 “Sovereign of the Road” Airstream, complete with Sky Dome and extended cab. It shines like a baked potato under the streetlight. Makes Trot’s stomach growl.

  “Well,” she says.

  “Well.”

  “Good night,” she says. “Sorry about—”

  “No problem. It’s my job. Protect and serve, remember?”

  “Right.”

  “Right.”

  There is nothing else for them to say. And so, in the damp swamp air of Christmas morning with the rusty moon peeling above, Trot and Carlotta stand for a moment, silent. Disheveled. Exhausted. They search each other’s faces and see a bit of themselves—the sorrow, the bandaged hearts. So Carlotta leans into Trot. He closes his eyes. She gently kisses his cheek. Takes his breath away.

  I am love’s catcher’s mitt, he thinks sadly.

  The touch of her lips burns.

  Chapter 5

  The Dream Café is not just, as it is still called by the locals of Whale Harbor, a titty bar. Thanks to a new bank loan, they also have a website. Billboards span five miles up and down I-75 to alert drivers on their way to Miami to this fact. Fluorescent green, they feature the high school yearbook photos of Dagmar and the rest of the Pep Squad from St. Jude’s class of 1978. Plaid uniforms. Pom-poms. The girls are Clearasil clean and smiling.

  “Naughty but Nice!” the caption reads.

  The billboards really bring them in.

  Underneath the smiling faces fine print, tiny as wayward ants, states that these photos are representative, not the actual photos of women employed at The Dream Café.

  Nobody’s sued yet, but Dagmar’s not planning to go to a high school reunion anytime soon, either.

  Dagmar, Leon’s ex-wife, is a striking woman. She stands like an Egyptian queen. Honey-skinned, steady brown eyes, apricot hair piled on her head like a Twistee-Freeze. She commands every room she walks into, but never seems to notice. Or care. It’s second nature to her.

  “The sex we sell here is good clean fun,” she tells her dancers. “If we keep it clean enough, we get couples in the door and double our profit.”

  Since Dagmar inherited the place from her uncle Joe five years ago, there have been a lot of changes. Last year, The Dream Café was identified by Inc. magazine as part of the “revolutionary trend in a new user-friendly adult entertainment industry.” Wholesome as it profitably can be. There’s even tour bus parking.

  The Café has always been a family business. Dagmar’s mother was a dancer, and Dagmar has worked there for as long as she can remember—first as a bartender, then bookkeeper, and then a manager—never danced herself. It only made sense that she would inherit the place. Uncle Joe, a bowling ball of a man, never married.

  So, when he died, Dagmar was the only one left. She’d always been interested in business. In between the endless “ons” and “offs” and “on agains” with Leon, she managed to finish a BA in Business Administration at the University of Miami. After graduation, even though she had just had her son, Cal, she planned to find a job with a Miami-based company. Work her way up from the mailroom if she had to.

  But Uncle Joe got sick. Then died. And she was stuck. The Dream Café was suddenly hers. The roof leaked. The septic system needed to be replaced. The property taxes hadn’t been paid in th
ree years. And Cal was a very colicky baby.

  The night after Joe’s funeral, Dagmar sat in The Café and tried to come up with a plan—something other than arson. It was Friday and the place was nearly empty except for a foursome of giggling tourists. Dagmar was downwind of them. The air was thick with the scent of coconut oil. They were more or less her age and dressed in a style that is often described in the fashion magazines as “Tropical”: expensive, impractical, and carefully designed to scream, “Hey, I’m from Michigan.” The men wore pastel cotton sweaters casually tied over the shoulders of their “authentic” Hawaiian print shirts. Collars up, of course. The women had spray-on tans and Lilly Pulitzer sleeveless shifts, just like the ones their mothers wore in the sixties. Slightly corseted. Discreetly zipped up the side. Lemon meringue yellow with tangerine daisies. Bermuda blue with pink flamingos. Tiny bows at the jewel neckline.

  They were slumming. Loudly asking if The Café had any champagne without a screw top. Any hollandaise sauce for the french fries? But when the dancers came on stage the foursome grew quiet. Each one bought a lap dance, even the women.

  Suddenly, Dagmar understood that sex had a new market share—baby boomers—and a business plan was born.

  Now, in the gift shop, vibrators of all sizes are sold shrink-wrapped alongside movies on DVD. Edible panties come in double mocha latte. Body paints in Range Rover green. Uncle Joe would never know the place. Dagmar even tried to get a Starbucks franchise for the lobby, but no luck.

  The Café does offer food however, just as it did when Uncle Joe was still alive. It’s just like Grandma used to make—except there are naked girls and you don’t have to say grace. And the pies are called tarts. And the fish is always sushi grade. And the cheese grits are creatively known as polenta. Instead of Uncle Joe in the kitchen, there are graduates from The School of Culinary Arts in Atlanta. They create reductions with sorghum, mangos, and Chardonnay. Offer goat cheese and guava in phyllo triangles “to start.”

  The music is the same, though. Five days a week, the blues, the heartbeat of the South, is offered during Happy Hour, courtesy of the Blind Brothers’ Blues Band. The band is made up of five elderly black gentlemen. Old school. They are neither blind, nor brothers. Jimmy Ray, the band’s front man, has a special place in Dagmar’s heart. Always has. Always will. That’s why the band is still around, still plays that midnight rough blues.

  Jimmy Ray had open-heart surgery a couple of years back. He needs to get to sleep by 9 P.M. Doctor’s orders. That’s why he and the rest of the fellows play only during Happy Hour now. Dagmar picks him up every night and takes him home, too. She is careful of his dignity. He is an elegant man. Caramel-skinned, handsome, and soft-spoken. Part of the aristocracy of the blues, he claims to have been born on Beale Street, right on the sidewalk. Says his mama went into labor singing for loose change.

  It’s easy to believe. Jimmy Ray embraces the blues as a birthright with an unsurpassed regal air. Pin-striped suits. Manicured hands. His blue-black hair, now gone silver, is always set in the perfect marcel waves. His skin has that acid old man smell, and he shakes a little, but he still knows how to play the blues and riffs about the life he had, and misses, all smoke and whiskey and big-lipped women reckless as Saturday night. He growls like thunder. Gives you chills.

  Forty years ago, when Uncle Joe first hired Jimmy Ray and his band, The Café was well known not only for its dancers, but also for its after-hours club, a “Black and Tan,” as such clubs were called.

  After all the other bars closed—the bars for “Whites Only,” and those where “Coloreds” were allowed to sit near the toilets, but not to use them—anybody who could still drive would cruise over to The Dream Café. Jimmy Ray and the band would play until the sun rose. BYOB. Mixes available. Anything that happened behind The Café’s doors stayed there.

  At sunrise, the band, the dancers, the drunks, and the lovers—the “black” and “tan” who only had this place, this moment—would all eat breakfast together. It was served family style in overflowing plates passed around the table. Country ham baked in milk with crackling bread and wild orange jelly. Pancakes with cane syrup. And lots of Cuban coffee, sweet and thick.

  Growing up, Dagmar and her mother lived in a trailer behind The Café. On Saturday mornings, Dagmar would take her place at the table and have breakfast with the adults.

  It was magical. They spoke to her about things she knew nothing about, like politics and travel. It was like being in a movie. The women were birthday cake beautiful with their bouffant hair, pale pink lips, and rhinestones, lots of rhinestones in their ears, on their shoes, sewn into the fabric of their Sunday-best dresses. They sparkled like so many candles. And the men that encircled them, arms casual across the backs of their chairs, Dagmar remembers them, too. Their slick hair, their silk shirts, their diamond rings, and the smell of spice and tobacco. They reminded her of pirates.

  She still remembers every detail of those mornings. The way the dawn smelled, the heady mix of salt air and dew. The way people spoke in whispers. But most of all she remembers her mama, Annie. Her hair was the color of peaches, just like Dagmar’s, as was her skin. The lack of sleep always made her voice smoky. “Give us a kiss, sugar,” she’d growl and pull Dagmar into her tired arms, give her a little squeeze. “You okay, darling?”

  And Dagmar would nod, even if she wasn’t okay, and hold her mother’s face in her small hands like one does a firefly—amazed at the light, not wanting to let go, but knowing you had to.

  Her mother had always talked about leaving, about going to a real town like Chicago: a town with something to do, something other than watch each other grow old and die. “Florida is heaven’s waiting room,” she’d say. “And God’s not ready for the likes of us yet.”

  Sometimes Dagmar would come home from school and find her mother passed out on the couch, smelling of strawberry wine and cigarettes. General Hospital blaring on the television. Jimmy Ray would usually stop by around suppertime and bring dinner.

  “Mama needs her rest,” he’d say, and he and Dagmar would sit on the steps of the trailer and gnaw at the bones of BBQ, or fried chicken.

  “We’re going caveman today, gal.”

  And they’d talk about anything and everything, except Annie.

  The last time she saw her mother was at Saturday breakfast. Dagmar was just fourteen years old but knew there was something wrong. Annie seemed nervous. Wouldn’t look her in the eye. Kissed her too hard. And when the coffee was being poured, she stood up and said, “My baby’s learning French.” Which was true, but everybody stopped talking and stared. Breakfast wasn’t a situation usually given to announcements and her mother’s voice was pulled taut.

  “That’s my girl,” Annie creaked. “Citizen of the world.” Her eyes were filled with tears.

  Most at the table just nodded and went back to their conversations. But Jimmy Ray leaned over to Dagmar and said, “You know, I know some French. Learned in New Orleans. That’s a town where they know how to vo-lay-vo.” And then he winked.

  Everyone laughed, but not her mother. Annie leaned into Jimmy Ray and spoke, fierce and low.

  “You better keep your vo-lay-vo to your vo-lay self.”

  The table went silent. Uncle Joe cleared his throat. Dagmar turned red. Jimmy Ray looked hurt.

  “Don’t mean no harm, sweetheart,” he said to Annie. His voice was whiskey soft. “You know that, no harm at all. I’d kill the man who touched her.”

  And then Jimmy Ray and her mother exchanged a look that Dagmar would never forget. It was the kind of look she’d seen other men and women give each other. The kind of look that says they have secrets. That surprised her. Until that moment, Dagmar never thought much about Jimmy Ray. He was just there, always, a part of her life. He was like the sun in the morning, like the gators in the creek. She never noticed how he always sat next to her mother. How it was his arm draped over her chair.

  She never noticed any of that until they exchanged that look—
and then Dagmar noticed everything.

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “You’d better watch over her,” she said, roughly. “Better do the right thing.”

  “The child knows I love her,” Jimmy Ray said.

  And Dagmar did. Still does. Doesn’t need to know much more. The look between Jimmy Ray and her mother said it all. And Jimmy Ray’s love, constant and unflinching, confirms it.

  Dagmar never saw her mother again. There were plenty of letters postmarked from all over the country, but never Chicago. They all ended with “See you soon. Luv, Mama,” which always struck Dagmar as odd. Annie never liked to be called “Mama.” There was never a return address.

  When Dagmar turned eighteen, her mother sent her a birthday card with lace edges and a poem about a mother’s love. She didn’t write “See you soon.” She signed it “Ann,” not “Mama.” Underneath her name was a single sentence: “Being a mama isn’t for everybody, but that don’t mean I never loved you.”

  But she never came back.

  All Jimmy Ray could say was, “Your mama had a hole in her that love couldn’t plug.”

  And Dagmar inherited it.

  All these years later, the heartbroken girl inside of her still waits for her mother’s return. That’s why she’s put her face on the billboards. That’s part of the reason she stays. If she left, her mother wouldn’t know where to find her. Besides, where would she go? Like it or not, The Dream Café is her home.

  “Come join the fun!’ it says on the back of the matchbooks. And fun is what Dagmar feels she sells. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three hundred sixty-five days a year. “We are the Wal-Mart of fun,” she tells anyone who’ll listen, and nearly believes herself, even though it’s clear by the look on her face that it’s difficult for her to watch the dancers at work, difficult for her to see the calloused hands of the men who sit up close.

  “She’s got no stomach for it,” the dancers say among themselves. Some say it with pity because they know that she’ll eventually close the place and that would be a shame. In towns like Whale Harbor jobs are scarce. You do what you can. What there’s a market for. What’s more or less legal.