Pamela Browning - Life Is A Beach - Life Is A Beach / A Real-Thing Fling

“I’ll run upstairs and change clothes,” she said.

“Is that necessary? You look fine.”

“Well,” Karma said, glancing down at what she wore, “these clothes aren’t mine.”

She had already gone upstairs and come back down earlier wearing a pair of sandals on her previously bare feet, whose toenails were lacquered sugar-pea green with silver sparkles. He had an idea that if Karma disappeared into the mysterious upper levels of the Blue Moon Apartments, he would have a long wait before she reappeared. She would want to wash her hair, dry it, and slather on makeup. She would agonize over whether to wear the red outfit or the hot-pink outfit and decide after half an hour to wear the blue-and-green print one instead. In the meantime he would have to be polite to Goldy, who sounded like Minnie Mouse on helium. And that was presuming that she got off the phone; if she didn’t, he’d have to rock back on his heels and pretend to admire what appeared to be distressed panels of coat-hanger art on the wall.

“You’re gorgeous just the way you are,” he said, appropriating Karma’s arm and propelling her toward the door. He even waved goodbye to Goldy in a way that he hoped inspired trust and confidence.

“Shall we take the car?” He’d left his Chevy Suburban at a parking meter.

“Oh, let’s walk,” Karma said, and he swung into step beside her.

He realized before they had taken five steps that people noticed Karma. Men stopped and did a double take after they’d passed; some of them gave her a quick once-over as soon as they saw her. It must be because she was so all-fired tall. She’d dominate any group; she’d stand out in a crowd. He walked taller himself because he was walking beside her, and before he knew it, he was taking pride in being with her. He didn’t mind being envied by other men; in fact, he kind of liked it.

“You see, you have to release emotional energy to free the body from its grip,” Karma said, marching along to the beat of a steel-drum band playing reggae on the street corner.

“I don’t think my emotional energy needs to be released,” he ventured.

“That’s what people think. But we all have repressed emotions.”

“Do you?”

“I’m not so different from everyone else,” Karma said seriously, though this was a statement he could have refuted. There was no opportunity, though, because they had reached the delicatessen. He opened the door for her, and she sailed through, hair bouncing, breasts ditto. A guy on the way out gaped at her.

“Would you look at that,” the guy said to his friend. “Would you look at her!”

This was a compliment, but Slade was sure that Karma hadn’t heard it. Or if she had, she was playing it cool.

Once they were seated in the restaurant booth, Slade studied the menu. He was in the mood for a big broiled steak, but there wasn’t anything remotely resembling one on this menu. Instead there were things like a corned beef-with-chicken liver sandwich on pumpernickel, and cheese blintzes, and humongous desserts with names like Double Chocolate Disgrace. On the table were two bowls in a metal holder, one containing small whole pickled green tomatoes, the other containing sauerkraut.

The waiter returned, and Karma ordered a veggie-and-cream cheese sandwich.

“Are you ready to order, sir?” The waiter stood with his pencil poised.

“What do you recommend?” Slade said, throwing himself on the waiter’s mercy.

“We just made a batch of fresh chopped chicken livers. The chicken liver sandwich is very good.”

The idea of eating a whole sandwich made of chicken livers made Slade slightly sick to his stomach, so he glanced wildly at the menu and chose the first thing he saw, corned beef on rye.

When the waiter had left, Karma ladled sauerkraut into one of the small bowls stacked on the table. “Want some?” she asked.

Slade shook his head. “I never liked sauerkraut, and I can’t imagine eating green tomatoes.”

Karma pulled a face. “I can’t imagine not eating them. I’m a vegetarian, so maybe that’s why.”

“You don’t eat any meat?” He’d never known a vegetarian before; he’d always thought such a person must be slightly deranged. Not to scarf down a thick prime rib, drowned in natural gravy? Not to sink your teeth into a big juicy burger with all the trimmings? Never to know the joys of pork tenderloin cooked on a grill, or leg of lamb, or succulent spare ribs?

“Nope, no poultry, no mammals. I eat fish, though. I love fish.”

Fish. He’d been known to eat catfish in the Glades, and he liked a tuna sandwich now and then, but he couldn’t imagine fish as a steady diet.

“I’ve never eaten in this place,” he said, looking around at the clientele, who ranged from jewel-encrusted elderly matrons with shellacked hair to sunburned tourists whose skin looked like raw hamburger.

“My uncle—you met him this morning—and my aunt used to like to bring me and my sisters here when we visited as children. I guess I came by my liking for Kosher food naturally, since my mother was Jewish.”

He welcomed the chance to know more about Karma’s personal life; he couldn’t imagine what could produce a woman like this.

“With a surname like O’Connor, your father was Irish, right?”

“Mmm-hmm. He and my mother married in college. Both families predicted the marriage’s immediate failure, but my parents had four daughters, including me, and lived happily for years. Until my mother took up cake decorating, that is, and they split up. She changed her name to Saguaro, like the cactus, and moved to Arizona.”

“They divorced because she became a cake decorator?”

“Kind of.” Karma seemed reluctant to elaborate.

“I’ve heard of many reasons to divorce, but that one takes the cake.” He grinned at her, pleased with his play on words.

The corners of her mouth twitched as if she were suppressing a smile. “Dad didn’t approve of Mom’s new occupation. You see, she worked for a bakery that specialized in cakes that look like body parts.” She looked embarrassed and seemed as if she expected him to be shocked, but he was still operating in the dark.

“You don’t mean—”

“I do mean,” she said. “The body parts weren’t arms and legs, if you get my drift.”

He did. He tried to picture in his mind a cake that looked like a pair of breasts or—well! He cleared his throat.

“So, uh, what does your father do?” he asked, sensing that they had reached a conversational cul-de-sac.

“My father found a new life after Mom left. He works on a cruise ship, plying wealthy widows with booze and blarney while pretending to enjoy teaching them the tango.”

Slade chuckled. “We should all be so lucky.”

Their food arrived, and they dug in. Once the corned beef sandwich had taken the edge off his hunger—and it was a delicious sandwich—Slade managed with some difficulty to overcome his aversion to the subject of his chakra.

“Suppose you tell me more about my second chakra. Like, where it is, for example.”

“Your second chakra is located in your abdomen.”

“Why would it have problems?”

Karma inhaled a deep breath, and looking as if she doubted the wisdom of explaining, she plunged ahead anyway. “Well, you know how these days we store information on disks—with computers, I mean? I told you that chakra means ‘disk.’ So it stores information, too. If a chakra is blocked, it needs reprogramming.”

“Reprogramming,” he repeated, thinking that this was worse than he thought.

“The issues of the second chakra are change, movement, pleasure, emotion. If the chakra is blocked, it can be difficult to form attachments, difficult to experience the right emotion. I can match you up with the perfect person,” she said, “and if you can’t change, or get no pleasure out of the relationship, or can’t emote—”