Gossip Queens

The most beautiful woman in the world was getting married and I wasn't at all happy about it. Oh, sure, it seemed to be a good thing; Julie wouldn't be moping around anymore. And the groom, the police sergeant of our town, would be more focused on his job. Or would he? At least I hoped he would be. But, after years of the two of them suffering from twin cases of unrequited love, the minute they got together, I felt the temperature rise. Not just my temperature, but the ambient temperature of the Sunshine Coast. I didn't want to think about how hot their relationship had to be to cause the mercury to rise all over the peninsula, but I couldn't help it. I'd been worrying about Julie's love life for so long I'd forgotten about having one myself. And the heat reminded me of just what I was missing. I stood on the dock outside the Sand Dollar Motel and sweated in the bright summer sun. This rare moment of peace was an indulgence I didn't often allow myself once the summer--and all its joys and aggravations and hysteria--came to Gibsons. The summer wasn't a time for self-reflection, that's for damn sure. So I went back up the hill to the motel and got to work. Mondays were always the worst. The weekenders often waited until the last possible minute to get on the road--which meant a flock of screaming children and frantic parents crowded into my office at six in the morning, before I'd had time for coffee. They needed to be on the road by six-thirty to make the seven o'clock ferry, and with ten rooms and what felt like a thousand racing visitors, panic reigned for that first hour of the week. And continued right through until after Labor Day. The good news was that, like every Monday, by the time the sun burned off the slight chill of the night, everyone was gone and I got ready to settle myself in to do it all over again. But not quite yet. The thought of dealing with ten rooms' worth of sand and salt, the filthy towels and smelly, crumpled bedding made me want to vomit. I couldn't even bear to think about the bathrooms. Combine that with the fact that Julie, my only child, was getting married in September and I desperately needed a break. I muttered as I hurried along the sidewalk in front of the rooms, checking the doors, locking those left standing open by the visitors in the stampede to get back to their real lives. "I can't stay away long," I said, pulling doors closed without daring to take a peek at the chaos within, "but I need to get out of here." I ripped off my official Sand Dollar Motel uniform--a golf shirt emblazoned with a starfish (a sand dollar just didn't have the oomph for a shirt)--replaced it with a lime-green T-shirt, pulled on matching sneakers and hurried down the hill to the Way-Inn to find coffee, a plate full of hash browns, and Rose. I figured Rose and Doris had saved my life at least once. When Julie's dad absconded with the family fortune before Julie was born, Rose and Doris propped me up, babysat once Julie arrived and helped me buy a living and regain my sanity. I own the Sand Dollar free and clear now, but I always thought of my two friends as silent partners. Rose, Doris and me, Mercedes Jones--the three of us owned the Sand Dollar. But they weren't just partners in business, they were my partners in life. I tried not to think about how much I missed Doris. Almost every morning--not in the summer, of course, but every other morning of the year--I'd meet Doris and Rose at the Way-Inn. It wasn't always at the same time, but we'd been doing it for so long it was as if we could divine each other's schedule and Doris and I often ended up pulling our cars into the parking lot at the same time. We'd sit in our booth in the back and Sam would wait on us. I grinned when I thought of poor Sam leaving his kitchen with a tray of coffee and hash browns. Rose was the waitress, the hostess, the glAustin, Kate is the author of 'Gossip Queens ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373881178 and ISBN 0373881177.