NOVEL NEXT 289: The Umbrella Drink Menu
"Ugggghhh, WTF is this?" I complained, waving my hands in front of my face.
"It's a goddamned shower is what it is," Rhoda griped. "Hells bells, how does anyone breathe in this place?"
We stepped out of the Miami landing platform and into a sauna. I think I melted on the spot.
"Gross. This is— bleeaccch. Yuck," I couldn't even use words; it was so hot and oppressive.
"Come on, there's the porters," Rhoda rallied. We had all of our luggage on one floater, pulling it behind us through the air, so we headed for the line of hover cars. We pushed the floater easily into the back of a porter and slid into the front bench.
"Oh, thank god for air conditioning," Rhoda declared, tapping the autonav. The panel lit up, and she popped in the location of our resort. We'd already decided that I'd pay her 50% of the cost of the trip at the end, but Rhoda wanted to put everything on her business accounts since she considered this a networking event for Wyoming Wild, her handmade skin care line.
I watched the city of Miami through the porter windows feeling like I was on a new planet, not just a few hundred miles from Cheyenne. Colorful, steamy, sun-bleached, busy.
The pace of it was so much faster, vibrant, and ALIVE than anything in Wyoming. Colorful people, buildings of peach, teal, and pink. Signs blaring and music pumping on every corner.
Miami was dynamic, and I loved it. "Let's go shopping, Rhoda. We're like— I dunno, world's away or something. I feel like I could actually start anew."
"Hah! Welcome to vacation brain, Sam. But yeah, let's get this dinner meeting done, and we can shop to our hearts' content. You know if you buy a zillion sundresses and short shorts, you'll barely be able to wear them back home."
I grinned at her, "Then, we'll have to travel more. Especially in the winter!"
"Deal. Florida every January sounds like a fabulous idea to me."
Once we arrived at Seaside Resort, we unloaded our luggage, freshened up, then turned right back around to head to the lounge. It was a wide, sweeping restaurant that looked out over the turquoise ocean. Beautiful.
It was also an outdoor, open-air bar, and despite the fans circulating the air, I thought I'd die from heat exhaustion before the night'd even begun.
"Padma?" Rhoda called as we headed into the bar.
A squat woman a couple of inches shorter than my 5'7" with a long, dark braid streaked with grey smiled at us. "You must be Rhoda Black, so nice to meet you. And you're her friend Samantha, right?"
I nodded, excited, nervous. Was this actually HC Maron's wife? The real HC Maron? And if it was, did her husband have a beta reader called Ayela Scarsdale? Hopefully we would soon find out.
"How does this corner table look to you two?" Padma asked.
We pulled out chairs in response. "Just get me the umbrella drink menu, and I'm fine with whatever," Rhoda snarked.
"Oh good! Good! Let's have girlie drinks and watch the sunset. And I love the sweet hush puppy starters here. What else, ladies?"
"Definitely conch fritters," I ordered.
"I'm fine with those, but let's put the dinner order in too so we don't have to be distracted later. I have questions for you, Padma, so get ready," Rhoda commanded.
"Ha ha!" Padma barked. "A woman after my own heart. Food and business. Perfect, and please, call me 'Paddy,' everyone does."
"I already know I'm getting the nightly special: Seaside Polenta," I told them.
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Rhoda nodded, "The blackened grouper for me."
"The filet here is amazing with a peppercorn glaze, so I can't resist steak tonight," Paddy finished, putting the order in the digital menu. Not long after, the delivery cart hovered over with our drinks, conch fritters, and little sweet balls of fried hush puppy crispiness with honey butter.
Mmmm. So good. Paddy and Rhoda were already talking cosmetics.
"Wild-harvested ingredients make your products unique and incredibly marketable—" Paddy started, but Rhoda cut her off.
"That's what I've always thought, but now that I'm here in this stifling air, I can't imagine anyone in Miami wanting my daily moisturizer. It just isn't right for this climate. I've developed it for mountain life, not sultry, damp conditions."
Paddy shook her head, "I agree that regional climate has an impact, but skin is skin, and humid air doesn't mean we don't need moisturizer." She held her hand out. "Don't even try to tell me you didn't bring samples. Give."
Rhoda laughed, pulling out a tiny round container. "This is my all-around go to. The biggest seller."
Sniffing the little jar, Paddy asked, "Unscented? Good choice." She dabbed a little on the back of her hand and nodded. "Nice and light. I bet you have a heavier duty one as well."
Rhoda nodded and pulled out a couple more containers, explaining how she marketed them to different skin types.
"See, I really think you're onto something, Rhoda. The science at Novaceuticals is undeniable; they've made sure of that, of course. But this regional touch. I know, I know, you're thinking mountain west is regional and that's different from southern US, but it's time to start thinking much bigger. The Known Cosmos is vast, and Milky Way becomes your region, dear."
"Think about it, I'm selling products on behalf of a company from Starlend, a small sphere in Andromeda Galaxy light years away. And to them, I'm still 'regional' because Milky Way is so much closer than Maglen Galaxy, right? So the cost of shipping products to Earth is far less than somewhere in the farthest corners of the 9 Galaxies."
I suddenly felt tiny. All those galaxies with a gazillion spheres. Planet after planet loaded with life. It was hard to keep up with my tiny existence in Cheyenne, let alone endless variations of humanity on other spheres.
What would it be like to get on a starliner and go to another galaxy? Or even further?
Dinner arrived, and my polenta was gone in minutes as Rhoda and Paddy kept talking skin care. They nerded out over the Chula lily from Andromeda which was supposed to be some kind of miracle plant for skin, and my gaze wandered out over the ocean.
All that endless blue stretched out before me. It felt so vast and eternal, and it was still so small in the face of galaxy upon galaxy of life.
"Uh oh, Rhoda, we've lost our companion. We've become boring, I'm afraid," Paddy teased.
I jerked my attention back to the table. "Miami has seduced me, and I'm lost in her grip. Save me, or don't. I no longer care."
"And what do you do when you're not accompanying your friend on vacations disguised as business, Samantha?" Paddy asked, and it was my chance. She'd given me the perfect cue.
"I'm in between jobs at the mo,' but on the side, I'm beta reading a book called Shapeless Poetry."
Perfect. I'd delivered it perfectly, exactly as Rhoda and I'd practiced on the airship. No tremble, no shaky breath, just me looking into her eyes and pressing the words into her mind.
Paddy's breath hitched, her eyes wide, then she whispered, "Ayela?"
I grinned, but I wasn't expecting her to jump up and run around the table and hug my face to her ample middle. No, I didn't wave my arms about and struggle in shock. I managed to be surprised but not crazy.
Paddy stepped back, holding one cheek in a cushiony palm.
"It's really you, Ayela. 'I watched a blossom fall and felt its tiny death. It didn't end there, for the death was life you see.'"
My poem.
"A Thousand Tiny Deaths." My poetry was being quoted in a restaurant in Miami. What even WAS this day? The whole world seemed to tilt, and I felt like I'd stepped out of a black hole and into a miracle.
"You know my poem?" I asked softly.
"Without the falling blossom, far from the mother tree, there could be no future flowers for it or for me.' Ayela— Samantha. Those words are some of the most beautiful I can imagine for anyone who has ever grieved. And let's be honest, that's all of us, isn't it? You didn't really mean the grief of death, did you? You were talking about losses that accumulate day after day, year after year. Seasons change and flowers fade, and we all feel that, don't we?"
Paddy shook herself off and took her seat again, eyes roaming back and forth between Rhoda and me. "Oh my, this is unbelievable. You girls. You've come to Miami because of the Discord fiasco, haven't you?"
She nodded to herself. "I can understand the false pretenses. It was a good plan. Oh dear god, this whole thing is so stupid. The fact that you had to meet me and talk about cosmetics for nearly an hour because we can't just say who we goddammed are. What the fuck is this world even coming to? Wimpy is gonna be so tickled, and oh! We should do something; this is too perfect! Surprise him—"
"Wimpy?" I interrupted.
Paddy cackled. "A pet name. By yours truly. A token of my love and affection for the past forty years to the great, famous HC Maron." She proceeded to crack up, so Rhoda and I joined her. How could we not?
"Alright girls, you're here, and we've got far more work to do than going over the Trade Guild options for Wyoming Wild, but first things first. It's time for you to meet HC Maron."
