Money, especially the doling out of it, made people think about how they could spend it even before it became a reality. She wasn’t willing to take Langstrom’s word that they would be paid fairly for what they had to give up. She was with Jess on that one. To begin with, she couldn’t put a market price on Tuna Street, nor could she endure the cost of losing it.
“Whoa.” It was Bob. He was on his feet. Blanche’s mind was a jumble, her insides wrung out, but here was Bob. And in her head, she heard her beloved grandmother, Maeve Murninghan of Santa Maria Island—long dead: Stand up straight, Blanche. Speak your mind. But her knees wobbled.
Bob gave her a thumbs up and looked around the room. “We have a number of items on this agenda.” His hands tamped down the air of contention. “You have a considerable hurdle or two, Mr. Langstrom. We are not likely to back down.”
Langstrom ducked his head and rubbed his hands together. Blanche wanted to strangle him right there. “You know, we appreciate your views,” he said. “We really do. But let me say, the company will make generous offers to facilitate the removal of dilapidated properties to improve the well-being of the island community.”
Dilapidated properties? Whose? Mine? Could he be serious?
“Now let’s wait one momentito.” It was Bob again. “The plan is ambitious and costly, and devastating to the flora and the fauna.” At this, several heads bounced in agreement, mostly because that’s what everyone did when Bob spoke. “Do you have state and local permission? You know, it’s quite a lengthy and expensive process to get permits to build within the coastal zone. And, normally, you’ll only be able to rebuild within the footprint of the buildings you, ahem, destroy.”
Blanche’s mind was racing. All he had to do was go to Tallahassee with a ton of money, and he’d get those approvals in a heartbeat.
“No, we don’t have all the permits,” Langstrom said quietly. “But we’ve taken the first step. To get the residents of Santa Maria on board with improvements to their economy.” Cool with just a dab of blasé. “And by economy, I mean each and everyone’s personal economy.”
She couldn’t hold back.
“Excuse me. Just where is Tuna Street on that board? Is that it? With a different name? Royal Palm Drive? And what about Bertie’s house on Tuna next to my cabin, and Jess’s place?” Blanche was pointing like crazy. As if the awful green roof and orange shutters on Sycamore Avenue weren’t enough, a mall in a weird, complicated design, all fretwork and balustrades, splashed a garish shade of turquoise, cut across the tip of the island and ate up most of the park land.
“By the way, something else is wrong here,” she said. “You seem to have forgotten a very important part of Santa Maria. I don’t see the pier at all.”
Sergi glanced at the drawing and jotted something on a clipboard. He smiled at Blanche. “That pier. Really, so quaint. Maybe a marina instead? With warehousing for boat storage?” He fumbled with the posters and held up a drawing of an elaborate dock with coach lights, a glassed-in restaurant, and Onassis-size yachts.
“I don’t believe this.” She steadied herself. The murmuring started up again, but no one came forward.
Blanche stumbled into the aisle and headed for the back door, anxious for a breath of air. Suddenly, she was suffocating. She leaned in the door frame, her back to Langstrom and the crowd. Outside, the geckos skittered up the wall, the palms rattled as the wind picked up off the Gulf. She turned toward the breeze and the shelter of the western sky where a patch of fluorescent orange glowed in the dark. It was a relief, knowing that at least no one could take away that sunset and the Gulf of Mexico.
But then she turned back to the disaster. Langstrom leaned against a long folding table, then bounced toward the crowd.
“Hear me out. Please,” he said. The buzzing stopped.
“Don’t you see what he’s doing?” she yelled. She’d been holding her breath, her voice tinny. The back row looked up at her.
“Believe me.” Langstrom ignored the outburst. “Santa Maria will be better than ever. We’ll plant native species, including live oak and sabal palms. Get rid of those Australian pines.” He drew out every word like he was announcing the creation of Eden, the pointer hitting various round dots on the board that Blanche guessed were the “native” plantings.
She was dizzy from the thought of losing the pier, most of the park land, and now this? How do I defend a tree? The pines wove a carpet of long needles on the broken shell and hot sand. They whistled and provided shade, and bright green parrots raised a joyous ruckus in the branches in March. Those trees had a life of their own, and they were part of their lives. Langstrom didn’t know a thing about them. How could you trust someone who dismissed the trees as a non-native nuisance?
And did he know anything about palms? There were nearly eighty varieties, and the island had quite a number already. Did he know that they bent in hurricanes and popped back up, and that they were amazing transplants? She was not against bringing in more palm trees, but he wanted to make the place look like a Florida postcard. More Fake Florida. Just what Santa Maria Island did not need.
“Hear, hear.” It was Bob again. He reached in his pocket and drew out a small piece of paper. A check. “You have some good ideas there, Mr. Langstrom, but I’m afraid these plans for development just don’t jibe with our plans for historical preservation. Plain and simple.”
He pivoted to the group, showing off the check. “Ten thousand dollars says the park and wetlands at the northern end will not be uprooted, paved over, nor built upon. It’s the first donation, and we’ll raise more.”
Blanche was stunned. Cheers went up around the room. The historical society was coming through.
The handouts fluttered in front of faces, and the buzzing started up again.
Langstrom’s pen lifted off the notebook, his expression taut. “You don’t say!” He eyed Bob and looked at the clock.
They were already scraping their chairs back. A dozen residents crowded around Bob. The assistant grabbed a couple of posters, and the mayor looked about to explode.
Langstrom snapped his briefcase closed. “Thanks so much for coming out tonight!” He pointed here and there, and his gaze lingered on Bob. “Hope I can buy you a cup of coffee at Peaches!”
But Bob was surrounded, his large head bent to Janet and Becky.
Confident and peppy, that’s Langstrom. Blanche couldn’t make his plans go away, but Bob’s check was a good start.
She stared at the posters and diagrams, globs of pink, turquoise, and coral. There should be a revolution, but there’s nothing like that. Are they resigned to it?
Sergi was at the side door, the smile gone. He didn’t seem to be paying the slightest bit of attention to them. They could have been telling him their grocery lists from the look of it.
Blanche studied her Tevas but then glanced toward the exit. He gave her a two-finger salute.
What? Victory? The meeting had settled nothing.
She spun around and watched them walk toward the parking lot and down the street. They needed each other if they were to turn things around. She had come in worried yet hopeful and now was about to leave, devastated. She was desperate to know what they were thinking: Where were the questions? Don’t you ask a lot of questions at a town hall meeting?