The wiry guy stepped forward, his cigarette dancing in the corner of his mouth as he shook Frannie’s hand. “Kurt,” he said. “I’m the artist.”
“Of course!” Frannie shook his hand and turned back to Saul, who was slapping sandwich fixings on the counter in the dimly lit cafe. “Uncle Saul, I—this place is neat.”
“Heh. Menace to society I’ve heard. Contributing to the delinquency of minors I’ve heard. Neat you don’t hear so much, but great.”
“So when you visited me, you said you’d fix me up with something nice.”
He looked at her. “You come around some more; I’ll put you to work.”
The bell hanging on the door rang and someone else came in.
Frannie held her uncle’s gaze. “Put me to work? Really?”
“Hey! Who’s this?” a male voice said.
Frannie turned around. Standing in the entryway, reaching up to grab an apron hanging on a coat rack, was a boy of about eighteen, lean and muscled, with wide shoulders and cheekbones and shiny eyes. A dream, stepping forward. For the first moment of the last ten minutes, maybe of her life, Frannie was struck dumb.
She decided to step backwards to look cool; she bumped into a booth table and grabbed it behind her, then tried to look casual swinging her knee up to kneel again on the booth seat. But halfway through the maneuver she suddenly felt like she must look like she was about 8 years old fussing around in a restaurant booth, but she was already half committed, so she climbed into the booth and propped her arms again on top, and felt like she was sticking up out of a rabbit hole.
“Frannie Cohn,” she said.
“Newpup,” the boy said.
“New what?”
Saul, behind the counter, waved a knife between slicing sandwiches. “Newpup. Oh, it’s his beach name.”
“Surf name,” the boy corrected, with a raise of his eyebrows.
“Okay, yeah, he has a surf name. You know, like a code name,” Saul said. “In case he gets captured by the Germans or somethin’.”
Frannie eyed the boy. “That so? You have a German POW name?”
“What? No,” Newpup said, with the most adorable amount of red entering his cheeks. He had a sweet voice, very smooth, like he was a singer. She wanted to hear him read the menu of every place in town. “It’s a name—you get a name from the gang when you become a Legionnaire.”
“A Legionnaire?”
“That’s our surf gang.”
“Really?” Frannie said. “That is cool. So are you a waiter?”
Kurt laughed out loud at that and Frannie was about to ask what the gag was when Newpup corrected her all on his own, with a note of annoyance. “I’m the manager. These guys just own the place.”
“Oh, okay,” Frannie said.
“They count on me,” Newpup insisted.
“When he’s not surfing, we count on him,” Saul said.
“But you can call me Newp for short. Everyone does.”
“Do they really?”
“So what’s up, Saul?” Newpup changed the subject.
“The Laguna Beach Decency League,” Kurt said.
“What is that?”
Saul slapped several brown-wrapped sandwiches on the counter. “That is trouble, my son.”
“This is amazing.” Frannie slid out of the booth, waving an arm. “I count three employees and not a soul in the actual restaurant.”
“Oh,” Newp-for-short turned to her. “It’s not always like this. Come back tonight and I’ll show you.”
Chapter 9
And she did go back.
This was a surprise; she had no reason to. She had returned to Carol and Nadine with the sandwiches and made excuses she’d already forgotten, and then after an hour of whistling at the surfers they all came home. At four in the afternoon, she was quite comfortable reading a Connie Blair novel (The Green Island Mystery, in fact), and her mother was in the kitchen, humming absently as she fussed with a chicken and half-listening to the problems of the actors on THE EDGE OF NIGHT, which was just coming on.
And it began as a tickle in the back of her head like the early static at the start of a sickness, a tickle that made her fussy and unable to concentrate on her book, unable to find a comfortable way to lay on her bed, unable to relax among the lime-green throw pillows of the couch.
Frannie wandered into the kitchen and sat at the table, listening for a few minutes to her mom’s soap opera.
Vus machs da, Frannie, her mother asked. And then a phrase that loosely translated to you have your head in the clouds. She concluded with: “Why don’t you help me with the potatoes?”
Frannie grabbed a knife and started peeling, and as she cut into the first potato she said, “I’ll help—but I’m going out for dinner, Mom. The girls are meeting up Uncle Saul’s place near the beach.”
“You’re seeing your Uncle?” her mom shrugged. “How do you like that? He never visits us, but he gets to see our daughter twice. Maybe he’s busy.”
“Never can tell,” Frannie said.
At five o’clock she got her bicycle from the back yard and pedaled seven miles to the beach. All told, it was a 45-minute ride, not much worse than if one of her friends had driven if traffic had gotten up.
She wore blue Capri pants and an oversized white shirt stolen from her father, and blue sneakers. She parked her bike in front of Cafe Monstro, next to a cactus and snared in the long twilight shadow of Kronos the god-eater.
The parking lot was full of cars, including some truly ancient Model A’s, which seemed to be super-popular in the area. Surfboards were stuffed everywhere, sticking out of the back of old Caddies and stacked in the convertible Fords.
Frannie felt a vibration in her collarbone, a fuzz of excitement running up her arm as she approached the darkened glass of the front of the cafe. As she put her hand on the door, she felt the vibration and pulse of the music.
She tore the door open and entered another world.
###
First there was chatter—countless boys and girls gathered at the counter and sprawling all over the booths. She saw Kurt the artist personally whisking a tray of empty soda glasses towards the sink, and behind the counter, Saul was taking orders and slapping them onto a turnstile that spun around into the kitchen. The conversation was loud and full of laughter, and my god, she saw more giant backs and shoulders than she had ever seen in her life. This was not a no-shirt-no-shoes kind of place.
And then there was music. Frannie stood for a moment next to the crucified monster and found herself transfixed by the singers up on the stage at the back, just opposite the beaded curtain on the door that said BOOKS 4 YR ENJOYMENT.
On the stage were two girls: one was a trim, tall black girl in a pink dress with white gloves like one of the Chiffons. Her white-skinned partner was strange, though; wearing a red-patterned full flannel nightgown, her hair done in a big helmet of blondness. On reflection, going out in a flannel nightgown might be all right.
They were singing a song Frannie didn’t know, but everyone in the audience seemed to, because when Newp suddenly called from the middle of the room, “Everybody!” everybody did.
The Old 49 is Coming
The Old 49 Won’t Stop