Life Is A Beach: Life Is A Beach / A Real-Thing Fling

“No explanation necessary. I saw you pull that red bra from your pocket this morning when you stopped to inquire about Rent-a-Yenta.”

“It’s not a bra. It’s a bikini top.”

“It serves the same function. Don’t worry, I’ll refund your registration fee.”

“I don’t want a refund,” he said, glancing over his shoulder as Brenda’s screams abruptly stopped. “I want a wife.”

“Fat chance,” Karma said.

He saw that red topknot flopping its way toward them. “I don’t want to talk to this woman. I can explain. Where can we hide?”

“Like they say, you can run but you can’t hide,” Karma said grimly.

“It was all a fluke. I grabbed her bikini top off the floor when she threw it off while she was dancing on the hood of a cut-down ’57 Chevy that was used as a couch in an apartment with some strange people I didn’t know. It’s true, I swear it.”

Karma stopped dead in her tracks in front of a yellow-stuccoed apartment house and stared at him. “That story sounds absolutely too bizarre to be made up,” she said.

“I didn’t make it up. I have no interest in Brenda. Isn’t there somewhere we can go?”

Karma’s eyes moved sideways and took in their pursuer, who was now only half a block away. They were standing in the slim shadow of a palm tree, so there was a chance that Brenda hadn’t actually seen them yet.

“In here,” said Karma, yanking him into the lobby of the yellow-stuccoed place. Slade had the impression of dusty potted ficus trees and tables piled high with dog-eared magazines. A bunch of elderly men sat around tables playing dominoes.

“Hello, Karma dear,” one of them said, his words punctuated by the sound of dominoes slapping on wood. “Your uncle Nate is out.”

“I think he went somewhere with Mrs. Rothstein. He borrowed my Old Spice,” said another. The rest of the men barely looked up.

“I’ll just drop by his apartment,” Karma said, edging toward the elevator and pulling Slade along with her. The men, focused on their game, barely paid attention.

Slade darted an anxious look at the front door. No sign of Brenda, or had she already passed by?

The elevator door opened, and Karma tugged Slade into it. “It’s okay. We can cut through my uncle’s apartment to the fire escape. From there we can—”

“I appreciate this,” Slade said. “You don’t know how much.”

Karma stared straight ahead. “Don’t try to weasel your way back into my good graces,” she said. “I can’t place any weirdos with my female clients.”

He looked over at Karma, a slight smile playing across his lips. “I am entirely normal,” he said. “In every way.” Her mouth was unusually full, and her cheeks were flushed. Without knowing why, he bent his head, hesitated and kissed her full on the lips.

He thought she might have gasped beneath his mouth, but he was so intent on lengthening and deepening the kiss that he wasn’t sure. What he was sure about was that her lips were softly pliant, her mouth was warm and willing, and she was one sensuous woman.

The elevator bumped to a stop, and he released her. Without saying a word, she walked out. He followed her, his mouth tingling, his ears ringing. And all from just one kiss.

Looking rattled, Karma led him into her uncle’s apartment and raised a window before turning to face him. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

“It was good for me. Wasn’t it good for you?” He affected an air of studied innocence.

“It was unnecessary and uncalled for. And—”

“—and very nice,” he murmured, gazing deep into her eyes, which dazzled him with their complexity of feeling.

She bit her lip and appeared to collect herself. “Let’s go,” she said, and she stepped out onto the metal fire-escape stairs.

“Now what?”

“We go that way,” she said, pointing toward the next roof.

It was easy, clambering across the roof, and the next one, and the next. Throughout their curious journey, with the city of Miami Beach spread out before them, with the scent of the sea in his nostrils, all he could think was that he wanted to kiss Karma again. And soon.

“This is the Blue Moon,” she said when they had reached a roof where lawn chairs were set along the edge of the building facing the ocean. The chairs on the sun deck were occupied by couples doing—well, who knew what? Slade had an idea, but he doubted the advisability of asking Karma if she would like to indulge. He was pretty sure she’d say no.

Karma marched across the roof and opened a door leading to a narrow hallway inside. “I suppose you want to be invited into my apartment for a drink or something,” she said, squarely facing him under the glare of an unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling.

“Yes,” he said because he had never wanted anything so much in his life. “Yes, I reckon I would like that just fine.”

Karma sighed and massaged the back of her neck. “I’ll have to think this over,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.

“You might want to come in to the office and look at some of my female clients’ videos,” she said.

“I thought you fired me,” he said. “As a client, I mean.”

“I did. But now I think you’re okay.”

“Because I kissed you?” he said, opting for the bold approach.

“No, because I believe that you didn’t have any psycho reasons for having that bra—”

“Swimsuit top.”

“—swimsuit top in your pocket. I saw your expression when you pulled it out this morning. You looked surprised. That’s enough for me.”

At the moment, screening videos of her other Rent-a-Yenta clients didn’t appeal to him at all. “How about lunch tomorrow? Or dinner?”

“Or yoga? Remember, I said we’d have a class here tomorrow night.”

She must be testing him. He didn’t want to go to a yoga class. He hated anything New Age. But he did want to see Karma again, and desperately.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

She favored him with a decisive nod. “Good. Now I’d better walk you out of the building. Goldy doesn’t take kindly to unescorted men rambling around in here.”

They walked down four flights of stairs and found Goldy in the lobby, sitting behind her desk watching TV.

She looked up briefly, showing absolutely no surprise that the two of them had descended from on high rather than walking in the front door.

“Your aunt Sophie is here,” she said.

Karma’s eyebrows flew up. “My aunt Sophie is dead.”

“Well, she’s here anyway.” Goldy gestured in the direction of a cardboard bucket of the same ilk as the ones that fast-food fried chicken came in.

“What in the world are you talking about, Goldy?”

“Your aunt Sophie. They delivered her ashes. That’s them right there.”

4

THE NEXT DAY WHEN KARMA met her uncle Nate at the neighborhood ice-cream parlor, she informed him about the fried chicken barrel now reposing on top of her refrigerator.

“Okay,” he said, “so I should have ordered an urn. But what difference does it make? Sophie wanted her ashes scattered in the ocean. She loved the ocean.”

Karma took time out from licking her raspberry frozen yogurt on a stick. “And you’re going to scatter them, right?”

Nate looked uncomfortable. “No, not me. You, Karma.”

Karma stopped stock-still in the middle of Ocean Boulevard. “Why me?”

“I pretend like she’s buried. I go to the cemetery every day to see her grave, God rest her.” He pulled her out of the path of a speeding dune buggy. “You should watch where you’re going, Karma. I don’t want to be going to any more funerals for a while.”

They resumed their stroll. “With me out of the way, you could give Rent-a-Yenta to Paulette,” Karma said while thinking that scattering Aunt Sophie’s ashes was something Nate should do.

“I don’t want you out of the way, Karma. Your cousin Paulette was second choice. Anyway, she already has a job counting money for a big Wall Street firm.”

Lucky Paulette, Karma thought glumly. She probably had a boyfriend, too. But not someone as handsome and charming as Slade Braddock, she’d wager. Not that Slade was her boyfriend, but he had kissed her. He was a good kisser, too.

“Anyway, Karma, I like to go to the cemetery and look at Sophie’s grave. I sit there for a while and I talk to her.”

“Aunt Sophie doesn’t have a grave. She’s in that fried chicken barrel.”

“Barrel? Don’t call it a barrel. It’s a fried chicken bucket. Sophie wouldn’t need a barrel. She was as slim on the day she died as she was on the day I married her. And anyway, I picked out a grave that looks like it could be Sophie’s. Sometimes I drive Mrs. Rothstein to the cemetery, too, so she can visit her husband’s grave nearby. There’s a pretty bottle-brush tree, and we like to sit under it on a nice wrought-iron bench. Let me have my fantasy that Sophie is there, bubbeleh. Don’t spoil it for me.”

“But Uncle Nate—”

“Your aunt Sophie was my life. I miss her.” Nate wiped a tear from his eye.

Karma slid an arm around his shoulders. “She’d want you to make a new life, Uncle Nate.”

He sighed. “I know, I know. That’s true.” He cheered up slightly. “So when can you scatter the ashes?”

Karma finished the rest of her frozen yogurt and tossed the stick in a trash can painted with a purple palm tree. “I don’t know. I’ll have to figure out a way. I think I’ll need a boat, since you can’t really toss ashes from shore without the prevailing winds throwing them back at you.”

“You let me know what you’re going to do.”

“I will, Uncle Nate. Thanks for the frozen yogurt.” She bent and kissed him on his wrinkled cheek.

“You’ve got your yogurt class tonight, don’t you?”

“Yoga. I practice yoga. I eat yogurt.” Her uncle had never been able to tell the difference between yoga and yogurt, which had been endearing at first, but now it was beginning to wear on her.

“Okay, yoga. Didn’t I hear that the big cowboy was coming to class?”

“Where did you hear that?” Karma uttered in surprise.

“Goldy mentioned it. Is it true?”

“I invited him. Not sure if he’ll be there tonight,” she hedged.

Nate’s eyes twinkled. “He will be. I saw the way he looked at you the other morning.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” Karma said, but Nate only laughed.

“That’s my line,” he said, and it was true. Her uncle was always saying that.

After she and Nate parted company at the corner, Karma walked slowly back to her office, wondering where would be the best place to hire a boat. She was still mulling this over as she climbed the stairs. The door swung open before she inserted her key.

“Hi, Karma.” Jennifer, the same Jennifer who was eager to find a date who was husband material, had parked her sexy self in front of the TV in the alcove where clients were welcome to browse through videos of possible matches. “Aunt Goldy sent me over to take delivery of the couch and chairs for you, and I figured it’s a chance to check out new prospects. I’ve just met one, in fact.”

“Oh?”

“He said his name was Slade Braddock. He was looking for a psychological profile form and took one off your desk. I hope that’s okay.”

Karma’s spirits fell. She wished she hadn’t missed him. “I guess it’s all right. Um, Jennifer, why aren’t you at work?”

“I switched to the night shift.”

“They have night shifts for ear piercers?”

“Uh-huh. That’s when all the teenagers come in, and we’re having a special—two for the price of one.”

“Two ears? You charge per ear?”

Jennifer rolled her eyes. “No, silly. Two people for the price of one. You should come get your ears pierced while the sale’s on. Your belly button too. I’m not supposed to do belly buttons, but I’d make an exception for you.”

Ouch! But, “I’ll think about it,” Karma said. To her dismay, the very video cassette that Jennifer now cradled in her eager little hands was labeled Slade Braddock, Client 1811.

“This guy was soooo cool. I think I’ll pop this cassette in the VCR and see what he has to say.”

“I haven’t edited it yet.”

“I don’t care. Want to watch it with me?”

Karma shook her head. “I’ve got things to do,” she said.

Jennifer leaned forward, her breasts surging out of her vee neckline. They were conical in shape and tanned all over, at least from what Karma could see, which was considerable. Furthermore, it looked as if Jennifer had succeeded in her quest for artificial nipples. They were standing up straight and proud. Did guys really like that look? It seemed that as a matchmaker she ought to know such things.

Jennifer noticed her scrutiny. “Yes, Karma, I did get them. Do you want to know where? I could—”

“No, thanks,” Karma said hastily.

Jennifer treated her to a knowing smile. “They’d help you in the guy department, believe me. By the way, I took a message for you.” She bounced over to the desk and ripped a pink message sheet off a pad. “The caller said she was your cousin Paulette. She said she was recently fired from her job in New York and wants you to call her back.”

“Paulette? Call her back?” Despite Karma’s immediate sympathy for anyone who’d lost a job, this wasn’t anything she wanted to do. Paulette had been the butt of jokes from Karma and her sisters during their childhood. Karma knew she had never been completely forgiven for dipping the sleeping Paulette’s hand in a pail of warm water on the first night of sleep-away camp when they were both eight; Paulette had wet her bed, which was what Karma had been assured would happen. After that, Paulette’s nickname around camp had been P. P., which ostensibly stood for her initials, since her full name was Paulette Parham. But all the campers had known what the nickname really stood for, and the counselors probably did, too.

“Come on, Karma, sit down and watch with me.” Jennifer tugged Karma into the alcove and pushed on her shoulders until she sat on the chair.

“Roll tape,” Jennifer sang out as she pushed the play button, and Slade’s face popped up on the screen. A good-humored face, an animated face—until Karma asked him the first question and he froze up.

As Slade hemmed and hawed his way down into the conversational skids, Karma slid a glance in Jennifer’s direction to gauge her reaction. “Not much of a talker,” was all she said.

“Mmm,” Karma said noncommittally.

“Still,” Jennifer mused as Slade started running on about birds, “he’s a hottie. I can’t see what’s the big whoop about roseate spoonbills and great blue herons, they sound boring to me, but I think I’ll give Mr. Slade Braddock a whirl.”

Karma’s heart sank.

Jennifer switched off the tape. “Set it up for Friday night, won’t you, Karma?”

“Well, I—”

“I mean, why not?” Jennifer skewered her with a look.

“I’ll have to check to see if he’s busy,” Karma hedged, getting up and shuffling through a pile of papers on her desk.

“Aunt Goldy says she’s met him. She says he’s nice. What do you think? Are we well suited, he and I?”

“Why don’t I study your personality profiles in relation to each other and get back to you on that? Of course, I won’t see his until he brings it back.”

Jennifer shrugged, which went a long way to show off her breast assets. “Oh, don’t bother with that psychology stuff. I want to go out with him. Friday night is good because my mother is trying to set me up with her best friend’s son, Sheldon. If I already have a date, Mom won’t insist.” She flipped her hair back off her shoulders, and Karma was nearly blinded by the shimmer of it in the slant of sunshine coming in the window. Slade, she thought sourly, would go crazy at the sight of Jennifer.

“So do you promise to set it up?”

“All right,” Karma said reluctantly. “I’ll do it.”

“Tell Slade to pick me up at seven,” Jennifer said airily on her way out the door.

When she had gone, Karma collapsed onto her desk chair and pillowed her head on her arms in dismay at the thought of setting Slade up with Jennifer.

“Well, he may be a client, but Jennifer won’t like him,” counseled the Aunt Sophie side of her. In fact, the voice in her head sounded so much like her aunt’s that Karma’s head jerked up in surprise.

Whereupon the Karma side of her cautioned, “Why wouldn’t Slade like Jennifer? She’s blond, sexy and eager.”

Unfortunately it was the Karma side of her that made the most sense.

Still and all, Friday was still four days away. Karma could only hope that Jennifer, who could usually be counted on to show her fickle side, would decide before then that Slade wasn’t a real possibility.

SLADE BRADDOCK SHOWED UP at the rooftop sundeck yoga class right on time that night. He strode in wearing those cowboy boots, jeans and a white T-shirt that made his tan look darker than ever. He nodded to Karma, balancing his hands on his hips and looking the group over.

“Who is that?” Mandi asked as she unfurled her purple yoga mat.

“Oh, just someone I invited to join us,” Karma answered.

“Mmm-mmm. I sure would like to hear him say, ‘You know you want it, baby. You know you do.”’ Mandi lowered her voice in imitation of a male consumed by lust, which might have been funny if Karma were in the mood for it.

“Don’t they all say that to you?” Karma asked innocently. Mandi let out a sort of halfhearted giggle as Karma unfolded herself from her mat, where she had been sitting in Half-Lotus position. She strolled over to where Slade stood.

He grinned at her, the light in his eyes rivaling the moonlight spilling down from a clear night sky, his grin revealing teeth that gleamed whiter than the promise of any toothpaste commercial on TV. “Didn’t think I’d show up, did you?” he asked.

What to reply? She had and she hadn’t, both at the same time. One thing for sure, she had developed a dry mouth from merely being in his line of sight, and at that moment, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to open it to speak.

“Uh, glad to see you,” she managed to say after what seemed like a couple of eons. Slade looked out of place, she thought, in those jeans. “Be better if you’d worn fewer clothes,” she said, not realizing until the words were out of her mouth how they sounded.

His delighted laughter boomed out over the assembled regulars, most of whom were gawking at him with their jaws hanging down to their knees. Which was not an approved yoga pose as far as Karma knew.

“Most things,” Slade said wickedly but in such a low tone that the others couldn’t hear, “are better without so many clothes. You mind telling me which items you’d like me to discard first?”

She blushed. She couldn’t help it. “Your boots for a start,” she said crisply.

The instructor, a powerful bare-chested yogi from The Om Place whose previous address was listed as an ashram in India, sauntered over. “A new student?” he asked in precise tones as he inspected Slade from head to toe.

“Prashant, this is Slade. Slade, Prashant.” Karma made her introductions as quickly as she could and scurried back to her mat.

“How do you happen to know that big hunky guy?” Mandi wanted to know. Her favorable assessment of Slade and his muscles and his tan and his white, white teeth was undisguised and avid.

“Oh,” Karma said with a vague wave of her hand, “we met on the street.”

Jennifer arrived, running late as usual. She stopped to talk to Karma. “Isn’t that Slade Braddock talking with Prashant?” she asked, aiming a come-hither look and up-standing nipples in his direction.

“Yes,” muttered Karma. “I’m afraid so.”

“Should I introduce myself? Or do you want to do it?”

“After class,” Karma told her.

“Mmm,” said Jennifer, her gaze still on Slade. “Boxers for sure.”

“Briefs,” Mandi corrected. “He’s a briefs kind of guy.” Having made that pronouncement, Mandi leaped up, her melon-sized breasts jostling each other for room under her Om Is Where The Heart Is T-shirt. She undulated over to the corner where Slade was approaching the stack of spare mats.

“Need some help?” Mandi asked.

Karma wondered, Help? Help with what? Deciding whether he wanted a blue mat or a purple one? Putting one foot in front of the other until he reached the rest of the group? Oh, pu-leeze!

Karma shut her ears to the byplay between Slade and Mandi and forced herself to breathe deeply, trying to find her center. The trouble was that by the time Slade, looking like every dream man in every one of her fantasies since she was twelve years old, began to spread his mat out beside hers, her center seemed to have moved downward considerably to that warm place between her—

“Karma,” Slade whispered under his breath while fielding admiring glances from virtually every woman present without so much as acting as if he noticed. “Karma, what am I supposed to do?”

She opened her eyes. “What Prashant says.”

“Oh,” Slade said in a puzzled tone. He glanced from her to Prashant. “He likes you, I think.”

“Prashant? That’s doubtful.”

“He certainly came running when he saw us talking. Defending his territory, maybe?”

The observation was too ridiculous to be worthy of reply, and Karma was saved by Prashant’s settling down on his own mat at the front of the group and welcoming them all to the lesson.

Prashant began the class by chanting an Om. “Allow yourself to go with the flow, and then you will find what you’ve been looking for,” he said afterward with reverence.

“I’ll be damned if I think that’s going to get me a wife, which is what I’m looking for lately,” Slade muttered under his breath. Karma threw him a reproachful look.

“Well, don’t I have you to find me what I’m looking for?” he whispered.

“Go with the flow anyway,” she whispered back.

Prashant coached them through a few simple warm-ups. With Slade beside her, Karma, for the first time ever in yoga class, found it difficult to concentrate. As they progressed through various poses, he doffed his shirt, revealing a torso that was leaner, harder, and more muscular than she could have imagined. And she had been imagining it plenty, starting from the first moment she saw him.

It was an intense class, and the members of the group, most of whom were intermediate students, flowed from pose to pose with little recovery time in between. Sun Salutation, Warrior, Downward-Facing Dog…and Slade, who seemed to be struggling valiantly to keep up, looked slightly more musclebound with each pose. Musclebound was not good with yoga. Flexible was good. Agile was good. Slade seemed to be neither.

“Are you doing all right back there, Slade?” Prashant asked once, and Slade replied with what looked like a grin superimposed on a grimace. “Fine,” he gritted through clenched teeth, but the next pose, a backbend, drew an incredulous intake of breath from him as he lay on his back and attempted to lift himself up.

“Karma, you are the best at backbends. Will you please demonstrate?” suggested Prashant.

“Well, I—” she began, but Mandi said, “Yes, Karma, do!” and was rapidly echoed by Jennifer.

All eyes were upon Karma, but the only ones that mattered in that moment were Slade’s. He lay on his mat looking up at her with a challenging grin, and all she could think at the moment is that if they were in bed, this is what he would look like—well-muscled and fit, his grin fading into passion as he reached for her and pulled her down across his body, the better to kiss you, my dear.

“Backbends are important,” intoned Prashant, breaking into her reverie. “They help our bodies release emotion in a positive way.”

“Wouldn’t backbends be good for me?” Slade urged. “Since my chakra is blocked, I mean?”

He might have something there, but the thing that finally decided Karma was that if she were in a backbend pose, she wouldn’t have to look down at him and thus wouldn’t be tempted to reach over and unbutton his jeans, a behavior that surely would be frowned upon.

Karma forced herself to lie down on her mat; she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, then exhaled as she firmly planted her hands behind her ears and her feet flat on the floor. While inhaling the next breath, she hoisted herself up into a backbend, keeping her eyes closed and wishing she’d never invited Slade to class. Slowly she walked her feet in a bit closer and arched her back even more, thrusting her breasts up. She knew that the quickly inhaled breath next to her came from Slade, and too late she realized that she was exhibiting more of the very thing that he probably wanted to see if Jennifer were correct in her thinking. Karma was wearing a thin exercise bra along with tight shiny leggings. Neither did anything to disguise her womanly attributes. This could be good. This could be bad. But all she could think about at the moment was that she wanted to get out of this pose.