Page 5 of All That Glitters

Chapter four

Lost Bets and Job Hunts

The Ocean View Pub, a favorite hangout for Tony and his friends, was as Southern California as The Beach Boys and palm trees. It featured a shack and a weathered wooden deck that jutted out over the sand, perfect for taking in an afternoon of sun, beers, and girl watching.

Tony, Jeff, and Matt sat near the railing, giving them a front-row seat to the beach and ocean.

A basket of fried calamari sat on the table beside empty beer bottles and wadded napkins.

Jeff and Matt divided their time between watching girls walk past on the boardwalk and giving Tony a hard time about his latest career fail.

Tony did his best to ignore them, focusing instead on the newspaper’s ‘help wanted’ ads as if his rent and the survival of his bank account depended on it. Which they did.

“Hey,” Tony said, circling an ad with his pen. “What about this one? It’s working in telecommunications.”

Jeff, who had been tracking a blonde jogger’s progress down the beach, reluctantly turned his attention back to Tony. “Doing what?”

“It doesn’t say.” Tony squinted at the small print. “It’s with some cell phone company.”

“Do you even own a cell phone?” Matt asked.

“Time out.” Jeff raised his hands in a T formation. “Am I the only one who thinks it’s completely lame that he’s quitting law after exactly one day?”

Tony looked up from the paper. “You’re leaving out the part about getting maced by an old lady.”

“But why couldn’t it have been two days?” Jeff persisted.

“The maced part had a lot to do with it,” Tony said.

Matt smirked, nodding toward Jeff. “He’s just pissed because he lost the bet.”

Tony paused. “What bet?”

With a groan, Jeff dug through his pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, which he reluctantly handed to Matt.

“The one that you’d last more than one day,” Jeff said, watching Matt pocket his money.

Matt reached over and patted Tony on the back. “Thanks for being so completely unreliable.”

“Anytime,” Tony said. He turned his attention back to the increasingly depressing job listings.

“So what’d you and Debbie do after graduation?” Matt asked.

“Not much,” Tony said, his eyes still scanning the paper. “Just hung out at the beach.”

“He means, she blew him off again,” Jeff said.

“No,” Tony said, irritation creeping into his voice. “It means we hung out.”

Matt looked at Jeff. “Remember? They’re ‘just friends’.” He inserted the air-quotes with his fingers.

“Lame,” Jeff said, leaning back in his chair.

Matt looked at Tony, who had begrudgingly looked up from the newspaper. “Here’s where you get the lecture about how only scary chicks are friends,” Matt said.

“It’s science!” Jeff said. “If a girl is cool and hot and not secretly a cyborg, some guy has already snapped her up. If she’s just ‘friends’ with a dude, it’s because there’s a fundamental flaw. It’s a well-documented phenomenon.”

Tony let out an exhausted sigh and turned back to the newspaper. “So, what about this telecommunications job? Yay or nay?”

“Dude,” Jeff scoffed. “That was the lamest change of subject I’ve ever heard.”

“Everything else is all retail, or fast food,” Tony said, deliberately ignoring the bait.

Matt glanced at Jeff. “He’s ignoring you.”

“He hears me,” Jeff said, leaning forward. “Dude. So how about this? If you’re not gonna date Debbie, hook me up.”

Tony felt something unexpected tighten in his chest. It felt like something more than simple annoyance, but he wasn’t sure what. “Didn’t you say something about only dating sophisticated girls from now on? Because that’s like the exact opposite of Debbie.”

Jeff dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “That was last week’s standards. I’ve adjusted them this week to reflect changes in market conditions.”

“Meaning, every girl he hit on blew him off,” Matt clarified.

“No,” Jeff said. “Meaning, I’ve seen the importance of lowering my expectations.”

“Hey,” Matt cut in, “I have no standards. Hook me up.”

“He can’t,” Jeff said, “because he’s already hooking me up.”

Tony shifted uneasily. The conversation made him increasingly uncomfortable, though he couldn’t pinpoint a reason why. Debbie was single, they were single — so why did the idea of her dating them make him want to throw them both into the ocean?

“I’m not hooking anybody up,” Tony said firmly. “For those of you just tuning in, Debbie lives in Phoenix with her parents.”

Tony’s defensive tone didn’t escape Matt and Jeff.

“Phoenix isn’t that far,” Jeff pointed out. “It’s what, like, a four-hour drive?”

“Six hours,” Tony corrected.

“See,” Matt grinned. “He’s already calculated the drive time.”

“That’s because I used to live there.”

“Mm hmm,” Jeff said. “And it happened to be stored conveniently at your fingertips.”

With an annoyed groan, Tony folded the newspaper and stood up. “You guys and your conspiracy theories have fun. I’m gonna go apply for that telecommunications job before they close.”

“Wait,” Jeff said. “Aren’t you forgetting to give me Debbie’s phone number?”

“No,” Matt said. “He was going to give it to me.”

Tony just ignored them and hurried off.

While Tony was across the desert dodging his friends’ questions and pondering careers that didn’t get him maced, Debbie had her own post-graduation midlife crisis to deal with.

At 22-years-old with a college degree, she still lived at home with her parents, still slept in the same bed she’d had since she was a kid, and still drove the same car she’d had since high school.

If her life was a pond, it would have mosquitoes buzzing over it from being stagnant for so long.

Something had to change; and in a rare stroke of luck for her, that change came courtesy of the US Postal Service that afternoon.

“Mail’s here, Mom,” Debbie called out as she shouldered through the front door, her arms loaded with letters of every size and shape. “Lots of it.”

She dumped the pile onto the kitchen table and made a quick scan of it.

It looked pretty much like the pile she had fetched yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.

There were student loan notices, credit card applications, insurance offerings for things she didn’t even know she was supposed to worry about.

Even one from AARP, which quickly went into the trash.

Her mother walked in from the laundry room carrying a basket of towels. Carol Campbell had the prematurely gray, patient demeanor of someone who had raised a chronically accident-prone child without losing her sanity.

“Anything for grown-ups in there?” her mother asked.

Debbie was already sorting the envelopes into separate piles. “Grown-up pile has the bills in it,” she said, then paused as her fingers found an envelope that made her heart skip. The return address showed ‘San Diego University Office of Admissions’ in official blue letters.

She had almost forgotten about the application.

She had sent it in on a whim a few months back, then forgot about it.

It had asked for an essay about her educational goals and teaching philosophy, and she wrote about wanting to make learning about the Renaissance Masters and artistic influences over the centuries feel like an archaeological adventure rather than a requirement.

“Whatcha got there?” her mother asked, setting down the laundry basket to have a look.

Debbie tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter inside it. Her eyes scanned the letter quickly, then more slowly, then a third time to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

“Holy smoke!”

“I take it that means it’s good,” her mother said.

“It’s from San Diego University,” Debbie said, still staring at the letter as if it might change its mind and rewrite itself. “They accepted me into their art history program. They’re even giving me a scholarship.”

“San Diego?” her mom said, with the same tone she would have used if Debbie had said she wanted to join the circus.

“You know, place that’s not eight hundred degrees and has a beach.” Debbie tried to sound as casual as possible about the fact that her life might soon take a sudden turn toward the Pacific Ocean.

“And miles from Europe, which is where you were planning to study next semester.”

Debbie winced. The Europe plan was one her mom had been pushing.

It would be a semester abroad in France studying art history and, quote, building character and expanding her worldview.

For the painfully shy Debbie, the thought of being somewhere she didn’t know anyone sounded about as fun as a root canal.

But she’d applied anyway, and was relieved when she never received an acceptance in the mail.

“Was planning,“ Debbie corrected. “Past tense. Ancient history. Dead parrot.”

“But you were so excited about it. And you sent in your application and everything.”

“I think that was you who was excited about Europe, Mom. And besides, they didn’t accept me.”

“You don’t know that, honey. Maybe it’s just taking them time to decide.”

“Bummer for them.”

Her mother sat down across from her in that annoying way parents do when they’re preparing for a serious conversation. “So, you just decided to uproot and move to San Diego?”

“I can bring my roots with me,” Debbie said. “I hear the ground’s really fertile there.”

“Honey, don’t you think you should wait? This could be your only chance to see Europe.”

That was her mom, the queen of buzzkill, and able to find potential regret in any decision.

“I’m sure it’ll be there after I graduate,” Debbie said. “I hear continental drift is moving much slower than they expected.”

“But then you’ll have student loans and responsibilities.”

Debbie let out an exasperated sigh. “If that’s the mom pep talk speech, it needs some work.”

Her mother’s expression softened. She reached across the table and patted Debbie’s hand. “I’m sorry, honey. I just don’t want to see you make a mistake.”

“Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me how we learn from our mistakes? Think about what a learning opportunity this is going to be.”

Her mother smiled. She had that knowing look that annoyed Debbie to no end. The one that said she knew the real reason Debbie was doing something.

“This is about Tony, isn’t it?”

“No,” Debbie said, perhaps a little too quickly. “It’s about roots, and moving, and teaching, and the beach. And did I mention the beach?”

“You did mention the beach. And it has Tony.”

“Mom.”

Debbie said it with the exasperation of someone who’d had fifteen years of these mother-daughter talks that danced around the subject of Tony Harding.

“Okay, honey.” Her mom took a breath. “It’s your decision. But I hope you’ll think about it.”

Debbie breathed with relief. “That’s it? No, ‘I can’t believe I carried you for nine months and now you’re throwing your life away’ guilt trip?”

Her mom smiled and pulled Debbie into a hug. “No guilt trip this time. Just promise me you’ll think about it. Okay?”

Debbie nodded. “I promise.”

They both knew it was a lie.