Cruel Summer (10 page)

The only upside to this pain in the ass was that it happened
after
Dante’s last swim lesson for the day. Sasha Edkins, the woman who owned and operated SafeSplash, had a zero-tolerance policy on bullshit. And her definition of the concept was broad, encompassing sickness, car trouble, family emergencies…basically everything but an employee’s own death.

Dante glanced down at his blinging new watch and instantly felt like a tool. Here he was, wearing something on his wrist worth way more than the car he drove. He was freaking stranded. But the correct time was three minutes until two. Congratulations, ghetto fabulous dickhead.

Not expecting much, he rang Max as more of a test than anything else. Chances are the party boy would just laugh his ass off and then hang up.

One ring…two rings…

“Put down your hedge clippers, yard ape. We’re going to the Shore Club,” Max said right away. Who needed boring hellos in the age of caller ID?

Dante couldn’t believe it. This guy had just called him a “yard ape”! It was one of the most offensive things anyone had ever said to him. Yet he found himself laughing anyway. “Man, one day you’re going to say the wrong shit to the right person, and I hope I’m there to see you get your ass kicked.”

Max cackled. “You know I don’t mean anything by that shit, right? I’m just screwing with you.”

“Yeah, I get that, man,” Dante said.

“So you’re not going to call the NAACP on my ass?”

“No, man, listen, I need a favor. My car just died, and I’m stuck on the causeway.”

“That’s an easy fix. Steal another one.”

“Ha ha,” Dante said, his irritation level rising, not toward Max necessarily but toward the whole freaking mess.

“Where are you?”

Dante glanced around, then called out an approximate location.

“Okay, I’m on my way,” Max said. “But don’t be standing on the side of the road with your shirt off. People might think I’m picking up a hustler.”

“Stop being paranoid. Everybody already knows that you hire rent boys to come straight to your crib,” Dante shot back. “Drive fast, homo. It’s hot as shit out here.”

He hung up and waited. It was hard work—the heat, the steam, the sun, the traffic. Fifteen minutes crawled by like an hour.

And then Max roared onto the shoulder in his Porsche, blasting North Pole A/C, jamming the Pussycat Dolls and Busta Rhymes, looking Rolex rich. He zipped down the passenger window and smiled like the smug little bastard he was. “Need a ride, sweetheart?”

Dante leaned down to meet him at eye level, grinning. “Go to hell.”

“Get in. Girls in bikinis are waiting for us at the Shore Club. But first we have to swing by and pick up Pippa.”

Dante looked over at his dead Honda. “What about my car, man? I need a ride to—”

“I’ll help you with that later,” Max cut in. “Nobody’s going to mess with that piece of shit. It’s fine where it is for now.” One beat. “You might want to grab your fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, though. Just in case.”

Dante hesitated, his mind running through the worst-case scenarios. What if his car got impounded? What if—

“Let’s go!” Max yelled, revving the engine to punctuate his impatience.

Screw it. For the second time in the last hour, Dante went against his better instincts. He slipped into the front seat, instantly relishing the blast of cold air from the vent. “Damn, that feels good.”

Max took off like a speed demon, singing along, “Don’tcha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?”

Dante shook his head and leaned back, still trying to cool down.

Max snatched his Sidekick II from a slot in the dash and punched in a number. “Omar, it’s Max. Check it out, a friend’s car stalled on the causeway. Have it towed to the house and see what you can do with it…about a mile north of Bridge Road…uh, I don’t know what make or model. It’s a piece of shit…”

“Ninety-nine Honda Civic!” Dante hollered out.

“Did you get that? Okay. Thanks, Omar. You’re awesome.” Then Max signed off and muttered, “Worthless jizz monkey.”

Dante laughed.

“He’s supposed to take care of all our cars,” Max started. “You know, keep them washed, waxed, gassed up, handle all the routine maintenance. Well, it—”

“Hold up,” Dante interrupted. “Let me get this straight. You don’t even put
gas
in your own car?”

Max answered with a diffident shrug. “That’s what Omar’s around for, man. Listen to what I’m trying to tell you. The dude’s a slack ass who spends half the day jerking off to Internet porn. Look at the interior of this car. He didn’t even wipe it down with Armor All last time.”

Dante looked at him in disbelief. “You are one spoiled little pussy.”

“We’re just trying to give this loser a job and keep him off the streets,” Max argued. “If it wasn’t for my family, he’d probably be standing outside a school yard with a hard-on.”

“What are you talking about?” Dante asked.

“The dude’s a registered sex offender. I think they wrote Megan’s Law just for him.”

“For real?”

“No, I’m just talking shit,” Max admitted. “But he could be a pedophile. You never know about people.” He punched the gas and left a BMW in his Porsche dust.

Suddenly, with no signal warning, a Cadillac Escalade land yacht switched lanes.

Dante experienced a quick life flash. He gripped the door handle, prayed that Max could maneuver as fast as he talked, and cursed himself for not wearing his seat belt.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh,” Max screamed. He seemed to do the defensive driving math in a nanosecond. Breaking hard would get them rammed by the Lexus following too close, so he made a sharp turn onto the shoulder at seventy miles per hour, just missing a dangerous sideswipe into the railing. Then he gave the machine all the juice it could handle, rocketing past the Cadillac by millimeters, at which point he jerked back onto the road, simultaneously cutting off the SUV and flipping his middle finger to the man at the wheel.
“Asshole!”

Dante watched the action behind them unfold in his mirror, bracing himself for the demolition sound track of colliding metal. Brakes were slammed. Horns were honked. It came
thisclose
to a multicar pileup. But in the end, what developed was nothing more than a bunch of pissed-off drivers on a hot Miami afternoon, collectively hating the guts of whoever operated the Porsche with the
BABY DON
vanity plate.

Max unclenched his knuckles from the steering wheel and laughed a nasty laugh, mocking the fact that they’d just been as close to needing a helicopter ambulance as God to grace.

Finally, Dante allowed himself to breathe. “You’re crazy, man.” But even as the words tripped out of his mouth, he didn’t know what the point of them was. Sharp criticism? Simple observation? Total awe? Or maybe a combination of all three.

Max twisted up the stereo volume and bobbed his head to Kanye West’s “Gold Digger,” drumming a white-boy rhythm on the wheel. “So what’d you do today?” he asked.

“Some of us have to
work,
” Dante replied. “I had a swim lesson at seven o’clock this morning.”

“How’d it go? Can you float on your back yet?”

Dante laughed.

“I got a blow job today,” Max announced.

“Good for you,” Dante said. He paused a beat. “I hope the guy knew what he was doing.” And then he lost it, cracking himself up.

Max laughed, too. He raised his right index finger. “Okay, that was pretty good. Seriously, though, I’ve got this awesome scam going. I post ads for actresses on Craig’s List and pretend I’m a production assistant casting for my dad’s next movie.”

Dante looked at him to put the guy talk in sharper focus. “You’re screwing with me, right?”

“No,” Max said. He was half smiling. But he was all the way insisting. “The girls show up, I have them run a few lines from an old script that’s been passed on, and they always end up doing something slutty to help me remember them. And you know, there are some
very
talented aspiring actresses out there. I book a room at the Raleigh and do this a few times a week.”

Dante shook his head, wondering what it must be like to exclusively live a life of fun, frat games, and fornication. “So, in other words, you’re exploiting the dreams of naïve and desperate young girls.”

Max considered the question. “Yes. And it’s very important work.”

Dante leaned back and laughed.

Max glanced over, and his gaze honed in on Dante’s watch. “Whoa! Hold on a minute. Check out bling baby! What’s up? Did you mug Bow Wow last night?”

Dante’s heart beat a little faster with the adrenaline of embarrassment. “I’m earning it.”

“You must also be teaching the lonely housewives how to swim after they put the kids down for a nap.”

“It’s not like that,” Dante said. “Swimming’s a big deal to parents. Why turn down a bonus?”

“Yeah, why do that?” Max replied, doing something funny with his eyebrows as he pulled off onto a side street, peeling around corners until he jerked to a stop in front of a sad-looking cottage. He turned to Dante. “Okay, ice queen, you’ll have to fold yourself into a pretzel back there. Pippa’s got great ta-tas, and I want them up front with me.”

Dante jumped out to oblige, taking in the dilapidated Shangri-la with the Spanish tile roof that should’ve been replaced years ago. It made him feel less alone to know that he wasn’t the only one in the group who couldn’t burn cash like bonfire wood.

“Holy shit,” Max sputtered.

A second later, Dante was thinking the same thing. Only he had the coolness to be silent about it.

Pippa’s strut toward the car was the direct cause of paralyzed limbs, open-mouthed drool, and redirected blood flow. In a black diamante-studded Lycra bikini and pink sarong with beaded fringe, the girl was undressed just enough to make male lifeguards ignore drowning children. Her breasts pouted ambitiously against the thin material of her top, presenting the please-God-please possibility that there might be a luscious cargo spill.

“Just kill me now,” Max groaned.

Dante waved hello and began negotiating his long body into the small space behind the front seats.

“Dante, no!” Pippa protested. “You’re too big for the back.” She giggled. “You’ll crawl out with scoliosis. I’ll squeeze in.”

“Oh, he doesn’t mind,” Max said, shoving Dante into the tight spot with a firm hand. “If Anne Frank stayed in the attic that long, he can handle the ride to the Shore.”

Pippa laughed and bounced inside to claim her seat, filling the tiny cabin with her delicious tropical scent, a heady mix of passion fruit, coconut, musk, and orange flower.

“You smell fantastic,” Max said. “It makes me want to lick your—”

“It’s Miami Glow by J. Lo,” Pippa cut in, halting the obscene not a moment too soon. “And
you
won’t be licking anything.” One beat. “Except maybe your own wounds.”

Dante laughed.

Max mouthed silent curses at him through the rearview mirror. “The stray in the back should feel
grateful
that I picked him up on the side of the road.”

Pippa twisted around, a question in her eyes.

“My car broke down,” Dante explained.

“Oh, no!” Pippa responded dramatically. “That sounds like Stress Central.” She twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “I wish I
had
a car to break down. My mum says I should think about getting a job soon. I don’t know what I’d do, though. I can’t jump into a dodgy restaurant job. That’d be bloody awful. And I don’t want to rot behind a counter ringing up things all day.”

“I could get you an audition for my father’s next movie,” Max offered.

Pippa perked up. “Do you mean that?”

Dante laughed, slapping Max on the back of the head. “Don’t listen to him. There’s no part in his dad’s movie.”

Max smiled and checked his watch. “Okay, ladies, this should be an interesting lab test.”

“What’s that?” Pippa wondered.

“Hitting the Shore Club pool at three o’clock. You’re usually shit out of luck on claiming a chair by ten. If Vanity can pull this off, then I’ll ask for her autograph.”

Dante’s mind stopped. Until now, he had no idea that Vanity St. John was part of the day’s equation.

“She’s been so frosty to me ever since I got here,” Pippa complained. “What did she say when you told her I was coming along?”

“Nothing,” Max assured her. “She was cool with it.”

“I just don’t get it,” Pippa went on. “I’ve tried so hard to be nice to her, but she still acts like a total bitch.”

“Vanity’s cool,” Max insisted. “Shit, I’ve known her since the first grade. It just takes her a minute to warm up. That’s all.”

Pippa shrugged. For her, it seemed enough of an answer.

But Dante needed more to shake his weird feeling. Part of him wanted to hop out and catch a bus back home. The other part couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.