Monday, September 3, 2012

LABOR DAY EVE...THE 'DEATH' OF A SUMMER

The sun is not as strong. Night comes a bit earlier, painting the sky with smoky streaks of violet and pink. Some vampires are witness to it. Some 'thick skinned' night-folk relish the witching hour. Not day. Not dark. And unrelated to them both. 

Baylah stands just outside the entrance to The Tropicana Hotel. That's where they park. Her mortal boyfriend likes it, because it's handy, first one (no, second) in from The Downbeach, a string of jewel-box residential towns running south from A.C.. That's where Margate is. That's where they live. 

She likes the casinos. Gambling provides a certain emotional frisson little known in the life-eater world. After all, how much uncertainty do near immortals truly experience? So she takes her seat, buys her chips, nods to the others and begins.

Some pokerinos avoid eye contact, but she revels in it. She's quite adept at the soulless stare...an cold hard appraisal of scared, desperate people. They pretend it doesn't hurt, but she knows that it does. 

And she wins. She always wins. But sometimes after, she'll encounter a loser in the bar. They talk. She smiles and a few five hundred dollar chips find their way into needy pockets. You see, it's not the money. It's the 'win.' 

A couple of the casino hosts know what she is. They don't care. What, are they any better? At least she does 'give backs.' They never do. So you tell me... Who's the real vampire. 

And the air has a funny feel tonight. There's a sadness, like a slow steady slide toward oblivion. It's Sunday. Tomorrow's Labor Day. Families with kids disappear. Summer home lawns (at least those without automatic sprinklers) turn dry. Supermarkets go back to winter hours. Even the Starbucks close early. 

She sees the girl sitting on a bench. It's obvious she's lost. Very pretty, but single. Vampirinas can sense that. Maybe she's visiting her grandmother? The old lady said - Get dressed. Go out. Have some fun. Here, baby-doll, here's fifty dollars. Win something. Maybe she met up with a couple girls from 'round the pool. Grandmoms' buildings always have pools, though few of the resident widows ever use them. They got seperated, or she wasn't cool enough for them.....whatever. Only now they're squeezed in with some twenty-something, bulked-up, players, having table service at The Borgata, while she's sitting all be her lonesome on a damp, boardwalk bench. Fifty dollars goes fast. So does the eighty dollars she added to it. Some old guy, maybe fifty two or fifty three started talking to her in the gift shop. She wasn't buying any keepsakes, just maybe a magazine to read back at granny's condo. He asked her to go play blackjack with him. She demurred. 

Now she wished she'd brought a heavier sweater. Ten more minutes. She'd sit there ten more minutes...and then she's take the jitney (small buses running along 1st street parallel to the boardwalk) back 'home.' She watched all the people pass. Fat couples filled with too much chewed up buffet food. Sixtyfive year olds managing to look fifty...or maybe sixty four. Coarse slobs in flip-flops and nylon shorts loudly braying like drunk jackasses. Tight bodies on bikes swerving in and out of the crowd. Prim couples in cruise wear searching for a captain's table they ain't never gonna find.

Tomorrow they'd be gone. Old friends get together tonight toasting the summer that was and planning the one yet to come. But not everyone would make it. That's what's so sad about Labor Day. You gotta wait for the 'good part' to come 'round again. And some folks wander into a darker part of the forest before it does. This one's wife don't make it.That one loses everything. And I don't mean just money. 

Bittersweet.... That's the word. Labor Day is bittersweet. Ever see the movie PICNIC ? Well, then you know.

Baylah walks over to the girl. She says - Mind if I borrow a little bit a bench?..... Girl says - No, of course not......and slides over. They talk. Baylah gives really good small talk. Finds out she's an education major from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Was gonna do junior year in Rome, but then she couldn't. Some kind of money problem. Baylah didn't push too much. Has a brother finished third in the Para-Olympics. Not the big ones in London. This was a smaller version in Annapolis, Maryland...... Baylah said she had a boutique, some place in Philadelphia. Actually, it's her 'familiar's' place, but she's got privileges. Spent thirty five minutes with that nice, young girl. Would a slipped her a little vial of vampire blood, like maybe for her brother, only she didn't have any. Vampires rush when they're getting ready too sometimes. So she gave her seventy five hundred dollars in chips instead. Didn't make a big thing out of it. Vampires are extremely adept at misdirection. Later, when the young girl went back into the hotel to use the ladies' room, she saw the chips in her handbag and didn't even know how much they were worth. So she asked a motherly-looking woman stuffing kleenex into her purse. Lady knows right off, 'cause she just read one of the brochures from the casino. Girl don't wanna believe her. Keeps whispering - It's a miracle. It's a miracle........ Woman just looks at her. Girl says - Thank you and disappears. I do not know how she did it. But Baylah was watching from a distance, like a vampire MADAM X or something, so it could a been magic. I don't know. Hundred and twenty heartbeats later, girl turns 'em in for cash, buys granny a giant box a saltwater taffy, gets herself a big, fat fashion magazine and goes home in a cab.

Summer still died the next day, but three weeks later, that girl was in Rome......

And if you wanna know a little secret... Autumn at the shore is even better.....

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