Page 2 of Without a Clue

“I definitely think you’ve got me there,” I cry back as the waves crash over my backside and send my green linen skirt twisting and choking around my legs like I’m a seaweed-laden mermaid. “Or who knows?” I toss out. “Maybe I’ve been insane all along. Maybe I’ve been insane all these years giving myself over to absolute delusions of who I was and who he was and what in life I was really bargaining for and maybe now, right now, I’m finally waking up. Who really, I wonder, has the authority to determine what makes us sane?”

My philosophical question clearly sails above the man’s head.

After another cacophony of insults and a dozen commands, all of which I ignore, the man with the robust belly overtaking his pineapple swim trunks finally has had enough.

He drops his beer can in the sand.

The beach chair quakes as he pulls himself to standing.

I am fairly certain I’ve never seen a person more directly angry with me in my life.

I waver for a moment, then hold the boom box higher.

To be clear, I did not wake up today with intentions to take on this one drunk man at two o’clock in the afternoon as representative of all that’s wrong with society. I truly didn’t. I’m not one of those people who ambles around New York with a water bottle sticker declaring She Woke Up and Chose Violence.

My stickers revolve solely around literary puns, the saving of trees, and cats wearing funny hats.

But he was here.

Dropping his slew of items directly behind me with a whole stretch of Miami beach around us, just to make painfully loud and alluding comments about “the view.”

How beautifully green “the view” (a.k.a. my backside) was.

How perfectly round “the view” (a.k.a. my backside) was.

And I was fine at that point. I was still a reputable woman in society, capable of ignoring his idiocy.

I was still Penelope Mae Dupont, summa cum laude graduate of NYU in English literature, lover of old books that crack when you open the spine and dogs that free-leash in Central Park at 8 a.m.

But then he cracked open what I guarantee was not the first beer of the day.

Made yet another leering remark.

And did the abominable. He turned on music.

Top-volume, angry, screeching, repulsive music that drowned out the beautiful keow of the seagulls, the laughter of children, the whistle of waves. A cacophony of sounds obliterating all the things I traveled thousands of miles through emotional anguish and physical distress just to experience.

He ruined . . . my moment.

“It’s my music!” he demands.

“It’s our collective experience you are debasing!” I counter, pulling away one of the long locks of my wildly disobedient hair that was trying to blind me and make me eat it for lunch. I gesture at the growing crowd.

To be utterly honest, they weren’t exactly here before I made a scene.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see The Seven (minus Nash at the moment) in their little huddle, watching me. Suitcases are at their feet. Massive sun hats and sunglasses cover their faces. Sunblock is smeared on Gordon’s nose like a vanilla Popsicle, the cruise ship we are meant to be boarding in a matter of minutes flapping its flags far in the distance.

Jackie nods approvingly at my word choice.

Ricky appears to be making a note of the word in his phone.

Crystal, well . . . her gaze alternates between me, my opponent, and her phone as she taps madly (attempting to write my current situation into a novel, no doubt).

“Put it away,” I say fiercely, pointing at her.

She gives me a caught-red-handed look and pockets her phone.

Pineapple Trunks takes a thunderous step my way.