The place opened in time for the summer season, despite several anonymous threatening calls to the County Planning Department.
The new sign said CALAMARI CURLS, all in pink and turquoise neon, with a whimsical octopus writhing around the letters. The neon martini glass was repiped a dazzling scarlet, with its olive once again winking green.
Inside was all pink and turquoise too: the tuck-and-roll banquettes, the napkins, the linoleum tiles. The staff, all bright young people working their way through Cal State San Emidio, wore pink and turquoise Hawaiian shirts.
Calamari Curls was fresh, jazzy and fun.
Mr. Bright rolled himself across the street, well after closing hours, to peer at the menus posted by the front door. He returned cackling with laughter.
“They got a wine list!” he told Jesus, the dishwasher. “And you should see their prices! Boy, have they ever made a mistake opening here! Who the hell in Nunas Beach is going to pay that kind of money for a basket of fish and chips?”
Everyone, apparently.
The locals began to go there; true, they paid a little more, but the food was so much better! Everything was so bright and hopeful at Calamari Curls! And the polished bar was an altar to all the mysteries of the perfect cocktail. Worse still, the great radiant sign could be seen from the highway, and passers-by who would never before have even considered stopping to fix a flat tire in Nunas Beach, now streamed in like moths to a porch light.
Calamari Curls had a glowing jukebox. Calamari Curls had karaoke on Saturday nights, and a clown who made balloon animals. Calamari Curls had a special tray with artfully made wax replicas of the mouth-watering desserts on their menu.
And the ghostly little businesses along Alder Street sanded the rust off their signs, spruced up a bit and got some of the overflow customers. After dining at Calamari Curls, visitors began to stop into Nunas Book and News to buy magazines and cigarettes. Visitors peered into the dark window of Edna’s Collectibles, at dusty furniture, carnival glass and farm implements undisturbed in twenty years. Visitors poked around for bargains at the USO Thrift Shop. Visitors priced arrowheads and fossils at Jack’s Rocks.
But Mr. Bright sat behind his counter and served chowder to an ever-dwindling clientele.
The last straw was the Calamari Curls Award Winning Chowder.
Ashen-faced, Mr. Bright rolled himself across the street in broad daylight to see if it was really true. He faced down the signboard, with its playful lettering in pink-and-turquoise marker. Yes; Award-Winning Chowder, containing not only fresh-killed clams but conch and shrimp too.
And in bread bowls. Fresh-baked on the premises.
And for a lower price than at the Chowder Palace.
Mr. Bright rolled himself home, into the Chowder Palace, all the way back to his cubicle. Julio caught a glimpse of the look on Bright’s face as he passed, and hung up his apron and just walked out, never to return. Mr. Bright closed the place early. Mr. Bright took another two aspirin with bourbon.
He put the bourbon bottle back in its drawer, and then changed his mind and took it with him to the front window. There he sat through the waning hours, as the stars emerged and the green neon olive across the street shone among them, and the music and laughter echoed across the street pitilessly.
On the following morning, Mr. Bright did not even bother to open the Chowder Palace. He rolled himself down to the pier instead, and looked for Betty Step-in-Time.
Betty Step-in-Time had a pink bicycle with a basket, and could be found on the pier most mornings, doing a dance routine with the bicycle. Betty wore a pink middy top, a little white sailor cap, tap shorts and white tap shoes. Betty’s mouth was made up in a red cupid’s bow. Betty looked like the depraved older sister of the boy on the Cracker Jack box.
At the conclusion of the dance routine, which involved marching in place, balletic pirouettes and a mimed sea battle, Betty handed out business cards to anyone who had stayed to watch. Printed on the cards was:
Mr. Bright had said a number of uncomplimentary things about Betty Step-in-Time over the years, and had even sent an empty bottle flying toward his curly head on one or two occasions. Now, though, he rolled up and waited in silence as Betty trained an imaginary spyglass on a passing squid trawler.
Betty appeared to recognize someone he knew on board. He waved excitedly and blew kisses. Then he began to dance a dainty sailor’s hornpipe.
“Ahem,” said Mr. Bright.
Betty mimed climbing hand over hand through imaginary rigging, pretended to balance on a spar, and looked down at Mr. Bright.
“Look,” said Mr. Bright, “I know I never seen eye to eye with you—”
Betty went into convulsions of silent laughter, holding his sides.
“Yeah, okay, but I figure you and I got something in common,” said Mr. Bright. “Which would be, we like this town just the way it is. It’s a good place for anybody down on his luck. Am I right?
“But that place,” and Mr. Bright waved an arm at Calamari Curls, “that’s the beginning of the end. All that pink and blue stuff—Jesus, where do they think they are, Florida?—that’s, whatchacallit, gentrification. More people start coming here, building places like that, and pretty soon people like you and me will be squeezed out. I bet you don’t pay hardly any rent for that little shack over on the slough, huh? But once those big spenders start coming in, rents’ll go through the roof. You mark my words!”
He looked up into Betty’s face for some sign of comprehension, but the bright, blank doll-eyes remained fixed on him, nor did the painted smile waver. Mr. Bright cleared his throat.
“Well, I heard some stories about you being a shaman and all. I was hoping there was something you could do about it.”
Betty leaped astride his pink bicycle. He thrust his left hand down before Mr. Bright’s face, making a circular motion with the tip of his left thumb over the tips of his first and second fingers.
“You want to get paid?” said Mr. Bright, outraged. “Ain’t I just explained how you got a stake in this too?”
Betty began to pedal, riding around and around Mr. Bright in a tight circle, waving bye-bye. On the third circuit he veered away, pulling out a piece of pink Kleenex and waving it as he went.
“All right, God damn it!” shouted Mr. Bright. “Let’s do a deal.”
Betty circled back, stopped and looked at him expectantly. Glum and grudging, Mr. Bright dug into an inner coat pocket and pulled out a roll of greasy twenties. He began to count them off, slowly and then more slowly, as Betty looked on. When he stopped, Betty mimed laughing again, throwing his head back, pointing in disbelief. Mr. Bright gritted his teeth and peeled away more twenties, until there was quite a pile of rancid cabbage in his lap. He threw the last bill down in disgust.
“That’s every damn cent I got with me,” he said. “You better be worth it.”
Betty swept up the money and went through a routine of counting it himself, licking his thumb between each bill and sweeping his hands out in wide elaborate gestures. Apparently satisfied, he drew a tiny, pink vinyl purse from his bicycle’s basket and tucked away the money. Leaning down, he winked broadly at Mr. Bright.
Then he pushed his little sailor cap forward on his brow and pedaled off into the fog.
Three days later, Mr. Bright was presiding over a poker game at the front table with Charlie, Leon and Elmore Souza, who had lost both hands in an accident at the fish cannery but was a master at manipulating cards in his prostheses, to such an extent that he won frequently because his opponents couldn’t stop staring. Since they were only playing for starlight mints, though, nobody minded much.