Coral Bay runs on firework smoke, salt, and money that changes hands after the boardwalk lights go out.
It is the Fourth of July, 1986, and the whole strip is out on the boards. Vivian St. Clair works the evening rooms where the deals close, and Monique Laurent runs her quiet errands between sets at the booth, which is how Monique came to know you. Darnell Brooks holds the rope at the door and lets the crowd decide. You are new here, off a bus with no address yet, and Monique is the one friend who answers when you call. Somebody on the pier keeps a ledger with her name in it.
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Club Mirage takes the night shift on Coral Bay, and it does not close until the sky gives in.
3 scenesEighties (80s)
Cel-Shaded Illustration
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Johnny's CarA two-seater built for the coast road and for the highway after midnight, when the lanes empty and the coast towns go dark. The front seats are tight and expensive, a cockpit you wear rather than sit in, and the trunk stays shut.Settle in and the door shuts with a sound like a vault. Leather, warm vinyl, a little spilled gasoline. Word gets around Coral Bay about who was seen in it, and word travels faster than the car does. Drive it once and somebody will know.
Cel-Shaded Illustration
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The Sterling Beach HouseIt is rented by the week to families who want salt air and a view, and by other people who want the same view and no neighbors. The Covered Deck holds the long table, the railing edge where drinks go to be spilled, and the threshold where you learn to stop talking.You arrive with sand in the car and groceries you did not pay for, and the boards take your weight with a creak that carries. The canopy holds the heat in; the wind comes through sideways, smelling of cut grass and low tide. Sit at the railing and watch the water. Someone else is watching the drive.
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Club MirageA concrete face, a neon marquee, glass block walls glowing like ice, an awning that swallows the line one body at a time. The bouncer works the rope slowly on purpose, and everyone in the queue pretends not to count the cars going by. Inside, the floor shakes under the raised stage, the dj rides the bass until your ribs keep time, and the curved booths behind the glass block partition hold the deals that never happened. Somebody at the door knows your face, or wants to. Come at eleven, leave at five, and watch who watches you back.
He stands at the rope every night and lets the crowd decide for itself whether it wants to test him.
2 outfitsEighties (80s)
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???Lean and cockpit-coiled, black hair slicked back, designer stubble kept sharp, he carries the paddock like he owns the tarmac under it. Olive skin, brown eyes, a gaze already down the road at the next corner. He wins, and he knows it shows.Between races the hands stay still. Nobody in Coral Bay has asked what a young driver on a winner's purse does with the rest of his evening, or why the Fourth of July finds him parked where the crowds thin out.
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???Arms folded, feet planted, the young bouncer on the Coral Bay door wears the flat top and thick mustache like a uniform and the build like a warning nobody has to read twice. Fourth of July, 1986, and the boardwalk is loud with it.He checks faces the way a man checks a lock, quick, then done. Regulars get a nod. Nobody gets a reason. What he does with the rest of his hours, and who he answers to when the rope comes down, is not written on him anywhere.
Silver hair slicked back, blue eyes doing the math, he buys what other people are afraid to hold.
2 outfitsEighties (80s)
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Monique LaurentShe works the decks along the strip, jheri curl set, head tilted into the mix, one hand up when the floor needs turning. The crowd does what the tilt tells it. Off the booth she runs errands for Vivian St. Clair, the kind that get done quietly and stay done, and Vivian trusts her past most.Darnell Brooks covered for her once when something on her end went wrong. She has not forgotten it, and she pays her people back. Nina Delgado trades news with her when they cross paths; Ricky Alvarez helps her out when it costs him nothing. Some nights she needs someone she can trust, and she calls the friend who answers.
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???Coral Bay, the Fourth of July, 1986, evening. She works the pier end of the strip where the light goes gold and the photographers know her by her walk. Long crimped hair, olive skin, a toned frame she stands inside like a rented room. She does not talk to the crowd. She does not have to.The bookings come from somewhere north, and the money arrives folded, and nobody has seen the man who sends them. Somebody down the pier is keeping a ledger with her name in it.
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???He came to Coral Bay for the fourth of July weekend and stayed past it, working the marina bars where the deals get loud after dark. Tan, clean-shaven, average build, an expensive watch he never checks. He listens more than he talks and asks the price of things nobody is selling. What he does with the answers is the part the bay has not worked out yet.
