Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 Read Free Page B

never catch me in a swimsuit smelling like cocoa butter and fruit, sticky with salt and sand, half catatonic and dehydrated from exposure. No. I had better things to do with my time, like feeding Huey. Or playing golf in that same sun. It was the lying around part that was a problem for me. Besides, who needed to see me in a bathing suit? I assure you, no one.
    But back to my current priority…feeding Huey.
    After his call, I picked up sandwiches from The Pita Rolz and drove over to his gallery in the Oak Lea Shops. He had been practically breathless on the phone, but private-audience breathless drama was pretty much Huey’s modus operandi.
    “Abigail! Darling! Drop everything and come! You must meet Rebecca!”
    “Who’s Rebecca?”
    “Our savior! You’ll see!”
    “Well, we could use a savior…”
    “And, would you be a dear and bring us some lunch? Just tuna for me, on rye, but only if it looks fresh, and turkey on white bread with mayonnaise for our darling girl, and of course get something for yourself. My treat.”
    Huey Valentine had not missed a meal in all his fifty-five years. I had to laugh. When Huey got excited, he thought about food. When he was depressed, he thought about food. What can I say except that Huey was well fed. I imagine the least insulting but most accurate term one might use to describe Huey’s appearance would be portly, but in a way portly suited his entire demeanor, which, when in the company of close friends, grew a shade larger than life itself.
    Huey was the consummate southern gentleman, an aristocratic Nathan Lane, never rude to anyone’s face but felt no remorse about a wicked comment to me about others, especially tourists.
    You could set your wristwatch by Huey. He was never late for an appointment or a dinner party. He wrote thank-you notes on his Dempsey & Carroll ecru hand-engraved stationery that was so stiff, folding it cracked it like an egg. And he always used an ornate fountain pen, signing with the flourish of John Hancock. Speaking of John Hancock, Huey Flagg Valentine could probably trace his ancestry back to Charlemagne’s grandparents. Evergreen, the plantation where he lived with his mother and houseman, had been in his family’s name since fifteen minutes after the land was claimed for King Charles II.
    I had never seen him dressed in anything but all white, summer and winter, and yes, he wore a hat. But not to affect a grand attitude so much as to save his balding head from the terrors of melanoma. Everything about him was stylish and elegant. He couldn’t help it. All those generations of social grace and good taste were imbedded in his DNA.
    I just adored him. Everyone did.
    It was on Huey’s arm that I had gladly attended every party, concert, dinner or gallery opening for the past three years, since my return to Pawleys Island.
    Life was so strange. I thought I was going to move into my family’s house and write my memoirs, but I was slightly embarrassed to admit that all I had done was exercise and slide in and out of social commitments with Huey. It wasn’t the worst thing, really. I mean, heaven forbid that I had a little fun. Besides, the thought of reliving my past through writing it all down? Well, let’s just say that I had yet to arrive at the moment where I felt comfortable enough to play with my inner gorillas. They could wait. In any case, I questioned the real value of an autobiography because it seemed like vanity in the extreme. It wasn’t like I abandoned a career as a backup singer for the Rolling Stones and that my writings would become the latest zeitgeist on sex, drugs and rock and roll. Frankly, my therapist recommended that I give writing a whirl, saying it might be good for an exercise in closure. Instead, I had closure with everything else—my frantic law practice, my marginal personal life and my nice expensive therapist. I simply closed up my house in Columbia and came back to Pawleys just to think about things.
    I imagine