"It's too damned hot."
Abby drained the last of her iced coffee, signaled the Watering Hole waitress for a refill, then leaned back in her chair, fanning her face with her hand.
"Abby, you're not going to sing about the heat, are you?" said Margo, pausing to glare in my direction. "Kel, you've got to stop playing that Mel Torme number from Kiss Me, Kate on your radio show every single morning. It's making me stark raving CRAZY." She shouted the final word, then lowered her voice and continued, sounding like she was talking through clenched teeth. "We all KNOW it's hot. It's BEEN hot since early May."
"I hear you," I said, the voice of sweetness and reason. "You're right. We've had enough Cole Porter. Tomorrow I'll open with Irving Berlin. You'll love Ella Fitzgerald's 'Heat Wave'." I ducked when Margo throw her balled-up napkin at me.
Margo, Abby and I were finishing a Monday lunch at our permanently reserved table outside the Watering Hole, directly across from Margo's Island Palms Real Estate office and Abby's adjacent law office above the toy store. The round wooden table with its aging captain's chairs was our weekday clubhouse where Abby, Margo, Jerry and Pete had morning coffee while I was on the air at WBZE doing my radio show from 6 A.M. 'til noon. It was also the place we usually met for lunch and occasionally for late-afternoon drinks. Jerry once calculated we'd spent enough money at the Watering Hole to buy it five times over; but if we owned it, we'd probably go broke by being our own best customers.
"What's the latest weather forecast?" asked Abby.
"NOAA in San Juan says SOS and that doesn't mean save our ships," I replied with a grin. "Highs in the upper nineties, chance of rain less than twenty percent, more sand blowing off the Sahara into the upper atmosphere. Same old, same old. Don't ask about the heat index. It's right up there with a body fever that will fry your brain." I picked up Margo's napkin to dab at the sweat dripping off my gamin-cut hair into my ears.
From under the fading yellow canvas umbrella, we looked down the palm-tree lined cobblestone walkway toward the seaside boardwalk that skirted downtown Isabeya. Sand-laden haze, suspended in the air like a gauze scrim between sky and ocean, obscured any view of the out-islands forty miles north of St. Chris. Telltales drooped like overcooked linguini on the smattering of sailboats moored in the Isabeya harbor in a placid Caribbbean Sea that shimmered like peacock-hued Carnival glass.
"August. I hate August," said Margo. "It's the middle of hurricane season, there are no tourists and my real estate sales are down the tubes. I'm so bored I could sort Paul's socks for mental stimulation. Thank God Labor Day is only a week away. Maybe it'll finally start cooling off."