Heat Wave by Judith Arnold

the song was old enough to
have been released as a vinyl single. No CD’s in the jukebox, no
digital files. Just good, old fashioned records, and heaven only
knew what records were in there. No one could figure out how to
open the machine. No one serviced it. Gus was able to access the
coin box, and once a month she emptied it out and donated whatever
cash was in it to a charity. Last year she’d donated a total of
nearly a thousand dollars to the afterschool programs Nick Fiore
ran on a shoestring at the Community Center. This year, she’d been
donating to a fund the town had created to help fishermen
contending with the new restrictions the federal government had
placed on them. Overfishing and environmental problems had caused a
sharp decline in the supply of cod, and a lot of operators were
struggling.
    Frank slid his quarter into the machine,
patted the buttons as if for good luck—pressing them did nothing to
determine which songs would play—and started back to the table he’d
been sharing with his Kreske’s colleagues. Almost at once, the room
filled with a familiar riff, the slide and thunk of the guitar
notes at the beginning of “Dirty Water.”
    The room erupted in cheers. Gus’s customers
loved “Dirty Water,” loved its propulsive beat, loved the abrasive
nasal voice of the singer, loved that the song was about Boston.
Within seconds, the dance floor was swarming. Down the bar from
her, Manny began jiving. He might be built like a linebacker, but
he moved like a ballet dancer, his burly shoulders and solid hips
rocking and swaying to the beat.
    “Ohhhh, Boston, you’re my home!” the
tavern’s entire population sang along.
    Through the throng of writhing dancers, Gus
spotted some newcomers entering the tavern—Caleb Solomon and a
young blond woman. Solomon was the lawyer who had indirectly helped
Ed catch a sleazeball who’d been importing drugs into town on his
private ocean-worthy sailboat.
    The woman with Solomon had been in the Faulk
Street Tavern earlier that week, too, talking to him. From their
body language tonight, Gus couldn’t tell what they were to each
other. They didn’t touch, didn’t even look at each other. The woman
appeared tense, her lips pressed into a ruler-straight line and her
gaze darting around the room. Solomon searched the room, too, but
his gaze was steady. He had a purpose in mind.
    They weren’t lovers; Gus could ascertain
that much. But they weren’t quite an attorney and his client,
either. Something beyond business connected them. Gus wasn’t sure
what it was.
    She realized pretty quickly that Solomon was
searching for an unoccupied table. Not an easy thing to find on a
Friday evening, when the place was packed with folks celebrating
the end of the work week. All the booths were taken, but eventually
he spotted a small table near the hall to the bathrooms. They sat,
and the woman eyed the dancers. The song had rounded a verse,
returning to the refrain, and the room filled again with a
boisterous, off-key chorus of, “Ohhhh, Boston, you’re my home!”
    Boston wasn’t that woman’s home, Gus guessed
as she punched the blender button and watched the icy pink froth of
two margaritas spin inside it. But she was pretty, all that
golden-blond hair and that cute little nose. If Solomon couldn’t
see that for himself, he was blind.
    He and the woman both leaned in, their
foreheads practically touching above the table. Gus supposed a
couple would have to move their heads close together if they wanted
to talk. The already high noise level in the tavern always rose
another fifty or so decibels when “Dirty Water” played.
    She pulled her attention from Solomon and
his companion to dip two margarita glasses in salt. She filled them
with the concoction from the blender just as Tricia loped over to
the bar, her tray empty. Gus balanced the margaritas on the tray,
as well as three icy bottles of Pete’s Wicked Ale she’d uncapped,
and three chilled glasses.