Scout’s Honor: Chapter 2

Two Weeks Earlier

“Edward, look at you. Go wash up. We’re leaving in two minutes,” said beautiful Jonnie Collins, stepping from the front door of the Riviera Inn, shaking her head. Eddie had delivered on his promise to change her new Cadillac’s tire in ten minutes flat. Grinning, he held the tire iron aloft—pumping it like a trophy—then dashed toward the lobby’s restrooms, gleeful in his triumph. 

Awaiting his return, Jonnie winced at her crumbling parking lot and the sparse desert landscaping. She ran the Riviera Inn—a weight-reducing spa on San Diego’s Coronado Island that she’d founded with her husband ten years earlier—but seldom ventured outside its buildings. Her two assistants handled the small resort’s day-to-day operations, while Jonnie comforted the heavyset women who struggled against its draconian diet plan. She tried her best to leaven her guests’ stays with fun, teaching the resort staff—her boys—the art of pretending the Inn itself was fun, their special clubhouse. She showed her more talented boys how to clown just so during the aquatics classes, the jazzercise, the announcements, and the sing-alongs after the so-called dinner. Eddie Kawadsky was her brightest star—the tall, lanky, nineteen-year-old she envisioned running the Inn one day, knowing he had a head for figures and a riptide of ambition. She could have driven herself to her appointment with this new psychiatrist in Newport Beach, but she had a better use of her time: she could tutor her pupil.

“Let me give you some advice, Edward. Never do it again.” Jonnie flicked out a fresh Kool as he eased the sapphire blue Cadillac onto northbound Highway 5.

“Do what?” Eddie glanced at her, taking in her blonde bouffant hairdo, lingering over her tanned arms and coltish legs. At forty-two, Jonnie looked like a mature fashion model. He swallowed dry, thinking her stunning. He had never admitted—even to himself—how smitten he was. 

“Tires. Don’t change tires or unclog sinks or toilets. You need a handyman, hire one. Do you think a millionaire knows a screwdriver from a flyswatter? No. He works with people, with ideas. Never work with your hands.” 

“OK.” Chortling, Eddie pressed his left thigh up against the blue steering wheel and let go with his hands. 

“What the hell are you doing?” she cried.

“You said not to work with my hands.” He laughed. Fresh from his triumph over the flat tire, thrilled by Jonnie’s undivided attention, he was happier than he’d been in weeks. 

“Grab that goddamn wheel. Don’t be a wiseass, young man.” 

Eddie drove north, along Southern California’s sprawling beach towns, occasionally nodding at Jonnie’s anecdote-larded lecture, leaning away from her cigarette smoke. He’d heard about her older brother—gifted with his hands, but flat broke—often enough that her epistle required little attention, especially because he knew she was wrong. Real men worked with their hands. Yet forgiving the enchanting Jonnie her mistakes was easy. 

“But don’t try to become a millionaire, either—they’re all crooked,” she persisted. “Every other one is a criminal.” 

“OK, got it. Work smart and get rich, but not too rich. The not-too-rich part should be a piece of cake,” he joked. “Is that the building past this signal?”

“Right in here.” She checked her makeup in the rear-view mirror for a third time and re-perfumed herself with Youth Dew. She waited a moment, then sighing theatrically, turned an inquiring gaze to Eddie.

“Oh, right, sorry.” He scrambled out of the car and opened her door with an exaggerated bow.

“What did I say about being a smart-ass?” With a nod toward the books in the backseat, she said, “You going to study all that?”

“Yes, it’s my calculus homework.”

“Books are fine, Edward, but they’ll only get you so far. To learn life, you have to live it. You need to live a little more, kiddo. Have some fun.”

Eddie watched her disappear inside the garden-style medical building, wondering why she had to visit a psychiatrist—she was totally normal, practically perfect—and what she could possibly talk about for a whole hour? He thought Jonnie beautiful, exciting, and sometimes outrageous. He knew she liked to shock people with her wild commentary, and could usually tell when she was serious and when she expected nothing but laughter in response, yet this morning’s lecture had hit home. She had to be wrong. But his father would be alive if he’d been in procurement instead of a fighter pilot. Would his grandfather be enjoying his old age if he hadn’t worn himself out fixing toilets? Eddie opened his book and tried to concentrate, but drifted away from the equations, pulled by her words. No, she was wrong. If no one ever checked the oil, the world would literally grind to a halt. At length, he abandoned the universe of small numbers, switched on the engine, popped the hood, and slid out the dipstick with a practiced hand. 

Her laugh spun him around. 

“If I wanted to be ignored, I could have talked to my own children.” Jonnie’s wig was slightly bent, her eyes happy, gleaming. The appointment had gone better than she’d hoped. 

“No, ma’am, I just wanted to—”

She smiled, shook her head, cigarette smoke trailing her, and walked to the passenger side. He hurried to her door and opened it, again with an awkward courtier’s flair. 

Jonnie’s thoughts danced from her marvelous session with the doctor to the young man behind the wheel, examining him with sly sidelong glances. If she squinted, he was almost handsome. She was struck by his eyes, the bright, comprehending eyes of a gifted child wanting to please. She wished she knew more about his background. She knew he’d found himself alone on the streets at sixteen, and fretted again over how that scarred him. She had to help him. “Guess how many of our guests have had nose jobs.”

“The good-looking ones?” he asked, chuckling. 

“Oy, all of them.” She laughed. The daughter of a pious Methodist minister, Jonnie had cheerfully stolen the slang, phrasings, and intonations of her largely Jewish clientele. “Anyway, do I know from great plastic surgeons or what? And your poor nose. Come on, don’t look at me like that. Whoever broke it should be in jail. Fixing it would make you so gorgeous.”

“No, I don’t want to talk about that again. I need to save money for college.” 

“College is where the bright kids go to have the fun the dumb ones had in high school. The bigshots—the millionaires—they never went to college. You learn how to run a business on the job, not from some book. Hell, you already know almost enough to run the Inn.”

“I don’t know about that,” Eddie said, swelling at the high praise, cocking his head to the side. But he did know how to handle the guests. 

“You do need a little fun… but not with any of the girls at the Inn.” She cackled. “The last thing I need is you schtupping someone’s daughter.” 

He reddened, concentrating on the wing mirror. The last thing he would ever admit to Jonnie was how badly he wanted to schtupp someone’s daughter. Deflecting her, he asked what she thought of a career as a pilot. 

“I’d rather be a bus driver. They go home at night.”

“What? But flying in the Navy? That’s a good idea, isn’t it? I have to go to Vietnam anyway. That’s not bus driving.” Eddie had been raised on air shows and pilot swagger. Standing at his father’s side, he saw—no, felt—the awed deference lavished on the Navy’s warriors. He knew second-hand the terrifying thrill of landing an F-4 on a night-blackened roiling carrier deck, the intoxicating smell of jet fuel. Nothing could touch being a Navy flyer. Nothing could touch being a hero. 

“It’s worse. It’s driving a hell-bound bus while people are trying to kill you. Edward, you don’t have to go to Vietnam. I can get you in the National Guard. Look what I wangled for Jerry—two years of caddying for generals in San Antonio.”

Eddie nodded without assent. “What percentage of our guests come from Beverly Hills?” 

“All of them,” Jonnie crowed. 

“Half?” He pressed.

“Probably more, why?”

“Because it’s a pain driving just to Newport and—what?—another hour to Beverly Hills?”

“So?”

“So, in the off-season, we should run a weekly shuttle to Beverly Hills, offering a free pickup and return as part of a holiday package. Maybe meet them at the Century Plaza. If we take the drive out of it, I bet we could fill an extra ten rooms.”

Jonnie laughed in delight. “Hell, we have the van—half my boys hide all afternoon anyway—it would cost us nothing but gas.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You’re so clever.”

He blushed and touched his cheek, her red lipstick coloring his fingertips. She leaned back, and their conversation faded as they drove south, allowing him to reflect. He trampled Jonnie’s seedling doubts and mulled his destiny as a Navy pilot. Money was the issue: to be an officer—to fly—he needed to finish college, and to attend full-time. He’d banked nearly $3,000 after eighteen months of sleeping in his van and cadging food (such as it was) from the Inn’s kitchen staff. He was inching closer; he’d work another year, take night classes, and then apply to the university.

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