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We experiment with a full-size version, getting the ratios down. More tourists walk up, and while they order more typical drinks, they take an interest in our work.
“I’ll try one of those,” says a woman in a yellow sundress.
“Sure,” Tillie says. She mixes a fresh one and holds it up. “Does it look like the water here?”
“It sure does,” the woman says, and accepts the glass. “Is it something local?”
“We’re perfecting it right here,” I say.
“I love it.” She holds the drink up to examine the color before taking a sip.
Tillie and I lean on the counter, staring at the line of shot glasses as if they could produce a title.
“It should include ‘swanky,’ I think,” Tillie says. “That way people can get a regular swanky or an alcoholic swanky. Andnotwith rum!”
“Agreed.”
We concentrate, the breeze ruffling our hair. We stand there so long that I almost forget we’re in the hut, that I’m working. With Tillie there, her ringlets dancing, her white T-shirt hugging her body, I feel perfectly at peace.
With Tillie, I only want to be right here. Right now. Future be damned.
I wait for the fear to creep in. For the need to escape. For the abyss.
It doesn’t come.
“What was the name of that place we went to swim?” Tillie asks.
“With the stingrays?”
Her eyebrows lift. “No, you know, when I got burned.”
Oh. “Burr Island.”
“Hmm. The Swanky Burr. Oh no. Not that.”
I laugh, but I like the direction this is going. A drink to commemorate our time together.
She smacks the counter so hard that the tourists all look up. “I have it.”
“By all means,” the hat lady says. “Tell us!”
“Swanky panky,” Tillie says, her eyes alight. “Like sex on the beach, only La Jarra style.”
I lift her by the waist. “I love it.”
She smiles down at me, and I lower her slowly, our bodies in full contact. When she’s low enough, I kiss her, and everyone claps.
“Swanky panky on the house!” I call, spinning in a circle with her in my arms. “You all were right here with a birth of a new cocktail!”
She holds on to me, her face nestled in my neck.
The tourists whoop at the prospect of a free drink.
A week from now, making a swanky panky might feel painful.
But the memory of everything that went into it—our time on Burr Island, Tillie’s first swanky with my friends last night, and this moment when we coined the name—those feelings will always be good.
Chapter 21
