Page 17 of The Beach Shack Artists 3
“It’s wasting tomatoes is what it is.”
“Art is never waste,” Bea said serenely.
Bernie laughed again from his corner. “Missed you, Bea. Place was getting too normal.”
“Normal?” Stella raised an eyebrow. “Yesterday someone asked if we could make a grilled cheese with the cheese on the outside.”
“Patricia Henderson doesn’t count,” Tyler said quickly. “She’s... special.”
“She’s persistent,” Stella said. “Like her pottery demonstrations.”
“Don’t remind me,” Tyler muttered.
The lunch rush was starting to pick up, locals filtering in for their usual orders. Margo watched her granddaughters work—Stella taking orders and decoding Bea’s artistic tickets, Bea charming customers while creating her sandwich art, Joey frantically trying to maintain some semblance of his systems.
“Order up,” Margo called, sliding two more perfect sandwiches onto plates.
Bea appeared with another ticket. This one featured what might have been a sunset. Or an explosion.
“Two classics, one with tomato,” Stella translated without being asked, already moving past with plates. “Table seven.”
“How did you—?” Joey stared at the ticket.
“The orange circle is tomato,” Stella explained over her shoulder. “You just have to think visually.”
“I don’t want to think visually! I want to think systematically!”
“Why not both?” Bea asked innocently, now folding another napkin crane.
Tyler snapped a photo just as Joey put his head in his hands, Bea held up her origami proudly, and Stella smoothly delivered another order. The afternoon light that Bea loved slanted through the windows, catching the small pile of paper cranes accumulating on the counter.
“Five cranes,” Bernie observed. “That’s some kind of record.”
“In Japan, if you fold a thousand, you get a wish,” Bea said.
“What would you wish for?” Stella asked, genuinely curious.
Bea paused for a moment, her hands still folding. “For the perfect light. The kind that shows everything just as it should be.”
“Isn’t that just regular light?” Joey asked.
“Oh, Joey,” Bea sighed. “There’s no such thing as regular light.”
Margo flipped another sandwich, hiding her smile. Some things never changed. Bea still saw the world through an artist’s eyes, Joey still clung to his systems like life rafts, and the Beach Shack still brought them all together.
“Next ticket,” she called out. “And Bea? Maybe try using actual words this time?”
“Words are just drawings of sounds,” Bea said philosophically.
Joey whimpered.
Stella patted his shoulder on her way past. “I’ll translate. We’ve got this.”
And they did, Margo realized. Different as they were, they were finding their way. The cousins working in tandem,Joey slowly accepting that chaos wasn’t fatal, Tyler capturing moments he’d never expected to see.
“One more hour,” Bernie announced to no one in particular. “Think we’ll make it?”
“We always do,” Margo said, and meant it. Fifty years of controlled chaos, and they always made it through.
