by Tom Shepherd
Anyway, soon I was thinking about Tanella and me and the storms of life. She was so really, really special. I was so—you know—really, really normal? No wonder Prince Ahmad was hot for her.
“What have I got going for myself?” I said aloud. “Well, all right—I’m a dazzling Norwegian blonde, incredibly good looking. Except I’ve been putting on weight lately. That’s it. I’m starting a crash diet, immediately!”
A finger tapped my shoulder. I jumped, yanking off my ear buds.
“Hi, Miss Dazzling. Listening to Taylor Swift again?”
It was Tanella, dressed in a blue-and-white bathing suit. She’s more busty than I am—for now—but I’m a lot sexier. Tanella is, you know, exotic. I’m erratic.
I scowled at her. “Girl, you scared me enough to pee my pants.”
“Something’s going on.” Tanella offered a red can that was sweating cold water; drops spattered on the dry wood floor of the little pavilion. “Dr. Pepper?”
I shook my head. “I’m fasting.”
She held up a Diet Coke with the other hand.
“Bless you!” I snapped the fizz seal. “So, what’s going on?”
“Another convoy of limousines just pulled under the carriage roof.”
“More Arabs?”
“Israelis.”
“Any good looking guys?” I glanced at her face. She wasn’t smiling. I sat on the bench, tucking knees under my chin. “How do you know they’re Israelis? Can you speak Jewish, too?”
“I asked.”
“And...?” I rolled my hand in air loops. Tanella will either stuff you with trivia or starve you with hints. The girl doesn’t know where the middle is.
“They said they’re here on vacation!”
I gasped, pretending amazement. “Isn’t that odd?”
She frowned. “Sally Ann—”
“Now, who would come to a five star, beachfront hotel just for a vacation?”
“Israel faces the Mediterranean. Utaybah is a Persian Gulf emirate, with a thousand miles of perfect beaches and summer sunshine twelve months of the year. Do they really need a hiatus on a Georgia barrier island?”
“Do they need a hi-what?”
“Time away, break time,” she explained. “Ahmad’s group registers immediately before an Israeli delegation arrives. Another coincidence?”
“Real spy story. James Bond will parachute in here any minute.” I picked up my towel. “Wanna play in the surf?”
Tanella paced the wood deck of the pavilion, occasionally glancing at the sea. “Sounds like my father and your uncle are involved.”
I sat down. “That’s ridiculous. How could they be involved?”
She shook her head and closed her eyes. Was she praying?
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “They speak Arabic, and Uncle Bob knows something about oil and money and stuff.”
Tanella walked to the bench and glanced over at the bushes. “Dr. Thornburg is the foremost authority on—look at that mess!” Her finger jabbed at the shrubbery below the gazebo. “Pepper vine, red bay, wax myrtle—Pizza Barn.”
I peeked over the rail. Cardboard boxes, fast food containers and beer cans speckled the bushes. Tanella was turning red, a real trick for a girl so brown. Only time I ever saw her lose it was when people trashed the Earth. Before I knew it, she bounced down the steps and started snatching sun-yellowed facial tissues from the dwarf buckthorn trees.
“Oh, Jesus! Don’t do this, girl.”
She never looked up. “Jesus would never litter. Don’t take His Name in vain.”
“How long you gonna do this?”
“Until it's clean.”
I plopped my can of Diet Coke on the bench, slipped the towel around my neck, and dropped over the side, lighting on a patch of thorns. “Ouch!”
“Get the big stuff.” She disappeared under the red bays.
“What’s that scent?” I plucked a doggie bag from a puppy-sized shrub peppered with gray-white berries. “Smells like a cough drop.”
I couldn't see Tanella, but her crisp voice reached me. “Wax myrtle.”
“Okay, what’s this stuff with black berries and shiny leaves? Looks pretty—ouch! Does every-frigging-thing on this island have thorns?”
“Catbrier.”
“My finger’s bleeding. I’d like to sic a dogwood on it!” I sucked the wound and cussed softly.
“Be careful.”
“Now she tells me.”
“And watch your language.”
“Yes, Mother.”
I crawled under a Hercules Club, which grew to the size of a small tree, to collect still another empty pizza box. Leftovers from beachside delivery. “Why don’t people clean up after themselves?”
Footsteps on the boardwalk silenced my mutterings. Was it Eric? I didn’t want anybody to see me doing something as stupid as this. Especially not my cousin. A man and woman shuffled up the steps into the gazebo.
“O’Malley, I don’t care what it costs—I want you to do it!” she was saying.
“It’s risky, Olivia. They’re cold-blooded killers.”
Dropping the pizza box, I dove beneath a thicket of wax myrtle. Tanella crawled over to me, and when I held a finger to my lips she nodded. She’d heard it, too.
“Olivia—that must be Olivia Bennett,” she whispered. “Wife of the owner of the Island Club, Hector Bennett.”
“Who’s O’Malley?”
“Shhh! Listen.”
A puff of smoke drifted away from the pavilion. “Smoke?”
“No, thanks,” Olivia Bennett said. “I quit last year.”
“Your guess was right,” O’Malley said. “Major kingpin is importing through Barrier Island. My sources don't know who.”
“How much are they bringing in?”
“Difficult to say. If this island’s a main drug port for Georgia and North Florida, probably a couple hundred kilos a night.” Tanella’s mouth opened but no sound escaped. I wanted to ask what that meant, but I was too scared to make any noise.
“Can I go to the police?” Mrs. Bennett said.
“No way. They own too many cops. You’d be inviting a bomb or a bullet.”
“What if I hold a press conference?”
“Antonucci and Beaumont will sue you up the kazoo. Hector’s foundation isn’t the only business on this island, sweetheart.”
“Wouldn’t the publicity drive the smugglers away?”
“Sure, temporarily,” O’Malley said. “Soon as the media, FBI and DEA left, the bad guys would be back.”
“Why?”
“Because Barrier Island is a sweet place to bring in dope. Look, a single causeway, broken in the middle by a drawbridge, connects this island to the Georgia mainland. If necessary, a squad armed with automatic weapons could raise the bridge and hold off the whole U.S. Army until their drugs are evacuated by air or sea, or just destroyed. The island has long, level beaches for night drops and a dark lighthouse to watch out for approaching DEA aircraft. It’s a god-damned drug runners’ paradise.”
Five feet of sand and weeds separated the base of the gazebo from the wax myrtle bush sheltering us. I arched my back and bent from deep shade into the sunlight, stretching to see them. Tanella leaned out into the clearing beside me. She was holding onto a tree limb for balance, like a lifeline to safety in the shadows. All I got was a glimpse of O’Malley’s hands—cuffs of a white sports coat, smoldering cigarette. Rings. The hand without the cigarette wore two rings, but no wedding band. In fact, nothing on the ring finger.
“This pop is still cold,” Olivia Bennett said. “Someone just left it here. Why can’t people dispose of their trash?”
Another pair of hands, a woman’s, poured my Diet Coke over the side. A stream of brown foam fell toward us. Tanella jerked me back under the canopy of leaves.
“I think Antonucci is involved,” O’Malley said. “He haunts the beaches at night, and seems to have attracted a large number of college students to his resort.”
“Peter?
He’s a harmless old nature lover.”
“He’s blocking the Gateway Project by refusing to sell. He’s an anti-growth environmentalist, like Clancey Beaumont.”
“I know,” Mrs. Bennett said.
“You want me to prove Antonucci is the drug kingpin, get him out of the way for Hector’s imperial glory?”
“Of course not!” she said. “I want the truth.”
“Look, sweetheart, I came to Barrier Island for a vacation.”
“You don’t take vacations.
His voice softened. “I might help you. For old time’s sake.”
“Carsten, let’s not get started.”
“You were grateful enough when we got started in Cairo.”
“Cairo was a long time ago. Things are different now.”
“Yeah, I guess so. All right, Olivia. I’ll dig around a little more. Can we please go have a drink now, or will it interfere with our business relationship?”
“Too early. Let’s walk over and have coffee on the pier. Have you seen my new toy? It’s moored by the old wharf.”
“No, thank you.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I forgot.”
“Let’s go to J.P.’s. You can get coffee there.” Their voices faded and I heard footsteps on the wood planks.
“This is so cool!” I said. “We’ve stumbled onto a mystery. We gotta tell your dad.”
“Tell him what? Mrs. Bennett hired somebody named Carsten O’Malley to find out if drugs are being funneled through Barrier Island? That’s only a hypothesis.”
“I don’t care what they’re smuggling—hypo-what-evers. O’Malley and Mrs. Bennett said drugs.”
Tanella sat on the gazebo step. “They’re just guessing. They don’t know anything.”
“Well, it sounds true to me.”
“Dad will say, ‘What proof do you have, Tee? A good scholar always supports her theories with solid research.’”
“Does he really talk to you like that? You poor kid.”
“All we accomplish by telling my father is to give him more to worry about. He came here for something big, Sally Ann. I can see it in his eyes. I believe it involves the Arabs and Israelis.”
“And maybe drug smugglers?”
“No,” she said carefully. “I don’t think so.”
“Suppose the Arabs and Israelis are smuggling drugs into Georgia, to screw up our country before invading us?”
She sighed. “Want to have dinner with Ahmad and me?”
“Yes! I mean, no. Of course not. It’s your date.”
“He called to request the honor of your presence at dinner. The Riverview Room at eight-thirty.”
“He didn’t!” I screeched.
“He did. That’s why I came looking for you.”
“And you didn’t tell me until now? God, look at the time! I don’t have anything to wear! Wait—the Island Boutique has clothes.”
“It’s only quarter after three.”
“Tonight calls for at least a five-hour prep. I'm going to the ball with Prince Charming!” I frowned. “Well, actually, we both are.”
“Yes, but I’ll be very distant. I want him to like you.”
I shook my head, firmly. “Distant isn’t good enough, girl. You need to be totally wicked.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know how.”
I smiled. “No problem. We got five hours. I’ll teach you.”
Three
Before we glided into the candlelit Riverview Room, I purchased my weaponry and carefully briefed Tanella on how to be rude.
First, I raided the Island Boutique and spent all my vacation money outfitting myself like Scarlet O’Hara. I bought a simple white cotton summer dress, bare shoulders with spaghetti straps, and just sheer enough to show a shadow of pale legs. I topped off my Southern belle impersonation kit with a white straw hat. It had a floppy yellow brim and a coral ribbon tied in a bow at the back. Tanella smirked and said I looked like a poster for the Daughters of the Confederacy. My family stayed in Norway until 1902, but I thanked her anyway.
We returned to our room and dipped in the hot tub, then lay across the bed for hours, painting nails and drilling on the fine points of a bad attitude. She didn’t have any talent for it, so I demonstrated each step. It was awful. You had to be there. It’s seven fifty-five, and I am trying to braid her hair and educate this poor innocent, but she’s still not comprehending a word. For a genius, Tanella sure is stupid when it comes to normal teenage behavior.
“No, no, no! If he says, ‘Good evening,’ you gotta say, ‘So? Today was a total bore.’ If he goes, ‘Your dress is lovely,’ you go, ‘How do you know? You don’t wear no dresses!’ Well…he wears a robe. So maybe that won’t work.”
She turned to look at me, disrupting my braiding rhythm. “Insulting him with double negatives—isn’t that a little extreme?”
“Sit still!” I said. “And that’s exactly what we want. Extremes.”
“I want to talk about his country.”
“So? You can’t play Rachel Maddow and be snotty, too? Sit still!” She quit squirming while I finished braiding her thick, black hair. “Look, Tanella, you’re the Prince. I’m your typical teenager with an attitude.”
She closed her eyes. “This is going to be horrific. I have no talent at acrimony.”
“You aren’t marrying him!”
She sighed heavily. “Proceed.”
I closed my eyes to find the right mood. Let’s see...what did it feel like when Mr. Lambert gave me detention for snoring during his incredibly boring lecture on the Yazoo Land Frauds of 1797? Got it!
“Try this. ‘So, Prince Ahmad, how many slaves do you have in your country?’”
“They don’t have slavery.”
“We’re role-playing. You’re the Prince.”
She nodded. “We no longer keep slaves.”
“Well, don’t you treat your wives like slaves?”
She played along painfully. “I have no wives.”
“Just whores?”
“I can’t say that!”
“Uff-dah, Tanella.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s a good Scandinavian cussword.”
“Actually, it’s the Norwegian-American slang equivalent of the Yiddish word ‘Oy!’ It means That’s too bad.”
“Quit educating me! I’m the teacher today.” I grabbed my head with both hands. How could somebody so smart be so clueless? There had to be some way to get through to her. “Try this: ‘Aren’t you glad to be away from all those stinking camels and miserable sandstorms?’”
“That’s an insult. People of the desert have a lot of pride.”
“They also have stinking camels and miserable sandstorms.”
“This is impossible.”
“Good. You want to be impossible,” I said. “That’s your goal.”
“Uff-dah,” Tanella said with a frown. “I want to discuss politics. You want romance under the moonlight. I’m sorry, Sally Ann, if I’m not as stunning as you, emotionally or physically.”
“Forget stunning. Just try rude.”
“Maybe later in life.”
“Oh, I give up! You’re suffering from terminal niceness.”
I pulled a blue triangle from my travel case and clutched it against my chest. This evening called for full battle gear—including a generous splash of Chloe McKenzie. It took me three months of baby-sitting to afford that bottle, but if my delicious scent enchanted the Prince, all those messy diapers and Dr. Seuss stories would have been worth it. I dripped the golden fluid on both wrists. Scent blossomed around my face like an opening flower. Placing the bottle on the dresser and closing my eyes, I inhaled the sweet fragrance and dreamed of the Prince’s strong arms around me. Just once, the fairytale must come true. Then I could die happy.
* * * *
Half an hour later, Ahmad’s big goon, Abdu’l, bowed to Tanella and me at the doors to the Riverview Room and told us to follow. The aroma of peaches perfumed the ai
r as Abdu’l snapped his fingers and two servants opened the double doors. On both sides of the doorway a pyramid of fresh fruit welcomed us. I reached for a peach but Tanella smacked my hand.
“Hey—they look good!”
“He'll feed you. This is decoration,” she said.
The Emir-junior rented the whole room, a half-moon porch jutting from the main dining area and glassed in against summer heat by the Hochberg Institute’s interior decorators. Normally, twenty guests could dine comfortably in the Riverview Room. Tonight, one candlelit table. At least six servants shuttled between the table and the kitchen, chattering in a mixture of English and Arabic. I removed my white hat with the yellow brim and smiled fetchingly. Of course, he complimented Tanella first.
“Miss Blake, you look enchanting as the twilight,” Ahmad said. "Sally Ann, what is that exquisite fragrance?”
“Oh, nothing special.” But inside I was screaming, Yes, yes, yes! Thank you, Chloe.
“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble, Your Highness,” Tanella said while a pair of white robed waiters seated us.
“No trouble at all. I wanted to engage the whole restaurant, but with so many guests here for your Civil War Conference only this poor place was available.”
“Poor?” I said. Through wood frame windows fringed with palms I could see a mauve sky. In the dusky distance lights of the Georgia mainland flickered across the Barrier Island Channel like jewels floating above a misty bay.
Abdu’l waddled over and spoke softly into Ahmad’s ear, “Highness, another American begs audience.”
“Can’t it wait? I do not want business matters to disturb an evening so perfect.”
“He is a relative of the young lady who attacked you.”
“Uncle Bob?” I said. What did he want? Maybe he’d come to pull me away from Ahmad before I wrecked international relations. Didn’t he know I could care less about politics? All I wanted was me and the Prince, alone under the stars.