We waded through a foot of water before coming to a clearing and the entrance to a bigger cave. She was the kind of person who’d go spelunking while I ate fruit salad in the cabana. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this location. At the mouth, Olivia said, “Well, this is it. This is where we are getting married.”
Gothic roots indeed. Mossy, dirty and inconvenient. Yet undeniably unforgettable.
She tapped her flashlight to make sure it was working and then switched it off. “So, exactly three days from now, give or take ten minutes, Colleen will pronounce us man and wife and then we kiss until this happens. Just give it a minute or two. This never happens. Only for one month every three years, does this happen every night. Thirty days every three years! That’s how infrequently what you are going to see happens. We experienced it when we were here the first time, three years ago. You’re going to flip your pretty lid. For sure. It’s a mating thing, I think.”
“What happens? I don’t see.” Mass organ harvesting, obviously.
Olivia made sure her feet were firmly planted and we stared at the cave. “You’re going to love this.” Her last words were drowned out by a rumbling from deep within the cave. As if she was summoning Satan himself, she held her hands up towards the cave and smiled.
In the blink of an eye, just as the sun finally set completely, a whirling dervish of thousands of bats in rotational motion raced towards us. I screamed and dropped to my hands and knees, and into the mucky water.
Growing up night fishing with my dad, I knew about bats and sonar. Even though they were blind (cue the cliché), they would not fly into you, their interior tracking system knowing. Despite the density of their fury, they were gone in moments, leaving me on all fours, sweaty and covered in sludge. The bottom of my dress was absolutely ruined.
“What the hell, Olivia?” was the best I could muster.
She sat down next to me, wiping my hair out of my eyes. Crying and desperate, looking ever so much like my gothic best friend from high school, I understood that this was her pièce de résistance.
She took my hand, “See? Now you understand.”
Chapter 15: The Scavenger Hunt
The evening’s activity was to be held at the Mono Loco resort, just a skip and a jump north of Bocas Town. Like many of the resorts, the cabins were over water; a dark wood walkway connected the six brightly painted cabins. The narrow boardwalks were certainly a recipe for at least one drunk reveler falling overboard. Water taxies were all queued up to take the guests on their scavenger hunt adventure.
Late, Olivia and I invaded Marianna’s room, rifling through the blood red closet trying to find things that would fit us. The dresses were too big for Olivia and too small for me, but we made do. Marianna went off to host the party, and I did my best to get Olivia looking tip-top. She frowned, looking at the two sizes too big reflection in the mirror. “I guess this will have to do.” She gave herself the finger.
She’d pull it off. She always did. I took her hand and looked firmly into her eyes, almost believing it when I said, “You will get your happy ending.”
She’d never looked so unsure in her life, asking, “Do you really think so?”
I kept hold of her hand as we walked barefoot into the party, but no amount of reassurance from me could protect her from the sight of a smug Emma with their father.
“What? What the hell?” It was like a slap in the face. The air felt ugly. Olivia ran up to her father, again teetering on tears.
At the outskirts, Ryan stood beer in hand, understandably not knowing what he was supposed to do or how to get out of there. He still looked like a kid, with his floppy blond hair; he didn’t look like he belonged at all. Though, if he was still anything like his high school self, it wouldn’t be long until he was the life of the party.
In 1991, the first weekend after our magical beginning in high school, I had a major fight with my parents. I had begged to stay at home for the weekend instead of heading north with them to see the Vermont foliage. In high school, three days could change everything. I spent most of the time in the back seat of the station wagon, crying and counting every second of the seventy-two hours that were keeping me from the boy of my dreams.
Ryan and I used to meet by the back entrance before school in the morning, but returning that Tuesday, he didn’t show. I waited, skipping first period. At lunch, the quad was filled on that memorable Indian Summer day. And then I saw him, smack dab in the middle of the square. He stood, one foot on a battered skateboard, surrounded by a gaggle of hungry girls, including a starry-eyed Olivia. She’d fairly fallen head over heels for Ryan. And he for her. What could I have done?
My heart broke. I had known I couldn’t compete so I didn’t. Those memories weren’t something I wanted to deal with.
And, back to the present, he was talking to Max.
How do I run away from here? How do I re-open the closed airport and run for the hills?
“What is Max doing here?” Olivia’s crazy factor was going to hit the roof. “She wasn’t even invited. Trying to be the center of attention. She always has to be the center of attention.” Even in high school she hadn’t acted like such a thirteen- year old.
“Her husband just died,” I whispered. “Cut her a break.”
She pulled me out of hearing distance, as far away as we could get. “But she doesn’t know that. No one is going to know he’s dead yet, right? That can’t be why she’s here. She doesn’t need to know yet. It’s not fair to her when we don’t even know what happened. And Emma!! Emma, the conniving little loathsome toad. She told on me. She actually told on me. And my father, my loving father,” she laughed with vitriol, “he’s raised the stake. I don’t get my dance unless she stays.”
You’ve got bigger problems than that, my beloved Bridezilla.
Olivia shook it off, literally, looking like she was about to enter the boxing ring, and moved into the party, going from person to person, telling them that Nico and Walter wouldn’t be joining them. She said that they had gone to join a small indigenous tribe down the Mimitibi River, as they had recently discovered a local wedding ritual that needed to be performed by only the groom and his closest friend. She was unsettlingly quick with the lies.
I wandered further away from the center of the party and sat down on the planks, submerging my feet in the warm water. Everyone was just a little sun-kissed, with slightly burned shoulders and noses, which would probably fade to brown by morning. That is, except for Princeton Colleen’s husband, lobster red, in pain every time she put her hand on his shoulder. Did they have any connection with Nico?
With certain obvious exclusions, everyone looked so happy and chic, not a guilty face among them. Except Lloyd, existentially sulking, but I suspected that it was a bit of a cultivation on his part. However, I clearly remembered his entry from the slam book in bold, underline and all caps: BEWARE. HE IS DANGEROUS AND SMARTER THAN ANY OF US.
I gravitated towards wallflowers in the room, as always, maybe because misery loved company. So, despite the prospect of a less than stellar conversation, I stood and made my way over to Josh, who was again the only person standing alone.
Please smile. Please be a little charming. Please prove them wrong and save me from this party.
“You look pensive,” I said, smiling. “Maybe aloof? Avoidant? Remote?”
His freckles were coming out.
He replied, “Have you been reading the thesaurus?”
“Not tonight,” I continued with my terribly fake smile. “But I’ve been known to, which is why I’m so great at parties.”
“I’m not so great at parties either. Well, this party.”
Marianna started the event. Uncomfortable and unsure, she distributed her clue list and treasure map, and then announced the random partners for the evening.
Not Lloyd.
Not Lloyd.
Not Lloyd.
What?! No. Please say it’s not so.
Even worse…Max.
She
didn’t look towards me when our partnership was announced. This was getting tedious. She leaned on the side of a cabin looking wistfully at nothing in particular, waiting for me to approach. She smiled, “Hello, you.”
Forget it.
It was the same every time.
We ventured off in silence and headed north. I held the torch and read the first item to find: a whip spider, which was a horrifying beast that I came face to face with at La Gruta. They weren’t poisonous, but they were jaw-droppingly ugly, and supposedly all over the interior of the island. We had received a celebratory jar to capture our arachnoid friend. We had until midnight. I guessed most would return without the spider. It was obviously a fear factor item thrown in from Olivia.
“Disgusting creatures,” Max commented on the list. “I’ve seen them in Borneo. What’s the point of this? I’m bored.”
She finally spoke of her reconciliation with Nico. As much as they viciously fought, they were the only ones who could challenge each other. They once played chess for three days straight, naked. High highs, and low lows, but he was the father of her child and they’d always be together. ‘Til death do they part. Ironic.
“What’s this ridiculousness about this male bonding jungle jaunt that Olivia told Edgar about? It’s not like Nico to agree to go spend the night with a bunch of savages sleeping in the woods. What are they really doing?”
“I don’t know.”
She was staring me down, and it was intense. She was beautiful in the moonlight. She was beautiful all the time. She would have made a perfect suspect if she’d been on the island at the time, not having arrived on a private jet just that morning.
We returned a good hour before midnight, all clues accounted for. Whether or not Max thought it was stupid, she was going to win and she grabbed the spider with grace and ease. “There’s a Tibetan proverb,” she said after dumping the creature in the jar, “there is first place and there is no place.”
Olivia must have stolen that phrase from the Ice Princess.
Our prize would have been spending half of Saturday at the only spa on the island, except Phil had committed his first snafu; he’d bought the gift certificates but didn’t book the appointments. “How was I to know that they’d be fully booked in this cowboy town?”
Only a handful of people returned to Mono Loco at all, and those that did called it a night shortly after. It was an unsolvable failure. The disaster of disasters. Hell.
Chapter 16: Swimming Lessons, Part I
Max and I shared a water taxi back to the hotel. She enjoyed the ride back, not talking, but skimming her fingers through the water for the entire ride. She was two huts up from me and didn’t say goodbye as she walked to her room.
With no TV to soothe me to sleep, I lay there listening to the waves and the occasional boat going by. Having a real difficulty falling asleep, I heard one or two pairs of drunken feet walking down the dock.
Rain started, just slightly. Unfortunately, no thunder and lightning to count down, so I sat up and read by the dim glow of the eco-friendly light. I had about forty-five pages left of The Dark Volume and was very glad to have the time to finish it.
I was essentially a city kid, sound sensitive in the wild, but I knew the creak of a footstep, especially one trying to be quiet on an empty tropical walkway.
Was there one set of feet or two?
They didn’t seem to be moving. On the day after a murder, this was not a good sign. My fear was split between the inability to move at all, and wondering what I had close to me that might be used as a weapon.
I made my way to the welcome basket and rummaged for the flashlight - a blunt object. I backed into the bathroom and waited for whatever was clearly lurking outside my door.
Anyone could have easily killed me with a silenced pistol or even a supercharged red frog poison syringe, without me even having to encounter their diabolical self. My breath seemed too loud.
From outside the balcony at the other side of the hut, I heard someone hoist themselves from the water onto the deck, and then nothing. Did I dare scream or was that a death wish?
I left the bathroom and tip-toed my way across the room to peer through the slats of the door and see my attacker.
Starting to hyperventilate, I put my eye to the slat, both angry and relieved that it was Ryan, who was now sitting on the deck, considering his next move.
“I was hoping you’d be up,” he said and patted the spot next to him.
I opted for a lounge chair and said, “What were you thinking? You can’t slink around like that after what’s happened.”
“What has happened?”
“You woke me up. I don’t know what I’m saying. Bad dreams. When someone dies you get confused.”
“Who died?”
“Someone, I’m sure, somewhere. Bad dreams.” If I didn’t pull myself together, Nico’s death wouldn’t be secret for long. “Do you know what would happen if anyone saw you here?”
“Anyone, or Olivia?” He smiled in the way that he did when he was 16.
“Do you have any idea what she’d do to us if she saw us together? Even almost 20 years after the fact?” He stood up in front of me and offered his hand. I don’t know why but I took it. “I’m here to give you a gift.”
“Is that what you are now? A gift to….”
“Shh. I want to teach you how to swim. It is beyond insane that even twenty years later, you still are a land shark. Remember, I grew up in the water. I want to show you that I’m not a bad guy.” He stepped closer, as if to kiss me.
I was about to step away when he picked me up romantically, my arms automatically clutching around his neck before he threw me in the water.
Nothing could have been worse.
I couldn’t look less sexy.
Water in my eyes, water in my nose, my favorite silk nightie ruined. I regained composure as my feet found the ground, eyes stinging and hair dripping water continuously in my face.
“Why?” I asked, and he blocked my attempt to get back on the deck.
He jumped in and stood before me. “Before you can swim, you have to let go of your fear. I’ll repeat that the first step to getting you swimming is letting go of your fear.”
I stood there looking at him, lit only by the light of the moon, all picture perfect. The water at night was still eighty degrees and I had nowhere to go. “Your biggest obstacle to getting over this fear is to learn to exhale underwater in a shallow area like this.” He waded out further and put his face in the water. Anyone looking at us would imagine quite a strange courtship. “Just close your eyes and put your face in the water. If you don’t want to exhale through your nose, you can hold it closed.”
I held my face in my hands for a moment and then put my face towards the sea. The reflection of the moon seemed to make everything alright. Deep breath, deep panic, exhale. Very vulnerable, I raised my head from the water.
Ryan smiled and put his hand on my back. I lowered my face in the water again, and then once more. I felt very small. “I always liked you best, you know?” he said.
“Nobody liked me best,” I admitted.
“Well, you’re wrong there.”
I hoisted myself out, leaving him alone, as he looked up at me with pleading eyes.
“This is certainly not the time or place, Ryan. Not the place and time. Really not ever. Thank you for the lesson, but it’s time for you to go.”
I walked back into my room, closing the door, angry that we were in a lockless place. I sat on the couch in my wet clothes and wondered if he’d be back. I might have kissed him if he came back, but he didn’t. His footsteps faded away into the humid night.
DAY THREE
Chapter 17: Little Blue Box
If I owned a Caribbean resort, I’d put double locks on all the doors, regardless of going against the grain of island courtesy.
After having terrible dreams, this time about having my organs harvested by Lloyd, I woke up in a slow, cold sweat to find Olivia starin
g at me as I slept, a huge, sour frown on her pretty face. Did she know that Ryan had given me elementary swim lessons?
Olivia furrowed her brow like an eight-year-old. “I’m sorry,” she slowly said, “I’ve been pretty terrible over the past couple of days, so I wanted to come by before today gets ridiculous and say that I’m sorry and to thank you. Thank you for putting up with me. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me since kindergarten. Thank you for being my family. Thank you.” She handed me a blue box. “I was going to wait until Sunday to give this to you, but I felt today might be penultimate.”
“You always get that word wrong. It doesn’t mean best. It means next to last,” I chided.
“Hmm. Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I knew that blue box, just as all women did. That little blue box that was the curse of the Tiffany & Co. brand. Receiving one was always an adrenaline filled build up and an inevitable let down, not being the big fat emerald cut engagement ring as our inner princess hoped. One would then be forced to show excitement at the keychain from the silver collection or what not.
I never got that far with Salty. I would sometimes wake up, staring at the ceiling, both of us wondering and dreading if marriage was in the mix for us. I’d ask myself if he was all I’d get in this life. I was a hopeless romantic whose relationship failures lowered my expectations.
I knew there’d be no letdown this time as I held my breath and opened Olivia’s box. Even in the overcast morning light, its contents shimmered: a pair of hoop earrings with three little rows of exquisite diamonds, a lovely five-figure purchase. I knew how much they cost because I suggested those for her wedding. She had passed on them for being too subtle, but they were certainly good enough for me.
Drowning Lessons Page 9