Drowning Lessons

by Rachel Neuburger Reynolds

  She must have been poorly phrasing about Lloyd, not Becky. I hope.

  Becky had done nothing worse than fall in love with the wrong man.

  She was the keeper of secrets for Nico, in business and life. Lloyd was tying up the loose ends. Would the secrets die alongside her? The dirt she must have had…

  The crowd happily went through their hip-hip-hoorays; patting me on the back, kissing me any number of times on the cheeks depending on their level of affectation, giving me sweaty hugs with rum punch and morning coffee breath. I tried to stay with the detectives, but the group was dragging me in other directions. I stopped trying when Max stopped me.

  Max gave me a long but frigid hug. “I apologize,” she smiled in her saccharine way. “You knew. You obviously knew exactly what you were doing and now all that was wrong is right. Here, slap me if you want.” She closed her eyes and braced for it. “Do it. It will make you feel great.”

  My eyes weren’t on her, I concentrated on following the trail of the detectives through the party.

  Max grabbed at my hand as I walked away. “Wait,” she said, looking in her bag, and then on her body. She took off a very expensive looking bracelet and put it on my wrist. “Thank you,” she said again. “You’ve done an amazing thing.”

  I looked at her with some curiosity when I realized I was being tipped.

  She had my attention as she whispered in my ear, “Please pass on to the authorities that it’s not outside the realm of possibility that it was a crime of passion. Becky might have taken her own life, rest in peace.”

  I jumped up on a table, doing a little faux celebratory dance of my own, giving me both breathing room and a view to observe the party. Across the loud din of the party, the soiree detectives were listening to Emma, who was talking their ears off, shaking her head at every chance. I couldn’t read a word of her lips except the repeated, “No.” LaGuardia caught my eye and shrugged.

  Seeing my chance after Colleen and her husband twisted by on the way to the bar, I jumped off my table, again trying to make my way out. This time Walter pulled me into a disgustingly soggy hug.

  Walter was happiness incarnate, and every time he stopped hugging me, he would look at me with very pure affection and hug me again.

  “Thank you, Lexie,” he said, heavy into a two- minute embrace. “What you have done is amazing. Trust me, you’ll be rewarded.”

  Tipped twice in ten minutes.

  He pulled me out of the roar of the party, asking me a million questions: if I was sure it was Lloyd, and what was said, and if we could meet up later where I could tell him everything.

  I was able to free myself when the detectives started walking away to the second dock.

  Walter called after me as I scuttled away, “I’ll find you later! I’m around! How awesome is it to say that!? Free as a bird.” He then riled up the crowd in doing another chorus of three-cheers-for-Lexie.

  Lloyd had been so convincing at the police station that I believed him wholeheartedly. But now, without his Emma alibi, I couldn’t process it. I wondered if Lloyd would even be there when the detectives returned to Bocas PD, or if he somehow slunk out and was halfway to Caracas by now.

  “Hey Lexie,” McDonough said. “Have a beer. Your day is done.”

  That was it? Case closed?

  Lloyd could use his 157 IQ and clear his own name. I wanted to get to my cabin and close my eyes until I was back in New York.

  Too good to be true.

  Not ten feet away from the party, I was grabbed again, this time by Ryan who looked genuinely sad and may have even been crying that afternoon. He didn’t understand why no one cared that Becky was dead, and why anyone would want to kill her. He said that she was like sunshine, and I grew a little jealous. They had spent a good deal of yesterday together, and Ryan said that her love with Nico was true.

  I made it to my door in silence, but Ryan stayed right behind me.

  “Hey Lex,” Ryan took my hand. “You okay? Your ankle? Whatever you’ve been doing with the cops?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said, pulling my hand away and walking over to my terrace.

  He readied himself to go but didn’t. “I’ve been waiting to talk to you, like really talk to you, for like twenty years and I just want to find a time where we can do that before we leave.”

  He leaned against the frame of the door, looking down at me with big blue sad eyes. High school damage never goes away. He was still gorgeous, but I wasn’t looking at thirty-five-year-old Ryan. All I saw was the fifteen-year-old who broke my heart.

  The only thought in my mind was the memory of the first time that the three of us were in a car together, early on in Olivia and Ryan’s relationship. We took her car to see Green Day at the Worcester Centrum. It was supposed to be a double date, but my boyfriend was grounded at the last minute, so it was just us three. We had a fun drive out, but as the saying goes ‘two is company, three’s a crowd.’ I became chauffer on the way back, with the lovely couple scrunched up kissing passionately in the back seat. It hurt.

  Ryan quietly said, “I’ve been understanding that there are things to say…”

  “You’ve wanted to talk to me for the last twenty years? My name is Alexandra Martone. Match that with reading my book Left Behind and I think you’ll only find one. Google me. You’ll see.”

  He changed the subject. “So, is anything being done for Becky?”

  “Of course there is. We feel the loss,” Olivia confidently offered, magically appearing in the open door of my cabin. “So, what’s going on, guys? Everyone having fun?”

  Neither Ryan nor I had an answer.

  She smiled at Ryan genuinely, “Can you excuse me, Ryan?”

  I believe it was the first interaction that he’d had with her since their boat ride from hell, and he trotted off like an obedient little puppy.

  Olivia smiled at me and gave me a little hug. She boldly put her hands on her hips, announcing, “You will be happy to know that I personally dealt with the Becky issue. Parents called. Arrangements made.”

  For Becky’s death to become nothing more than another item on her checklist made me sad. She was simply regarded as an obligation to be dealt with.

  “Honestly,” I said, and even pulled out the blood sisters’ card.

  She smiled and cocked her head. She took my hand, “Ok, well, to be honest, Amanda made the calls. I’m not 100% sure of the details, but I know it was all dealt with in the most elegant and tasteful way.”

  “Is that what this party is? Elegant and tasteful?”

  “Celebrate life. Woot!”

  We looked outside for a while.

  “You know, I was thinking about this last night,” Olivia continued. “I was watching Scream on my computer again last night, and no one was too upset about their friends being killed. They had a big party too. It’s what people do.”

  Watching a horror movie in the middle of this mess?

  I changed into a decent dress that I had yet to wear; all bets were off with coordination of clothes to events. Olivia stood next to me, as if she didn’t trust to leave me alone, and excitedly regaled me with all of her amended plans for the next two days.

  It’s all back on.

  “You, my love, my Thelma to your Louise, my Rizzoli to your Isles, my Cagney to your Lacey…well, you know. Come back to the party for a little bit. It’s not just for Walter. It’s for you. You, Blood Sister, saved the day.”

  I caught Ryan’s eye on the way back and he kindly smiled. I’d kicked myself in the head for years for making the decision not to tell Olivia that I had met him first, that I had fallen in love with him. Though, despite the way he was looking at me, I knew we never would have been together.

  Olivia dragged me back to the party, Walter presenting me with a bottle of extravagant champagne and pulling me up on a table to dance. “Chug it, Tall Girl.”

  I took a sip.

  “Ok,” Walter said, punching me in the arm. “I’ve got to make the ro
unds, but I’m going to find you later.”

  He left me dancing badly on top of the table, bottle in hand, still being celebrated by the group that had called for my blood the night before. The world was caving in on me and I was getting dizzy. I made my way off the table and made my way to the rear of the restaurant.

  There were questions, there were cheers, there were people trying to shove alcohol down my throat. When I passed Olivia, she held up a glass of champagne, yelling, “It’s a scream, baby.”

  Embarrassing.

  The rear dock at the edge of the restaurant was my light at the end of the tunnel. After extracting myself from a criminally witty conversation with Chad and Tom, it was home sweet home. Tom poured his cocktail, with diabolical laughter, over Colleen, and I was immediately forgotten about. Quickly making my way down the dock, I begged a bus boy to call me a water taxi.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  It wasn’t too long until the water taxi arrived and I scuttled in, grabbing a life vest as usual. Using the little Spanish I’d picked up, I asked to be driven around the island, no port of call in mind. I didn’t know where I wanted to go, except far away.

  “Hey,” I heard and saw Josh just behind me. “Can I come too?”

  I couldn’t fathom a conversation with him where we didn’t talk the case, but I was up for a ‘just regular’ adventure.

  Chapter 29: Business As Usual

  Josh didn’t seem to sweat, his white shirt strangely remaining crisp and free of wrinkles or dampness. His style made me want to buy a pair of Wayfarers.

  “Where are we going?” He asked.

  “Just around the island. I need a little silence,” I calmly said.

  Ten minutes north, there was little to see as far as human civilization; mangroves, friendly yachters waving as they passed, and those dolphins of questionable intelligence, riding astride the boat. Hotels were small, few and far between.

  The surfing side of the island calmed me; run down bungalows with a couple of people surfing here and there. We passed Hywel’s surf camp which would be over-run by our group of drunk cretins soon enough.

  Hywel was one of my favorite people I’d met on this trip. He told me that most of Bocas’ waves weren’t for beginners, but his camp was off a lazy little beach, where people were happy if they could ride a two-foot swell at the end of their week.

  We were getting closer to Bocas Town when Josh pointed to a largish resort portside and asked if I wanted to stop there for a late lunch.

  It didn’t fit in with the rest of the island. It was a major resort hotel with volleyball courts, pools, two restaurants with decks, and bikini-clad babes getting massages on the beach. It didn’t belong, and I hoped it would stay the exception, not the rule.

  I could see the original charm of the island that Olivia and Walter wanted to share, and agreed that it should be preserved. It’s a place that for all intents and purposes was lost. Despite recent events, I loved the island and hoped for its anonymity going forward. Everyone seemed pleased to be here.

  The taxi pulled up by the dock, where two staff members in white outfits helped us out of the boat; ladies first of course. The restaurant was welcoming, and they escorted us to a seaside table and handed us menus. They assumed we were on a romantic vacation together, and why wouldn’t they? This would have been the natural course of things, had the wedding not been tainted by a double homicide. At the very least, it looked like a date. In a parallel word, after some tedious wedding event, a single man would ask a single woman for a drink somewhere away from the party, where they could get to know each other. Maybe they’d smile. Maybe they’d laugh. Maybe they’d kiss. Who knew?

  I looked up at Josh, who was thoroughly engrossed in the menu. He ordered a bottle of French Rose for us, chilled in a cheap bucket, and he held up his glass. “To good work.”

  I met his toast. “I didn’t do anything right, to be called good work. But thanks. And cheers you.”

  “I really didn’t do anything, period.”

  Silence.

  “So, you’ve known Olivia since when?” Josh asked, cordially.

  “Five. Kindergarten.”

  “You’re not very alike, are you?”

  It that an insult or a compliment?

  “We were. Once upon a time. We really were.” Hopefully, down deep, we still were.

  We struggled over small talk about where we’d grown up, how we knew everyone, and the small talk you that you have to do. After an extremely awkward pause, he asked me what had gone down at the station. And what Lloyd had said. I told him what I knew, though with caution and abbreviation, now that I was fully briefed on this regular guy named Josh.

  Josh listened intently and held up his glass again. “Well, here’s for putting Lloyd behind bars. Where he’s always belonged.”

  I reminded him, “He’s been arrested. Not charged.”

  “Well, here’s to the right direction.”

  That I could get behind.

  I wasn’t 100% surprised when he asked the secondary question of the week. “So, is it okay if I talk to you about your book?”

  I don’t want to rip you apart. Please don’t ask me about Left Behind.

  I’m not sure why everyone wanted me to go through the story of the formation of the group. It was already spelled out in the book that they’d read.

  Unlike speaking to Becky about my previous philosophy in terms of herself, Josh wanted to know more of what brought me to the precise moment of self-realization. A lot of people had bought into what I wrote, so I couldn’t really tell them that I’d discovered my entire philosophy was damaging and didn’t work for beans.

  The whole process was going to make you feel worse and eventually more insecure. That is something that I never actually said. Josh had chosen the wrong people to pick him apart; Nico, Walter and some of his newer, more successful literary friends. He didn’t leave his house for a week after they were done kicking the crap out of his soul.

  “Did you learn anything from it?” I asked.

  He smiled, “Yes. To pack up all my stuff and move to a land very far away.”

  He had a good humor about their insults, and I was sorry that he was the punching bag for the group of idiots that he hung around with. He did believe that it had made him a better person.

  I still needed to stay credible, so I went with the story that it was my strong choice to leave Salty, in search of what I confidently deserved, instead of the opposite; that I stayed with him out of fear that I wouldn’t meet anyone else.

  He has to know that I wasn’t Left Behind.

  “I think you’re fine,” I said, realizing that what I had said sounded cold. “You’re a good catch.” I supposed he was. I admitted, “I don’t know if I agree with my book 100% anymore.”

  Through the entire lunch, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lloyd behind bars. Not my business, really. It was convenient to believe it was him, and not Emma, who was lying.

  Josh ordered another bottle of wine, which was much more than I’d drink normally in an afternoon. After another toast to justice, I asked, “Speaking of books, why didn’t you tell me about your book?”

  He returned with a question. “What book?”

  “The book about Lloyd. The one with the injunction order that Nico hit you with.”

  Unexpectedly, he laughed. “That’s a bit of an exaggeration. You’re talking about something from over ten years ago. I told Walter about wanting to write a book about Lloyd. Walter can’t keep a secret, and the next thing I know I get a cease and desist from Nico’s lawyer on The Dissector’s behalf. That was it. I’d done maybe two or three weeks of work on it. Lloyd seems to be grasping at straws, don’t you think?”

  Grasping at strings? He seems to have thrown a whole ball of frazzled yarn.

  After agreeing through silence to change the subject, he told me with animation about his newest endeavor; a biography of another modernist writer named Fernando Pessoa, out of Portugal. He wrote under s
eventy-five pseudonyms.

  “Sorry,” Josh said. “I know that it is all very boring.”

  It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.

  On the way back home, I looked at him in all sorts of “what if” situations? What if I had met him in a bar? A library? At work? At a bookstore, like in the movies. But in all honesty, I don’t think that anyone in the history of dating ever met anyone in a bookstore…

  What if he wasn’t a friend of Walter? Hadn’t seen our slam book? What if I hadn’t read that born-again Christian sci-fi best-seller, spelling out all my pathetic faults and vulnerabilities? What if he were likable at all?

  There was nothing left to say.

  Chapter 30: There Was A Little Girl

  Josh and I rode back to the resort in silence, engaged with nature as we gazed deep into the mangroves we passed. At one point I put my hand on his shoulder, pointing out a three-toed sloth high up in a tree.

  “I don’t see it,” he said, squinting as he looked up into the tall trees.

  “They don’t move much. You could easily mistake it for a coconut.”

  “Oh, ok. I do see it.”

  He spent the last few minutes of the ride asking the difference between the two-toed and three-toed variety of sloths. I found myself very happy to have something to talk about besides murder and my book.

  In the restaurant at the resort, Emma sat at a remote table, lips pursed, reading the Frommer’s Guide to Paraguay. She’d seemingly purchased the wrong tour book. Part of me expected Josh to ask me for a last cup of coffee or glass of wine.

  “Thanks for the company. I think I’ll take a nap before tonight’s party.” Josh shrugged, I have no idea why, then turned and sheepishly walked back to his room.

  You’re a strange one, Josh.

  I returned to my cabin and tried to nap myself. But sleep was no longer in my DNA as I lay on my back, under the mosquito netting, with my mind still racing. I took a long wash in the solar shower, which turned from lukewarm to cold in minutes, but I got out feeling squeaky clean and relaxed. It was late in the afternoon, and no one was knocking on my door or dying so that was good.