Against All Odds

by R. A. Lang

  I got angry and opened a bottle of Gold Label whisky, which my mother had given me when she last visited. I proceeded to sip glass after glass of it without getting any benefit whatsoever. Brave loved whisky, and he had the ability to take the full effect from me.

  Without using Haitian’s body to communicate to me, I got an unmistakable feeling that my problems were far from over. It felt like I was being sent a warning, and as it turned out, my instincts were right.

  Two days later, Antonina called me from Kazakhstan. She was crying on the phone, saying she was so in love with me and so sorry for trying to murder me. I guess Brave did have something to warn me about after all.

  I told her that I never wanted to hear from her again and that I would block her from calling and emailing me, which is exactly what I did. It was no surprise that that didn’t work; she still had Haitian’s number!

  Antonina called Haitian, and as expected, Haitian took her phone call in private so I couldn’t listen to the conversation. Haitian was still intent on protecting her free accommodation, and she needed Antonina’s help to continue destroying my life until she had succeeded.

  Haitian promised Antonina that she would talk to me and repair all that they had done to me. I knew by the way Haitian came to me with a pathetic look on her face what she was about. I turned my back and went outside to wait for a taxi to town.

  After my holiday from hell, I was not going to accept any more bullshit, especially from a voodoo priestess with a hidden agenda.

  The island has many strange laws. One of them states that if somebody can prove that they had taken care of a house where the owner had died, they automatically became the new owner.

  Haitian saw the phone call from Antonina as another opportunity to make my life totally impossible all over again and she encouraged Antonina to return to the island.

  Though I wouldn’t deal with the crazed Kazakh, Haitian maintained contact with her whilst smiling sweetly and calling me precious for some pathetic reason.

  Three weeks later, Haitian warned me that Antonina was returning to the island to visit us. I told her to stop her nonsense; it was impossible for Antonina to get a visa without being sponsored by someone living on the island.

  Unbeknown to me, Haitian had helped sponsor Antonina’s second visa. Also, the woman who worked in the travel agency in Kazakhstan still had my credit card details to debit for Antonina’s trip back!

  A week later, Haitian informed me that Antonina was returning to the island to make everything right. Naturally, I went ballistic. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me all over again! I remembered the hell I had endured the last time … and the murder attempt. I felt that I was no longer strong enough to go through any more of it.

  There was no way in hell I was going to allow her back into my life. I asked Haitian how she knew Antonina was returning to try to destroy my life yet again.

  Haitian, the evil woman that she was, lied. She claimed she didn’t know the details. I, however, knew exactly what had been going on behind my back. Haitian was so obsessed with getting rid of me permanently that she wasn’t going to stop at anything until she’d succeeded.

  Eventually, I started to believe that Antonina had acquired another visa and was returning back to the island. I unblocked Antonina on Skype to tell her she was not welcome in my life or on the island or in my house after her last visit.

  Using Skype, I could see her in a hotel room in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, as she waited for the Dutch embassy to grant her a visa. I heard her room telephone ring, and I knew it was a man from another room who required servicing.

  She told me she had to go to the hotel’s reception to pay the room charge from the previous night, but I knew that was a lie. Bills aren’t settled until it’s time to check out.

  She didn’t think I could hear her customer entering her room or telling her customer not to say anything because she was talking with me via Skype.

  I certainly did hear everything because her bed was very squeaky, not to mention hearing her speaking words of encouragement to her customer. After a very noisy hour, I shouted through my laptop to turn the lights on immediately. Naturally, she took her time doing that.

  She had covered herself with one of the bed sheets, but she failed to instruct her client who had just finished using her to keep the hell out of sight of the laptop’s camera. I could see a skinny Russian man in the background putting his clothes back on. I told her again to forget ever returning to the island.

  Unsurprisingly, the next day Haitian informed me that Antonina would be arriving on the island in two days’ time. When I asked her how the hell she knew, she just put on the usual pathetic expression and said the spirits had told her.

  Two days later, Haitian and her boyfriend went to a beach to see a festival going on there. They told me Antonina was arriving on the Amsterdam flight and that they would drop me off to welcome her!

  I still didn’t believe a word she had said, but I agreed to go to the airport to prove them wrong. I really shouldn’t have done so.

  The flight came in on time, and I waited for half an hour before turning towards the taxi rank only to see Antonina! I could not understand how she had been granted a visa. My nightmare was about to continue on a grander scale than ever before.

  I asked her where she was going to stay because I wasn’t letting her anywhere near my house, or myself for that matter. Antonina followed me to my taxi and threatened me with the police, just as she had done in Kazakhstan.

  I totally ignored her and proceeded to get into a taxi to go back home. I realised that Haitian was the instigator of my continued hell, and that she had gone to the beach with her inadequate boyfriend to stay out of the way.

  When I arrived at my house, Antonina was full of apologies about the attempted murder, but I wasn’t having any of it. I went straight to my bed with the intention of pulling Haitian aside the next morning to ask her what the hell she had been doing behind my back.

  Of course, Haitian denied everything, and of course, Haitian protected Antonina … just like before. The next morning, I wanted to go downtown to buy some more Cuban cigars, and Antonina insisted on joining me, or she would arrange for the KGB to go to the island and make a big problem for me. I just laughed in her face.

  Naturally, I was way past caring at that point. I just laughed at all of her threats. I kept thinking to myself, What the hell made me deserve it all? I hadn’t done anything wrong to anyone, unlike the three of them.

  I took a taxi downtown and went directly to the cigar shop in the Renaissance Mall to buy my favourite brand of cigar: Cohiba Siglo #VI. Because I received a warm welcome in the cigar shop, Antonina started to perform again and in front of everyone.

  Before things got too out of control, I cancelled my plans for visiting other venues and took another taxi straight home. That was just the beginning. Soon after we returned to the house, Haitian and Ronnie arrived and started to make things much worse.

  Of course, they sided with Antonina, as always. She made sure she had Antonina all to herself, but I didn’t care, I just went to my bedroom and watched TV. After a while, I realised that the house was quiet, and I ventured out of my room to see why.

  To my surprise, the place was empty. I was all alone to soak up the peace and tranquillity. It didn’t last long: Haitian and Ronnie returned just half an hour later looking quite pleased with themselves.

  I didn’t see Antonina anywhere, and I asked where she was. Haitian said she had helped protect me and dropped Antonina off at a nearby hotel where she would be well taken care of.

  She wouldn’t tell me which hotel because she claimed it was better that way. She hadn’t considered the fact that if anything happened to Antonina, she would be held responsible as her sponsor.

  After two days, I demanded to know where she was. Haitian told me which hotel, and off we went. I had never seen the hotel before even though it was just a ten minute walk away. Haitian and Ronnie had lived
there for many months because the cockroach-infested rooms were only ten dollars per night.

  It was also where all the island refinery workers chose to stay due to its low cost. The hotel was full of illegal Venezuelan and Colombian men, and no women … except Antonina.

  Of course, Haitian and Ronnie had shown Antonina around when they dropped her off. The bar was the first place they showed her so she could be seen by all the workers as being a lonely woman staying there. We found Antonina’s room and went straight in just as a Venezuelan man was leaving. It looked like she had not had any sleep since arriving.

  Naturally, she refused to leave with us because she was making money from all the Latin Americans there. We went back to the reception and threatened the guy working there. I told the man at the reception that I would have the police raid the place if he did not help me by kicking Antonina out, as most of the workers staying there were illegal on the island. He agreed to help.

  She came back to my house so I could get her visa revoked in the morning and have her deported before she could cause any more problems.

  In the morning, I left for the authority’s office to cancel her visa. I planned to go to the police for help after that. That plan also got spoiled because Haitian knew what I was going to do and advised Antonina to stay with me.

  When we got to the capital, I tried to buy her a coffee, but she just continued walking. Because I had not invited her back to the island, and because I never wanted to see her again, I stopped trying to reason with her. Instead, I walked off in the opposite direction and took a taxi straight home.

  I should have grabbed the opportunity and continued to the authorities, but my mind was scrambled with all the stress that was rising by the minute.

  An hour later Antonina, called me and asked where the hell I was. I calmly replied, “At home, where else?” I actually had my house to myself because Haitian was out, as she wasn’t expecting me to return for several hours.

  Thirty minutes later, Antonina turned up in a taxi. She walked straight into my house to collect her things because she had already made a deal with the taxi driver that she would see him all right if he helped her.

  I encouraged her to get the hell out of my house by throwing her little case out of my front door. I thought that would be the end of the hell I was living in. But I couldn’t have been more wrong!

  An hour later, the police visited me. They demanded to know why I had brought a poor Kazakh lady all the way from her country only to abuse her and sell her off to the highest bidder.

  I couldn’t control my emotions any longer; I just started laughing at the police for believing Antonina. I invited the two policewomen into my house and showed them the photos of what Antonina had done to my head. I also showed them my fresh scar.

  Thankfully, the two shocked policewomen believed my story and arrested Antonina and put her in jail. At least I finally had something genuine to laugh about. What a relief that was.

  It was a Saturday, and Antonina was detained along with all the hookers from Colombia and Venezuela who had overstayed, until she was deported that Wednesday. Antonina wrote and registered an official statement that I had brought her all the way to the island to murder her. Fortunately, and luckily for me I wasn’t the one who had sponsored her return!

  That was the last I ever heard of the crazed psychopathic Kazakh woman.

  After she left, I really started to believe that my nightmare was finally over, but I still had Haitian and Ronnie to deal with.

  I couldn’t face leaving my house until a week later, but I finally decided to take a taxi to the tapas bar next to the hotel I had originally stayed in three years earlier. I sat at the bar talking to a bank manager friend of mine while enjoying my favourite brand of Cuban cigar, when a local woman entered the bar with a man I assumed was her boyfriend.

  Because I was sitting near the corner of the bar, she made eye contact while rearranging her bra in a very obvious manner with her blouse half open for the entire world to see. That should have been my cue to go somewhere else. She had agreed to go for a drink with the Spanish guy just so she could have free drinks while she looked for a bigger catch.

  My first thought was that she looked like a hooker. Unbeknown to me, she was a professional hooker who also worked as a salesperson for a very expensive Italian men’s clothing shop on the corner of the Renaissance Mall.

  She picked up on my conversation with my friend regarding where the best place was to buy good quality trousers, and she confidently butted into our conversation. She sat right next to me and explained where the shop she worked was.

  I could see which direction it was going because the guy she had walked in with was now being blatantly ignored. I was fresh meat.

  Nevertheless, I had already been at the tapas bar for at least four hours, and I wasn’t fit to stay for another four so I made my excuses and left.

  Three days later, I received a missed call from a number that wasn’t associated with any name in my phone. I broke my cardinal rule and called the number back. I don’t know what possessed me to do that. If I called every missed call I’d received on the island, I would have been bankrupt.

  A woman answered my call, and I asked who she was. She replied, “It’s me, Inez. Don’t you remember me?”

  I was being completely honest when I told her I didn’t know anyone called Inez. She explained that she’d spoken to me in the tapas bar on the previous Saturday.

  I began to remember talking to some woman, but I still didn’t remember any Inez. I wish I’d never returned that call because another nightmare was about to begin.

  She persuaded me to visit the Italian men’s clothing shop where she was a sales assistant to show me the quality of the trousers they stocked. She added that they had a tailoring service to turn them up for short-legged men like myself. That last point piqued my interest because I didn’t know where to go on the island to get trousers turned up so off I went.

  I found the clothing shop just where I had pictured it from her description, on the corner of the Renaissance Mall. It was located right where taxis dropped people off. The shop was nicely laid out, and a shop assistant quickly approached me.

  “Now do you remember me?” the assistant asked. “No,” I answered. I really didn’t remember her face at all. “I’m Inez. I was talking to you on Saturday night,” she said.

  I had to be honest and admit that all I remembered from the bar was seeing a woman struggling with her little silicon bags in her bra.

  She seemed to react very well to that, and she took me by my hand as part of her personal treatment to score a new customer and walked me deeper into the shop.

  Actually, she looked totally ridiculous in her free issue, company supplied uniform. It was ridiculously tight, at least two sizes too small. She was wearing four or five inch heels, which made it look like she was wearing stilts under her trousers as you could see the outline of her heels a few inches up her trouser legs.

  She began by showing me the trousers they had in stock. After some sales talk, she persuaded me to buy a couple of pairs before leaving half an hour later.

  I needed to return two days later to collect my new trousers. I was horrified to find that, contrary to what she’d told me to secure the sale, they were dry clean only, just like so many I already had, tailor made in South Korea. Therefore, I hadn’t actually gained a thing.

  Not to miss an opportunity, she started flirting with me and asked which hotel I was staying in. It seemed like a well-practised speech. She was quite taken aback when she learnt that I had been living on the island for the past three years.

  After further interrogation, she uncovered the fact that I was a manager in the oil and gas business and was off the island more than on it. The thought of house sitting is clearly on her mind, I thought.

  She persuaded me to take her out to dinner, which I did, but on my own terms. She wanted seafood, and I wanted a sixteen-ounce rib-eye steak, so steak it was going to be whether she
turned up or not. I really didn’t care.

  I met her in a cigar bar just across the road from the restaurant that owned it. Amazingly enough, she arrived at exactly six o’clock in the evening, as planned. I was impressed, but that only lasted for about two seconds.

  After she had said hello to the barman, bar manager, and waitress, she finally came over to me. Meanwhile, I was just sitting there patiently, waiting to be the last to be greeted.

  She sat at the bar next to me and her very first words were, “Look at me. I’m totally naked from my waist down.” I didn’t react at all because it was perfectly clear from the moment she entered that she wasn’t wearing anything, or at the most, something as skimpy as a G-string. Her dress was so short, she looked like a perfect hooker, and I was already starting to feel uncomfortable having her sitting next to me. I really didn’t want people seeing me with this new floozy.

  I’d only seen such short dresses on the street girls who came over from Colombia and Venezuela to make as much money as possible from visiting tourists. Inez was no different.

  The barman, whom I had known for a long time, had known her a lot longer, and he had seen this forty-year-old hooker with hundreds of tourists over the years. He wasn’t such a good friend because he didn’t tell me to drop her as soon as possible. He was Colombian, so he probably assumed I wanted to have my wicked way with her before leaving her as hundreds or even thousands had done before me.

  We finished our drinks and crossed the road to the steak house. All their steaks were always of the finest quality and came from Argentina. The steaks were all grain-fed Angus beef. It was my favourite venue when I wanted a steak. The staff knew me very well because I went there two to three times per week, usually for lunch when I knew it would be quiet.

  It was no surprise that the staff had all seen Inez before, but with a different man each time. I noticed the manageress’s expression when she saw that Inez was with me this time, and she probably wondered what the hell I was doing with her or where I had been to have met her.