For months I grieved, tightly and privately, keeping my pain to myself until I could be alone. Then one day, I decided I could no longer be a grown woman weeping in a single bed. I buried the rest of my anguish and got on with my life, astonished that that was all it took, a simple decision, which I suppose, in retrospect, revealed something unsettling about my character. Despite what passed for shyness, I could be ruthless like that, make a decision and then act, filing and organizing emotions as efficiently as I did a boat schedule in high season. Emotions were things for which I did not have the time or the luxury.
I was in the office one day trimming the edges of a nice write-up about Laureen to pin on the office wall when the brass bells signaled Max Winter’s entrance into the overly air-conditioned hut. As automatically as breathing, Laureen stripped off her stained hoodie and stood to greet him, her ample, sun-spotted chest leading the way. Her wide arms assumed a hug, but Max instantly sliced through those intentions with a stiff extended arm, an awkward moment I pretended not to see.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Winter, or should I say Senator Winter? It’s been such a long, long time.”
“I’m just a state senator, so no need for titles,” he said, looking over her shoulder to give me a perfunctory nod.
I didn’t remember Max Winter from previous years, which wasn’t unusual. Laureen had a whole cache of clients she took personal care of: bankers, sports stars, celebrities and the like, people who didn’t like the obviousness of St. Barts or the sleepiness of St. Martin, people for whom banking was a full-time job and the Caymans was where they could both work and play. She hoarded them, bragging about the exorbitant tips she’d declined because they’d formed friendships, or so she said, trusting her enough to drop lascivious details about affairs and divorces, though I knew she’d merely overheard them talking from the bridge.
“Anyway, it is so good to see you again, Mr. Winter. The club didn’t alert me that you were returning. I would have been more than happy to handle your needs there so you wouldn’t have to come all the way down to my ratty old office. Get Mr. Winter a coffee,” she barked at me.
“Oh no,” he said to me. “Please don’t go to any trouble.”
“By the way,” Laureen added sotto voce, “my deepest condolences to you and your lovely daughter. I read about that awful business. Has it been a year already?”
I pricked up my ears, eager to know more about this “awful business.”
“Eighteen months,” he said. “And thank you, I appreciate your kind words. But I am wondering about a boat. For tomorrow. Something manageable that I can handle alone.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t hear of that. I’m more than happy to take you out tomor—”
“No. Please. Though I do appreciate the offer. You must be busy this time of year.”
“Nonsense. January is between high seasons.”
I spoke up. “The Commodore is available. One person can handle it easily. I just need to clean it out and put gas in it.”
“Thank you. I know that boat,” Max said. “I’ll come by around eight. Does that give you enough time to prep it?”
“Plenty.”
His nose was slightly crooked, the only lived-in thing about his handsome face. I imagined he’d played sports and had an accident with a baseball or football. Maybe an interesting story involving a fistfight at a private school. The thought instantly endeared him to me.
“Mr. Winter, I’m telling you, that little boat won’t do. Let me take you out on the Lassie—”
He gave me a steady look, which I held until my face burned.
“I’d like to take the little one. I’ll come for her in the morning.”
“At least let me bring her around to the club dock, Mr. Winter, all nice and gleaming.”
“I’d prefer to leave from here, if you don’t mind,” he said.
There was an edge to his voice now. He intended to be alone on that boat, and this now worried me, given Laureen’s hushed condolences and his general air of sadness.
“I don’t mind anything. Will you need snorkeling equipment? Will your daughter be with you?”
“No. Dani’s with her aunt in Paris for the month. She’s at that age where she prefers her company, anyone’s company really, over mine,” he said, looking at me.
“Let us pack a picnic for you, then. Call up the kitchen,” she commanded me, “and let them know Mr. Winter wants—”
“I’ll grab some food from the takeaway. I didn’t catch your name.”
This time he was talking to me. I was about to respond when Laureen beat me to it, her accent mangling the emphasis so that it sounded less exotic than it was.
“Pretty,” he said, studying my face as if to solve something about its relationship to my name. “Suits you. Are you new?”
“I’ve been working here about eight years now.”
“Why have I never seen you before?”
He seemed genuinely bothered by this oversight on my, or Laureen’s, part.
“Maybe because I’ve never seen you,” I said, a little impudently, my face warming.
“This one’s not one of my more friendly staff, that’s for sure,” Laureen said. “If I didn’t shove her out the door she’d be content to sit in the air-conditioning all day checking her Facebook.”
I rolled my eyes at Max. She knew I had no interest in such things.
“Yes, well, all right. I’ll see you both in the morning,” he said and thanked us each by name.
The bells clanged behind him.
“Now there’s a man who has suffered,” she said, a hand on her chest, eyes lingering on the door. “Poor man’s wife dies in a car accident just before he wins an election. Then he’s got to raise that kid on his own.” She shuddered. “I don’t like the idea of him alone on the water. Did he seem depressed to you?”
I wanted to say Of course he’s depressed, his wife’s dead, but she was already telling me the Winters were longtime members of the club, where they owned a few of the private bungalows, the biggest reserved for their personal use.
“And they live on a private island that’s been in the family for hundreds of years. An old king gave it to them. And the house, it’s like a castle straight out of a Disney movie. Presidents have slept there. Republican ones, that is. He’s probably the only Republican I could hold my nose and vote for. He’s not one of those right-wing nutters. More of the old-school variety; high brows, low taxes, that sort of thing.”
She turned to face me. “Aren’t you a dark surprise? I’ve never seen you flirt before. You embarrassed yourself by a lot. He might be single now, but you do realize he’s the sort who will end up with a movie star. That’s about the only act that could follow the first Mrs. Winter. Rebekah was something else to look at, I’m telling you. You know, she once offered me a hundred-dollar bill to stay here because she was waiting for an important phone call and was worried she wouldn’t get a signal on the ocean. It never came, the call, but it was me she trusted to sit right where you’re sitting and wait for that call all day, and I did. Of course I didn’t want to accept the money but she insisted. She had a lot of class, that one. The daughter, though? Total piece of work. The biggest snot-nosed brat ever. D’you know a couple years back, that one had half the police on the island plus a helicopter looking for her? She thought she’d go partying with a group of athletes from some college in Florida. Not even thirteen years old, she was. Those poor boys, all in tears when they found that out, swearing up and down no one laid a hand on her, but not for lack of her trying, they said. She could have ruined their lives just like that,” she said with a snap of her fingers. “But at the last minute she said the boys were telling the truth. She’d just wanted to make them suffer a little. Girls like that, they don’t get happy endings.” She meandered to the back office holding her ledger to her chest, flip-flops slapping at her dirty, cracked heels.
“Nope. They end up dead or in jail, leaving everybody to wonder which fate they deserved more.”
THREE
For the rest of my shift, I thought of nothing but Max Winter’s visit. While hosing off his boat and prepping it for the morning, I thought of how he’d held my gaze and the warm smile he’d given me, a small enough gesture people trade a hundred times in a day, yet this one’s effect lingered. He’d paid attention to me. He’d said he liked my name. He’d wondered why he’d never seen me before, as though I were someone to be remembered. He’d said, directly to me, that he would come for the boat in the morning and bowed when he’d said my name, using the proper emphasis.
It was a short walk from the marina to staff housing, but there was a stretch of West Bay that had no sidewalk, and I often took the beach route to avoid walking next to traffic along the unlit highway. The sand made for a more challenging hike but it was better than being in a car’s blind spot. Besides, on certain nights the walk cleared my head, and that night I needed it.
When I reached the townhouse the sound of another wild party wafting from our living room stopped me cold. The townhouse was one of three Laureen owned, stacked side by side like tombstones at the end of a bleak cul-de-sac on the other side of the highway. I stood listening to the insistent bass pulsing from the house while slowly deflating. I had nothing left, no reserves to cut through what would be a forest of drunken people crowding the stark rooms, draping over each other on the greasy couch, every tabletop a wasteland of empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays. I looked back across the highway towards the blinking lights of the marina, feeling like misery itself had tapped me on the shoulder and offered me its arm. What else was there to do but trudge back to the pier and the cot in Laureen’s office?
I didn’t bother with the beach route back. I was so tired I almost wanted a truck to swerve to miss a chicken and hit me. And to make a bad night worse, I spotted a lone male figure approaching, staring into his phone, the screen lending his face a glowing malevolence. When you’re a woman walking alone along a highway at night, it’s a toss-up over what’s scarier: a drunk driver who can’t see you or a man in your path who can.
My instincts always assumed the worst. But when the man suddenly stepped out in front of an oncoming car, another instinct kicked in and I screamed, “Look out!” A screech of brakes, and the man’s phone spun in the air as he plunged backwards into a bush. I scrambled towards him, retrieving the phone. When he finished brushing dust off his pants and stood upright, I found myself looking at the face of the man who had occupied my thoughts all day and with such intensity that for a moment I worried I might have manifested him.
“Thank you—it’s you!” Max Winter said, accepting his phone. “Good God, my phone must have blinded me.”
“Are you all right?”
“I am, yes. I think you might have saved my life.”
Cars sped by us, illuminating his face every few seconds, his expression hard to read. I thought of Laureen’s concern about his taking the boat out alone. Was he depressed?
“Are you sure you’re all right?” I stepped closer, boldly placing a hand on his forearm. “Let me help you.”
“I promise you I’m fine. I’m more embarrassed than bruised,” he said. He glanced at his phone before pocketing it.
“What are you doing out on the highway anyway? You should be using that,” I said, pointing to the walkway raised over the road, off-limits to staff at night.
“I got a text from my daughter. It’s the middle of the night where she is so I couldn’t ignore it. We got to texting back and forth, and yeah, the rest is history. Where are you heading so late?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want him to know I lived the way I did. Lots of people had roommates and I was only twenty-six. But suddenly my life felt dingy and squalid and I wanted to give him the impression that I was older, more sophisticated.
“I forgot something at work. I was just going back to get it.”
“Well, lucky me you did. Let me walk you. The least I can do in return is to make sure you’re safe.” I began to protest when he added, “Please don’t worry, you won’t be spotted.”
He knew, then, that staff wasn’t allowed to socialize with club clients, not even for a benign stroll like this. If Laureen saw us I’d be fired on the spot.
Placing a hand on the small of my back, he led me across the road, then down the path along the south side next to the hydrangeas, my earlier route. He knew exactly how to get to the beach from there, and he seemed aware we’d be able to walk in near-total darkness all the way to the edge of the marina. We stood at what he intuited was my drop-off point, the foot of the long dock dividing Laureen’s property from the country club’s, which, by day, had the ambience of a small hospital where wealthy people might go to convalesce. But at night, from this vantage point, the club seemed a warmer and more intimate place, relaxed and cozy.
Max checked his watch, then looked around like a spy. “Okay, run. I’ll wait right here.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I insisted. “I can get home by myself.”
“Regrettably, my dear, because I was raised by a chauvinist pig and her sexist husband, I do have to walk you home.”
His joke made me laugh, but I still had to make a choice: either introduce him to the shabby chaos of staff housing or tell him I was planning to sleep on a cot at work because of it.
“The thing is, there’s a party going on at my place and I really need to sleep. So I’m staying out here tonight.”
He looked out at the clapboard office at the end of the pier.
“I mean, does it lock? Is there even a blanket?”
“Yes, and a pretty good pillow,” I said. “So it’s not a big deal. And what a view!” My arm swept across the dark beach.
“It’s better than the one I have.”
“So no need to feel sorry for me, Mr. Winter. Besides, I have an early morning, what with this last-minute demanding client who wants his boat to be ready to go first thing.”
“Wow. What an asshole.”
“He’s a senator or something,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But only a state senator.”
He laughed a little too loud.
“Mr. Winter, keep it down,” I whispered, craning around for witnesses.
“Please, call me Max,” he said. “Nothing else.”
“Max.”
He tilted his head, his focus on a point between my eyes, just above my brow. It felt intimate, this look, like a prelude to something, not quite a kiss, but something that overwhelmed me even unexpressed.
“Well, good night, then,” I said.
“Yes, of course, good night. But I’m going to wait right here to make sure you reach the office safely. I’ll leave when you flick the light on and off. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“And I will see you again in roughly nine hours.” He checked his watch. “Actually eight. Even better.”
I nodded by way of saying good night again and turned to leave.
Making my way down to the end of the pier, I was aware of his eyes on me. I willed myself not to turn around to check whether he maintained his vigil, worried he’d mistake it for coyness, an invitation. It was only when I unlocked the office, flicked the light switch on and off, then collapsed on the cot that I fully exhaled, kicking my legs a couple times like a schoolgirl with a crush.
Of course I didn’t sleep. There was, in fact, no blanket, and the pillow was the orthopedic cushion from the office chair, but I didn’t care. I welcomed the adrenaline rush that accompanied these brand-new feelings. Maybe Laureen was right. Maybe I was, indeed, a dark surprise.
FOUR
I stirred awake with the sun, stretched, and tied my hair into a knotted fist on top of my head, securing it with an elastic band. Then I smoothed down the wrinkles of my uniform shirt and turned on the computer. Before
the screen came fully alive, I spotted Laureen making her way down the pier two hours earlier than her usual start time, and an hour earlier than mine. The way she stomped—the entire office bobbing with her steps—meant I had screwed something up. Panicked, I scanned the office. I had started the coffee. The day’s schedule was scribbled on the whiteboard. I had prepped Max’s boat the day before. I just had to bring it around to the pier. At the last second, I plucked the cushion off the cot and tossed it onto the chair. Laureen’s angry knock reminded me I had forgotten to unlock the door. When I opened it, she blew past me, her perfume chokingly strong, her eyes darting around the office. She plopped herself down in front of the computer.
“Total shit show,” she muttered. “The fucking Singularis sunk near Eleven Mile off Barbuda. Bunch of shivering Brits waiting for a charter back to St. Barts. Fucking one’s the Queen’s cousin or something.”
She found the number she was looking for and immediately laid into whoever answered the call, presumably the pilot. “Bruce, you fucking moron. How many times have I said don’t go off route? . . . I don’t care if he’s next in fucking line to the fucking throne. Is he gonna pay for this? No! . . . Well, you’ll have to wait. Janie will call when the charter gets there. I’ll see you in St. Barts. . . . ’Cause I gotta meet the Prefect, that’s why . . . Yeah, it’s that bad. I was told to bring luggage. And a lawyer. You might wanna do the same, asshole.” She slammed the phone down.
The Winters Page 2