Max gently placed the fork and knife back on the table in front of me and cleared his throat. “Listen to me very carefully,” he said, leaning forward to yank the corner of my chair to face him so that our knees touched. He took both my hands in his and pulled me closer, peering into my downturned face. “These past two weeks have been, for me, more than just diverting. I cannot remember a time I’ve enjoyed anyone’s company as much as I’ve enjoyed yours, so much so that I have stopped myself more times than I can count from kissing you hard on that very smart mouth of yours. Will you forgive me for being such an ass tonight?”
I nodded, a tear dropping onto my forearm. “I’m sorry I got mad, too.”
“No, no, I liked that,” he said. “More of that, please.”
“We’re still friends, then?”
“Sadly, yes,” he said, and signaled for the bill. “But I plan to do something about that.”
We walked to the car in silence. I knew what was going to happen when we got there. Before he opened my passenger door, he swiftly, gently pressed my back against the car and kissed me on the mouth. It took me a second to catch up to him, to help settle the kiss into a rhythm, which was easy for us to find. He lifted me slightly and pressed me back again, and released something like a murmuration of tiny birds through my body, fluttering beneath my skin into all the places his hands and mouth traveled.
After a minute of this, he dropped me back down on my feet.
“That was okay for me to do?”
I nodded.
“You did basically just say I should kiss you.”
“I did.”
“I have been wanting to almost from the moment I met you. I just . . . you’re much younger than me. And I didn’t want to embarrass myself, or misinterpret your attention.”
“You haven’t.”
“Because I like you very much.”
“I like you very much, too.”
My phone rang, shattering the moment. It was Laureen. I wanted to smash the phone into the gravel.
“I have to get this.” I walked a few steps away from him, where the light music and chatter coming from the fish shack wouldn’t reveal my whereabouts or give her the impression that any kind of fun was being had.
“Please don’t tell me you’re already asleep,” Laureen said, instead of hello. “It’s only nine goddamn thirty.”
“No, Laureen, I’m actually just heading back from your place. What’s the news on the tow?”
“Never mind the tow. How come whenever I call the office you’re never there? It’s always John-John answering the phone.”
“I’ve had a few charters this week, and I try to leave by six to water your garden before dark.”
“I want you to stick by the office from now on and let John-John take out guests who need piloting. Or get that lazy arse whatshisname, one of your roommates, to do it. The British idiot. You know I prefer having a young woman at the front desk, even if it’s just you.”
“Sure, but—”
“By the way, John-John told me you’ve taken Max Winter out a few times and he didn’t come back with anything. Well, no fish.”
“Yes, well, he wasn’t all that interested in fishing,” I said, walking right into it.
“I gathered that much. Watch yourself, missy. John-John’s not a gossip. For him to bring it up means you’re being real obvious.”
She tossed off a few more instructions regarding her house and reminded me she’d be back soon and that I was to meet her at the airport. She hung up without saying goodbye.
Max was texting a few feet away, the blue light from his phone reflecting on his smile. I assumed he was texting with Dani. She didn’t seem to keep normal hours. Or maybe that’s the way it was in Paris.
I took a step towards him, stopping shy of his reach.
“Is your boss on to us?”
The kiss had shifted the atmosphere between us so dramatically I wasn’t sure how to reenter it.
“You laugh,” I said, “but I could lose my job.”
He put his phone in his pocket and leaned back against the car. “What would you do if Laureen fired you?”
“I don’t know. I suppose a part of me would be happy. I’ve thought of getting a job in a hotel. Maybe in management. I could also go to the Brac. I know people there.”
None of this was true. But I was ashamed of my precariousness, how beholden I was to Laureen, to the debt I owed her. We drove back in silence, no mention of the kiss. Max dropped me at the foot of the cul-de-sac.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I was tired and emboldened by the wine.
“I hope I do, Max. But you have to tell me when I will see you, and under what circumstances. I don’t want to be demanding, but I have to take greater precautions now. You have privileges here. I only have risks.”
“Fair enough.” He took a deep breath, looking out beyond the windshield for a moment. “Tomorrow I have work to do in town, two morning meetings and lunch with an old friend I had the misfortune of running into. When I get back to the club I’ll want to take a boat out in the late afternoon, sometime after four. I’ll order food. Then later I’d like to see . . . what’s it called? The bioluminescence field. I heard it’s very pretty at night. Do you think that can all be arranged at Laureen’s Charters?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Now go and get some rest.” He picked up my hand and kissed the back of it once, twice. “And please be sure to pack a bag. I might want to spend the night out on the water.”
* * *
• • •
Even now, thinking about our past two weeks on the island can cause my face to redden, partly because I’m recalling the delicious vertigo of love taking hold, but also because my behavior became that of a woman deranged. The next morning I charged into the office and rather than asking, I told John-John that I was taking Max Winter out on an overnight cruise.
“But if anyone wants a boat and crew, even if it was Mr. Winter, Laureen said that I was to pilot, not you.”
“Too bad.”
He gaped at me. “I don’t want to have to call her.”
“Then don’t. I beg you, John-John. It’s not necessary. I’ll cover you for the rest of your goddamn days in exchange for this one tiny favor.”
I wince at the image of this wild-eyed young woman desperately clearing the path leading to her own destruction. Yet there was no reasoning with me. He threw up his hands and walked out of the office to unlock the rental kiosk, while I calmly prepped a forty-five-foot Formula, a small, attractive yacht I could handle on my own—its anchor not too heavy, its quarters roomy and comfortable—even if the weather changed overnight.
At four thirty, Max arrived at the end of the dock dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, mouth stern beneath dark glasses, the thick strap of a leather overnight bag slung across his chest. He was trailed by two kitchen workers, each carrying a cooler filled with food and drinks. No one, least of all John-John, was fooled into thinking this was anything but preparations for a romantic overnight trip for two. As I said, I had lost all reason. Moving from half to full throttle once we hit open water, I had a premonition that I would be returning to a different reality, a more difficult one, likely, but in that moment nothing mattered. I let the salt air slap hard at my bare arms, my hair whip painfully at my cheeks. I removed my uniform and was wearing a silky white tank top, no bra, the only mildly alluring thing I owned. While I steered us out to the sea, Max came up behind me to take advantage of my inability to do anything about his hands on my breasts or his mouth on my neck. Within minutes of losing sight of land, we were in the sleeping quarters impatiently consummating our relationship, blotting out any notion that this was some chaste friendship, that his intentions towards me were benignly paternal or mine at all innocent. I was no virgin (though I am, by nature, modest), but by t
he expert way Max moved beneath and above me, how he murmured to me with confident knowledge things about my own dark appetites that even I had never articulated, I knew he had completely ruined me for any man after him, were there to be one.
“Jesus,” I whispered, collapsing next to him, coated in a layer of sweat and shamelessness, an arm flung over my eyes to obscure how conquered I felt. “I almost hate you for that.”
He burst out laughing into the low cabin ceiling before curling next to me wearing a self-satisfied grin.
Every night that final week (after fleeing John-John’s scolding glare), the boat became our private oasis. I dropped anchor near the glowing water, where we’d eat, swim, have sex, and then do it all over again. I was, by all measures, deliriously happy, mentally carving every moment into small chapters, the time he said that, the time we did this, the time we went there, so that when he was finally gone from my life, our brief time together would feel to me as though it had been much, much longer than it was.
What did we talk about? Everything and nothing. Local lore, the particulars of the boats we’d take out. He was fascinated by my upbringing and wanted to know how my father parented me alone after my mother died, now that he found himself in a similar position.
“How did he discipline you?” he asked.
“I think I was born obedient,” I said, not too proudly. “Can’t really rebel when your livelihoods depend on each other.”
“Lucky father,” he said. “I think Dani’s bent in a way you aren’t. Has been since birth. She’s seen all kinds of specialists, dabbled in all manner of therapy. She’d be diagnosed with something, but the drugs would do nothing. Then we were told she had some kind of personality disorder, but she’d display few of the characteristics. Things were just getting right with her world, then Rebekah died.”
We had talked almost nothing about Rebekah since the night at the fish shack. But there it was again, the name that charged the air and changed the mood.
“That must have been devastating. For both of you.”
“Yes,” he said. “She loved her mother very much, even though she was a very difficult woman for Dani to please.”
Oddly, Dani always seemed more abstract to me than Rebekah, but the idea of having a mother like that suddenly struck me as a particular kind of burden, something I could understand, even if I couldn’t relate. Never did it occur to me that I would one day meet Dani and come to know her, and that the question of her well-being, her sanity, would be of paramount concern to me, to my happiness, to my very life.
SEVEN
I heard her and felt her before I saw her that day, Laureen back early from St. Barts, screaming my name and stomping down the dock, the whole office shuddering with her approach.
“You better be heeere. We have a lot to taaalk about,” she sing-songed.
I scrambled to tidy up the desk, straighten out my ponytail, and hand-press my uniform. When she slapped open the door, I widened my eyes while pointing to the phone receiver I had shoved under my chin, already knowing from her expression she was aware of what I’d been up to. Thinking back to how much of my future she had held in her hands that day, I can still justify making that ridiculous fake phone call.
“Yes, yes, we can accommodate that reservation,” I said, like a cheerful idiot. “Come right down and I’ll be happy to help you. I’ll be here all day. Okay. Bye.”
I hung up on nobody.
“Laureen! You’re back early!”
“Yes, I’m back. Move,” she said, motioning me out from behind the desk.
“I would have picked you up if—”
“Tell me something,” she said, flipping the pages of the daily schedule to line up with the nightly ledger. “When you take Mr. Winter out on his overnight fishing trips, how much do you charge him?” She traced her thick index fingers down the two columns.
“The full amount. It’s all there and up to date. The club’s been keeping a tally of his food and drinks.”
It was over. The spell I’d been under for the better part of a month evaporated. Oddly, while bracing for my imminent dismissal, I wasn’t angry with John-John or myself. In fact, a feeling of peace washed over me. It had all been worth it.
Satisfied I had charged for (most of) the services rendered, Laureen straightened up. “Take a seat,” she said, her chin indicating a chair in the waiting area where Max and I had enjoyed breakfast that very first morning. It felt like such a long time ago now.
“Wait,” I said. “Before you say anything, I want you to know that what I did never interfered with running the business. I also made sure your plants were taken care of—”
“Shut up. Please. For a second.”
She came around from behind the desk and stood directly in front of me. She took a deep breath. “I actually don’t need to hear any excuses from you, or reasons, or apologies,” she said, modulating her voice with a dose of what sounded like kindness. “I just need you to go to your quarters and pack your things.”
I stood and took a step towards the door.
“I’m not finished. I need you to pack up your things and head straight to the airport because Janie’s got the plane waiting to take you to St. Barts.”
“What? Why?”
“I need you to manage the charters there while I get this fucking disaster under control. I have to meet my lawyer in George Town tomorrow. I’m being sued and I’m suing that idiot captain, because it turns out I have hired a bunch of morons I haven’t spent nearly enough time smacking around.”
“But I don’t think I’m qualified.”
“I don’t need qualified. I need someone I can trust, even though I know you haven’t been very trustworthy of late.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes to wash away the stink of a ten-million-dollar yacht stuffed with C-list royals wiping out a rare bird sanctuary.”
“I thought you came to fire me.”
She looked tired all of a sudden. “I really should. Now go. I can’t pay to hold that plane for longer than an hour. We’ll talk more after you land.”
I was frozen in place, trying to form an argument that this office, this job, even this island meant everything to me. But none of it was true. Were it not for Max, this would be about the best thing that could ever happen in my life. My reticence had only to do with him, and the promise of another week together, at most. The fact that I was weighing temporary bliss against work that could sustain me, pay my debt, help build a life for myself was something, to this day, I can barely admit.
“What if I don’t want to live in St. Barts? Don’t I have a choice in all this?”
She looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Certainly you have a choice. Here it is, kiddo. You can stay on Grand Cayman and find a job somewhere else. And since you appear to have broken every goddamn rule at this club, a reference will be a challenge. Or you can go to St. Barts now, receive a raise, earn your own way, live in your own apartment near the marina, and take on a lot more responsibility. That is your choice. And if you’re not a complete moron, you’ll make the right one.”
I turned and fled, Laureen yelling after me, “I’ll send a taxi to your place in twenty minutes. Oh, and you’re bloody welcome!”
I ran down the dock, past the gauntlet of sickly sweet lunch smells. I didn’t want to go away, not now, but what choice did I have? I still owed her several thousand dollars. I had no other job prospects on the island and only enough saved to tide me over for a month.
A terrific nausea set in by the time I reached the road. Morning traffic whizzed by me on the highway. I had to tell Max. I had to see him once more before I left. Maybe it was best this way, a quick rip of the Band-Aid and it would be over. Crying in an apartment without roommates might also accelerate the grieving. No muffling or stifling; no shoving it down. I could plow through my days in St. Barts, managing
the schedule, giving out orders, not caring what the staff there thought of me, not worrying about being nice or liked by anyone. I could channel all this anger into a stoic competency I’d seen in other women who worked hard and lived alone. They didn’t seem unhappy, sipping their white wine on their condo patios, peering into another beautiful sunset, a challenging paperback splayed across their crepey thighs. That wouldn’t be such a bad life.
I made a run at a gap in the traffic. Instead of heading left to staff quarters, I went right to the private bungalows, heedless of strict club rules or how distressed hotel workers glared at my marina uniform.
Hours earlier, before we parted in the predawn hours with plans to head out after dusk again that day, I’d overheard Max telling Dani he’d be returning to Asherley soon, that the legislature reconvened in February and he’d have to be in Albany a lot more since it was an election year. We hadn’t discussed what “soon” meant, or whether we’d see each other again after he left. I acted nonchalant that morning, pretending I wasn’t torn up inside about his looming departure, counting the hours until I could spot him coming down the dock, a basket of food in his hand. I had to kiss him one more time, to thank him, to say goodbye.
His car was parked in the drive, thank God. I banged the brass mermaid knocker and pressed my ear to the thick door. Nothing. I banged again. Maybe he was golfing. Someone would have already alerted club security, so I couldn’t linger. I ducked behind his bungalow, took a shortcut through the eighteenth hole to the brush that backed onto the road across from my townhouse, dialing his number as I jogged. It headed straight to voicemail. I sent a brief text, which dangled unread.
Several cars clotted the driveway of the townhouse, stragglers from last night’s party. In the filthy kitchen, two roommates sat groggily spooning cereal into their mouths for lunch.
“Hey, stranger,” one said. “Didn’t think you lived here any—okaaay.”
The Winters Page 5