Borrow Trouble

by Mary Monroe

  I called my house again. This time Leon answered. I hung up as soon as I heard his voice.

  I didn’t see Inez again until the next morning. Around eight, she tiptoed into the room, with her sandals in her hand, looking like she’d been mauled. Her hair was askew, dark circles surrounded her eyes, and she had what looked like a handprint on her neck.

  I had ordered room service and was enjoying a continental breakfast in bed. Even though our suite had air-conditioning, I had opened all of the windows. The smell of paradise was intoxicating. The only aroma I recognized was the scent of flowers, but I was sure that the coconut trees also contributed to the intoxicating hodgepodge that had me savoring each breath I took. The sounds outside, below our windows, were just as amazing. Exotic birds flying past the windows were chirping and noisily flapping their wings. Ocean waves were splashing against the rocks on the beach, and people on the beach were laughing like they didn’t have a care in the world. And different types of music—reggae, calypso, Spanish, and even hip-hop—seemed to be coming from all different directions.

  Our hotel was located on El Capitan, the tiny island’s main street. Almost everything else was, too. Like the shopping center, most of the restaurants and bars, and a beach that ran the length of the heart-shaped island. As far as I was concerned, the island lived up to its name. I was in paradise, and I was going to enjoy as much of it as I possibly could. Everything was too beautiful for me to get upset, but I had to say something to Inez about her antics.

  “I hope he was worth it,” I snapped, giving her a look that I hoped made her feel like the shameless hussy she was acting like. “And I hope this is not the way the rest of the trip is going to go.” I took a sip of coffee and fanned away a gnat that had flown in one of the windows. A large bird, with blue, yellow, and green feathers, and a beak that had to be six inches long, perched on our windowsill.

  Inez waltzed over and chased the curious bird away, and then she shut all the windows. “What’s the point of having air-conditioning if you’re going to leave the damned windows open?” she said, with a profound yawn.

  “So, how was your date?” I asked, with a sneer.

  “I didn’t fuck him, if that’s what you mean. I let him get a little cozy with me, but mainly, we just talked. He was a really interesting dude to talk to.”

  “I’ll bet. He must have had all kinds of exciting stories to share about what it’s like to work in a five-star hotel.” I started to take another sip of coffee and stopped. “Or was it the baggage handler from the airport?” I covered my mouth with my hand to keep from laughing. I was angry, but I was also amused.

  Inez shook her head and flopped down on the side of her bed.

  “Neither one. Dude from the airport never showed up. And the hotel cutie forgot to tell me about his wife until she showed up with their two kids to give him a ride home. I never felt so punk’d in my life!” Inez groaned one second and giggled the next. “Wait until you see the bartender from the restaurant on the second floor. I bumped into him while he was on his break, on my way to the ladies’ room. He’s the one I sat with on the beach all last night.”

  I gave Inez a disgusted look as I tried to find the right words to say what was on my mind.

  “Inez, am I going to spend these two weeks waiting for you to come back from one date after another, listening to all the fun you had? What will I say to everybody at home when they ask me what we did down here?”

  Inez rose from her bed, stretching like a feline. She slapped one hand on her hip and started wagging a finger at me. “Let’s get one thing straight right now. What happens in Paraíso stays in Paraíso.” Then she removed her bright yellow halter top and dropped it to the floor, cupping a tittie in each hand.

  Before Inez had invested in some serious plastic surgery, the same titties that she was so proud of now had looked like baby elephant ears: small, flat, and floppy. She had specifically instructed her surgeon to give her a bosom identical to Pamela Anderson’s. And that was exactly what she got.

  Rolling her eyes at me, Inez wiggled out of her denim Bermuda shorts, shaking her naked rump. Her butt was so firm, she could balance a cup on it. And she wondered why she had so few female friends.

  I shrugged. “I appreciate your paying for me to come down here, but if you came down here to do your wild thing, why did you drag me along?” I pouted, feeling like the ugly stepsister that got left behind.

  “You’re right. I know how you feel,” Inez said, offering me one of her best smiles. “Let’s get dressed and go shopping and sightseeing. We’ll have lunch, come back to the room, and take a siesta, and then we’ll go out for dinner and dancing. Just you and me.”

  I didn’t have much credit available on any of my credit cards. Leon had charged up a fortune buying school clothes for Cheryl and Collette, and his ex had badgered him until he’d purchased her a new refrigerator. I had spent most of my last paycheck paying for the clothes for my trip and the new wigs that I’d brought with me. In addition to what Inez had already done to make this trip possible for me, she insisted that I take one of her no-limit American Express cards to pay for some of my purchases.

  We literally shopped until we dropped. Somehow we had managed to make it to an outside café near the shops, where we fell to the ground in the sand, our shopping bags landing next to our feet. I immediately kicked off my sandals so that I could feel the soft white sand between my toes. This was as close as I’d ever been to heaven, and I didn’t want the moment to end.

  Inez couldn’t wait for a waiter, so she offered to go to the bar to get us some drinks. I was on my back, stretched out on the ground, with my eyes closed, when I felt somebody tickling the bottoms of my bare feet. I looked up into the eyes of one of the most breathtaking men I’d ever seen in my life.

  “What the hell?” I managed, sitting bolt upright.

  “It was my pleasure to pay for your dinner last night,” the man said, squatting next to me. I could see several different ethnicities in his face and coloring. He was a medium shade of brown like me, but he had sharp Latin features and light blue, slanted eyes. He appeared to be a combination of Spanish, African, and Asian. His thick hair was a rusty red, but it was almost as kinky as mine was under the curly wig I had on.

  “So you’re the one,” I said, feeling clumsy.

  The handsome man gave me his hand and gently pulled me to my feet. I thought that I was going to go up in flames when he brushed sand off of my legs and butt. I was patting my wig to make sure it was still securely in place when Inez strutted back, holding a tray with our drinks. Before I could open my mouth, my handsome admirer did a double take and looked Inez up and down. He almost knocked me back to the ground, trying to get to her so fast to remove the tray from her hands. I felt clumsy and in the way, so I sat back down on the ground.

  “So we meet again,” she said to the man. “I see you’ve met Renee.”

  “Not exactly,” I said, feeling like a balloon that somebody had just let the air out of. “Mr…uh,” I said, snapping my fingers.

  “Jose,” Inez gushed, extending her hand for this man to kiss it. “Jose and I had a wonderful time last night.” She swooned, but I couldn’t tell whose benefit it was for. “Girl, you ought to see this man dance,” she squealed. Jose beamed proudly as he promptly wrapped his arm around Inez’s shoulder, squeezing her against his broad chest.

  “That’s nice,” I muttered, putting my sandals back on. The drink no longer appealed to me, nor did this man, with his smoldering good looks and rusty red hair. I felt woefully out of place. “Uh, I think I’ll drop my things off at the hotel, then take a walk on the beach,” I announced. I stumbled like a wounded lamb as I rose, snatching up my shopping bags in one swoop.

  CHAPTER 24

  I practically ran back to the hotel. As soon as I entered our suite, I got naked. I stood in the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door and tried to figure out what it was about me that made most men lose interest in me as soon as they saw
Inez. I was attractive, even more so than Inez. And I had not cheated nature by having cosmetic surgery. I had a few lumps, knots, and stretch marks on my body, which I had no trouble hiding, but you would have thought that I looked like Moms Mabley or Big Mama Thornton when I was around Inez. I knew it wasn’t just about looks. Inez exuded charisma, confidence, and sex appeal. I was convinced that even if she had looked like Moms Mabley or Big Mama Thornton, most men would still choose her over me.

  There was some justice in my world, some consolation: I had a husband and a strong marriage. Inez had struck out with three husbands and was probably going to end up alone in the long run. I had to be doing something right.

  I didn’t expect to see her any time soon, so I slipped into my long T-shirt of a nightgown and crawled into my bed. Even though the sun was hours away from sinking into the sea, I was in for the night. The large television in our room had cable, so I could enjoy some of the same shows I enjoyed at home. I laughed to myself, thinking how sad it was that I’d come all the way to the Caribbean and was in a luxurious hotel room, watching an I Love Lucy rerun.

  I decided that I would get used to ordering room service. And just to add some icing to the cake, I’d order steak and lobster for dinner, and the most expensive wine available, every evening that I spent in the room alone. Hell, Inez could afford it! I let out a wicked laugh, wondering how happy the waiter would be when he saw the huge tip I was going to add to the room service bill every single time.

  I had the telephone in my hand, about to order my dinner, when Inez stumbled into the room.

  “Girl, what the hell are you doing in bed? Don’t you want to go dancing?” she asked, slamming the door shut and marching over to the bed. She dropped her wide-brimmed straw hat to the floor, shaking her hair like a wet dog.

  “I thought you had other plans,” I said in a bitterly cold voice, placing the telephone back in its cradle.

  “I do have plans, and that is for you and me to go dancing.”

  “What about your new friend?” The words flew out of my mouth like spit.

  “You mean Jose?” Inez made a face and waved her hand. “He’s too old. He’s pushing forty.”

  “Well, we are not exactly spring chickens ourselves. Did you forget about your thirty-fourth birthday coming up next month? And me, I feel every one of my thirty-one years.”

  Inez dismissed me with another wave of her hand. “Don’t laugh. Old woman or not, I plan to enter that wet T-shirt contest at the Giggling Shark nightclub tonight. They started passing out flyers on the street right after you left. Come on. Get out of that bed, and put on your sluttiest dress, baby.”

  “I don’t dress like a slut, and you know it. I didn’t bring any slutty clothes,” I complained, trying to convince myself that thong bikinis and see-through halter tops didn’t count.

  “Suit yourself. But you ought to know by now that if you can’t beat ’em, you join ’em. If you wear one of your regular outfits tonight, everybody will know you are a schoolteacher.”

  “What’s wrong with that? I am a schoolteacher!” I hollered.

  “And that’s why I’m the one having all the fun. Get up. Put on that short red dress I talked you into buying today,” Inez ordered. She snatched the covers off of me and pulled me to the floor by my arm. We were dressed, out of the door, and walking into the club less than an hour later.

  With eleven other females to compete with, three of them blue-eyed blondes in their early twenties, and one young sister who looked more like Beyonce than Beyonce, Inez walked off with the first prize in the wet T-shirt contest that night at the Giggling Shark nightclub. She won three hundred dollars, plus all the tips that the men had tossed at her feet. And her drinks were free for the rest of the night. The club’s photographer took her picture as she stood in front of a large mural of a giggling shark on the wall.

  We both had fun that night, and the next few nights as well. We tried some other clubs along the beach, turning down drinks and dances left and right. We reluctantly declined the offers from the many men who wanted to join us at our table in each club. For the moment, we wanted to keep our space to ourselves. “This way we can enjoy each other’s company more,” Inez insisted, and I agreed. Leon had not called me but I was having too much fun to let that bother me.

  By the next Friday night, when we had only one more week to enjoy ourselves, we decided to do more dancing and more drinking. And we agreed that it should be at the club that seemed to be the most popular one on the island, the same club where Inez had won the wet T-shirt contest.

  Like before, the men at the Giggling Shark were all over the place, literally grabbing our hands each time we walked off the dance floor after dancing with another man. One thing I had to say about this island was that the men seemed to outnumber the women. At least, that was the way it looked in the clubs, the restaurants, and on the beach.

  And I loved the beach in Paraíso. I loved being near water, period. A few family outings near Lake Erie and a couple of family reunions on both sides of my family on the banks of some of the lakes in Mississippi and Alabama had been my only “beachlike” experiences. The white sands of the beach near our hotel were mesmerizing.

  I had never worn a thong bikini before in my life, so I was not prepared for all of the attention I got at the beach. When we were not shopping, taking siestas in our hotel room, or visiting the clubs, we spent our time stretched out on the beach. Inez was right at home on all that white sand. But I think it bothered her that I got a lot of attention, too. Because she had a lot more stretch marks on her backside than me, she refused to wear a thong bikini. She was self-conscious about the patch of stretch marks, which resembled a cat’s paw, right in the middle of her left buttock. Her plastic surgeon had not been able to remove it. But Inez was the kind of woman who always had a backup plan. Since her bosom was as close to perfection as one could be, she removed her bikini top and started prancing back and forth to the beachside bar, with her breasts jiggling like Jell-O. During the last two appearances that we’d made at the beach, I had felt like her understudy. After a while, I didn’t want to go back there with her. So we started spending more time in the clubs. But that backfired, too.

  I had to address the situation, which I had been trying to ignore. Whenever a man in a club paid more attention to me than Inez, she reacted in a way that made me uncomfortable. That usually meant that she showed a little more skin and shook her butt a little more than usual. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when she strolled over and plopped down into the lap of a real nice man who had been keeping me company at our table while she was entertaining the huge crowd in the Giggling Shark by dancing on top of a table that Friday night.

  After just a few minutes, the man slid Inez off of his lap. He then leaped out of his seat like a jackrabbit, darted across the floor, and grabbed a shapely White woman, pulling her out to the dance floor.

  “Now that was a tacky thing to do,” I complained.

  “I agree. Men of color act like dogs in heat when a White woman enters a place. Some of them at least.” Inez paused and grinned. “But I showed those White bitches who was in charge when I won that wet T-shirt contest the other night, huh?”

  “I was talking about you,” I said, glaring at her. “Not that White woman.”

  “What about me? What did I do?” Inez asked, with both of her eyebrows raised.

  “That man was talking to me. He’s a schoolteacher, too, and we were having a real nice conversation.”

  “So? I didn’t stop you from having a real nice conversation. I didn’t stop him from talking to you.”

  “Well, after you plopped your bubble butt down in his lap, what else could he do?”

  “Girl, we are having too much fun for you to start tripping.” Inez grabbed a napkin and used it to wave another man over to our table. “I’m not going to sit here and put up with your jealous attitude.”

  “I am not jealous of you, woman. I just don’t appreciate the way yo
u behave with the men who are clearly interested in talking to me,” I said.

  Inez gave me an exasperated look and rose from her chair so abruptly, it fell over.

  Things would never be the same after that night. Inez and I did not speak again until we returned to our hotel suite. There was so much tension in the air, you needed a machete to cut through it.

  “Inez, I have no idea how many men you have fucked, and I don’t want to know. I know how important it is for you to have so many men give you so much attention.” I was talking with my back to Inez as I removed my clothes. When I turned around, she was standing in the middle of the floor, with her hands on her hips. “You are the most insecure woman I have ever known, and you don’t need to be,” I told her, with my arms folded.

  “I don’t know what in the hell makes you think I’m insecure. I can have any man I want. Insecure? Me? I don’t think so. That’s what you, and the rest of the bitches who hate me, think.” Inez stomped over to her bed and sat down hard, struggling with her sandals, trying to remove them so fast.

  “You can’t stand for me to get more attention than you. Just like that day when we came back from shopping and that Jose came over. I was really the one he had wanted to talk to.” I pouted. I crawled into the bed and pulled the sheets up to my neck.

  “Then why didn’t you fight for him? That is the problem with you weak bitches.”

  “I am not weak. I am just as strong as you are. And I don’t have to suck dicks or fuck every man I come across to show just how strong I am.”

  I had never seen Inez look so angry before in my life. She jumped up from her bed and stood in the middle of the floor. Her body looked so stiff and still, she could have passed for a statue.

  “And that makes you better than me?” she asked, her voice fading in and out like a dying lightbulb.

  “I never said I was better than you. I said I was just as strong as you are.” I sniffed. “I just don’t show it the way you do. No wonder Leon has such a hard time accepting you in our lives. He thinks you’re a bad influence on me.”