Seeking shelter from the heat and his silence, Alicia picks up a mop, finds a bucket, wipes the kitchen floor, scrubs the surfaces. She devotes herself entirely to the self-appointed task of restoring cleanliness in Arturo’s house. The scratching noise of the spring pad against the cooking hob disturbs him, makes him lift his head. He sees the silhouette of Alicia’s body bending over the cooker, partially—sideways—facing away from him. He sees the perky shape of her small tawny breasts bouncing under her skimpy top, in tune with the rubbing motion of her right arm. She can sense his gaze upon her, waits expectantly for the cue that will allow her to do what she so anxiously desires. Stop cleaning, Alicia, that’s enough. All he means is what he says. He still wants to play no part in her life. Alicia reads too much into his words, approaches readily, swinging her hips sensually, dropping her utensils halfway down the aisle, replacing them with two fresh bottles of cold beer and an invigorating dose of lust. She knows Art loves to see a girl drink beer straight from the bottle. She sits on his lap, whispers in his ear. He doesn’t need to hear her words to understand their meaning. She caresses his chest, bites his ear, digs her fingernails into his skin. He knows the outcome of the evening is inevitable. She strokes him ravenously, immersed in her own desire. He can see their image in the mirror. He looks at himself, straight into his own eyes, as she uses him to satiate her lust. I like mirrors. The glass reveals what is otherwise reserved to the touch only, persuades him to join her feast. He grabs her by the thighs, pulls her closer to him. She is already on the verge of ecstasy when his heavy touch, his virile thrust, drive her overboard. He is penetrating her, but it is she, really, who ravishes him. Her tense, arrhythmic shivering hurts him but he shows no sign of pain. She frees him from her grip, kneels before him, licks him clean. He still looks at nothing but the mirror. She meets his eyes through the looking glass as she paces her wide purple tongue up and down the slimy valleys of his masculinity. His expressionless eyes bounce between their own reflection and that of her playful ones. Pleasure mounts: her teeth tease him, her lips rouse him, her hands touch him in the right places. He still makes no sound. For two and a half seconds he finds himself untroubled, almost happy. The couch of Art’s childhood—drenched in more than spilled beer, dew, and frustration—serves as a makeshift bed for two exhausted lovers to sleep placidly, serenely, in the company of each other until the morning after.
V
I’m furious with that whore. Eduardo knows it, that’s why he says nothing. Say what you have to say. His driving turns violent, reflecting our shared mood. Still silence. I can see the trace of a smile forming on his face. He finds amusement at my expense, but he will make no comment. I can’t believe she backed out in the end. There is hardly any traffic: once upon a time, this road would have been teeming with cars but these days hardly anyone ventures out into the Caracas night. That’s why the little harlot wouldn’t join us in the end, or at least that’s what she said. Say what you have to say. And still nothing, just the road quickly guiding us through the city. I have nothing to say. The smile remains intact, obvious, rude. Let’s go get some hot dogs. Eduardo slows down, looks out the window, makes a sharp U-turn, and drives in the opposite direction. No, not this one, man, you know I don’t like this one. Let’s stop at the one with the green tent. Even sharper turn to the right, screeching tires, late breaking, approaching headlights. Close call. Calm down, tiger. It was me who got turned down, not you. The smile, briefly erased by the moment of tension, returns to his face. This time I fight his silence with more of the same. Not even the radio is on, not even the air conditioner. Five minutes of nothing make for a long gap.
The queue is long but Joao, the hot dog man, is as quick as ever. Un con todo, por favor. You want one or two? Son tres, doctor. I hate eating one hot dog while holding another one in my hands. If that means I’ll have to queue again for the second one, so be it. I told you from the start she was a teaser. I knew this had to come at some point. Just not when I brought it up: it has to be when Eduardo decides is most effective. On top, Alicia is waiting for you at her place. I swallow my hot dog in a hurry, find in the queue the perfect excuse not to listen to his moralizing. Get me a Coke. A suspect Corolla whizzes past, pulls the brakes, reverses until it’s parallel with the hot dog stand. Eduardo’s request gets lost in the rackety thumping of the loud speakers. There are four males inside the car, only one jumps out. I haven’t seen any of it, only heard the noise that keeps me from catching Eduardo’s voice. He calls for me once, twice, but I just can’t hear him. I’m still disgusted by the outcome of the night, by Eduardo’s comment, lost in my own thoughts, oblivious to the danger of the developing situation. Suddenly, I feel a violent pull from behind. I drop the money in my right hand as I lose my balance. I get thrown into a car, forced into a seat by the slamming door. A large black piece of iron distorts the space around us. Boom! I didn’t see the lightning, I only heard the sound. It wasn’t firecrackers. The car I’m in jolts forward. More tire screeching, slight slide from the back, appropriate correction of the steering wheel. I can see blood. I can still see his blood. Silence.
Eduardo is shaking. He sure isn’t drunk anymore. We fly out of Las Mercedes. We’re on the motorway, heading somewhere different, not home: we went past Chuao a long time ago. The gap opened by silence becomes so much more piercing when you long for a specific melody to disturb it. No sirens. The guy in front of me in the queue now lies bathed in his own blood, dying for a hot dog. Eduardo lives. So do I. Eduardo drives. I think. I cannot take it anymore. I don’t want to take it anymore. I’m leaving. My final thought comes out aloud. Eduardo looks at me inquisitive, confused. I’m out of here, Eduardo. I’m out of this dump.
Part I
Continued
VI
Maybe I’m being naïve, but for the love of God, I give this guy the chance of a lifetime, the chance to move out of a country that is up in arms, the chance to make his dream come true, and he can only answer, We ain’t at uni chasing after the same girl anymore, Dragon. I’m not talking about a girl, Art, I’m talking about a project! A massive project, a major enterprise, a fabled fucking fantasy. Things are not what they used to be, man. What the hell? What’s that supposed to mean? And who the hell is talking about a girl in the first place?
I’d thought one phone call would be enough to solve the first of our practical problems. I’d thought one phone call would reignite a friendship that had once flourished without boundaries, that had emerged spontaneously from precious nothing and had grown as if by magic, until it had turned us—Art and me—inseparable. As it turns out, even the most intense of friendships have a best before date, and five years have proven too long to stay inseparable.
Needless to say, the conversation doesn’t go the way I’d envisioned, and Arturo is no longer the adventurous character he once was, and suddenly I’m exposed to Nathaniel, in the same room, as I speak to a friend I no longer know, and my agony, my internal struggle against Art, against Nathe, is laid to rest with Art’s final words, which escape the earpiece loudly, infesting the stagnant air with defeat.
I’d already arranged to pay SamB back for his hospitality with dinner at my house before speaking to Art, and I’d schemed with Nathe and Sheila to let him into the little secret of our project that night, but in my mind I was absolutely certain that by then the first foundations of Dragon Wings would be reinforced with the presence of an experienced aviation professional. Instead, the couple of days prior to our dinner have been punctuated by a fair amount of disappointment but above all by a growing sense of the urgency of a situation that seems to be getting more critical by the hour.
I’d intended to treat my guests—Nathe and Sheila, SamB and his lady—to a feast of traditional English roast on Saturday evening, but no lamb is to be found on the island, and the beef looks suspect to me, so I’ve decided to roast three whole chickens and serve them with steamed vegetables, Yorkshire pudding, and apple sauce.
Sheila and Nathe arrive in
the middle of the day, well ahead of schedule, and she cannot believe her eyes as the puddings begin to rise in small cupcake containers—the nearest equivalent I could find in the island’s shops to a Yorkshire pudding tin. You cook dat youself? The glint in her eyes, the curl in her brow, the awe in her face: I’d confess to anything she might accuse me of. Anything at all.
Nathe is watching a football game outside while we busy ourselves in the kitchen for the best part of two hours. Suddenly every recipe, every carrot that needs dicing, every dish that needs washing, turns into a matchmaker, as the touch of her fingers barely brushing mine, the scent of her sweat as the temperature in the kitchen rises, the sound of her laughter with every stupid joke I make, take me farther away from the problems and the disillusion that have been weighing me down over the past two days.
The moon is out in full so there is no need for candles, but on the evening when we were meant to pitch the idea of a regional airline based on Anguilla to the man who might make all the difference to our erratic project, I feel more romantically inclined than is advisable. Under a full display of candles (small, thick, round ones—the kind usually reserved for cemeteries: it seems Anguillans are not particularly fond of candles) it soon becomes bitterly evident that this international crowd (SamB is Zimbabwean, and Jessica—his toy of choice tonight—Vincentian, Sheila has never set foot in England, and Nathaniel, well, Nathaniel is a citizen of the world) couldn’t care less about my apple sauce and Yorkshire pudding.
My choice of food proves a rotund failure but all I could have dreamed of getting out of this dinner I got already during its preparation, in the kitchen, sharing precious hours with the most exuberant of women, and my plan was not so much to get SamB’s attention with good food but rather to have the board of directors of Dragon Wings sit for the first time around a table with the most reliable pilot on the island on an evening when several glasses of champagne would make toasting partners of first acquaintances.
That’s how, suddenly, a matter of acquaintances turns into our first positive resolve to create an actual rather than just a hypothetical airline, when SamB nonchalantly observes that Simon O’Connor still owns one of his Queen Airs—I see it parked in the hangar every day. I’m immediately overcome with excitement. It must be the one that was involved in the accident but at least that means it shouldn’t cost you too much money. Only Sheila is vaguely aware of the details of a scandal that erupted long before Nathe landed on the island. Ralph McKenzie hit something with the propeller; turns out he’d been drinking, shouldn’t have been flying in the first place. According to SamB, Leyland Airways had had two mechanics at the time but they were only certified by the ECCAA to carry out maintenance, not repair, of the airplanes. By the time Simon could bring someone from Antigua to make the repairs, he could no longer afford it. I’m totally oblivious to the fact that the first potential aircraft Dragon Wings might even consider purchasing has been involved in what sounds like a pretty serious accident. I simply do not care. After the incident Ralph’s license was immediately suspended; so was Leyland Airways’ air operator’s certificate. The investigation lasted nine weeks and Simon had to keep the payroll running. In the end Ralph’s license was rescinded for a year and the airline put under probation. No passenger got to charter a Leyland flight ever again. I don’t even know whether the Queen Air’s certificate of airworthiness was renewed. Ralph’s back in the business, though—flying a private Twin Otter over in St. Martin.
So, where can we go with this thing? Ever the pragmatist, Nathe is typically prosaic about our latest discovery, but if his question has caught me mentally embellishing SamB’s story with all sorts of fantasies, I can also see through his cool façade: an innocuous comment, an innocent anecdote, has set the engine of Nathaniel’s curiosity in motion. Once you get it going, it’s ideal for the region: St. Barths, St. Martin, Nevis—if you get the permits, even Statia. You won’t be allowed to land in Saba, only Winair are licensed to land there, and in all honestly you’re better off staying away from that airstrip. I don’t know the exact specs of this Queen but most of them sit nine to ten people. I don’t even know anymore why we’re only talking about this. What are we waiting for? Let’s get it. Let’s go. But Sheila is there at hand, timely, beautiful, composed, to restore the balance between Nathe’s seemingly skeptic curiosity and my overexcited craze. It sound like we should be having a look—where we find dis Simon O’Connor man?
VII
The moonlit evening in which social etiquette dictated that SamB should first make the acquaintance of the board of directors of Dragon Wings suddenly became the brightest beam shedding light on the right path for Dragon, Nathaniel, and Sheila to turn their hypothetical airline into a real enterprise. While Sheila spent all her time searching for alternative funding within the island and Nathaniel engaged in the challenging process of clearing the bureaucratic hurdles placed ahead of an official meeting with government representatives to discuss routes, permits, and most importantly, a possible subsidy, Dragon took it upon himself to track down Simon O’Connor and lure him to a dinner table where the rest of the high command of Dragon Wings could join them to discuss the details of the potential transaction that would provide the airline with its first piece of aeronautical equipment.
But Simon O’Connor turned out to be a conspicuous fellow who seemed to spend more time traveling from one place to the next than staying in any of the places to which he traveled, and by the time Dragon made a breakthrough in his thoroughly frustrating detective mission, the full extent of the company’s economic precariousness had already made an impression in the mind of all three partners: after three weeks of chasing Simon O’Connor, Dragon Jones finally managed to exchange some words with the man himself, to pen him down for a rendezvous at the restaurant of choice, to begin the negotiation that would eventually liberate him from what for him was, no doubt, nothing more than a problem, and for the new nucleus of the Jones family nothing less than a coup. No matter what price he names, we cannot afford it. Nathaniel flipped through a governmental document delivered to him the day before; Sheila considered the last few names on a list of possible investors on the island; dust crawled inside the open window, shimmering as it floated past the ominous shaft of light that invaded the office. Silence. How are we going to pay for this? Silence. How? Nathaniel hardly took his eyes off the document: Borrow it from Jones Investments. Dragon was stunned. What? Nathaniel’s irresponsiveness fueled Dragon’s anxiety. You can’t just take 100,000 US dollars and call it a loan: that is an investment. Nathaniel momentarily raised his eyes from the yellowed paper and with his powerful voice, You can, if you replace it within three months. His stern tone settled on the stagnant atmosphere of the room. Sheila felt obliged to break the uneasy silence: Not all options have been exhausted, you know, a number of investors kyan be persuaded to join us but dis kyan’t all be done in de next couple of weeks.
Three weeks wasn’t soon enough for the meeting with Simon O’Connor, but the date had been set and Simon’s unreliable character could not be trusted for rescheduling and the dice already tumbled. So Dragon e-mailed Jones Investments’ London office for them to draft a short-term loan agreement and stand by for a transfer of funds from the company’s main account into Dragon Wings’s account in the Indigenous Bank of Anguilla.
* * *
Three cars arriving from three different directions coincided at the exact same time in the parking lot of the Koal Keel, the island’s most emblematic restaurant, where over one year before Nathaniel Jones had first dined with Sheila Rawlingson. Simon O’Connor emerged from his stylish Honda with his lawyer. Dragon came alone. Meanwhile, Sheila made the party gasp in awe, her sensual figure delicately hugged by a black dress that hung loosely from her shoulders.
The menus had hardly been collected by the waiter, the wine had not yet been decided upon, never mind poured (Simon only drank club soda with a slice of lemon), when the dry, charmless approach of a hurried businessman harassed an entire f
amily. I know exactly what you want and why you have taken me here to ask for it, so let’s cut to the chase: I want 150,000 US for the plane. If you agree, we can continue with our lovely soirée, otherwise let us save ourselves the time and the energy.
The price was too high, the attitude was insulting, and the timing was spectacularly ill-conceived; however, Nathaniel, the negotiator, rose to the occasion, took control of the evening. I would absolutely love to taste that 2003 Chateau de Rothschild. After an initial, respectful rebuttal—My friend, we don’t even know, yet, whether this plane is suitable for our purposes—Nathaniel continued to soothe Simon O’Connor’s overzealous spirit with a detailed inquiry into the condition of the aircraft, the circumstances of the accident. A long soliloquy that lasted the best part of an hour and took them through the appetizers was finally summarized with the assurance that you can load this plane with nine people, charge them as much as you want, and take them wherever you want . . . tomorrow, if it pleases you. Everything is within the strictest boundaries of the law: the propeller has been repaired, the plane has been deemed airworthy.
On the Way Back Page 4