Then I steered her back to the web page for a quick reality check. But she just seemed annoyed all over again. We called Jane and warned her about this woman.
“Fiona has a terminal case of folie de grandeur,” I advised Jane. “Don’t take any lip from her.”
“Don’t worry!” Jane said brightly, obviously not the least concerned (I told you Jane’s a tough cookie).
But we steeled ourselves for trouble anyway. And yet the day of Fiona’s arrival came and went with no irate phone calls from her or desperate pleas for mercy from Jane.
“Maybe they had a shoot-out and they’re both dead,” I suggested to Michael that night.
“That’s the only logical explanation. Otherwise we would have heard something for sure.”
Unable to contain my curiosity any longer, I called Jane the next morning.
“Okay, what’s the story?”
“What story?”
“About Fiona. Has she been difficult?”
She laughed.
“Well, she was a bit peevish when we drove up to your house and there was no pool.”
“Huh?”
“She said you advertised a lap pool.”
“Jane…” I began.
“Calm down,” she laughed. “I know you didn’t tell her any such thing. But wait, it gets better. She walked through the house like Martha Stewart on steroids, pointing out every tiny imperfection. I kept expecting her to pull out a pair of white gloves and spot-check for dust.”
“Oh God.”
“But the strangest part is, she called this morning and said how much she and her husband adore the house.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She couldn’t stop raving about the crisp sheets and the big fluffy towels. She’s a pussycat.”
I rest my case.
If good-quality linens can win over Fiona, they can win over anyone.
☼ ☼ ☼
Bookings stayed sluggish right through December that year, though we clung to the hope that things would soon pick up.
And eventually they did.
Jane called in early January to say that the house just up the hill from ours had been rented for the following week by a group of classical musicians from the Pittburgh area. As it turned out, the party was bigger than expected and they needed two more bedrooms. Was our house available?
You bet.
We learned later that several of the musicians brought along their instruments and every evening gave impromptu concerts by our neighbor’s pool during the cocktail hour.
We tried to imagine the sound of classical music wafting through the palm trees at sunset just above our house. I must admit the thought made our dark winter days seem a little brighter.
Even better, the merry band of musicians returned to the island the following year and two of them (Carol and Scott) got married on New Year’s Eve. Yet again our house had become part of a love story, which we felt sure would generate giant waves of positive karma.
And it did.
☼ ☼ ☼
Another guest that season had an amazing story to tell, though we didn’t know it until several months after her stay.
All we knew at the time was that she was from North Carolina and that she was bringing her partner and a couple of friends along. A quick Google search (yes, I admit that I sometimes Googled prospective guests) revealed that she was a veterinarian from Raleigh-Durham. Not much more.
But she left behind some clues about herself in our Comments and Suggestions book.
Her entry read: Our week here has left us feeling extraordinarily connected to nature, and at the same time pleasantly isolated from mankind, which was just what we needed. On a personal note, our time in Vieques has been one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life—right up there with meeting my fiancé, beating leukemia, and getting rescued by helicopter after being stranded in a lifeboat for six days in the Atlantic.
Huh?
I read it again. Then I called Jane.
“Did Erin mention anything about being stranded in a lifeboat in the Atlantic?”
“Who’s Erin?”
“The veterinarian from North Carolina, remember?”
“Sure, I remember. Great gal, but she didn’t mention any lifeboat. I think that would have stuck in my poor brain, addled as it is.”
“Apparently she was stranded in the Atlantic for six days.”
“How do you know?”
“She mentioned it in our guestbook.”
“I should take a peek at that thing sometime.”
“You might enjoy it. It’s full of comments about how wonderful you are.”
“Wow, sounds like a classic.”
We did further online research about Erin. In a nutshell, here’s her story, which (I kid you not) was made into a TV movie in 1993.
In the late ’80s she was diagnosed with leukemia. She went through the usual hell of chemo and radiation and three years later was declared a survivor. Then one day she took her longtime partner aside and told him she was pregnant. He could hardly believe it. To add to his general befuddlement, she informed him that there was one last thing she needed to do before assuming the responsibilities of parenthood—sail up the Atlantic seaboard.
Very reluctantly he agreed, though at the last minute he found himself unable to join her. Intrepidly, she set out with two male friends in idyllic September weather, only to be clobbered by Hurricane Bob on their third day out. The boat capsized and they were set adrift in a lifeboat.
After three or four days they were pretty much convinced they were going to die. One of the men became delusional and threatened the other guy. Erin, in the throes of morning sickness, mediated, keeping everyone calm and reasonably sane until they were rescued at the end of their sixth day out.
Although I was somewhat wary of letting Erin know I’d been researching her past, I couldn’t resist sending her an email to confirm the story. After all, she had sold her tale to ABC, so it couldn’t be that much of a secret.
It’s true, she responded matter-of-factly. I’ve had a blessed life. I’m healthy, happily partnered and our wonderful son Thomas is now sixteen. P.S. Thomas loves the ocean.
Thirty-Three
Water Works
Despite the fact that water completely surrounds Vieques, it’s still plagued by water shortages.
Okay, maybe not plagued, but you get my point.
The island’s drinking water is supplied by a large pipeline from the big island eight miles away. Water for other purposes, including sewage, comes from reservoirs that catch and store the island’s plentiful though sporadic rainfall.
All well and good. But unfortunately without the slightest warning, both sources regularly go on the blink.
Once, when I was washing my hair, the showerhead hiccupped and belched and then petered to a weak dribble before stopping completely. I toweled myself off, threw on shorts and a T-shirt and ran around the house desperately trying to eke out a cup or two of water from another source—any source (bathroom sink, kitchen sink, balcony hose)—to rinse out the shampoo. But everything was bone dry. Within minutes my hair was stiff and gray. I stomped into the bathroom every so often to see if the water had come on again.
It hadn’t.
Such times make you appreciate the elegant simplicity of a baseball cap. Luckily I’d brought one with me and was able to wrangle it onto my brittle crown of hair. There it stayed until the water returned with an urgent whoosh, four hours later. I mentioned this little episode to Jane the next time we spoke.
“It happens all the time,” she said nonchalantly. “The water supply is notoriously undependable here. Sometimes it goes off for days.”
“Not really,” I said. “Days?”
I couldn’t imagine.
“Yep, this is the Wild West.”
I was quickly learning that this was one of her favorite characterizations of Vieques, one that, in the present context, conjured up sexy images of unwashed cowboys. The reality, of course, was
considerably less titillating (think high Body Mass Index, greasy hair, and sweaty pits).
“Is there anything we can do about it?”
“Sure, you can get a cistern.”
I’d heard of them but wasn’t quite sure how they worked. “Which involves…”
“Buying a huge plastic vat and having it installed on your roof.”
“The roof! Why the roof?”
“It’s called gravity, sweetheart. You want the water to be higher than you are.”
“But what about those concrete pylons in the sideyard when we bought the house? Didn’t somebody say they’d been built to support a cistern?”
“They may have been, but it wouldn’t have worked. And anyway you had them removed.”
She had me there.
“But isn’t it dangerous to have a huge tank of water on top of your house? What if the roof collapsed?”
“If you happened to be standing underneath it, you’d probably die. Or at least need a very big Band-Aid.”
Jane was obviously in one of her Ironic Moods. I decided not to play along.
“Where does the water come from?”
She laughed.
“The municipal water supply.”
“So it collects in the cistern over time? Doesn’t it get stagnant?”
Without missing a beat, her tone shifted from sarcastic to expository.
“If everything’s working properly, a pump circulates fresh water through the system on a regular basis so it doesn’t get stagnant.”
Nice to know.
“So where do we begin?”
“With me, as usual.”
“You’ll get us some prices?”
“Pronto.”
Although cisterns consist of little more than a large plastic tank attached to a very simple pump, we weren’t particularly surprised to learn that they’re absurdly expensive in Vieques.
In fact, when Jane told us the price, there was a slightly satisfying “I knew it” element to the whole thing. Once again we were being forced to shell out a lot of money for an expense we had never anticipated. This was threatening to become a pattern.
We chose a mid-price model. As Jane had foretold, it was large and black and, to my eye, singularly unattractive. Oh, and there were two of them. Almost worse, our electrician positioned the bright red switch needed to activate them almost exactly halfway up the most prominent wall in the house (the south wall of the great room).
I tried to hide my distaste for these enormous black money-gobblers but eventually it came tumbling out. Approaching our house from the rear one afternoon, after a short stroll with Michael, I stopped dead in my tracks, transfixed by the cisterns’ hideousness.
“What have we done to our poor house?” I wailed.
“We’ve made sure our guests don’t get caught with shampoo-head,” Michael replied, unperturbed. “And anyway,” he went on less convincingly, “they’re really not so ugly. Anyone who’s anyone on the island has a cistern.”
“So you’re saying they’re a status symbol?”
He hesitated, but only for a moment.
“Absolutely,” he said with conviction.
On what planet? I wanted to ask.
But I didn’t.
☼ ☼ ☼
Fast forward a week or two.
I was lying in bed one night watching a DVD, Michael dozing lightly beside me, when it occurred to me out of the blue that our brand new cisterns were positioned, not only directly over our bedroom, but squarely over my side of the bed.
If the roof collapsed I’d be crushed in an instant. And it wouldn’t be a softly-lit death scene with violins and pretty speeches—I’d be flattened like a doormat.
This image, which I decided not to share with Michael, kept me wide awake and focused on our bedroom ceiling with laser-like intensity for several evenings. Occasionally I would drop off only to wake up in a cold sweat. Destruction, I was certain, lurked just above me. And let’s not forget that the five hundred thread-count sheet set I’d chosen with such loving care would also be completely trashed.
I tried to reason with myself, an exercise that invariably sounds more feasible on paper than in practice. But, to be honest, if I’ve reached the point where I need to reason with myself, I’ve progressed beyond the cozy realm of logic into some fuzzy purgatory of paranoia.
I considered creeping into the living room for some much-needed shut-eye. Or to one of the downstairs bedrooms. But I decided against it, mainly because explanations would be required the following morning and frankly I wasn’t up to explaining anything.
I was too exhausted.
☼ ☼ ☼
By the time Michael’s sister, Maria, and her friend Jennifer came down for a visit a few months later, I had learned to appreciate our new cisterns in all their glory.
The girls were giddily enjoying a break from the joys of motherhood (both have young children), and everything was peachy.
Until Maria decided to wash her hair.
There she was in the downstairs shower, lathering away, gazing wistfully down our hill towards the ocean, when—guess what?
The water shut off.
Jennifer, napping in the next room, heard Maria’s cry of distress and came running to her friend’s rescue. Within a couple of minutes Jennifer was bounding up the stairs to tell us the big news.
Unfortunately Michael wasn’t home—he’d gone to the hardware store to pick up some garden-related gadget or other.
“Maria’s in the shower and there’s no water,” Jennifer blurted out as soon as I emerged from the bedroom.
How embarrassing, I thought. And then of course it hit me.
I can fix that.
“No problem,” I answered, turning on my heel and heading towards the back wall of the great room with a glorious sense of purpose. With a flourish I flicked on the hideous red switch.
There followed a gigantic, primal gurgling belch—and then the sound of coursing water.
“Oh, thank you!” Maria screamed from downstairs.
“We have a cistern,” I remarked casually to Jennifer. “In fact, we have two.”
“What’s a cistern?”
I explained.
“Smart move,” she commented admiringly.
“Thanks,” I gloated, all but patting myself on the back. “Frankly, I sleep better at night just knowing they’re there.”
Thirty-Four
Relatively Awful
We bit the bullet the next season and advertised the house as either a one- or three-bedroom, hoping to catch all the couples-traveling-solo business we’d missed the previous season.
Our hunch was right.
Come September, the inquiries began pouring in.
We got emails from Washington State, Utah, Colorado, even Nova Scotia, as well as all the usual spots on the East Coast.
One stands out in my memory.
Checking our inbox one day, I found an email containing a phone number with a very familiar area code—that of the vicinity of my hometown, a small-ish town in Tennessee.
Although Michael usually responded to inquiries, I couldn’t resist making this call myself. A woman answered the phone and immediately passed me along to her husband Kevin.
After exchanging the usual pleasantries, I asked what town they lived in. He sounded slightly surprised by my question. Then he named my hometown.
“I grew up there,” I said.
“No way,” he responded. “Who are your parents?”
I told him.
“You’re joking,” he said quietly.
“No, why?”
“I’m related to your mother.”
“Oh my God, how?”
“Well…” he began, and then launched into a long and tortuous explanation of how his grandmother and my maternal grandmother were first cousins thrice removed.
“I can’t wait to tell my mother about this,” I said.
He laughed.
“We sent out lots of emails about
houses in Vieques but of course now that I know who you are, there’s no question which one we’re going to rent.”
He told me about himself and his wife, Helen, describing the two of them as “professional travelers.” In fact, he went on, they had visited sixteen countries since retiring five years earlier.
“Have you ever been to Puerto Rico?”
“Never.”
“What made you consider Vieques?”
“Well, we read an article about the island online and decided since it’s the new hot spot in the Caribbean, we’d better see it before it starts sizzling. At that point, we won’t be able to afford it. We’re budget travelers all the way.”
This sounded reasonable enough.
“Makes sense,” I said encouragingly.
“Yep, we don’t eat out, we don’t take taxis, and we don’t rent cars. Too expensive.”
Oh no.
“Kevin, I’m afraid you’ll need to rent a car in Vieques.”
“How’s that?”
“Our house is in the hills. You’ll need a car to get to the beach.”
“We will?”
I wondered how carefully he’d read our web page. Even more, I wondered if he regretted having already committed himself to renting our property.
“Yep, I’m afraid you will. Look, why don’t you sleep on it? If you find something that suits your lifestyle better, no hard feelings.”
“What do you mean, our lifestyle?”
Now I had offended my mother’s long-lost tenth cousin or whatever he was.
“I just meant maybe someplace within walking distance of the beach.”
“We don’t like being near the beach.”
“Ah.”
“Not. At. All. Too many bugs.”
“It’s kind of a buggy island, Kevin,” I said in a weak voice. “We have bugs up in the hills too.”
“What kind?”
I thought quickly.
“Well, all kinds of mosquitoes, including the kind that carry dengue fever. And we saw a tarantula in the driveway recently.”
“No problem,” he said. “We’ll take it.”
What could I do? This simple transaction had obviously devolved into a Matter of Family Honor.
“Fantastic!”
☼ ☼ ☼
The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House Page 21