by Nicki Chen
They ducked under the bougainvillea-draped trellis and were starting toward the front door when suddenly she felt a wave of vertigo and grabbed Jay’s elbow to steady herself.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, loosening her grip. “I’m fine. They could sure use some better lighting here, though, don’t you think?”
He placed his hand over hers, but as they continued through the open door to the reception desk, she suspected he wasn’t convinced.
“The D-TAP party,” he said.
An Asian woman half-hidden behind an arrangement of bird-of-paradise flowers frowned. “Dee-what?”
“Development Trust for Asia and the Pacific. Mr. Charbonneau’s party.”
“Ah, yes. This way please.” The woman led them through what must have been the living room before the house became a restaurant and out onto a patio where tables were arranged along one side of a swimming pool.
“Mr. Charbonneau’s party,” the hostess announced, opening the door onto a narrow room with one long table down the middle.
“Hey, McIntoshes,” Alexi said, waving. “Glad you could make it.”
“Diana, how are you?” Suling asked with a sympathetic squint.
“I told them about our little mishap,” Abby said.
“Near mishap,” Diana countered. “A small adventure at the end of a pleasant afternoon.”
“Too many adventures.” Suling jabbed Alexi. “Before we married, you said Port Vila is so safe. I don’t even need to lock my car, you said.”
Alexi put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Still, I’d wager it’s safer than Shanghai. Anyway, until tonight, did you ever hear of anyone stealing a car in Port Vila?”
“Lincoln Toms,” Saudur said.
Jay pulled out a chair and motioned for Diana to sit in it. “Where is everyone?” he asked, looking at the half-empty table.
“They’ll trickle in when it’s time to eat.” Alexi turned back to Saudur. “Lincoln Toms? Oh, yeah. The guy who escaped from prison last year.”
“Vanuatu’s most notorious criminal.” Saudur gave Abby a disapproving glance. “Something my wife doesn’t seem to appreciate. He’s escaped from prison more than once. Steals cars and whiskey. Uses the cars to stash the whiskey in the bush, and then, when he’s had enough to drink, he drives around and gets caught. I guess he assumes no one will find his stash of booze and he can go back next time he breaks out of prison.” Again the sideways glance, the pinched lips.
“And,” Abby said, “for all we know Lincoln Toms is still in prison.”
Alexi leaned forward. “The way I heard it, this Toms character drove his stolen car past the prison last year so he could wave at his buddies.” He laughed. “Wanted to show them he knew how to drive a car.”
“Wasn’t our bloke,” Abby said. She reached across in front of Saudur and scooped up a handful of peanuts. “Unless . . .” She considered the nuts in her hand. “Unless he ditched his prison garb.”
Of course. The man was an escapee with nothing to wear but striped pants or an orange jumpsuit—whatever they wore in prison here. Hence the homemade penis wrapper. Diana shivered. Perhaps, despite his leafy necklace, their thwarted carjacker was not so comical after all. Frightening, she thought, remembering his expression as he dug his fingers into her arm, but not stupid.
“We don’t need another description of your bloke’s improvised outfit,” Saudur said. He reached into the peanut bowl and came up empty.
Alexi raised another bowl to show Saudur that it too was empty.
It was past seven thirty, and they were all getting hungry. It wouldn’t be right, though, Diana supposed, to order the food until Marshall arrived. Still . . . She looked at Jay and then at the kitchen.
He nodded and waved at the waiter. “Could we have the appetizer plate please,” he said, “and some tea.”
They nibbled on a sampling of Chinese appetizers and sipped tea for another twenty minutes. By the time the Fabrizios arrived, the Ifopos and McCurdys close behind, the barbecued pork and shrimp toast were gone.
“What’s this?” McCurdy glared at the picked-over platters with open-mouthed disbelief. “You’re eating without us?” He was a tall, husky man, towering over the table. But Leo McCurdy’s hair was turning gray and his skin sagged. Height and aggression were his only advantages, leveraged now by the fact that most of the guests were seated.
“You’re late,” Jay said.
“Hey, there’s still some pickled jellyfish.” Alexi pinched up a cluster of semi-transparent strips with his chopsticks, allowing them to shake like a bunch of wriggling albino worms. “Very tender tonight.”
McCurdy’s face reddened. “Where’s the chief?” he demanded.
Abby shrugged. “Who knows.”
Ignoring her, McCurdy ushered his wife to the far end of the table. “Sea jelly,” he grumbled. “You call that food?”
Food or not, even the jelly fish was gone before Marshall and Carole Anne showed up.
“Hey, chief,” McCurdy said the moment the door opened. “We waited for ya.”
Marshall paused in the ill-lit doorway. Then he put his arm around Carole Anne and squeezed her shoulder. “We ran into a little trouble,” he said at last.
“A little trouble?” Carole Anne pulled away from him. There was a suppressed gasp as she stepped into the light where everyone could see the bruise on her neck, a splotchy purplish red from ear to ear.
“We were carjacked,” Marshall said. “Late this afternoon on our way home from tennis. The company car.”
“You, too?” Alexi asked.
Marshall ignored both Alexi and the knowing looks that were ricocheting around the table. He crossed his arms and uncrossed them as though he were an actor unsure how to play an unfamiliar role. “The guy was a well-known criminal,” he said. “Lincoln Toms, a repeat offender. He escaped from jail late last night.”
Saudur raised his eyebrows. “You see,” he mouthed at Abby.
“They’ll catch him soon enough,” Marshall said. “No place to hide on a little island like this.”
Carole Anne glared at him. “That’s not the point.” She turned toward the rows of sympathetic eyes on both sides of the dinner table. “Y’all don’t know what it’s like.”
Jay squeezed Diana’s hand.
“That naked man had his hands all over me.” Carole Anne flapped her hands beside her head like someone fighting off a swarm of insects. She dropped her head and let her arms fall limp at her sides. “I don’t know how I’ll ever get over this,” she sobbed.
Diana winced. She had to hold her hand over her mouth to keep from sobbing. Why did the attack seem worse now when Carole Anne was telling about it?
“Now, now,” Marshall said. “It’s all over, baby. You’re safe now. Come on.” He led her to a chair and sat her down. Positioning himself behind her, he rested his weight on her chair and addressed his audience. “This guy was a real wild man—crazy, matted hair, desperate eyes, dried blood on his neck. I could tell that he was capable of anything. And he was armed. These criminals can make a weapon out of anything. A shank they call it. He could have killed Carole Anne.”
The image of a homemade knife—there all along, in the man’s other hand—sent a cold shock up Diana’s spine. The attack had happened so fast, and the sunlight . . . wasn’t the light spotted under the trees or slanted or . . .? Her face went cold and then hot, and her stomach felt queasy. Too much tea. Or peanuts and jellyfish. If Marshall would just stop talking, they could eat.
“Sir.” The waiter, who must have been as eager as the rest of them to get the meal started, came up behind Marshall. “Sir, may we . . .?”
“Scotch on the rocks.”
“Sir, um . . .”
Marshall waved him away and sat down. “The guy had leaves around his neck. Leaves, for Christ’s sake. And . . . well, since there are ladies present . . .” He smirked. “I won’t describe the contraption that held his penis a
loft. Armed and ready, so to speak.” He broke into a big smile.
Bastard. Diana thought. Everything’s fodder for his dirty jokes.
“Hey!” Jay said.
“Pardon me.” Marshall bowed his head, but he looked more pleased than sorry. “Anyway, this guy was standing in the middle of the road, blocking it, and when I stopped the car, he ordered us out. That’s when he grabbed Carole Anne and threatened to slit her throat.”
Several women gasped.
“Oh, my lord,” Peg McCurdy said.
If she interrupted right now, Diana realized, she could spoil Marshall’s story by telling her own. She took a breath and leaned forward. She looked at Jay and then at Carole Anne.
“Nothing I could do,” Marshall continued. “I had to give him the car keys.”
“No question,” McCurdy said to an enthusiastic chorus of agreement from his wife, Siole, and Fabrizio. “Absolutely! You did the right thing.”
“He ordered me to lie flat on the ground,” Marshall continued, “nose in the dirt. When I tried to see what he was doing, he said something like, ‘You wantum me killum woman blong yu?’”
Carole Anne whimpered.
“So I buried my nose in the weeds. Didn’t look up until I heard him rev up the engine and dig out. God! I shudder to think what he did to my gears. Ground them getting into second, never did shift into third that I could hear.”
Diana and Abby glanced at each other with barely disguised looks of triumph. Let Marshall finish his story first. Soon enough they would tell how they were successful in fighting off Lincoln Toms.
“Poor Carole Anne,” Marshall patted her shoulder and tossed down a gulp of scotch. “She was hysterical by the time I got to her.”
“I was the one with a knife at my throat.”
“A shank, dear.”
Diana wondered if there’d actually been a shank. Carole Anne’s neck was bruised, but the skin wasn’t broken. Unless the supposed shank was extremely dull, it may have been a figment of the Charbonneaus’ imagination.
“Where’s my gin and tonic?” Carole Anne turned frantically from side to side looking for the waiter. “You ordered one for me, didn’t you?”
“Hey, calm down, baby.” Marshall patted her shoulder.
She glared at him. “Mrs. Pettyjohn understood how I felt. She said I was in shock.”
“The Australian High Commissioner’s wife,” Marshall said for the benefit of the socially unconnected. “She was coming from a doubles match with the Finance Minister’s wife when she found us and graciously offered to take us to the police station herself.”
“All I wanted was to go home and take a shower. Damn it, Marshall. I was still in shock.” Carole Anne looked from face to face. “Y’all can’t imagine how something like this absolutely turns your legs to jelly. I could hardly stand up. And still they expected me to remember what happened. It was all up to me, since Marshall had his head in the sand.”
“Anyway, the authorities assured us they’ll have the car back within a week.”
“The car, the car. Who the hell cares about the car? I can’t stop shaking.” Carole Anne held out her hands to demonstrate how shaky they were. “I told Marshall I needed to go home.” She scanned the table, assuring herself that everyone understood. “He ignored me and told the officer to bring us here.”
Peg McCurdy grabbed Carole Anne’s hand and squeezed it. “Poor dear,” she said. “We’re just glad you’re all right.”
Abby nodded sympathetically. Her eyes and Diana’s met, and they both understood that they’d keep quiet for now about their own encounter with Lincoln Toms.
“Hey,” Marshall said as he scanned the table—the smeared, empty appetizer plates, peanut bowls, and wine glasses. “Looks like it’s time to eat.”
A waiter hurried away. Moments later he returned with large serving bowls of hot and sour soup. Placing them on each of the two lazy Susans, he quickly ladled the soup into individual bowls. The salt and pepper squid came next and then the beef and broccoli followed by coconut crab, honey chicken, chili prawns, and fried rice.
Diana had thought she was hungry, but after the soup, she started feeling queasy. She served herself bite-sized servings of the squid and the beef and broccoli. When Jay gave her more coconut crab than she wanted, she pinched part of it up with her chopsticks and put it on his plate, smiling and shrugging at his raised eyebrows.
It was after the fried rice that she felt it, something damp between her legs. For a moment she couldn’t move. A hot–cold flash numbed her face and the back of her neck. No no no, she cried inside. Not this. The voices and faces and plates of food fell away, and for a moment, time stopped and she was alone. She took a breath and blinked. Then she leaned across the table. “Abby,” she whispered, trying to hide her panic, “can you come with me?”
All the way to the ladies’ room, she was gripping Abby’s hand and pulling her along.
“Are you all right?”
“Just wait here.” Diana dropped Abby’s hand and hurried into the stall.
“I’m bleeding,” she said through the door in a stage whisper.
“Do you need help?”
“I don’t think so.” Diana pulled her panties up and unlatched the stall door.
“How much is it?”
“Just a stain.”
“What color?”
“Brownish, like at the start or ending of a period.”
Abby let her breath out and smiled. “You’re just spotting. That’s all. It’s normal. It happened to me a time or two.” She put her arms around Diana and held her until she stopped shaking.
“You really think it’s all right?”
“I do.”
As they started back to the table, Diana realized the queasiness she’d had at the table was gone. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread. Jay was right. She should have been more careful. She and Abby could have gone anywhere to sketch. Why in the world had she chosen the road to Montmartre? And when Lincoln Toms demanded her keys, why in the name of God didn’t she just hand them over? If anything happened to their baby, she’d have no one to blame but herself.
44
Maybe Abby was right, Diana thought as she climbed into bed that night. Maybe the stain on her underpants was an ordinary occurrence for a pregnant woman. Nothing to worry about. Diana hadn’t dared mention it to Jay. After Carole Anne’s overly dramatic rendition of the carjacking incident, he was already rattled enough. She pulled the sheet up under her chin and tried to suppress a little shiver. Carole Anne might be prone to hyperbole, but her story made it clearer than ever that the nearly naked man Diana and Abby encountered on Montmartre Road had been dangerous. Far from being just some weird and crazy guy, Lincoln Toms was Vanuatu’s most notorious criminal.
After making excuses so they could leave the dinner early, she and Jay had hurried out to the car, Jay holding onto her as though she might disappear. After learning who her attacker was and how he’d treated Carole Anne, Jay was bound to accuse her of downplaying the incident. And he was right. She had. They sat in the front seat for a few minutes without speaking. Finally, he turned to her. In the moonlight she caught the glint of a tear in his eye. “When I think what could have happened to you . . .” He dropped his head and wiped his eye.
What could she have said?
Even later when they were at home, she’d felt too fragile to speak without bursting into tears. She’d taken as long as she could in the bathroom so that when she climbed into bed, Jay was already falling asleep. Without disturbing him, she slipped one hand under the sheet and rested it on her belly. Baby, she whispered, sweet baby, take care of yourself. I love you so much.
They’d already decided on a name for the baby if it turned out to be a girl: Noelle. They couldn’t decide on a boy’s name, though. Many an early evening they had sat out on the veranda gazing at the lagoon, drinking lemonade and trying out names: Justin, Shaun, Jason, Micah, Alex, Ryan. Diana liked Luke. Jay preferred somet
hing like Michael or Christopher. Whatever name they chose, they wouldn’t know the baby’s gender for another six months.
Through the open window Diana could see hazy shapes in the pale moonlight—a papaya tree, the downhill tilt of the land, a smooth sheen where the lagoon was. She imagined Lincoln Toms somewhere out there in his crown of leaves and penis wrapper parked beside a banyan tree stretched out on top of Marshall’s car drinking whiskey, a slice of moon reflecting off the shiny white paint of the hood. As she was falling asleep, Jasper jumped up on the bed and arranged himself inside the curve of her body.
Later in one of her dreams, she found herself in a strange foreign town with a young man, someone with unruly blond curls whom she knew from other dreams. She raised her wine glass to toast something, and he reached across to steady her hand.
“Careful,” he said. But a deep scarlet drop of wine had already spilled on the skirt of her white dress. Ignoring the spreading stain, the young man took her hand, and together they wandered among the stalls in an outdoor market. A vendor with long black braids held up a fat, red tomato for them to see. Suddenly, glaring at Diana, she squeezed it, digging her fingers into the flesh. No! Diana opened her mouth in a silent scream as the juice ran down the woman’s arm. Then, doubling over in pain, Diana hobbled away. She could already feel the flow, hot and wet between her legs, cold on the back of her dress. She turned to the young man.
But no, this was her responsibility. Her blood.
Her blood. The realization woke her. By the time she shuffled into the bathroom, knees together like a geisha, her nightgown was already stained. Jay was right behind her. “What’s wrong?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
He flicked on the light. Blood was trickling down her thighs, past her knees and down her calves.
“Oh, my god, Diana. Here. Sit down.” He took her arm.
“What’s happening?” she demanded. This wasn’t a dream anymore. And this wasn’t merely spotting.