Carpet Diem

by Justin Lee Anderson

  Carlos laughed. “I like you, mademoiselle. Could I just see your invitations, please?”

  Again with the papers. What was this, Nazi Germany? Bob handed over the envelope and, again, the visitors stood like gift horses waiting to have their teeth poked. Carlos took his time, wandering a few feet away to speak into a walkie-talkie. Simon started to sweat again. What didn’t he want them to hear? Were they already busted? Had Faunt given them duff paperwork? Surely not…

  Carlos returned, looking serious.

  “I’m very sorry, there’s been a problem. I understand your booking was changed at the last minute to add Mr Carter,” he said, nodding at Bob.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Bob replied. “Didn’t think I was going to come, but at the last minute, things changed.”

  “Well, it seems our receptionist took down the wrong details of your credit card, so the payment was rejected. I’m sorry, but is there any chance I could ask you for the card so as to process it properly?”

  Shit.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Faunt had organised everything. But he couldn’t allow for this. What would they do?

  “Em, actually, I didn’t pay for it myself,” Bob explained. “A friend did, so it was his card.”

  “Ah,” replied Carlos. “So could we call him, possibly?”

  “Em, he doesn’t take calls, really. It’s hard to explain.”

  What need did Faunt have for a phone number? If anyone wanted to speak to him, he knew it immediately, and he could contact them if he wanted to.

  Carlos frowned. This was clearly not a good thing.

  “Give me a moment, please,” he asked, backing away again and talking quietly into the walkie-talkie.

  This was bad. They did not need to draw attention to themselves. And on this island, Faunt couldn’t help. He wouldn’t even know they were in trouble.

  “Oi,” Harriet nudged Simon.

  “What?” Simon asked, in a panicked hush.

  “Sort it out,” she said, gesturing to Carlos with her head.

  “What am I supposed to do? I can’t get in touch with Faunt!”

  Harriet took a deep breath.

  “Pay for it, you nipple. You’re loaded!”

  “Oh yes, so I am!” Simon answered, surprised. He never really thought of himself as wealthy, just that he always had money in his account when he needed it. He needed it a lot right now.

  “Em, excuse me, Mr Carlos?” he called.

  Carlos looked up and grumbled something into the walkie-talkie. A smile returned to his face as he approached one of the paying customers.

  “Yes, Mr Debovar?”

  “Is it OK if I pay for Bob?” he proffered his platinum credit card.

  Carlos’s smile broadened and his eyes lit up again.

  “Of course, Mr Debovar! That is a most satisfactory solution. Please follow me.”

  “Thanks,” Bob whispered to Simon as he passed. “I thought we were in trouble. I didn’t realise you were rich.”

  “Neither did I,” Simon answered, following him.

  It was Harriet’s turn to sigh. She’d put her perky new body in the hands of a buffoon. Well, if nothing else, she was determined to have some fun with it before he got it pulped.

  ----

  Gabby had a conundrum. She knew they needed to get to the jetty for their boat. She also knew that Cherry, who was standing here before them waiting for an answer to what seemed to her to be a very simple question, was the best way for them to get there. She equally knew that there was not a chance in hell that she was leaving her alone with Luke. OK, it was entirely irrational and she trusted Luke completely - but still.

  “So?” Cherry prompted. “Who’s going first?”

  Luke looked to Gabby. He knew he was on thin ice, he just didn’t know where the weak spots were. “Em, why don’t you go first darling?”

  Gabby shot him with a look. “OK,” she answered. For some reason, it definitely wasn’t.

  Cherry took her hand and they blinked out. Moments later, Cherry was back, smirking.

  “Your lady says I better not touch any more of you than I have to, and we better be back within 30 seconds. Coming?” she grinned mischievously, reaching out her hand.

  He took it, resolving not to enjoy it in the slightest. As he did, the hotel room faded away and Gabby appeared before him. He dropped Cherry’s hand like a jellyfish, struck with guilt despite his innocence. Women, he had noticed, had an uncanny ability to cause this reaction in men. It was one of those things that one could never appreciate without being human.

  “OK, so you guys have everything, right?”

  “Yes,” Gabby answered.

  “OK. Faunt says ‘good luck’. As far as he knows, they made it to the island. And just so you know, hurt Simon and Faunt’s not the only one you’ll have to look out for.” She stared intently at the pair, and was gone.

  “How have we managed to find the most popular hermit on the planet?” Luke asked.

  “I have to admit, I like him,” Gabby answered.

  “Me too,” Luke nodded. “So let’s go screw up his day in the nicest possible way.”

  They headed down the jetty as a bald man in a ludicrous orange shirt pulled up in a speedboat.

  ----

  “Well, I’m glad they’re gone,” said Cherry, putting her feet up on the kitchen table and opening a beer.

  Daniel, having pressed Faunt’s hospitality as far, if not farther, than was sensible, had been keen to leave once Simon and his entourage had been on their way. Lily had duly gone with him, though Faunt had offered her the opportunity to stay on should she wish. Crucially, he knew she’d say no.

  “So am I,” Faunt replied, drinking his own beer. “Now we can only hope that they all manage to figure out the solution themselves.”

  “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

  “I’ve done as much as I can, for now,” Faunt answered pensively. “Simply giving them the solution would break the Rules and, as I said, the Rules are what really matter here - but if I compromise them, we’ve already lost.”

  Cherry looked intensely at the deer. “Well, Christ, if I can’t trust that you know what you’re doing, what can I trust?” she asked, taking a long slug of beer.

  Faunt wished he shared her confidence.

  ----

  “It can’t be,” Simon thought to himself as he surveyed his room. It was designed for absolute comfort, with bamboo walls allowing a delicate, temperate breeze to flow through. A door led directly onto a small, secluded balcony, which was made private by a few palm trees, but still afforded a view of the ocean. The mini-bar was stocked with Dr Pepper and there were six bottles of Rioja in the wine rack. The television in the room received British satellite TV and there was a bath the size of Bath. Faunt had ordered ahead for him and actually produced a room that was –surely not –as good as the one he had just stayed in.

  There was not so much a knock at the door as a battering, and Harriet pushed her way in.

  “Holy crap! Have you got a half dozen bottles of malt too?” she asked, surveying the room like a starving hyena with the scent of carrion in her nostrils.

  “No,” Simon answered, a note of irritation in his voice. “And even if I did, it would be mine.”

  “You don’t bloody drink whisky, anyway.”

  It was true, but hardly the point.

  “Come on, we’re going down to the bar,” she said, tugging at his arm.

  “I don’t want to go to the bar,” Simon objected. “We’re here for a reason, remember?”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, have you never been on holiday?” Harriet almost immediately realised her mistake. “Listen, if you want to meet people on holiday, you have to get drunk with them. And get in good with the barmen. Trust me!”

  Simon was reticent. It sounded plausible, but at the end of the day, Harriet wanted to go to a bar. There was a fairly clear ulterior motive here.

  “She’s right,” said Bob
, who had appeared at the door completely unheard.

  Simon had previously thought Bob unobtrusive. He was beginning to think him sneaky, which was a little disturbing. With the options of seeing him either as a creepy Peeping Tom or a useful ally in their current predicament, Simon plumped for the latter.

  Harriet smiled smugly.

  “OK,” Simon conceded, “but I’m having a bath first.”

  “Fuck that, m’boy. Bobby and I will be in the bar.” Harriet turned on her heels and stomped out, grabbing Bob’s arm as she passed. The door slammed closed behind them, punctuating her dramatic flounce rather well, Simon thought.

  He headed for the bathroom, peeled off his top, and turned on the bath. It had been uncomfortably hot all day and the steam from the bath only made him warmer. He was starting to feel a little funny in the head. Simon realised with alarm that he was in a deeply unsettling position. He didn’t want a hot bath. But his body was slick with sweat. He needed to be clean. Now.

  Then he noticed something in the corner of the room. While there was no screen, or curtain, there was a showerhead sticking straight down from the ceiling. The whole room was tiled. Simon had heard about wet rooms, but he’d never been in one. A cool shower –he never imagined it would seem so appealing. His memories of his previous shower that morning gave him a familiar tingle, too, which was not unpleasant.

  Incredibly, Simon was going to have a shower.

  ----

  “Oh. Dear. God,” thought Simon, before quickly adding, “and Satan!” for fear of seeming biased and incurring the wrath of Lily’s superior.

  The showerhead had the word ‘Amazon’ engraved on the side. It was, essentially, a big metal circle suspended from the ceiling by a pipe. You wouldn’t imagine something so nondescript could provide the sheer ecstasy which it was currently bestowing all over Simon Debovar. He knew exactly where the name came from: he was standing in an Amazon rainforest downpour, as the sweet, sweet water cooled, cleaned and did a damn good job of massaging him. Muscles throbbed with the gorgeous pain of relief. Simon had heard women on TV (notably in Sex and the City, if he recalled correctly) talk about falling in love with their showerheads. While he was sure the specifics differed, he finally saw the attraction. If he ever decided to get out of this shower, he was having one fitted at home within minutes of getting back.

  A wolf whistle shook Simon from his reverie. He felt a pang of masculine guilt at the thought of some Neanderthal harassing a poor woman outside. But the whistle was followed by a cry of “Hello!” which was distinctly feminine. And, more disturbingly, clearly audible. Audible in the sense that it didn’t sound as if it was being filtered by the glass of his bathroom window.

  This was, he realised with a hideous, sickening pang of terror, because he’d left it open.

  Rinsing the shampoo off his head and frantically wiping at his eyes, Simon prayed he was going to be wrong, but he knew in his heart what he would see when he finally could. Which was, as it transpired, three women standing outside his bathroom window, smiling and waving appreciatively. Instinctively, Simon put one hand down to cover his crotch and his other arm across his chest. The women giggled. Firstly, because this was a deeply feminine reaction - and he wondered why he had felt the need to hide his nipples - but secondly, because his hand was having some difficulty coping with the entire capacity of his new appendage. Sidling towards the window, Simon opted to use both hands for the weightier issue and accept that his nipples would have to get used to public display. He was on a tropical island, after all.

  He forced a smile at the ladies as he pushed the window closed. He knew his face was beaming and only hoped that the suitcases the women carried meant they were on their way home. Sod’s law dictated, of course, that they had just arrived. They booed dramatically as Simon clicked the window lock.

  Instead of the horrendous embarrassment and indignity he naturally expected to wallow in for a few days, Simon found himself smiling at the attention. Cherry had said he was ‘hot’. He had subconsciously chosen to believe she was being kind out of pity and the fact that she liked him. It seemed that perhaps he had been mistaken and he actually was now sexually attractive to women. Certainly, he was fairly sure that had he accidentally left a window open at home and been showering visible to the neighbourhood, the only women outside shouting at him would have been mothers throwing eggs at the local pervert.

  Things had changed.

  ----

  “So what are we going to do?” Gabby asked.

  “I’m working on it,” Luke answered, unpacking his bag.

  “How can we have come this far and still not have a plan?”

  Luke stopped packing and looked up.

  “OK, what’s your plan, then?”

  This was not a question Gabby had been expecting. She was naturally inclined towards occasionally pointing out glaring flaws in plans, but not so well inclined towards instigating plans of her own. In short, she could tell what was wrong, but not how to fix it. It was not chief among the reasons Luke loved her.

  “That’s not fair! You know I don’t do plans.”

  Luke smiled, patiently.

  “Then please stop harassing me to come up with one. We’re here. Honestly, I thought we’d be toast by now. If not for Faunt’s help we probably would be. We’ll get a chance. We just have to take it.”

  “OK,” Gabby answered. “So, now what?”

  “Now, we check out the lie of the land. If possible, we get in with Priest.”

  “Why?”

  Luke fixed her with a pointed stare.

  “In case we end up having to stay here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Where are you, you spineless little…little…ah, hell I can’t think of a word. Simon!”

  Harriet burst unbidden into the room and staggered towards Simon. Well, mostly towards him - also quite a lot towards the floor. Bob followed her in, looking fuzzy around the edges.

  Harriet grabbed a pillow from Simon’s bed, placed it on the floor and carefully collapsed next to it.

  “Hello, Simon,” Bob smiled, sitting on the end of the bed. “You didn’t come to the bar.”

  It was true. He hadn’t. He’d showered, dressed and even done his hair. In the mirror! But when it came to the crunch, he just couldn’t go out on his own. So he’d sat on his bed eating pistachios from the mini bar and watching TV, trying to forget that his life was at stake.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Pussy!” Harriet grumbled from the floor.

  “Well, I’ve got British satellite in here and there was a MASH marathon on and it was the version without the laugh tracks, so I sort of got into it and…”

  Bob smiled understandingly.

  “It’s OK,” Bob said, standing up. “We found out some things.” He walked to the bathroom and Simon could hear him pouring a glass of water.

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Well,” Bob came back into the room and stood just next to Harriet, “it’s not all good, actually. Priest is not here.”

  “Isn’t that good?” Simon asked, suddenly hopeful that fate had been kind to him. He was also vaguely aware of snuffling noises coming from the floor. Bob took a drink of his water, and casually tipped the rest onto Harriet’s head.

  “Fuh say!” she complained, through a mouthful of wet pillow. “You could’ve used vodka!”

  “Actually, no,” Bob answered Simon’s question, “because Cassandra is with him.”

  “Oh,” said Simon. “Why is she with him?”

  “Well, that’s the bad news. The staff call her his ‘first wife’. He takes her everywhere, apparently.”

  “Oh.” Simon felt a bit sick. Not in his stomach, though. He felt sick in the depths of his soul, where his certainties lay. They’d had a good kicking of late, and were prone to disorientation.

  He decided to change the subject.

  “How much have you drunk?”

  “Well, that’s a good question,” said Bob. “The local
alcohol is rather potent. Someone told Harriet. She took it as a challenge. And her body…”

  “…isn’t used to alcohol, anymore,” Simon finished for him.

  “I have only found a few. Had a few...” Bob was swaying gently, like a sapling in a light wind. Simon determined not to drink the local stuff.

  “Who did you speak to?”

  Bob broke into a broad smile.

  “Actually, a really nice girl called Amelia. She was born here. And she was lovely.”

  Bob’s eyes had gone slightly glassy.

  “Nutsack!” Harriet bellowed into the floor. “Nutsack is a good word!”

  Simon sighed and raised his eyebrows at Bob.

  “Shall I take her away?” Bob offered.

  It hadn’t occurred to Simon that leaving her there was an option. Regardless of what she’d said previously, he was unnervingly certain he’d be awakened by her drunkenly attempting to mount him during the night.

  She had to go.

  “Yes, please.”

  Simon helped get her to her feet and propped her on Bob’s arm. This was the kind of thing Simon had always despised doing and he was grateful to Bob for taking the responsibility.

  As he closed the door behind them, he heard Harriet ask, “Are we going to shout at Simon, now?”

  Things could only get better, he hoped, tomorrow.

  “Have you seen my tits?” Harriet bellowed from along the corridor.

  The answer was probably “yes”, whomever she was asking.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Fucking sit still,” Harriet spat in the general direction of the walls.

  She’d managed to open her eyes almost halfway, but the damned room was lurching and spinning like a belly dancer on jelly.

  Hangovers were, for Harriet, an utterly foreign experience. First of all, she rarely drank so little that she woke up sober. Secondly, once she was awake, she never waited for the hangover to kick in before starting the day’s imbibing.