“I love you too, you big dummy.”
He kisses her. The kiss lingers, becoming more intense, the two of them settling down into a bed of dry leaves. For a few minutes they lie there, kissing and caressing each other’s clothed bodies, their breaths coming faster and faster.
“Help me,” Ruby says urgently, kicking off her shoes, and Henry strips her pants down over her ankles. As she pulls off her top, he removes his shirt and opens his fly, releasing the pent-up bulge in his underwear. She runs her hand over it through the cotton fabric, gently squeezing to make him groan. Then she tenderly unwraps him and leans forward to take it in her mouth. Henry’s breath hitches at the feel of her warm, enfolding lips, that ocean of bliss. She takes him completely inside her mouth and then, because it’s been awhile, pulls back so as not to finish too soon.
Lowering himself next to her, Henry glides his hands over her belly and under her bra, grazing her pierced nipples. He traces her twining black tattoos with his fingertips and tongue, following them around her navel and down past the seam of her panties to the puckered well of heat within. He slides the panties down and she opens her thighs to his kisses. For a few moments he circles the budding center, tempting her out, then delves in with his tongue, looking up her body as across a smooth landscape, her face turned back in ecstasy, her pale, arching figure a marble Aphrodite half buried in leaves. As she comes, he comes too, pulsing hot against her calf.
Getting dressed, they can’t stop smiling. “You bad man,” Ruby says. “You bad, bad man.”
Topping the hill, they arrive at the gate for the third time in as many days. By now they are not surprised to find the place shut tight against them. All Henry says is, “Unbelievable,” and keeps moving along the fence.
“Where are we going?” Ruby asks.
“I don’t know yet.”
Because it is set on a steep hillside, the property is mostly inaccessible, thus the fence stops at a certain distance up and down the slope. Downhill it is lost in thick brambles, so Henry climbs up. He notices that he is not the first to have done this: there is a well-worn footpath hidden along the perimeter, with crushed beer cans and cigarette butts littering the ground, as if teenagers have been sneaking up the same way—a hopeful sign. In places it is so steep they have to climb hand over hand up the fence posts.
Juggling her camera, Ruby says, “Are you sure we should be doing this?”
“No.”
At the top, the fence ends in a snarl of barbed wire. Above them is all sheer brown rock. But someone before them has dug a passage under the wire, just where it meets the base of the fence. The earth has been scooped away and the metal coils tortured upward just enough to permit a cautious, crawling entry. The Spanish-tiled eaves of the complex are visible through the bushes beyond. Henry doesn’t wait, but lays on his back and starts to squirm under.
“Oh no, I’m not going through there,” Ruby says.
“Why not? Someone else obviously has.”
“We’re going to break our necks.” They are quite high above the gate, at least forty or fifty feet up the steep slope. “How do you know you can get back once you’re over there?”
But Henry is already most of the way through, looking down the far side. “It looks doable,” he says. “There’s a deck and some stairs right below me. Are you coming or not?”
“I just don’t want us to be trapped in there if they call the cops on us.”
“Would you rather wait for me? It’s okay if you want.”
“I think maybe I better. We can’t both go to jail—what would happen to Moxie?”
“My mother could adopt her.”
“Very funny.”
“Okay. Well, then I’m gonna go give it a shot,” he says. “Can you get back down okay?”
“Yeah, I think so. Are you going to be okay?”
“Oh yeah—piece of cake. I’m just going to drop down and see if there’s an easy way to open the gate from this side. Maybe I can let you in.”
“Okay.”
“But if it looks like I can’t, I’m not going to waste time with it—it’ll be too suspicious, and I think it makes more sense for me to just go and find my mother before anybody has a chance to throw me out.”
“I guess so. Are you sure we shouldn’t call this off before it’s too late?”
“I’m sure. It’ll be fine, I promise. See you down there.” Henry reaches through the fence and they clasp hands. “If I can’t get the gate open, feel free to go back to the hotel and wait for me. In fact, you probably should.”
“No way! I’m not going anywhere and leaving you here.”
“You’re the one who said we can’t both get arrested. Look, nothing’s going to happen, but it could take me a while to find her. I might have to hunt around, and if I do find her she’s liable to pitch a fit. Whatever’s going on, I don’t want you standing out here by yourself. If I’m late, I’ll find a phone and leave a message for you at the hotel.”
With deep reluctance, Ruby says, “All right…I guess. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. I better go before somebody spots us up here. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Wait! Take my camera.”
She hands it through to him and Henry ducks out of sight behind the weedy ridge. A dirt furrow has been worn into the slope, and he slides down it on his butt until he comes to the top of a concrete retaining wall. From there it is a short drop to the pier-like boardwalk connecting the uppermost bank of condos to those lower down. The view is spectacular and somewhat vertigo-inducing: Spanish-tiled buildings descending the mountain on terraces like outlandish golf greens, with quartz-graveled islands and paths, all overhanging the broad expanse of the sea. There is no one in sight anywhere.
Henry doesn’t linger over the view, but hurries down the walkway to the entrance gate. He is annoyed to find that he can’t get to it—there is an inner gate, a second layer of security. It is not fancy wrought iron like the outer one, but plain chain-link, secured with a hefty Yale padlock. It is hidden from the outside by high hedges.
As Henry stands there in consternation, something crashes against the gate, causing him to jump back in surprise.
It’s a dog—a big black German shepherd. The animal looks ferocious, barking frantically, yet the only sound it makes is a pathetic wheezing. No vocal cords, Henry thinks, astonished. Is that just so the old folks aren’t disturbed?—it seems insane. What if he or Ruby had just climbed over the fence without knowing? What if a kid did? The dog run is recessed like a moat, so that from the outside it is invisible, and there are no signs posted.
That’s a deadly weapon, you assholes.
He knows of such dogs being used in war, has heard they have a powerful psychological effect on the enemy. But who’s the enemy here? Where’s the war?
As he starts the camera, other stealth dogs appear, five or six of them, charging up the fenced corridor to silently bay at him. As a security consultant himself, Henry has to shake his head at the overkill. Unless this is the private estate of a Colombian drug lord, he can’t imagine why such measures would be necessary.
Unless…
The dogs are going crazy enough already; Henry doesn’t want to provoke them more, but he has no way to signal Ruby without raising his voice.
As quietly as possible, he calls, “Honey! I’m here!” The dogs go silently berserk. No answer. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Henry tries again, hissing: “Ruby!”
Still no reply. Then her ruffled voice from beyond the hedge: “I’m coming! Give me a chance, will you? God—so much for these stupid Capri pants. They were too tight anyway. Where are you?”
“This is as close as I can get—there are guard dogs in a culvert between us. I gotta go before someone sees me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ll either call or meet you back at the hotel.”
Doubtfully, she says, “All right…if you think so.”
“I do, trust me. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Be careful.”
“I will—you, too. Bye.”
“Bye.”
What Henry doesn’t tell her is that he has the distinct feeling of being alone in here. The complex feels empty, abandoned. It’s a suspicion he’s had since the first day he and Ruby stood outside the fence, but which he wasn’t sure of until he actually came inside. Seeing that padlock clinched it.
But why wouldn’t anyone tell him if it was empty? Why the idiotic runaround? Somebody must know about this—certainly the Sheriff’s Office and the Chamber of Commerce. Could it be possible that they themselves don’t know? Surely everybody knows everything on a little island like this.
And if the place is shut down, where does that leave his mother?
Henry follows the winding driveway, thinking that he must be mistaken, that any second he will encounter an old codger out for a power walk. He remembers what Ruby said about these old folks liking their quiet.
The road bisects the upper and lower ranks of condos, and as Henry looks for numbers on the units, hunting his mother’s address, he is also seeking signs of life—quirks of individual taste like flower pots, welcome mats, window decorations, any hint of differences between neighbors. But it is all sterile as a chain motel.
He discovers that the extensive landscaping is all fake: just scruffy plastic shrubs and trees embedded in concrete. Likewise, the “grass” is green-painted gravel.
Maybe it’s because of the water restrictions, he thinks, but that doesn’t explain the petrified aura of the place, the sense that it is all a dry museum display—it might as well be marked DO NOT TOUCH. The cast-iron lawn furniture is bolted to the ground, immovable; stains on the seats from standing water make it look to Henry as if none of it has been used, or is ever meant to be.
Rot. Rot and solitude. The peeling façade of a shuttered carnival. As an adult Henry is alert to these negative aesthetics, knows when he is in their presence—they give him that bittersweet rush of childhood.
Usually he has to seek them out: Henry is a connoisseur of blighted landscapes and old cemeteries. It’s one of the things that attracted Ruby to him, and he to her—what she calls her “Morticia Addams streak.” The tattoos, the piercings, the whole Suicide Girl motif. Her favorite hobby is collecting grave-rubbings. In spite of all their differences, they recognized this gloomy niche in each other and were ineluctably drawn to it.
Yes…he recognizes this smell.
Going up a gravel path to the nearest building, Henry enters a breezeway formed by the upstairs deck, following it along a row of identical doors and windows. Everything is shut tight. He notices that there are no mailboxes or mail slots—of course not; in a place like this there must be a central pick-up point. So the address is useless.
Damn. Henry is beginning to realize that, once again, he is not going to find what he came for. It boggles his mind. At this point it is almost becoming funny—the joke’s on him.
Trying not to be conspicuous, he peers into the windows as he passes, trying to find a chink in the closed curtains, any glimpse of furniture and life, but they are all drawn against the morning glare. Now you can add Peeping Tom to the other charges, he thinks, cupping his hands around his eyes and attempting to penetrate the dark edges of the drapes. Every window is the same.
It’s all so uniform, so impersonal—there is nothing to distinguish one condo from another. The stylistic conformity doesn’t seem to follow the usual incentives of commerce and class, and brings to mind the hive mentality of communist-bloc urban planning.
Haphazardly taping as he goes, Henry moves on, not certain what to make of all this, but more and more convinced that it’s nothing kosher. After the third identical building, Henry decides to take things a step further:
He knocks. Just at the next random door.
Of course there is no answer.
As he is contemplating what to do next, Henry hears a sound and freezes. It is the blat of a noisy engine coming up the road outside. It pauses at the entrance, sputtering. Then there is the unmistakable sound of the gate being opened.
Oh shit…the dogs!
Henry looks around for someplace to hide. There is not a lot of choice: Everything is laid out in the open, the buildings interconnected and backed up against the steep hillside. There are no trees to climb, nothing that will shield him from a determined dog. The nearest thing to a refuge that he can immediately see is a concrete drainage culvert running downhill under the raised boardwalk, but that would only conceal him from human eyes, not canine noses.
Shaking his head at the stupid predicament, imagining what Ruby would think, Henry puts all his frustration into kicking in the nearest door. He broke down a lot of doors in Afghanistan, but never in civilian shoes—Ow. At the second kick, the bolt gives way with a splintering crunch and Henry ducks inside.
He steps off a cliff into total darkness.
Chapter Eighteen
WE’RE SHADY ISLE
It is a low cliff—two or three feet high—but Henry lands hard on his face. If the ground wasn’t soft earth he could have fractured his skull. As it is, he is just rattled. He crawls to his feet, spitting a gob of blood and dirt.
“Fuck,” he says, checking his jaw. His voice echoes as if in a barn; the whole building is hollow inside, gutted. There are no condos, no separate rooms at all, just one big empty box. What is this? Remodeling?
Standing up, Henry closes the door to a crack and blearily peeks out. He can hear the jangling of the inner fence being unlocked and dragged open, and a gruff voice abusing the dogs. “Stay!” the voice says. “Stay, you whores!” The vehicle spurts through with a farting roar, and now Henry sees it coming down the driveway:
It is the same dirty-yellow quad ATV that he and Ruby saw at the Casino, and carrying the same two men. The one in the rear has a blue U.S. Postal Service mailbag slung across his back. They do not stop to scan the grounds, but move purposefully as if on an errand, following the service road downward to the lowest bank of condos. Henry loses sight of them. The dogs are nowhere to be seen—they must not have been released into the compound.
Thank you, dear lord, Henry thinks—not only for himself, but because of his foresight in telling Ruby to return to the hotel.
The last thing he would have pegged those guys for is mailmen. At least they’re not security or cops—at the moment he seems to be in the clear. It’s almost disappointing: For a second Henry’s mind had raced through the various scenarios of being caught, and all of them at least allowed him to vent his frustration at being forced to trespass like this…and now almost break his neck. It’s not like he’s in here for fun! He’d like to walk right out and flag those men down, demanding answers.
But somehow it just doesn’t seem like a good idea to reveal himself to them. Maybe if they were more official-looking and not so much like crazy yahoos spoiling for a fight. Especially if something illegal is going on here, they could be dangerous. After all, isn’t that what he came here to find out?
Henry makes the snap decision to see where they went, to discreetly follow them. If they’re really mailmen, maybe they went to an administrative office where all this can be neatly resolved. He’d gladly pay for the busted door. In spite of everything, he still dearly hopes there is some reasonable explanation.
Venturing out of hiding and down the stairs, Henry listens carefully for the giveaway racket of that ATV. On the next-to-last landing, he catches sight of the vehicle. It is parked on the sun deck of the lowermost block of condos, which are set on a concrete ledge directly overhanging the beach. It is the base of this platform that Henry and Ruby had first seen from the shore road below.
Henry wavers, unsure of what to do. Much as he wishes he could just march down there, his military experience tells him to reconnoiter first, to not throw away his only advantage. Oh, now you’re James Bond, he thinks as he vaults the railing and ducks into the shaded space beneath the stairs.
Feeling like an id
iot, he works his way down the steep culvert, hanging onto the wooden struts for support. It’s a little scary—the cement drainage chute dips almost vertical at times, and ends at a fifty-foot drop to the rocks. Quite a fall if he loses his grip.
Tourist killed in fall. He can’t help but grin at the idiocy of it—Ruby would kill him if she knew—but at the same time it feels good to be doing something, to be working up a sweat outside of the gym. However nonsensical, this is more real than anything he’s done in years. Henry knows that he is having a life-moment of some kind, and allows himself to relish the feeling—it doesn’t come often enough these days.
Suddenly he hears a spritely electronic tune—his cell phone! Struggling to grab the phone out of his back pocket without losing his grip on the wooden beam, Henry fumbles the noisy device and watches it go pinwheeling down the culvert and over the drop. The tinny music ends with a very faint splash.
Great. At the base of the stairs he peers out at the ATV, now eye-level with him and just a few dozen yards away. The engine is ticking as it cools. He can see down the length of the lowest tier of condos, his eyes following the ranks of doors and windows blankly facing the sea. The third door down is open, black as a missing tooth.
Henry boosts himself up onto the deck, not quite pulling off the fast, silent commando maneuver he had in mind—he was never that graceful, even when he was in shape. If someone glances out now they will see a middle-aged man straining like a walrus climbing out of a pool. But no one sees him, and in a second he is clear, heaving for breath behind the corner of the building.
There is a sound: the muffled bass thump of heavy metal music, resonating from the wall next to him. Henry presses his ear to it and the AC/DC song jumps out loud and clear: “Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.” The music has a hollow echo to it, as if being played in a cavern.
Deciding to risk it, Henry turns the corner and briskly walks toward the open doorway. If anyone should pop out, he will just be completely honest and straightforward, cut to the chase. It would probably be for the best at this point anyway to get it over with—Ruby was most likely the one trying to call him, perhaps to say she is back at the hotel, and he doesn’t want to worry her.
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