Now Lilian had to laugh too. The wine and fatigue had made her feel very relaxed, and she felt a little sluggish.
“Do you feel like taking a nice walk on the beach with me?” Chuck suggested. “It might be easier to have a real conversation out there than in here.”
She was about to answer Chuck when she noticed Dominique get up and, after a few unsteady steps, slowly begin shuffling on the dance floor with Dave. Apparently, the song that was playing had moved her to dance, even if this song didn’t seem very different from every other song they had played in the bar so far.
Lilian noticed that Dominique wasn’t really dancing, but was basically hanging on to Dave’s neck. Dave, in turn, was whispering sweet nothings into her ear, to which Dominique responded with lethargic nods. Once in a while her eyes would close, after which she opened them with some degree of difficulty.
“No, that’s probably not a very good idea,” Lilian said to Chuck while getting up from her stool. “I think I better keep an eye on my girlfriend, because it looks like it’s about time for her to go home.”
“Just let her be! Your friend can handle herself. Dave will take care of her.”
“Yes, I can see that.” Lilian looked at Dominique and thought for a moment. Then she took her cell phone from her pocket. At the house, she had stored Leroy’s phone number on her speed dial. After hesitating for a moment, she pressed the button.
Chuck shot her a disapproving look, but didn’t say anything.
It took a long time before Leroy answered the phone. Automatically, Lilian glanced up at the clock above the bar. It was a quarter past one.
“Yes?” she heard the voice on the phone say.
“Leroy? It’s Lilian, you know, from the condo, number 19.”
“Hi.”
“Listen, I’m sure this is the last thing you want to hear, but is there any way you can come and get us?”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Yes, I do, I’m sorry. But we’re in Oranjestad, and Do is very drunk and …”
“Who?”
“Dominique.”
“Okay.”
Lilian took a deep breath. “Like I said: Dominique is quite drunk, and I’m afraid this isn’t going to end well. She’s here with some guy from Canada and …”
“Where are you now?” Leroy interrupted.
“At …” Lilian looked around, but didn’t see anything with the name of the bar on it, so she asked Chuck, who answered her with a dance move: “La Mamba.”
“Did you hear that? La Mamba,” she said into the phone.
“I’m on my way. I’ll be there in ten minutes—be sure to wait for me outside.”
“Okay, thanks so much, Leroy and …”
But he had already hung up the phone.
Lilian got up and walked over to Dominique and Dave. She tapped her friend on the shoulder. “We have to leave soon, Do. Leroy is on his way to come pick us up in his taxi.”
“With that piece of crap car?” Dominique asked, slurring her speech. “I want a limo.” She considered it for a moment, then pulled away from Dave. “No, Lil, I’m not ready to go at all! I want to stay here with Dave and the others. The night is still young!”
Because she had to belch at the same time, the latter didn’t come out very convincing.
Lilian said her good-byes to the others and navigated Dominique to the front door with Dave’s help.
The fresh ocean air seemed to do Dominique some good. She took a few deep breaths and began to look a little better.
Suddenly she said: “Lil, I have to pee and actually I’m a little nauseous too.”
Before she could finish her sentence, a wave of vomit came up.
Lilian quickly pulled her in a nearby alley, which ran next to the bar. Dominique emptied the entire contents of her stomach out next to a few garbage containers. Once it was clear she was finished, Lilian brought her back inside the bar so she could freshen her up in the ladies room. A few dogs shot past them, heading for the place where Dominique had just vomited.
Once they came back outside, Leroy was waiting for them with his arms folded. While he opened the door to his yellow taxi, he warned Dominique: “If you even dare to throw up inside of my car, I will make you clean it up yourself.”
With a tiny voice, Dominique promised she wouldn’t let that happen.
Dave was nowhere to be found.
14
On the way back, the taxi hit a dirt road, something which quickly proved to be entirely too much for Dominique’s stomach. Thankfully, all the windows in the car were open wide, so she only got the outside of the door dirty.
This time there was no Harry in the security box, but a different man in uniform. The moment he saw Leroy, he opened the security bar. Leroy drove his car all the way up to the garage door of number 19.
Together with Lilian, he carried Dominique, who had in the meanwhile fallen into a deep sleep, inside. They placed her on her bed.
“Why don’t you go to the living room?” Lilian said. “I’ll fix her up a little.”
A little reluctantly, Leroy left the two of them behind.
Lilian checked the hallway to make sure that he’d really left, closed the bedroom door, and washed Dominique’s hands and face with a wet washcloth. Then she took off her friend’s clothes, everything except for her underwear. With quite a bit of effort, she managed to put a T-shirt on Dominique’s seemingly lifeless body. Then she put a sheet over her. She placed a glass of water on the nightstand. Just to be sure, she left the light on in the room, so Dominique wouldn’t panic if she woke up and didn’t know where she was.
Meanwhile, in the living room, Leroy had poured himself a glass of whiskey with a lot of ice.
“Can I get you a drink?” he offered.
“No, thanks, I’m going to have a nonalcoholic drink now.”
She walked to the fridge and grabbed a pitcher of juice and a glass.
“Shall I spend the night with you?” Leroy asked flatly.
Lilian looked at him in pure amazement. “What do you think? That I’m going to sleep with you? Just because you came to pick us up?”
He took a big sip and leaned against the table. “All of this isn’t part of my job description, you know? Being woken up in the middle of the night to go fetch a couple of drunk girls from a bar. Normally, I get paid for that type of thing.”
“Well, you can take that up with WernComp,” she answered coldly. Now she was the one who took a large sip. The juice was deliciously cold.
“Tomorrow I will ask Do to call her father. Then he can arrange a bonus for you.”
His eyes held hers. After a moment he said, “That won’t be necessary. But I just want to make clear that I am not your little errand boy.”
“Of course you’re not. But I could see that Do wasn’t doing well, and I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t know anyone else here yet. So I asked you if you could help. If you didn’t feel like it, then you should have said so.”
“And then what?” he asked, challenging her.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know—I would have had to come up with another idea!”
Again he stared her down. “Well, here we are then,” he said teasingly.
“Yeah, here we are.”
“So now what?” he asked “Are we going to have a drink or not?”
“I’m not,” Lilian said quietly. “And I’d appreciate it if you also didn’t drink anything else here. As far as I’m concerned, I could care less if you took the whole bottle of whiskey with you. But right now, all I want to do is go to sleep.”
She could see he was contemplating saying something else. Instead, he placed the glass on the table so abruptly that one of the ice cubes flew out and fell on the ground. Without giving Lilian another look, he took off toward the door. He slammed it closed behind him.
She waited until she heard him get into the taxi and peel out of the driveway. Only after she had checked all of the doors and windo
ws were locked did she finally go to bed too.
15
“How dare he! That bastard!” Dominique spewed out the following morning, after Lilian explained what had happened. “I’m calling my father to tell him about this!”
“That’s totally unnecessary,” Lilian said, shushing her. “I can take care of myself, and I think I was very clear in my communication with him.”
Dominique looked at her with gratitude. Of course Lilian was right: she had handled the situation perfectly. The same couldn’t be said for herself last night. In fact, she couldn’t even remember exactly what had happened at the bar. But what Leroy had said to Lil was completely unacceptable.
It was almost twelve thirty in the afternoon. By the time Dominique had finally come out of her self-induced coma and hurried to the bathroom, Lilian had already been up for a few hours.
Dominique eventually found her by the pool, where Lilian was lying in the sun on a towel, covered in sunscreen from head to toe.
“Ooh la la!” Lilian called out when she spotted her friend. “If you feel anything like the way you look, it’s got to be bad.”
“Well, thank you very much,” Do answered, slightly embarrassed, while she eased herself in a reclining chair. “My head is pounding, and my mouth tastes like I swallowed dog shit, my whole body hurts, and I am starving to death, but I am not sure if I am too nauseous to eat. But, hey, other than that, I’m just fine.”
Lilian sat up straight. “You need to take in lots of liquids and eat a strong breakfast. Then take a shower.”
Dominique closed her eyes. “Can’t I just stay right here?” She fell back into the lazy chair. “Just wake me when the world stops spinning please? Because I can’t take much more spinning!”
Lilian walked back to the kitchen, laughing. She set a small table with bread, all sorts of cold cuts, yogurt, muesli, and pitchers of juice and milk. She made coffee and tea, and began to fry some eggs.
It didn’t take long before Dominique appeared in the doorway.
“Well, that does smell really good,” she admitted. “But first I need to …” She rushed to the nearest toilet.
A moment later she returned, her face white as a ghost.
“Eat something, now!” Lilian ordered her.
She waited for Dominique to be seated in one of the chairs and placed two large pieces of bread with two fried eggs on top in front of her.
“What? No wine?” Dominique asked semi-serious. She giggled quietly when she saw her friend’s facial expression. “Just kidding!”
Lilian sat down across from her. She’d already had breakfast, but joined in anyway, so her friend didn’t have to eat alone. She enjoyed watching how Dominique devoured the food and downed one glass of orange juice after the other.
When she was finally finished, Dominique leaned back, satisfied. “You were right, I really needed that,” she said gratefully.
“I understand. I know what it’s like to have too much to drink.”
“Well, it wasn’t really too much, it just didn’t hit me right. I …” Dominique started to explain.
But her friend interrupted her. “Oh, don’t give me that crap, Do. You drank like a fish and mixed all sorts of drinks. You were hanging on for dear life, with your arms wrapped around that guy.”
“Oh, yeah, that guy. What was his name again?”
Lilian smirked. “Well, apparently he made real impression. That would be Dave.”
“Dave, right.” Dominique closed her eyes. “He was American, right?”
“Canadian.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right. He wanted me to come to Montreal, because that’s where he goes to school. What he studies there I can’t recall.”
“Well, sounds like you’re a match made in heaven. You’re going to go visit him in Montreal, but you can recall his name or what he’s studying there?”
“That would be correct. But I do know where he works, here on Aruba.”
Lilian looked at her with great surprise. “Where is that?”
“He works at the Enlightenment Hotel. I made sure to remember that, because it’s really very interesting.”
“Why is that?”
“They basically have their own island, right off the coast, where only the hotel guests are allowed. It’s supposed to be very luxurious and beautiful.”
“Well, that does sound interesting.”
Dominique nodded. “He promised me that he would take me to the island. You can come as well.”
16
“Shall we take the scooters today?” Dominique suggested. “Then we won’t have any problems parking.”
“I’m not sure I can—I’ve never been on a scooter before.”
Dominique smiled. “It’s really not complicated. You’ll figure it out it in five minutes.”
The insurance was arranged with one simple phone call. They put on their sunglasses and headed for the garage. After she moved one of the scooters outside, Dominique showed her friend how to start it and how the gears worked.
She was right: in no time, Lilian was driving effortlessly. She only had a hard time taking turns. At the end of the driveway, she had to put her foot down to support herself when she took a sharp turn.
Lilian was ready to hit the road, but Dominique put up her hand. “Wait a minute! We need long-sleeved T-shirts. I once took scooter trip with my dad in Suriname and ended up with a horrible sunburn.”
“Good idea.”
Five minutes later they drove off. They stopped at the security gate.
“What’s the most scenic route to go on a scooter?” they asked Harry, who attentively jumped up the moment he saw them approach. The heavyset man wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. He took the moist rag into his other hand and pointed. “If you head to the coast and take a left, then you’ll end up in Oranjestad, but you already know that. However, if you go right and follow the road along the water, then you will have a great view of Eagle Beach and Palm Beach from the top of the island. Truly beautiful.”
They thanked him and drove in the direction he had suggested. Dominique led the way. She turned around often to make sure her friend could keep up, but Lilian had no trouble at all keeping up the pace.
While they drove across a rocky path, large lizards shot left and right behind the rocks. They came to a two-lane asphalt road, which led them along the coastline. Everywhere they looked they saw strange low shrubs and crooked trees. At one of the white beaches they even saw one of the trees in the ocean water. After a long stretch with very few houses, they came to a section with a large amount of hotels and luxurious houses.
Dominique slowed down so that Lilian could ride next to her. “This must be Eagle Beach,” she shouted over the wind. “You want to stop here and have a look around?”
Lilian shook her head, so they continued on. Because there was quite a bit of traffic, they rode one after the other.
In the middle of all the hotels it was just as busy as any European ocean city. Slowly, they drove on a long boulevard, which emptied out onto great white beaches, filled with beach umbrellas, tents, and beachgoers.
There was plenty of swimming and surfing in the water. There were stores everywhere, hotels with pools, and smiling, scantily clad people with sunglasses. A few boys with deep, dark tans yelled something inaudible at them. Despite the long-sleeved shirts, the sun beat down on them without mercy as they exited and made their way out of the crowd.
As they approached a new resort area, the two lanes quickly changed into four. It was the first large road they came across in Aruba. Here, the hotels were even higher than they had seen in Oranjestad and at Eagle Beach. It was very crowded too. The beaches were unbelievably white, and the guests in this resort clearly lived the good life. Everything there was top of the line: the cars, the pools, the nightclubs, the bars, the stores.
“A lot of Americans here,” Dominique called out over her shoulder to Lilian, who followed diagonally just behind her. She cast an exaggerated glance at a ma
n with a large belly, sunburned and in a bathing suit with a cigar in his mouth, with a woman in his arms who wore a hideous pair of oversized butterfly sunglasses and carried a small dog on a leash with her.
They considered having a drink on the busy boulevard, but decided to keep going instead.
It was considerably quieter on the north side of the resort. They rode with the wind in their hair, and the ocean was never far away, always to their left. The terrain became rougher and rockier as they approached the northern point of the island. From afar they could make out the lighthouse they had spotted from the plane.
“It looks just like the lighthouses we have in Holland,” Dominique noticed, slightly disappointed, as they approached the lighthouse.
As they approached, it was indeed just like many of the lighthouses she had seen along the coast of the North Sea.
They put their scooters at the base of the lighthouse and bought ice cream at a gelateria on the square next to it. They walked around the lighthouse while they ate their ice cream.
“Why would anyone name something like this the California Lighthouse?” Dominique asked mockingly, gesturing with her head to the sign carrying its name.
Lilian walked up to it and read the small copper sign. “A ship named the SS California ran aground here once,” she answered. “So, that’s why.”
They saw a few tourists enter the lighthouse.
Dominique looked up. “You want to go up?”
“Nah, I just want to have a quick look around,” Lilian answered.
They walked across the parking lot to a viewpoint that overlooked the tip of the island and the ocean.
The waves rolled quietly onto the white beaches, which hardly had any people on them.
“If you kept going straight here, eventually you’d end up back in Holland,” Lilian said pointing at the water.
Dominique laughed. “No, thanks—not yet, as far as I’m concerned. I really like it here.”
“Let’s head back to the house,” Lilian decided. “I’d like to get an even tan during this vacation.”
Bon Bini Beach: A Thriller Page 5