“It’s a date.”
We return our snorkeling gear and head along the beach towards our bungalow to shower off and dress for lunch. A black sailboat sails into the bay. It looks like an old Spanish galleon, complete with cannons that blast from the gun ports to announce its arrival.
“Isn’t that something?” Don comes to stand by us. “Looks like something out of the age of pirates. The ship came here early today—picked up some of the other guests for a tour of the island.”
The boat drifts as close to the shore as possible without scraping the reef. At the stern Conner and Alexandra lean against the side of the boat. Her hair, tangled from seawater, blows in the wind. Shirtless and poised like a statue of an ancient gladiator, Conner looks to the horizon. One of the crew scampers along the bow and drops anchor. Conner, Alexandra and the other guests climb into a small powerboat chained to the sailboat. They motor to the beach and slide up where we stand. Conner helps Alexandra out of the boat. I am content to keep walking, but Gwen stops.
“How was it?” she asks.
“It was wonderful,” Alexandra sighs dreamily as she pulls her hair into a ponytail. “Captain de Salle sailed around the entire island, and then he took us diving on this amazing shipwreck. I felt like I was in an undersea National Geographic program.”
“That’s great,” Gwen replies and then gestures to me standing impatiently several feet away. “We just went snorkeling.”
“The reefs here are no comparison to the shipwreck de Salle just took us to,” Conner brags.
I take my wife’s hand with the intention of heading back to our room, and say to Conner, “Maybe later in our trip we’ll check out your shipwreck.”
“You know, Phil, if you’re concerned about swimming so far out to sea they have life vests to help you,” Conner says with a cocky grin. “Just in case you get tired.”
“I swim fine,” I retort.
He throws up his hand to indicate he meant no offense, and then promptly proceeds to offend me. “It’s just that it’s easy to get tired once you’ve been out there swimming for a while. You might not have the stamina.”
Am I imagining this or is this guy I hardly know taunting me? Conner seems completely at ease—we are just two men making polite conversation, but something about his amused expression reminds me of a cat toying with a mouse.
“How far did you two swim out on the reef?” Conner asks.
Gwen points to the far end of the beach where we snorkeled.
“Oh, that’s not far,” he remarks, and points to a buoy bobbing out in the bay. “Now if you said you swam out to that buoy I would be impressed. Hey, let’s swim out there now—you and me, Phil. The exercise would do us good.”
Gwen squeezes my hand. “Phillip, that’s too far.”
Conner steps into the surf, not waiting for my reply. “C’mon, let’s go. It’ll be fun. We could make a race of it.”
I have been in situations like this before. The predicament I am in would be familiar to any boy on the playground. Accept the dare or back down? Conner’s easygoing smile barely conceals his smug bravado. When faced with a challenge like this in the past I always feigned an excuse to avoid it. Not this time. I do not want to be that timid, drip of a man, anymore—a man so easily overlooked and disregarded by everyone, even his own wife. I stand next to Conner in the water.
“Phillip, what are you doing?” Gwen asks, perturbed.
Her concern for me is irritating. Alexandra shows no such concern for her husband. How weak does Gwen think I am? I ignore her question.
Conner turns to Don. “Can you count us off?” then he says to Gwen. “Don’t worry about Phil. If he can’t make it he can always climb on my back.”
Don and the other bystanders laugh. Now I officially hate Conner.
Don counts us off, “One, two…” frustratingly long pause. “ …three!”
I leap into the water, arms flailing, hearing nothing but the rush of water and the thrust of my arms propelling me forward. I get several yards out and realize I am alone. I stop swimming. Conner is still on the beach laughing at me.
“C’mon back,” he waves. “I was only kidding.”
My face burns. Conner played me for a fool. I hesitate, treading water, and then a stubborn streak rises in me.
“That’s okay, I still want to swim to the buoy,” I call back. “Like you said, it will be good exercise.”
Gwen starts to protest. I pretend I cannot hear her and swim on. After a few minutes, I feel winded. Despite all my effort, the buoy seems only marginally closer, while my wife and everyone else on the beach appear to be miles away. Pausing to catch my breath, I look down and cannot see the bottom. How deep is it? I have never swum this far from land. If exhaustion overtakes me and I drown, no one will be able to reach me in time. Gritting my teeth, I continue towards the buoy. I can do this. I can call Conner’s bluff. To keep my imagination from dwelling on whatever hungry sea predators might be lurking beneath me, I imagine my triumphant return to the beach, shoving my swimming prowess in that arrogant asshole’s face. Gwen will kiss me and extol my incredible stamina. I will take it in my stride, chuckling and pulling her close to me, accepting compliments from all the guests gathered on the beach.
I reach the buoy—a floating ball tethered to the sea bottom by a slimy, algae covered rope—and cling to it, panting heavily. As the black sailboat sails away, the crew point at me, say something to each other and chuckle. I give a weak wave. No one waves back. I turn to the beach. My wife is just a dot mixed in with the other dots. Now my imagination starts to get the better of me. I picture a shark—a ravenous tiger shark—circling in the deep blue below me, preparing for a fatal upwards rush towards my dangling legs. Or that barracuda—the one I saw poised so diligently over the reef. In a moment, I will feel it slice into me, opening a major artery. Feebly, I will struggle back to the shore but the blood loss will be too great for me to make it.
I shake my head, trying to dislodge these thoughts from my brain. From this vantage point, the entire resort lays before me. How pathetic would I look if I refused to budge from the buoy and someone from the resort had to rescue me in a hobie cat? I am not about to find out. I rest for a few more minutes and then head back to shore.
No matter how spent I feel stopping in the middle of the bay is not an option. To conserve energy I flip over on my back and paddle with my feet. My progress slows, but never stops. It seems like an eternity, but I reach the shallows and touch bottom.
Don and Amy stand next to Gwen. Conner and Alexandra are nowhere in sight. So much for my victory lap.
“That was a stupid thing to do,” Gwen scolds.
I am too exhausted for much of a rejoinder and can only shrug.
“We thought you’d be hanging out with Neptune, young man,” Don teases.
“That…was…my…workout…for…the…day,” I pant, trying to make light of it all.
“Really, Phillip, I cannot believe you,” Gwen mutters. “I am not ready to be a widow. You shouldn’t let Conner goad you into a stunt like that. I am just relieved you made it back.”
I am too tired to mount much of a defense. How could I explain to Gwen that all my life jerks like Conner have mocked and ridiculed me? Conner, Patrick Farber—all the overconfident jackasses who feel I am no competition, simply someone to brush aside while they take what they want. Gwen should realize I am finally standing up for myself.
Part of me wants to tell her all of this, but I do not.
“Let’s get ready for lunch,” I tell her, and we head back to our room.
After lunch, Gwen and I sign up to use one of the hobie cats. The hobie cat, which is the size of a compact car, is basically a miniature catamaran. Lorenzo runs through techniques of successfully piloting the craft.
“If you pull too swiftly on de line de cat will capsize, and you probably won’t be able to flip it back over,” he says.
“Has that happened to the other guests?” Gwen asks.
“Just dis mor
ning,” he shakes his head with a wry smile. “When dat happens one of us has to sail out on another cat to come to de rescue.”
Gwen looks at me warily.
“Maybe it would be better if you came with us,” I suggest. “I don’t trust my sailing coordination.”
Gwen chuckles and pats me on the back. “Don’t feel bad, honey. At least this way we won’t end up floating in the middle of the bay.”
Gwen and I hop onto the tightly stretched canvas as Lorenzo pushes us off from the shore. The moment he raises the sail the ocean breeze propels us at a gentle pace away from land. Lorenzo shifts the sail, leans back on the line and we accelerate. I feel the water slapping against the canvas that we sit on. Within minutes, we are much farther than the buoy I struggled to reach during my swim.
Lorenzo sails near the other resort across the bay. Sunbathers dot the beach. A few shield their eyes from the sun to get a better look at us. Gwen waves to them. A few of them wave back. Lorenzo adjusts the sails to propel us along the craggy, arid coastline. Gwen hands me our camera and poses for a photo, smiling radiantly, long tendrils of hair fluttering in the breeze, the vastness of the open sea as her backdrop.
“What’s that over there?” I point to the rocky isle across the bay that I spotted on our first night at the resort. The red light I saw flashing on the island sits atop a metal tower.
“The light is to warn ships about de island.”
“Does the island have a name?” Gwen asks.
“Not really. Goat Island, I call it. Every once in a while a technician has to go dere to service de warning light. He told me a goat lives on dat island. It must have swum out dere one day—decided it seem like a nice place to call home.”
“Or it couldn’t figure out how to swim back,” I add.
“True, true. Dere is a current dat sweeps towards Goat Island. The goat is probably stuck, unable to swim back against de current. The technician told me he tried to coax it into his boat but no luck.”
“The island is so small. I’m surprised it has enough food to eat,” Gwen muses.
Lorenzo smiles knowingly. “Nothing is tougher den a wild goat. Dey don’t need much to get by.”
Back on the beach, we thank Lorenzo for his expert sailing skills. We shower and dress for dinner. Jonas greets us as we arrive at the empty restaurant. “You have the honor of being our first guests tonight,” he leads us to a small table at the back sheltered by flowering bushes with a prime view of the sea.
Alone with Gwen, I find myself at a loss of anything interesting to say. This was not something I expected. Throughout the day, we got along smoothly, except for the time I swam out to the buoy, but without anyone else around to help spark a conversation, or some physical activity like snorkeling to distract us, we become like two strangers. We deliberate over our dinner menu with the silent intensity of attorneys focused on a contract.
“Do you remember how it was when we first met?” Gwen suddenly asks, breaking the silence.
I pause for a moment, recalling that time. “Yes, of course. Those were the happiest days of my life.”
“You were so funny—the things you used to say. You were so different from the usual dumb jocks I’d dated before. You were clever and silly. When I first met you, I thought ‘What an interesting new friend I’ve made’, and then before I knew it you were so much more to me. Remember that time we went to a picnic and got caught in a downpour?”
I think back wistfully to that day. “The sky turned black. The rain came down in buckets. I was drenched straight through to my underwear.”
“And we ran all the way back to my apartment,” she continues, her face aglow from the memory of that day. “Stomping in the puddles—laughing because there was no point in trying to keep dry anymore. And once home…”
“We tore each other’s clothes off. It was the first time we ever made love—soaking wet and laughing, rolling around on your bed.”
She gazes into her champagne glass as though divining the future in its bubbly depths. “Will it ever be that way again?”
I take a deep breath, choosing my words carefully. “It’s asking a lot to think everything can be just as it was. We had something beautiful—”
“And I ruined it,” she whispers.
“Who knows? Maybe in time it can be good again…not like it was…different—but still good.”
The restaurant is nearly full now. We say no more as we eat our meal and look at the churning sea.
With our melancholy meal out of the way, Gwen rises from her seat and gestures to the calypso band playing a slow song in the lounge. “Come dance with me.”
Other couples are dancing arm in arm, smiling, chattering to each other. The last thing I want to do is join them. Nevertheless, Gwen stands before me, hand outstretched, with such a sad, hopeful expression, that I take her hand and stride to the dance floor. Connor and Alexandra are there. He dips her with dramatic flourish and she squeals with delight. I cannot stand to be near him. I lead Gwen to the other side of the dance floor. Don and Amy dance cheek to cheek, and wave to us as we approach.
The music is familiar to me, a calypso rendition of an American pop love song, and the band plays it expertly. I place my hand around Gwen’s waist and we sway unenthusiastically to the music, neither speaking nor looking at each other. With a jovial nudge, Don advises me how to dance with more zeal. I mumble a response, trying to force a smile. I look at Gwen; tears brim in her eyes. A lump rises in my throat. She breaks away from me, wipes her eyes, and heads towards the beach stairs. The couples dancing around us look on with concern. Embarrassed, I follow Gwen. She halts long enough to take her heels off, and then continues walking away from the bright lights of the restaurant towards the dark beach.
“Gwen, wait,” I call to her. She ignores me. I run after her, grab her arm, and spin her around.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
Weeping, she wraps her arms around herself. Wind off the ocean flings her hair in her face; she brushes it away. “What are we doing here, Phillip? We’ve spent so much money to come here and for what? I’m trying to save our marriage, Phillip. I’m really trying. Each time I feel I’ve made just a little progress with you…the next instant I find I’m right back where I started. We’re doing things together, having fun, and then we sit at a table like two complete strangers.”
“What do you want from me? To be the person I was before—the person I was before you cheated on me? You’re trying…well, I’m trying, too, but it’s not easy to go back to how things were before,” a sob catches in my throat. “Why’d you do it, Gwen? Why’d you throw it all away?”
A fat tear streams down her face. “I don’t know.”
“Was he funnier than me? Better in bed than me?”
“No, no,” she murmurs.
“Then why, Gwen? You’ve told me a lot of things since I saw you with Patrick. You’ve told me you were sorry. You’ve told me you love me. You even said that you’d work to bring us together again, but there’s one thing you haven’t told me. Why, Gwen? Why?”
Her voice is almost inaudible. “I don’t know.”
“Why?” I shout.
“I don’t know, Phillip. I don’t have an answer. If I knew maybe I wouldn’t have done it.”
I look back to the happy couples mingling in the lounge. Thankfully, they cannot hear us over the calypso band. Many of them are celebrating anniversaries while I stand on the shore with a marriage washing out on the tide.
I turn back to Gwen. “I’ll tell you something: I believe you love me. Yes, I do. Even when you were sleeping with somebody else I believe that you loved me.”
“Phillip—”
I raise my hand to stop her, and then continue speaking. “You said I was different from men you dated before. I made you laugh, I made you think, and that’s why you fell in love with me. But did I turn you on, Gwen?”
“Of course,” she responds.
I shake my head. “Not like Patrick, though. Yo
u’re a beautiful woman. You could have any man. On some level, you must have wondered to yourself how did I end up with this little drip.”
“That’s not true.”
“No? I think it is. In me, you had a man who was funny and smart, but I never really turned you on. Then someone like Patrick comes along, someone strong and tough, someone with money, a man that other people automatically respect, and he started paying attention to you. After coming home to someone like me every day all that attention from Patrick must have been very exciting.”
“Phillip, no.”
“It must have given you a thrill…this strong, handsome guy so interested in you. So, you decided ‘I’ll just flirt a little’ but it didn’t end there—no. Once you started, it felt too exciting to stop. Am I right, Gwen? Am I getting close?”
She swallows hard but does not answer.
“Am I getting close?”
“Yes,” her voice is barely a whisper, and then emphatically: “No! I don’t know. Maybe. One thing I do know is that I took you for granted. I admit it. I did not realize how wonderful you are—how right we are together. I know that now.”
“There’s something else you haven’t told me. Something you think I don’t know about.”
She looks confused. “What?”
“For the months that we were separated you led me to believe that you were crying in our empty bed, praying for me to come back. Yeah, you called me all the time…tried to work it out with me—but there’s one thing you neglected to mention: You were still with Patrick.”
She turns from me towards the dark ocean.
“Your affair with Patrick did not end the night I caught the two of you together. No, even while you called me—begging me to come back—you kept seeing Patrick—kept sleeping with him, too, I’ll bet. And how is it that I’m the one standing in front of you on this beach instead of him? Because, in the end, he didn’t want you.”
“It wasn’t like that,” she insists.
“Oh no? You’re telling me I am wrong?”
“I wasn’t with him. Not after you found out.”
I nod slowly. “Ah, but you did keep seeing him, correct? You wanted to keep me on the back burner in case your relationship with Patrick went nowhere. It took you a while, but eventually you figured out that he only wanted you for sex…he did not love you. Not like I did. That’s when you came crawling back to me. I’m not your husband. I’m your consolation prize.”
Last Resort Page 5