by Junie Coffey
“He was marking his territory. That’s what he was doing. Been there, done that.”
“Not quite like that, I’m guessing.”
“My point exactly.”
He headed over to the table of golfers to take their dessert order. Nina ate her lunch and read the paper. As she stood to leave, she noticed Ted’s hat sitting on the bar. He’d forgotten it. She picked it up and put it in her bag. She’d drop it off to him later.
“Bye, Danish,” she said, heading for the door.
“Yeah, you’ve got him rattled. That hat is practically welded to his head most of the time,” Danish called after her.
Nina collected her laundry, then walked home through town. Just before she reached her place, a shiny red pickup truck roared past her on the narrow lane. It was going at least forty miles per hour on a stretch of road with a speed limit of twenty. It strayed slightly off the pavement, coming within two feet of Nina and spraying a shower of sand on her bare toes. She jumped as it passed and then stood blinking in its wake of dusty wind. All she could see was the back of the driver’s head—a sunburned neck and short dark hair. The man was talking on his cell phone as he drove with one hand on the wheel. Nina glared at the back of his head in case he looked in the rearview mirror, but he was obviously preoccupied with his conversation.
Out of habit, Nina studied Les’s bungalow as she passed. His shiny red convertible was in his carport. No Aerosmith emanated from the front deck. He must be playing his video games or doing whatever he did all day. Nina went inside to the relative coolness of her own cottage and folded her laundry and made the bed, then fell asleep on the fresh sheets. When she woke, it was already time to head over to the inn to meet Victor for a cocktail and a catch-up before getting ready for her dinner date with Ted.
She splashed some water on her face and headed out. She was looking forward to the short walk through the quiet residential streets and under the shady awnings of the shops on Water Street. She was admiring, as she always did when she passed it, the pink Victorian house with gingerbread trim and a porch swing a few doors down from her cottage when the shiny red pickup truck sped past her again, headed south toward town. The driver was still alone in the cab.
There was nothing in the direction from which he had come but the fishing lodge and The Enclave, an upscale residential development of outsize luxury villas. The island came to an abrupt end at the far side of the housing development, just a couple of miles from Nina’s cottage, where the Atlantic Ocean met the Caribbean Sea at a point of land owned by a rock star and his wife. Like theirs, most of the houses in The Enclave were hidden behind fences and gates. The residents in The Enclave valued their privacy.
Nina decided that he must be a friend of Les, for no reason other than he engendered the same flavor of irritation in her as Les did. Driving fast was unusual and therefore suspicious behavior on Pineapple Cay. She sighed and focused on the profusion of flowers in the window boxes of the white clapboard house she was passing, feeling a little envious of the owner’s gardening skills. She wondered where Blue lived and what his yard looked like. It must be impressive if Danish’s account of Blue’s dedication to gardening was accurate.
The Plantation Inn was bustling with the new arrivals, who were chatting in small groups in the lobby or checking in at the front desk. Nina didn’t recognize anyone, and since Bridget was officially in charge of putting out fires until the conference formally opened the following night, Nina passed through the lobby and down the walk to the water. She slipped off her flip-flops and walked along the beach toward Victor’s bungalow. It was fourth in a row of five set a discreet distance back from the perfect curve of sand. Each of the bungalows housed two private guest suites, each with its own porch separated from the other by a wall that allowed the guests on one side of the building to avoid seeing the guests on the other side. Razor Hudson occupied the other half of Victor’s bungalow. Philip and Sylvia were in the bungalow next door. Definitely a less-than-ideal pairing, Nina thought, but they would be busy with the conference, and there were walls between their suites, so they shouldn’t bother each other too much. Each bungalow was separated from the next by thick screens of flowering trees and shrubs and strips of mowed grass.
The powdery white strand was dotted with hotel guests enjoying the late-afternoon sun, either stretched out under blue beach umbrellas or swimming in the jewel-colored water. An attentive waiter in a crisp white shirt and navy-blue shorts delivered top-heavy fruity cocktails to the occupants of the beach chairs. It was hot, so Nina walked down to the water’s edge and splashed along in the cool surf.
Victor was on his porch, leaning back in a wicker chair with his feet up on the railing. As a concession to the heat, he’d removed his jacket and rolled up his pant legs and the sleeves of his white collarless shirt. He raised his martini glass to her in greeting as she approached.
“Hello, Nina! You’re just in time for the first hour of happy hour,” he called to her. She rinsed her sandy feet in the basin of water that had been put there for that purpose and then walked up the steps to the porch. Victor stood and kissed her on the cheek. She sank into the chair beside his.
“Hi, Victor. Settling in all right?” she asked.
“Couldn’t be better,” he said. “May I fix you a martini? It’s the house specialty.”
“That would be just perfect, thank you,” she said.
Victor strode over to the drinks tray just inside the double glass doors that had been opened wide, giving the bungalow the feel of a glamorous stone tent open to the fresh sea air.
“Do you mind if I have a peek?” asked Nina. “I’ve never been in these bungalows before, and I’ve wondered what they’re like.”
“Please, my casa is your casa,” said Victor, shaking a silver martini pitcher. Nina strolled around the airy suite. The floors were tiled with large, creamy slabs of travertine stone, cool and slightly rough underfoot. The walls were built from chunks of light-colored coral rock. Against one wall, a richly polished mahogany desk and matching dresser sat under windows dressed up with whitewashed wooden shutters. The bed was an antique four-poster with a gauzy white mosquito net draped over it—mostly for effect, thought Nina. A thick oriental carpet in reds and blues had been placed next to the bed. Strings of white fairy lights crisscrossed the wooden ceiling, which was open to the rafters.
“How romantic,” murmured Nina.
“Yes,” said Victor. “What a waste. Have a look at the open-air shower, through that door there. I’m thinking of having one put in at my garden flat in London, just for those two days a year when one could really enjoy it.”
Nina pushed open a wooden door into a small, high-walled garden. Big-leafed tropical plants surrounded a stone patio with an enormous rainfall showerhead. The high stone walls of the enclosure were draped with flowering vines. Nina noticed that along the top of the wall, jagged broken bottles had been set into the cement, presumably to deter intruders. The sharp glass poked through the leafy vegetation meant to camouflage this suggestion of possible danger in paradise. Still, it was lovely. It must be magical in the starlight. Nina rejoined Victor on the porch. There was no sound from Razor’s side of the bungalow.
“Ah, well, Nina. So, here we are! You’ve done it! Given it all up and moved to a tropical island. Is it everything you dreamed it would be?” he asked, handing her a martini glass filled with a delicate pink liquid.
“It is,” said Nina. “I have no regrets at all. There’s just the small matter of earning a living to work out. But so far, so good. Philip did me a favor moving his conference here and asking me to make the arrangements.”
They heard the front door of the adjacent suite open and close. A couple of seconds later, Razor Hudson came into view, trudging along the sand in billowing, black knee-length swimming trunks, his laptop computer under his arm and a straw porkpie hat perched on his head.
“I say, Razor!” called out Victor. “Care to join us onboard for a cocktail?”
“No, thank you,” he said. “Actually, I was just heading down to the other end of the beach to make some observations on tourist behavior. I don’t usually stay at luxury resorts like this, so I thought I’d better get some work done to justify being here. I spent a month last summer hanging with the locals on the Jersey Shore, and I’m thinking I can get an article out of comparing behavior at a local working-class beach with this place. Publish or perish, eh?”
He gave them a world-weary grin and what Nina thought was a slightly judgmental look.
“Righto. Carry on, then,” said Victor. Razor hesitated for a second, like he would really rather have a martini than sit on the beach taking notes on his laptop, but then he nodded slightly and continued down the beach.
“Poor Razor Hudson, the Indiana Jones of tourism studies. Its self-styled rising star,” said Victor as he and Nina watched Razor go. “What a difference a generation makes, eh? There’s young Razor, who’d just love to be able to claim a working-class background, to be the genuine ‘voice of the people.’ On the side of the angels. Unfortunately, he’s just plain Raymond Hudson, burdened with an ordinary middle-class upbringing in suburbia, with all its privileges and tedium.”
“I have to say, for someone who chose to make a career out of studying how people spend their leisure time, he seems pretty determined to take all the fun out of it,” said Nina, watching Razor trudge through the sand with his head down.
“Mmm,” agreed Victor. “Then there’s Philip.”
He gestured toward the shore with his chin. As if on cue, Philip had appeared, marching along the water’s edge in a slim-fitting European-style swimsuit, his belly spilling out over the waistband, a towel slung over his shoulder. He did not look up toward the porch, and Victor did not call out to him.
“Philip grew up in Flint, Michigan, where his father worked in an auto plant,” continued Victor. “We met at Yale. I was doing a year abroad. Philip was a little bit older than the rest of us because he’d had to work a couple of years to earn the money to attend university, and he worked part-time jobs and studied hard for scholarships to get through school. I think he felt a bit out of place when he started. He seems to be ashamed of his origins and has worked hard to become the best bourgeois striver possible.”
Victor tracked Philip’s progress down the beach, watching as Philip threw his towel on a vacant sun-lounger and marched into the sea with his chin up, still wearing his eyeglasses. He lay on his back in the water and kicked his legs, cutting a course through a group of other swimmers, who jumped out of his way as he churned toward them.
“Yes, rather than being proud of his hardworking forbearers, Philip seems to have a chip on his shoulder about not being to the manor born. If you’re waxing lyrical about your fabulous trip to Tuscany, he’s just been somewhere better and farther off the beaten track, someplace no one else knows about yet. If you’re moaning about marking student papers until one o’clock in the morning, he was up until two o’clock. If you mention meeting some minor celebrity or politician somewhere, he knows them intimately, has met them many times. But perhaps I’m mistaken. Maybe it’s not his humble origins for which he feels he must compensate, but simply that he’s short and pudgy.”
Nina knew that Victor and Philip weren’t the best of pals, but she was a little surprised at the meanness of the comment. Victor was normally so good-natured. Victor took a sip of his drink, glancing over at Nina and then back out at the water, where a sailboat with billowing white sails was now tracing a path along the horizon.
“Actually, Philip’s problem is that he’s always taken himself far too seriously,” continued Victor. “I mean, really. Our work amounts to furnishing fodder for dinner-party conversations. The amusing tidbits people feed one another so they’ll have something to say other than ‘Please pass the salt’ or ‘I’ve never really liked you, but I quite fancy your wife tonight.’ For example, tourists on holiday in the sunny Caribbean fret about sharks in the water. But did you know that last year, only three people in the entire world died as the result of an unprovoked shark attack, and none of them were in the Caribbean. In the past fifteen years, sixty-six people have died going overboard from a holiday cruise ship. That’s about four or five a year. All in all, it’s very unlikely that you will die either by being eaten by a shark while on holiday or by falling off a cruise ship. You’re probably—no, most definitely you are—more at risk of meeting a nasty end in your own home. It’s a useful service to society we perform, generating these factoids, but it’s not exactly curing cancer, is it?”
“Oh, come on, Victor. You don’t really believe that,” said Nina. “Why would you devote your working life to something you find so trivial? You know as well as I do that fun and relaxation are vital to human happiness and that happy people are healthier people and more productive workers. Vacations and parks save governments money on hospitals and prisons, and maybe even help prevent wars.”
“Of course, you’re right,” replied Victor with a smile, swirling his glass. “It’s the tales we tell around the dinner table years later—the family holidays, the amazing view from the top of the mountain, those crazy Australians we met in Amsterdam, or that night on Pineapple Cay. These memories bind us together and make life worth living. What separates humankind from bird and beast.” He took a sip of his martini and perused the beach in front of them.
“It’s the way a pair of shy, solitary vacationers, each reading the same shockingly violent thriller at either end of a hotel beach, find a way to come together—or not.” He gestured with his glass toward a woman in a raspberry swimsuit, floppy straw sun hat, and large sunglasses reclining on a chaise longue at the far end of the beach. She was seemingly engrossed in a book. Then he moved his glass toward a pale man briskly spreading his beach towel on the sand under a shade umbrella. The same paperback novel with a lurid black-and-red cover was tucked under his arm. “That is the stuff of life.
“The fact that sixty-six people have died by going overboard from a cruise ship in the past fifteen years is not the least bit trivial,” he continued. “It’s tragic. Many of them jumped. Either they booked a cruise with the intention of committing suicide, or, enveloped by unbearable misery among several thousand happy vacationers, they formed that intention at sea. The notes are heartrending. ‘Found purse near railing.’ ‘Jumped following a bar-tab argument with his wife.’ ‘A man, age ninety, and his wife, age seventy-nine, both missing and presumed dead . . . cabin locked from the inside, two pairs of bedroom slippers neatly tucked under a balcony chair.’ A female, age forty-eight, ‘jumped from balcony, landed on balcony below,’ then died from her injuries, perhaps believing that she had failed even at this. Most who fell were drunk at the time. These events often occurred on the very last night of a cruise. What’s that tell us about human nature?”
This was a habit of Victor’s that Nina recognized. He loved to play both sides of the argument. Bat it back and forth like a cat with a toy until you weren’t quite sure what he really thought about something.
“How do you know those two are lonely?” she asked. “Maybe they came here to be alone. Maybe she’s a frazzled mother of three who jumped at the chance to spend a few days in luxurious solitude while Daddy and the kids visit the grandparents. Or she’s a teacher or a nuclear physicist looking to unwind for a few days. Maybe he’s a psychiatrist or a talk-show host or a taxi driver who desperately needs a break from people jabbering at him all the time.”
“Of course, you may be right, but I think not,” said Victor. “For one, they’ve both chosen to situate themselves at the edges of the beach, where they can survey everything. This suggests that they’re interested in their fellow guests. For another, her swimsuit is new and not the kind one wears to swim laps at the YMCA. It was an aspirational purchase. A sleek, chic maillot for
the glamorous new life she has imagined. The one that will begin here on Pineapple Cay.”
He sat up in his chair and took a deep breath of seaside air. He shot Nina a grin.
“How about we add a little zing to the week, Nina? You say those two are perfectly content alone, and not looking to change the status quo. I’ll wager you that, in fact, I’m correct in my analysis of the social dynamics of this particular situation. They are primed for romance, and whether they know it or not, they’re already on a trajectory that will culminate in a passionate embrace in the moonlight by the Caribbean Sea. I predict that by the end of the week, those two will have found true love, either for a night or for the modern equivalent of happily ever after—which is to say, a few months.”
“Gawd, Victor!” said Nina. “How did you become so cynical? What was his name? I’m the one who walked in on my husband and his paralegal doing it on the red velvet sofa we bought on our honeymoon. But I still believe in the enduring power of love and the sweet pleasures of solitude. I know you’re English, Victor, and there it’s still 1965 in terms of how men view women, but here’s a news flash for you: sometimes women choose their clothes simply because they like them. And they may have chosen to sit at the edges of the beach precisely because they want to be out of the fray.”
“Yes, well. I was sorry to hear about your split from whatshisname, Nina, darling, but I don’t think you’re pining away down here on your tropical island. In fact, you appear to be thriving. You’re positively glowing.”
“Well, thank you. All right, Victor, you’re on. Although I don’t know how you’re going to know how long they actually stay together, even if you are correct.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “As soon as they kiss, I win.”
They clinked glasses on the bet.
4
Nina showered, smoothed sweet-smelling sesame oil into her skin until it glowed, and pulled on a new turquoise sundress she’d bought at Shelley’s Beach Boutique in town. She brushed her dark hair smooth and twisted it up off her neck in a silver clip, then put on the pretty silver wire and sea-glass earrings Pansy had given her. Finally, she swiped her lips with a rose lipstick that had caught her eye in a New York department store what seemed like a lifetime ago. It was called Beach Plum.