by Julie Paul
“Says who?” I asked Fraser.
He pointed at Allan, who laughed. “Can we at least agree on checking out the gelato after dinner?”
We agreed.
“But first, one more drink for everyone.”
“Hold the rum,” I said to our waiter, who wanted to pollute my Coke.
Then a teenaged boy stopped at our table with two black and white puppies. “Hey, mon, you wantin’ a puppy? Take one home wit’ you. Good price.”
Billy went off. “Oh, look, Allan, we have to take them! They’re so darling!”
Allan’s face was red from booze and sun. “They’re pretty damn cute,” he said.
“We could adopt them, right? People do it all the time.”
Fraser shook his head. “It’s a hassle. You don’t want to bother.”
Billy looked at the boy. “What will you do if you can’t find a home?”
He shrugged his bare shoulders. “Let ’em go free.”
“Allan,” Billy pleaded.
“Let’s think about it.” He asked for the boy’s number.
“No, just come by de fish market,” the boy said. “Down by de pier.” He sauntered away, the two puppies tucked into his shoulders, licking his brown skin.
“Allan,” Billy said. “What will it take?”
He laughed. “I can’t say, not here. But we don’t need two dogs, do we?”
She jumped up and moved her halter-dressed body over to sit in his lap and whispered something in his ear. Fraser watched as the V slid sideways to let one breast come out for a quick visit. When he saw me watching him, he blushed and turned away.
“I said, I’ll think about it.” No more laughing. He pushed her off. She pouted and walked away from the table, toward the ladies’ room.
“One more round?” Allan asked.
“No.” I stood up and followed Billy. I heard Fraser trying to talk him out of it, too.
“You okay?” I asked Billy’s feet in the stall beside mine.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just a bit fragile when it comes to animals, I guess.”
“Hard to turn down a puppy like that,” I said. “Lots of paperwork. Shots. Responsibility.”
People loved the formative stage. Puppies, babies, blossoms, cookie dough, new love. Was it biological? When you were looking at a young woman with her breasts popping out all over the place, how could you turn your gaze away and back to the person who loved you, who was married to you, who, in damp, muted Vancouver, made you happy?
After Billy and I left the bathroom, we plodded through the gravel back to the cottage to take turns showering, couple by couple. Fraser and I waited our turn on the porch, where he flaked out in the giant string hammock.
“You’re right about thinking in the heat,” he said. “I don’t know how anything gets done.”
“I guess you get used to it.”
“Or else get up at four in the morning.” He yawned, then belched.
“God, Fraser.”
“Sorry.”
“Can you believe the puppy scene back there?”
“I know. She’s crazy about animals.”
“She’s crazy to be with that man.”
“He’s not so bad.” Fraser’s voice was quiet; he was almost asleep, just like that, rocking in the late afternoon breeze.
Allan was so bad. What was Billy doing with him? She gave off light like there was voltage from inside, like those plants that didn’t need sun to grow. He was a dark and oppressive boot, squashing everything in his path.
“Okay, maties,” Allan called before heading into their bedroom. “Your turn.”
“Fraser,” I said. “Let’s go.”
He didn’t stir.
Then Billy came out, in only a towel, to tell us the bathroom was free.
“Oh, someone’s sleepy!” she said. Of course, Fraser woke up when he heard her voice.
“Is it gelato time?”
“Not until you take a shower, stinky.” Billy gave the hammock a little shove with her foot to get Fraser swinging.
“I’m going in,” I said. “Stinky can come or not.”
“Billy, get in here!” Allan bellowed from his bedroom.
“He wants you,” I said. “Wink, wink.”
She sighed. “He probably just can’t find his shirt.”
When we walked into the small gelato shop, I believed it could be the best in the world, mostly because of their glorious air-conditioning. I asked for a sample of a local red berry sorbet, which was tart and sweet and perfect paired with vanilla.
Allan asked for a sample of chocolate from the gelato maker, an Italian who’d moved to the island ten years before, according to the guidebook.
“No samples,” the man said.
“But how do I know what I want unless I try? She got a sample.” Allan scowled at me.
“Everyone knows what chocolate tastes like. No one asks for a sample of chicken in a restaurant. You just order. No samples.”
“I’ve eaten gelato all over the world, and nobody’s refused me a sample.”
“No samples.” The man stood with his scoop ready.
Fraser stepped up to the dairy case. “I’ll have vanilla.”
Billy ordered what I had after she took a lick from my cone. Allan went out sulking. Then he sent Billy back in to buy him one. Chocolate.
Cones in hand, we strolled back to the cottage in the heavy night heat.
Fraser stopped to toss the last bit of his cone to a stray dog, and pulled me toward him for a kiss. “Having fun?”
“Good enough.”
Hands on my hips, he pulled me into him so I could feel what kind of fun he wanted.
The bugs were starting to buzz. Billy and Allan were still heading toward the cottage, not touching. “What’s on the agenda tonight?”
“This.” Fraser pulled me tighter. “But Allan wants to go out for a drink or two first.”
I groaned. “Really?” Any more time with that guy and I was going to implode. “I’m not up for it.”
“I told him you wouldn’t be. Neither is Billy. You two can hang, if that’s okay? Get to know each other. I know she likes you, Sue. You can be like a mentor for her.”
I felt my face burning a little at the hairline. “Mentor?”
“Nursey stuff. Woman stuff. Whatever.”
“Fraser. We’re on vacation.” My heart was jumping. I kissed him lightly on the cheek. “That’s fine. You two go and have your drinks. Billy and I will talk shop until the sun comes up.”
As soon as the guys left us, Billy came out of her room in a tank top and short shorts.
“PJs at last,” she said and sat at the kitchen table. “So good to have some girl time, isn’t it?”
I agreed. I changed into a white cotton nightie, wishing I’d bought the baby dolls.
“You up for a game of Rummy?” Billy asked.
“I don’t know how.”
When she survived the shock, she brought a bottle of white rum to the table and told me she would show me how to play on one condition: that I get with it and try a rum and Coke. “Two firsts in one night for you,” Billy said. “What a party!”
She dealt a hand and explained how it worked. I could smell her honeydew lipgloss.
“You think they’re on the prowl?” she asked.
“What?”
“Fraser and Allan.”
The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. “Do you?”
She shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time. For Allan, I mean.”
“Really?”
“It’s okay. I mean, I’m no angel.” Suddenly, she was looking at me from behind her cards, just her snapping blue eyes showing.
I nodded, slowly, holding her gaze.
“What about you? And Fraser?”
“Oh, well.” I looked at my cards, pretended to study them, arranged a few. “We’re okay.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re good.”
Billy sniffed. “Good.”
“Another beverage?” Was she trying to tell me that she knew something about Fraser that I didn’t?
“You know, Allan has been an extra-big prick on this trip so far.”
I sipped my drink, nodded slightly. White rum didn’t taste all that bad.
“He gets so—so parental on me sometimes, that I just want to say, Fuck it. Never mind the attitude he’s got about practically everything.”
I nodded again. I was a nodding bird on the side of a drink. “How many years between you?”
It was the wrong thing to say. She looked at me, unsmiling. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’d be like that with anyone.”
“I don’t know him,” I said.
“Well, you’ve seen some classic Allan.” She paused for another swig. “You guys seem so happy, in comparison.”
I shook my head. “Believe me, Fraser’s a little out of his element, too.” I took another drink. “Maybe back in Calgary, everything will smooth itself out.”
“I think this is the beginning of the end,” she confided. “I want to see the world, you know, and Allan’s already seen everything. When my friends come over, they don’t even know what to say to him, he’s so old, and settled. They feel like little kids around him.”
“But what about school? Any decisions there?”
She shuffled the cards, then looked me straight in the eye. “Can you keep a secret?”
I nodded.
“I’m not actually in school right now. I’ve been saving up instead, for a trip to Spain.”
“Without Allan knowing.”
“Yep.”
The little scoundrel. “And how will you tell him?”
“I won’t. Just like Wendy in Peter Pan, I’ll be gone in the night.”
We’d abandoned the card game. She was holding the deck, looking dreamily into space.
“Want to sit out on the porch?” I asked. “It’s cooler out there.”
We took our tinkling drinks to the outside. Our towels and swimsuits were hanging over every surface except the hammock.
“Here,” Billy said. “Let’s sit sideways.” She pulled open the hammock and sat her bum in first, legs over the edge.
“Think it’ll hold?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “This is built for two.”
I settled myself into the thousand strands of cotton that made up the loose weave.
“These can hold a Volkswagen,” she told me. “I saw it on YouTube.”
We started to swing, ever so slightly, outer arms behind our heads for pillows, our other hands holding our drinks. Slowly, with each rock of the hammock, our bodies began to slide into one another until there was no space between us. Our sides were in full contact, snug. I could feel a sort of vibration from her, as though her skin could barely contain her.
Or was that vibration from me?
We toasted again. “To rum!” Billy exclaimed, and giggled as the drink spilled on her chest.
“We need straws.”
“No, I’ll just finish this like a good girl,” she said. “Bottoms up.”
I drank mine down. My throat burned, as much from the Coke as the rum. I kept one ice cube into my mouth to chase the taste away.
Our glasses on the deck, we settled back into our nest.
“This is the best,” Billy said. “Screw the guys.”
A huge roll of thunder followed her words.
“Whoops! You made someone mad.”
“Well, I mean it!” She shouted it to the sky. “To hell with them!”
The raindrops started like footsteps over us, on the tin roof above us, then quickly became a stampede.
“Wow. That came on fast.”
“I love it.” Billy laughed. “I love it!”
Our heads were touching, just behind the temples. We stared at the roof, at the sky, watched for lightning on the surface of the sea.
“Did you and Allan, you know, do it, on the balcony in Flores?”
Billy laughed quietly. “How’d you know?”
“Well,” I said, “we were sitting outside, and . . .”
“Did you like what you heard?” she whispered into my ear.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I did.”
We faced each other, and she pulled off her sticky tank top. Nothing on underneath but her coral choker. “Your turn,” she said.
“I’m not the one who spilled her drink,” I said. My nightie came off.
What was I doing? Next, we were nipple to nipple in a rainstorm, mouth to mouth, matching parts together. Electric. Honeydewed. Hot.
Allan was at the door, soaked to the skin. His round face glowed, red as a rubber ball. When he saw us, he grinned. We struggled to move apart in the cotton net.
“Interrupting something?”
“We’re just getting comfortable,” Billy said.
I grabbed my nightie and covered myself with it.
“Where’s Fraser?”
“Dunno. Gotta piss. Don’t go anywhere.”
He stumbled into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
“Where were we?”
“Here,” I said. I rubbed my palms across her nipples, and she moaned in my ear. But then I heard footsteps on the stairs.
Fraser, soaking wet, came in a moment later. I was out of the hammock; we both had managed to get our pyjamas on. I was breathless. “Did Allan come back here?”
Billy pointed at the bathroom door.
“Shit. He’s going to be in deep shit, and us along with him.”
“What for?”
“He—oh, my God.” Fraser ran his hands through his drenched hair. “He broke a window in the gelato shop.”
“Oh, no!” Billy hoisted herself out of the hammock and ran to the bathroom door. “Get out here, you idiot! You’re in big trouble.”
“Fuck off!”
“Were you with him?”
Fraser nodded. “But I couldn’t catch him in time to stop him.”
Billy came back to the porch. “Did anyone see?”
“I’m not sure. It was right when the storm started, so everyone was taking shelter. But who knows what people saw?”
“My God,” I said. “This heat makes people do crazy things.”
“We’ve got to get out of here, now. Find a taxi, a bus, whatever it takes, we just have to leave.”
When Allan came out, Fraser told him his plan.
“No. Who the hell would take us at this time of night? Besides, we’re here to see a croc, and tomorrow, we’re going kayaking in the lagoon. And no one saw a thing. It’s all okay.”
He may have been talking about the rock he threw or the scene he walked in on. Kayaking? All I wanted was to lie around.
Spotting crocodiles is not a skill we need in the north; a log is a log in Canada, something to avoid when you’re in a canoe, or compete on during logging sports. Early the next morning, we were in two plastic kayaks, doubles, seeking this live log out, to look at and photograph and brag about, because the men wanted survival tales. Something more exciting than starfish and nurse sharks and gelato. The crime of the night before wasn’t mentioned, but I sensed a tension between the guys.
Billy and I were united: we didn’t want to see a crocodile. But it was a holiday, we’d be on the ocean, it was our last hurrah, the thing to do. If we didn’t go, we might’ve been together for the whole morning. My marriage needed the buffer zone of the men. My body ached with what remained unfinished.
I saw the crocodile first, motionless, sunning itself on the muddy bank. I didn’t say anything, just watched it to see if it was sleeping. When we eased closer, I nudged Fraser with my paddle; he looked at me, and I pointed out the monster.
He was just about to whisper to Allan when Billy saw it, too, and started screaming. Of course the croc started moving and quickly slid into the water and disappeared; at the same time, our two kayaks collided. Then Billy, screaming even more, fell into the lagoon.
What happened next was film-worthy. We shouted
at her to grab on to the boat, but she was panicking, splashing around as if the croc already had her by the foot.
Allan yelled, “For God’s sake, get out of there!”
Our kayak was closer to her, and before I could think properly about the possibility of being pulled in by her—never reach for a drowning person—I turned around in my seat, grasped Billy’s arms, and pulled her onto the centre of our boat. She was between Fraser and me, on her belly and hysterical, lifting her legs out of the water.
“It’s coming, I almost have my period and I know it can smell me! I saw a show on TV! Oh, my God, I hate this. I hate this!” The kayak rocked with her sobs.
“Billy,” I said. “Calm down, now. You have to turn around and sit up.” I offered her my hand.
Fraser scanned the surface for the crocodile. “It’s long gone. Billy, it’s okay.”
“Billy!” Allan was shouting again. “Get it together and turn around. I’m coming up beside you. You have to move into my boat.”
“I can’t! Allan, I can’t! I’ll fall in again, and I’ll die!”
“Billy! Stop your blubbering and turn around, or I swear, I will just fucking flip!”
At his bark, she took my hand and pulled herself up on all fours. Although she was still crying, she managed to stay focused enough so that when we were next to Allan’s kayak, she was able to step into the front seat.
“Holy shit,” Fraser said, after Billy’s stifled sobs subsided. “That was insane.”
“What the hell happened? How did you end up in the fucking water?”
“Allan. She slipped.” Fraser shrugged.
Allan muttered something.
Fraser leaned forward. “What are you saying?”
“Just that she does this kind of shit all the time. I’m sick of it.”
Billy was curled, chest to knees, her body protecting her heart.
“Enough, Allan.” Fraser’s voice cracked. “She’s totally upset right now, can’t you see that?”
“Let’s go.” Allan started paddling furiously and the kayak jerked toward the mouth of the lagoon. Billy, up front, was in no shape to paddle.
We followed him silently and made our way back toward the pier. When we could see the dock, Fraser touched my arm with his paddle, then pointed at the dock.
People were waiting: the man in a white T-shirt and neon green shorts who’d rented us our kayaks, and three men dressed in sand-coloured pants and shirts. Police.