It almost knocked the wind out of him. Swallowing water, he could only gasp for air as Cheryl came up behind him and dragged his suit down over his feet.
"That's better," she said, tossing the balled up suit onto the sailboat.
Cheryl ran her hands over his chest, and he thought for a second something was going to happen right there, with Henry and Frances only a few feet away. Things were different now. Something had changed, and the liberating sensation of treading water naked was pleasantly disorienting. When Cheryl slipped around and pressed her belly against his hard-on, he pushed her away, dog-paddling in a wide circle until less excited, trying to think of other things. He held his breath and dove as far down as he could, his eyes shut, and when he surfaced the two women were climbing onto the aft deck. Frances reached for the freshwater hose, and Tommy gaped appreciatively as she ran cold water over her body and Cheryl's. She was so tan. Completely untroubled by her nakedness, her long, brown body unmarred by a single white line. Tommy's eyes drifted over to Cheryl, noting with sadness the triangular white patch over her pubis where the sun had never reached.
"I'm hungry!" called out Henry, from behind him somewhere, churning water, and with a few even strokes he was pulling himself onto the deck. "Let's eat, man . . . you going to paddle around all day?"
Frances brought a large picnic basket from below, laying out a spread on the table. There was lobster salad, some cheese, two loaves of crusty French bread, a thick saucisson a Vail, and some soppresata. There were olives and dark pommerey mustard, and the last thing to hit the table was an enormous survival knife, a military issue KayBar. Henry used it to slice the sausage.
They ate greedily, without saying much, washing down the food with chilled Beaujolais drunk out of jelly jars, the only sounds the cries of the frigate birds, gulls, and boobies overhead and the gentle slapping of water against the fiberglass hull.
Chewing happily on a hunk of French bread, Tommy watched Henry slice sausage, noticing for the first time how muscled he was for such a long, thin guy. And the scars, he'd never noticed them either. They'd become livid in the water, and they were remarkable, a chronicle of incredible, violent violations of the flesh. Two large discs of scar tissue were noticeable on Henry's left side, under the rib cage - they puckered when he leaned forward to grab the cheese. Tommy wondered for a moment if he'd been gored by a bull. When Henry turned to root around in the picnic basket for a plastic fork, Tommy saw a whole constellation of jagged trails and old suture marks running diagonally across his back. He stopped chewing, transfixed, tabulating wounds, more and more of them, everywhere he looked. Suture marks under the right knee, a sizable hunk missing from the right foot, two more shiny punctures on the left instep, and just visible now, in the noonday sun, a hair-line scar extending from Henry's left ear to his right collarbone, below the Adam's apple. Jesus, thought Tommy, where did he get those scars?
"Henry, sweetheart," said Frances, startling Tommy. "Tommy's checking out your scars. Be a love and tell him how you got them. He's probably dying to know."
Tommy stammered a few protestations. "No . . . no . . . that's okay," he said, feeling guilty at having been caught staring.
"Well, I don't want you to think it was me," said Frances, laughing. "Though there have been times—"
"It's alright," said Tommy. "Really."
"No, don't be embarrassed. Everybody who sees them wants to know." She smiled indulgently. "I mean, how could you not? He looks like Dr Frankenstein put him back together, poor thing." She leaned down and ran the tip of her tongue lasciviously along the hairline scar on Henry's neck, Henry grinning agreeably the whole time.
"Veet-nam." Henry sighed without drama. Bored with the subject.
Cheryl, naked still, like the rest of them, except for Henry's red-and-white kaffiyeh draped around her neck, sat down next to Frances and gaped openly at Henry's appalling collection of wounds, clearly fascinated. She leaned forward, wobbling a little drunkenly, one arm resting on Frances's leg, Tommy not liking at all the way her eyes were traveling over Henry's body.
"Wow!" said Cheryl, reaching the two punctures below Henry's rib cage. "I guess you got shot, huh?"
"Henry's been shot a gazillion times," said Frances. "A regular magnet for flying pieces of metal and sharp, nasty objects. Fortunately," she added, pausing to eyeball his crotch lewdly, "nothing vital got hit." She lifted the tip of Henry's penis with a pinkie finger before letting it drop back against his leg. The two women exchanged looks and burst out laughing.
"I was trying to be the boy hero. You know, Audie Murphy time. Too many damn movies. That was the problem," said Henry, still completely at ease with the difficult subject and Frances's casual handling of his privates.
"Did it hurt?" asked Cheryl, this time, at least, looking him in the face.
"Some more than others," replied Henry, cheerfully. "This one here hurt the most." He pointed to the round scar on his instep. "Stepped on a punji stake. Went right through the boot. That hurt. That hurt like a motherfucker."
"Ewww!" said Cheryl, grimacing.
"He was shot five times," said Frances.
"Well . . . it was on only two different occasions," Henry hastened to add, modestly. "After the first one hits you, you tend not to notice so much the ones that come after."
"Then some nasty commie threw a grenade at him," said Frances. "And this one here" - she traced the thin scar down his neck - "that's where he got stuck with a bayonet. Can you believe it? A bayonet!"
"No shit," said Tommy. "I thought they cut that shit out after like the Civil War."
"Victor Charles was sort of short on high tech," said Henry patiently. "But he was long on enthusiasm. Guy who gave me this came at me wearing nothing but swim trunks and a satchel charge. I thought, Wow! Swimsuit! . . . Wow! Bayonet! By the time I got over the surprise, he was making neck kabob outta me." He laughed and popped a heel of French bread into his mouth. Standing up, he grabbed a disposable camera and a jumble of snorkel equipment from a storage locker.
"Tommy, let's you and me climb that big rock over there. The view is sensational. We'll swim over. There's a big moray down there we can look at on the way. Check it out."
He tossed a pair of flippers and a mask at Tommy's feet and went over the side. Tommy looked wistfully at the two women, who were just stretching out for some sun, then reluctantly dove in after him.
Underwater, Tommy had to exert himself to keep up, breathing hard into his snorkel. He saw Henry stop and point over at a large, round hump of brain coral rooted in the sandy bottom of the lagoon. Seeking to impress, he dove deep for a closer look. Henry waved him off, and he immediately saw why. A snakelike thing, all eyes and angry-looking teeth, came darting out at him, mouth open. It was the moray Henry had spoken of, and it was enormous. The whole rock was teeming with them, a nest of smaller ones visible inside the hollows; yellow colored with bluish speckles, they squirmed and slithered noiselessly, their evil-looking heads extending out a few feet, all eyes on Tommy, row after row of jagged little teeth. Turning, Tommy caught a flash as Henry captured the moment on film - Tommy and the Medusa.
They swam on, the water grew shallow, and soon Tommy could stand on the soft, swaying sea grass. A few moments later, they were sitting side by side, Henry storing the snorkel gear on a dry rock by the water's edge.
"Onwards and upwards," said Henry. "This way."
Tommy followed, able to walk upright at first, using his hands occasionally for support. Henry was up over the first pile of black rock very quickly. From there, leaping like a mountain goat, he picked out the most direct route to the top. They reached an almost vertical incline, and Henry just went straight up - there were plenty of moss-covered ledges and pits in the rock face where one could grab hold, so Tommy labored, sweating, after him. At first, each new handhold led fairly easily to another, but soon it became more difficult to keep up with the older man. When Tommy stopped and looked down, he was horrified at how high they were. Below, on t
he sailboat, he saw Frances and Cheryl watching him through binoculars. Cheryl waved, and then they were whistling and cheering. Tommy was suddenly reminded that he was still buck naked.
He'd fallen behind. Now painfully aware of how far he had to fall if he lost his grip, he began to pick his way up more carefully. He didn't know how he was ever going to get down. His knees felt trembly and uncertain, and little bits of pebble and dirt began to roll past his head as Henry hoisted himself over yet another ledge and waited for him to catch up.
When they were standing side by side under an outcropping of scrub-covered rock, the wind began to pick up. They were above the protective barrier of grassy bluff now. Tommy could see the ocean and feel the salty gusts coming off it. He wanted to go back.
"I'll help you over this part," said Henry. "It's a little tricky here." His back to the wall, legs splayed, he held his hands together to give Tommy a boost. When Tommy put his right foot in Henry's hands, he heaved him easily up and over the scrubby projection overhead. A mass of twigs and spongy vegetation in his face, Tommy grabbed frantically with both hands for somewhere to hold on.
There was a terrifying, inhuman screech, and a barely apprehended flash of white - the beating of wings, Tommy thought as he felt himself falling backward.
He plummeted straight down. For a long, a very long second, he was free from the earth, death an absolute certainty.
Then he felt himself grabbed out of the sky. Henry's arm was around him, and in the next second he felt himself slapped against the rock face like a stolen pass. He was alive. And Henry had saved his life.
"Almost lost you there, bro'," said Henry.
"Wha . . . what was that?" gibbered Tommy. "That noise?"
"Baby boobie," said Henry, calm and smiling like it was only laundry he'd just saved from a two-hundred-foot fall onto the coral, the deep creases around his eyes indicating amusement. "Must have disturbed a nest. Good thing mama boobie wasn't around. Now she really would have caused a racket. Anyway . . . No problem, mon. We can go around."
"I don't know," said Tommy, his legs Jell-O now.
"Not to worry," said Henry, moving laterally along the ledge. "It's not bad from here. Besides," he said casually, "you really don't want to try to go down this way. The other side is easier. We could have come up that way, but this way is more fun."
"Fun," said Tommy.
They moved around the rock horizontally until they were over the sea. Waves rolled over sharp coral beneath them, the wind stronger than ever. Tommy fought to regain control of his shaking limbs, not wanting to show fear but desperate to get back to the safety of the boat. Finally reaching a more gradual incline, Henry led him up to one last heap of boulders, made a few perilous hops, and was quickly at the top. Tommy, his knuckles and knees scraped and bleeding, reached up, took hold of Henry's proffered ankle, and was pulled to the bald, black peak. Exhausted, he sat down across from Henry and took his first breathless look around.
"Nice," he said. "Nice view."
He was grateful to be alive. Leaning into the wind, the sweat drying at his hairline, he looked at the endless body of water below them. The sailboat in the lagoon looked like a bathtub toy, and on one side he could see Saint Martin on the horizon, on the other, Saint Barts.
"Hey, Tommy," joked Henry, squatting on his haunches, "I can see your house from here." He raised the camera and snapped off a few shots of cowed Tommy on the peak.
"What's that one?" asked Tommy, doing his best to show interest in something other than clinging to life. He pointed to a shadowy silhouette in the distant sea, afraid to remove his hand from the rock for more than a second.
"Oh, that's Saba," said Henry. "It's a volcano." He identified the surrounding islands of Saint Eustatius and Saint Kitts, named the barren rocks of Hen and Chicks and Molly Beday. Unexpectedly, he prodded the disposable camera into Tommy's hand and said, "Take my picture."
It sounded, unusually, like an order, and Tommy was surprised how quickly he responded, without thinking about it. He took two quick shots of Henry, squatting atop the rocky crag, high above the sea.
"Shoot the roll," said Henry. "There's only a few shots left." He rose and adopted a mock heroic pose, standing on one leg, like a running Mercury, leaning precariously over the edge. Another pose, this one Washington crossing the Delaware, eyes shielded from the sun. Tommy kept taking pictures, anxious for the film to run out so he could go back to holding the rock with both hands, but Henry kept at it. One minute an Egyptian hieroglyph, the next, Nijinsky, each pose loonier and more dangerous. Finally the film ran out, and Tommy tried to hand him back the camera, but Henry ignored it, fixing him with a stare of such sudden and unexpected gravity that Tommy thought he might be knocked off the rock by the force. Henry sat cross-legged across from him, his eyes steely gray and unblinking, a panther examining its lunch. "I want you to do something for me," said Henry, and Tommy knew, with terrible certainty, that whatever Henry was about to say was what this had all been about from the first. The boat, the rock, maybe everything - it all came down to this. Frightened and unbalanced, he cocked his head and held on, trying his best not to show fear, pretending it was the Lower East Side, not the top of a rock in the middle of the ocean.
"I want you to do me a favor. And I want it to be a secret. Between us."
Tommy couldn't imagine what favor, what outrage could possibly follow. What could Henry want from him that was worth all this? He wondered for a millisecond if Henry was gay.
"Take the camera," said Henry. "Take it to the Dock Shop when we get back. They'll develop it right quick for you, you put a rush on it, pay a couple extra dollars. I'd like you to take those pictures . . . and show them to Charlie."
There it was. There it was. Tommy felt as if the rock under him had moved. He felt cut loose, like he was holding on to the top of a teetering flagpole. Charlie. He knew about Charlie. This changed . . . everything.
Henry placed a hand on Tommy's shoulder. "It's not what you think." Tommy shook off the hand and almost lost his balance.
"Steady, steady," said Henry, withdrawing the hand. "Just listen . . . listen to me. I just want to talk to the man. Show him the pictures. See if he wants to talk to me. It's simple."
"You knew. The whole fucking time. The whole time."
"Tommy, please understand . . . I've known Charlie a long time. It's been a while since I've seen him, and there's something I want to talk to him about."
Angry and betrayed, Tommy just shook his head, barely able to hear Henry over the rush of blood in his ears. "Sonofabitch" was all he could manage.
"It was a surprise for me," said Henry, "when Charlie showed up here. It presents me . . . to be honest, with some difficulties. Especially with his new friends. I imagine . . . I hope . . . it was a surprise for you too." He stopped to examine Tommy's reaction. "I mean . . . you were never involved . . . in the crew . . . nothing like that. I'm right about that, right? I'd sort of counted on you not . . . you know . . ."
He was silent for a moment, just watching Tommy. "No. I didn't think so."
Feeling like an utter and complete fool, Tommy blinked away tears. "That's what all of this is about. Isn't it? The generator, the bar, the boat trips . . . it's all about this." He looked down again at the boat, at the two brown shapes stretched out on the deck. "Your wife . . . she's in on this too."
"I tell Frances everything."
"Friends," he said, bitterly. "Big friends. So helpful . . . so nice. I guess we look pretty stupid to you."
"Look," said Henry, trying to be conciliatory. "I couldn't just walk up to the house with a potted plant and say, 'Charlie, ol' pal.' I've worked for the old man. Okay? Back in the bad old days. Like a lot of folks down here, I'm not terribly anxious for the U.S. government to take a sudden interest in my life. I am what I say I am. Just a guy with a wife he adores, a home . . . who just wants to spend the rest of his life in the sun, grab a little happiness, live simply. I didn't lie to you. I'm not a bad guy. Being an ol
d friend of Charlie's is not exactly an asset these days, you've gotta admit. Apparently a lot of them are going to jail."
"And you're working for them," said Tommy.
"No. I don't work for anybody. Not here."
"Who the fuck are you? How . . . how . . . how do you know him then? He hasn't left his corner in twenty years. You make it sound like you met him at a cocktail party."
"Look . . . you're pissed at me, and I don't blame you. We used you. A little bit. But the friendship part. That's for real. That's not bullshit. This is not a scam. This is my home, okay? We've lived here for over ten years, and this is who we are. I'm not here to hurt Charlie. There's no ill will. Not from me. Charlie could hurt me. Badly. I just want to talk to him. My intentions" - Henry smiled for the first time in a while - "are strictly honorable."
"Who are you to him?" asked Tommy.
"I worked for him once," said Henry. Tommy was taking indecent pleasure in his apparent discomfort. "I did some things for him . . . Look. I'm not asking you to betray the man. I know you wouldn't do that. Just give him the fucking pictures. Show him the pictures of your new friend - the silly American expatriate. Tell him what I said. Tell him any damn thing you want. There's nothing I can do about that. Just . . . let him decide, okay? I'd rather you didn't go squawking to the marshals. That's all I ask. Charlie wants to blab to them, let it be his move. Show us both that respect is all I ask . . . please. The old man wants to drop a dime on me, there's nothing I can do about it."
Henry sighed and looked forlornly over at Saint Martin. "See that piece of ground over there? That's home for us, man. That's everything to us. We've gotten to know you, you've gotten to know us. We let you in. That's who we are now. We decided to put our faith in you. We're in your hands, okay? Just pass the message. Show him the pictures. Then we'll both find out . . . what he wants to do." Henry stood up and shook off whatever else he was thinking about. He looked older. "That's it," he said. He extended the hand once more, this time to muss Tommy's hair like his father had once done. "Let's go back."
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