She pulled her shawl tighter. “What’s your deal with Liz?”
“He and I own Iguana 30/70.”
“He’s a minority captain, then.”
“But the better sailor. Besides, he’s lousy at taking orders. We share all the decisions. I take care of his money.”
“Of which he has a lot, I’m sure, no small thanks to you.”
“Would I violate client confidentiality with such an indiscretion?”
“Would it violate your ethics to tell me how you two came to be partners?”
“You’ll have to get that story from Liz,” he said, sliding on his sunglasses. Her face was reflected unflatteringly, all nose, in their lenses.
“Hiding behind those sunglasses may be the most irritating thing you do,” she said.
“Being irritating is something we have in common. That and knowing how to make money work.” He handed her a business card: Iguana Nevis Holdings, LLC, with addresses in Charlestown and San Juan.
The agent announced their flight. Jason motioned her ahead and took his time joining the queue. The last passenger to board the shuttle, he hung on a strap near the door and was already halfway to the plane when she stepped out of the bus. He was bent over the prospectus when she passed by in the aisle.
On the flight home, she replayed their past exchanges and couldn’t catch Jason in a lie. She mulled over those men in the shadows, customers of a sort she’d never imagined. Staring out at the clouds, she thought about Liz, the rental captain and self-proclaimed water rat who had seemed so rootless—homeless save for his berth on Iguana, which she’d assumed was a condition of his job but now realized was his choice. Exiled from his country and family, leading a life afloat and alone, a man with roiling anger and an obsession with the dead. None of that squared with the boyish man, the bearer of impulsive gifts.
When Nevis appeared in a break between the clouds, she gazed down at its white-laced reefs and the mountain’s rumpled green folds and felt as excited as she had when flying home to New York and catching sight of the skyscrapers of Manhattan with their grids of light against the night sky.
CHAPTER 34
Els was sitting in the leather chair, a yellow pad on her knee and a calculator and dinner plate on the chair’s wide arm, humming along with Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.” The aroma of garlic and fish from her half-eaten dinner lured Susie; without looking up from her lists and calculations, Els shooed the puppy away each time she nosed the plate.
“Glad you’re no longer subsisting on Cheez Ums, sweet.”
Els jumped. The plate slid to the floor. Susie dove for the fish bones and Els grabbed her collar. “Could you figure out a way to announce yourself that doesn’t startle the shit out o’ me?” she asked, leaning down to pick the bones off the carpet.
“Leave some old chains by the door and I’ll drag them in, or maybe ring a bell, like Marley,” he said. He was standing in the dim light near the refectory table. His hair was on end, his beard unkempt.
“I thought you’d disappeared forever,” she said.
“Or maybe you wished it.”
“Not without a proper goodbye.”
“Nobody else got one.” He stepped closer to the light. His eyes were bloodshot, darkly circled. “Most expats go away in the heat of summer, why not me?”
“There have been days this bloody summer when I might have fled back to London just to get a proper bath, if I’d had the money.”
“Maybe now you appreciate my waterworks, all the Aladdin lamps,” he said. “You have to be prepared here to bounce back a century without notice. Good move, though, resurrecting the water system and buying that generator.”
“A costly necessity. We can’t close every time the current clicks off.”
He gazed at the refectory-table-turned-souvenir-shop: T-shirts with the pub’s logo, a version of his likeness on the flag with the cigar and horseshoe. His nude photos and Els’s flower paintings made into notes and postcards. Vivian and Eulia’s cookbook. He walked to the bar and gazed at his portrait, a swashbuckling counterpoint to The Beatrice. “Your preoccupations have changed.”
“The pub is more than a preoccupation.” She stroked Susie’s ears. “You’re jealous.”
“Jealousy,” he said. “The only vice that gives no pleasure. I swore off it long ago.” He picked up a postcard with an image of the flag and the legend I got walloped at Jack’s. “You’ve filled my—our—house with boozy life again, gotten my best work out there. My little measure of immortality. How could I be jealous of that?”
She stared at him, sipped her drink. He looked less substantial than in earlier visits, his shirt a misty blur. “Have you been spying on my customers?”
“Who could resist?” he said. “All these people drawn to the legend of Horseshoe Jack? Whispering to each other about illicit sex, political overthrow?”
“Sex I’ll grant you, but overthrow’s a bit dramatic.”
“You watch out for those domino guys or your fine establishment might suddenly start having trouble with the powers that be.”
“They’re just playing and watching the girls.”
“Don’t bet on it. Power is money here, and don’t you forget it. You flirt with the opposition and see what happens.”
“I’m not flirting with anything. I’m just trying to run a business.”
“My point precisely,” he said. “You’re not just a white private citizen anymore. Pay attention that you don’t get on the wrong side of power.”
“Why shouldn’t they push for Nevis independence?” she asked. “I don’t see that we get much out of being yoked to St. Kitts.”
“You need to stay the hell out of all that.”
“Did ye come back just to warn me where not to stick my nose?”
“Partly.” He gazed at the carpet. “It was two years today that I died.”
September 21: the autumn equinox and the day Hurricane Georges slammed into Nevis in 1998.
“Damn, I should have observed the anniversary,” she said. “A special night at the pub, drinks half-price at sunset in celebration of a life recklessly lived.”
“There’s always next year,” he said. “Stoke the legend. Should be good for business.”
She looked up at him but couldn’t catch his eye. “Jack, how insensitive of me.” She stood up and Susie huddled against her shins. “I never knew the exact date.” She picked up her drink, decided a toast was inappropriate, and crossed her arms. “It’s only just occurred to me that there’s no marker for you.”
He shrugged. “Even if you plant us, we dead don’t hang around some graveyard address you can visit.”
In the family plot at Cairnoch, she’d sought her beloved spirits in the keening wind, piney scent, stones ancient and new, and had always drawn strength from their presence. She thought to argue with Jack, but he was sliding in and out of focus, and she knew it couldn’t be the fault of her few sips of rum. She swirled her slivers of ice, trying to pin down what made him so ephemeral.
“Your death,” she said. “What was it like?”
“Falling,” he said. “No, being pulled head over heels, arms wheeling, down the drain. I was standing there on the wall, daring the storm and thinking about jumping, and then a gust of wind hit me from behind, and my feet went out from under me and the wave grabbed me and I thought, Oh shit, I’m going to be ground to a pulp on those rocks. Vain to the last gasp, I imagined what a disgusting corpse I’d make. Luckily, the sea decided to keep me.” He looked at the slowly turning ceiling fan. “I always wondered where the fish went in a big storm. I called out for them and they were all around me, squirming like salmon against the current, bumping me with their bellies, slapping me with their tails. An enormous grouper sped by in the murk, looking surprised, and said, ‘Mon, this is far out,’ and then my clothes dragged me down and the water was the color of slate and there was froth everywhere. When I stopped trying to swim it got easier, and I just rolled and rolled and rolled.�
��
A cock crowed in the distance and another challenged it.
“And that was it,” she whispered.
“The end of Jack as we knew him.”
The case clock scrabbled into action, and they looked away from each other until it finished its nine bongs.
“I have dreams where the water is dark and all I can see is faint gray light way far above me,” she said. “My arms are pinned, my clothing is pulling me down. I wake up in a panting sweat. Do you think I’m imagining my death?”
“How would I know?” he said. “I certainly never imagined mine. I imagined a funeral, witnessed Tom Sawyer style, where I could hear all the sweet and sappy things people would say about me and see all the weeping women try to throw themselves into the grave. But the moment of death, no.” He stepped closer, haggard in the lamplight. “Whatever you imagine won’t be what happens anyway.”
“Were you planning suicide?”
“Who isn’t?” he said. “We all have to go sometime. Better at fifty and in reasonable shape than drooling and peeing in your pants. You wouldn’t be nearly so receptive if I appeared with a walker.”
“What’s changed to make you so fragile tonight?” she asked.
“That has more to do with you than with me, sweet. I was bound to lose my charm sooner or later. Story of my life with women.” He backed into the shadows near the kitchen stairs.
Susie took a step after him and let out three tentative barks. Els reached for her collar and when she looked up, Jack had disappeared.
CHAPTER 35
Els and Eulia huddled at the domino table, Els scribbling columns of figures and drawing arrows and boxes to answer Eulia’s questions. The air seemed to be stockpiling moisture in preparation for hurling another September storm their way. Genevra was in the kitchen with the radio turned low, but now and again preaching or a hymn drifted to their ears.
Finney lumbered across the court carrying his bucket. “Boat payment due yesterday,” he said. “Wha’appen nobody here?”
“Eulia and I decided we can only serve three nights a week,” Els said. “At least until the Resort reopens.”
“That new road mess gotta be keeping people away too,” Finney said. “You wanna get here from Oualie today you gotta walk.”
The road project’s path of destruction inched daily closer to Jack’s, shaving front lawns to leave houses almost teetering at the curb, removing hairpin curves at the ghauts, and creating straightaways that would invite even worse speeding. Protective of what had so charmed her about Nevis, Els was ambivalent about the government’s “improvements.”
“Maybe I’ll sue the government for business disruption,” she said, thinking of how the construction must be enriching Eugene and what pleasure he might take in sending a layer of dust over everything at the pub.
Finney pulled US bills from his shorts pocket and flattened them on the table. “Double installment. Now the Maid really mine.”
Els weighted the bills with her glass. The hundred dollars was significant money to Finney, but a drop in the sea of her debt. “When we first inked this little business relationship, I thought I’d see you only when the payments were due. Now you’re practically family.”
“Zat true?” Finney said, and though he smiled, Jason’s taunt returned to her. She had to admit that her need to snuggle into the Flemings’ lives vastly exceeded their need for her shelter and patronage. Now that Vivian had regained so much of her strength, Els wondered when Finney’s independence or Vivian’s pride would send them back to the Westbury house.
She poured Finney a glass of the iced tea mixed with bitter orange juice that the pub would feature as long as the crop held.
“Good lobster catch today,” he said. “I sell it all to Cobb, thinkin’ you not here.” He sat down and took a gulp of the tea. “You can call him. Jason limin’ down there, he can bring some up.”
“Is Liz back too?”
He nodded. “Jason say Liz comin’ up for dinner tonight, bringin’ the Jammer crew.”
In the four months since she’d seen him, she’d tried to put Liz out of her mind, but there had been many days when she’d gazed out to sea imagining Iguana’s huge sail heading for Oualie. The prospect of seeing him raised her jitters a notch.
“I’ll surely need those lobsters, then,” she said. “We have a big family party from Golden Rock. It’s so bugger-all hard to plan, but maybe that’s to be expected until a place catches on. Or doesn’t.”
“We goin’ do fine once we get that new cooler,” Eulia said. “She teaching me the business, Daddy. Today we studyin’ financial planning. It gon’ take a lotta cookin’ to pay for all the stuff we got to buy. Even that old walk-in we can get from the Resort. They askin’ three thousand for it. US.”
“Better snatch it,” Finney said. “You get a new one, gorment grab most a’ that in duty before you get it down the wharf.”
“Jack’s got a cash flow problem,” Eulia said, rolling out the words like a schoolgirl testing new vocabulary. “I just tellin’ her she gotta axe Jason.”
“Miss not like ar we,” Finney said. “She can go to the bank.”
Maybe not, Els thought. “Eulia claims he’s an understanding lender,” she said.
“Understandin’ got nothin’ to do with it,” Finney said. “He got to know you honest, one. Then you mus’ convince him you got a sure plan for de money.” He drank the rest of his tea. “From time to time a lotta us cyan make it widout him. If he agree to help you, that make you local, fuh sure.”
Half an hour later, Jason pulled into the court, lifted Finney’s cooler from his truck bed, and said, “Lobsta fuh you tourists.” He carried the cooler into the kitchen and emerged with a beer, strolled to their table, and sat down.
“Is okay I take this, payment fuh the delivery?” he said.
“Fair enough,” Els said.
“You welcome.” He took a long pull on the beer.
“Els need axe you for a loan,” Eulia said.
“I need nothing of the kind.” Els gathered the pages.
Eulia jabbed a finger at the yellow pad. “You gon’ listen to your new minority partner?”
Jason’s eyebrow lifted over his sunglasses.
“I offered her a profit-sharing scheme to keep her from jumping ship back to the Resort,” Els said. Eulia shot Jason a look full of pride and mischief. Els refilled her glass even though the caffeine and sugar were already making her buzzy.
“You choose a perfect partner,” Jason said.
“If you doan tell he about the stuff we need, I do it myself,” Eulia said. “I ain’t cooking my tits off for nothin’.”
“We’ll manage,” Els said.
“We flat-ass broke,” Eulia said. “Worse.” She dropped to a whisper. “We ain’t got enough to pay the girls beyond Saturday, and I ain’t layin’ off my own cousin.”
Els slowly handed her calculations to Jason. “It took everything I had left to get us this far,” she said. “If we don’t get proper refrigeration and replace that relic of a cooker, Eulia can’t feed a full house. We should add a pavilion in the garden for extra tables and build a guest loo so Finney and Vivian can have their privacy back. I’ve done cost and revenue projections by activity—pub, gift shop, even weddings.”
Jason studied the pages while she finished her second glass of tea and poured a third.
“Forget it,” she said. “Give those back.”
“What the rest a’ you financial picture?” he asked.
“I said, give them back. I want nothing from you.”
“Then I got me a fool for a partner,” Eulia said. “Unless you thinking somebody gon’ give you big money for Missus Beatrice, them Haring squiggles, or the other weird pictures up there.”
Bananaquits ganged on the plate of brown sugar on the patio tipped their heads to shovel up grains. Something spooked them and they burst away.
“When the renovations soaked up just about all I had left,” Els said, “I bor
rowed against the house to outfit the pub. I’d never had a penny of debt before.”
“All bankers should try the borrower’s side,” he said. “See how it feel.”
She tried to gauge his irony, but he was stone-faced. “I can’t make the payments right now, much less invest in the business. I risk losing my home.”
“How much you need?”
“One thirty-five,” she said. “US.”
Eulia looked at her. “You ain’t borrowing all that against our restaurant?”
“Welcome to the concept of leverage,” Els said. “It’s what makes the world spin.”
“I go tink about it,” Jason said.
“Who said I want your help?” Els said.
Jason finished his beer. “I give you a answer tomorrow.”
Eulia followed him to the truck. They stood in animated but hushed discussion for a few minutes. When he drove away, she returned with compressed lips and spoke little for the rest of the day.
Els was working the bar, her head pounding, while Genevra and Luleesha waited tables and Pinky manned the grill. When Liz appeared with the windjammer crew, she’d been too busy to do more than show them to a table. The sound system pumped a mix of Jack’s jazz favorites, leavened with reggae, the Beatles, and R&B, but tonight she longed for a little Debussy or Vivaldi.
“Yer table will be ready in a jiff,” she said to a waiting group’s white-haired paterfamilias, pouring on the brogue that always eased a crisis. On the patio, Liz and the crew had finished their meal and were on their third round of beers. She beckoned Liz to the court.
He walked over to her, the torches bathing his face in amber light.
“A round on the house if you’ll finish yer drinking in the lounge,” she said. “I’m desperate for that table.”
“Deal,” he said. “You look a little fried. Let me take over the bar for a while.”
The Moon Always Rising Page 23