Easy in the Islands

by Bob Shacochis

  The wet worsted of my suit chafes against me like sandpaper and I would like nothing more than to sit down in the hot sun and let everything dry up and calm down, but in a few minutes the Marine Patrol, the Coast Guard, the State Police, the local guardia, and all my friends at the DEA will be here to welcome everybody, so I must be on my way. I hurdle over Haitians and puff up the slippery steps of the breakwater, across the perfect zoysia lawn toward the circus colors of the poolside cabanas. I am thinking that this is all a rather shameful matter and that I’ve been made to feel embarrassingly lawless.

  I think my form is pretty good as I approach the pool; the old spirit shines through. My legs still feel a bit jellylike from the vibrations of the boat but my knees are rising respectably and I keep my elbows tucked into my side, my hands pumping out in front of me. Bikinied women on chaise longues lean forward to check me out. A well-tanned attendant in lime-colored sportswear is striding toward me, waving his arms for me to stop. I collar him around the neck with my forearm and together we rush somewhat awkwardly into the nearest cabana. I must say this part of town brings out the worst in me. We stumble to the Astroturf floor. I am holding his head down by the ears. I try to talk to him.

  “I’ll kill you, I’ll rip these things right off your head. I’ll bite your fucking nose off.”

  “Mister, please—!” the fellow says. There is terror in his preparatory blue eyes. I am not behaving properly, I see.

  “Excuse me, I’m overwrought,” I say apologetically and roll off, still holding on to one ear so I don’t lose him. “I was out jogging and ran into some trouble. Understand?”

  He nods his head very quickly. After all, he is a young man who has been trained to be of service to people who have everything and still want more.

  “Mrs. Gerald Silverhartz,” I say. “Statia Silverhartz.” His eyes widen appropriately. “Do you know who she is?” He nods his fair head vigorously after I let go of his ear.

  “This is a private, personal matter. Understand?”

  Again, a satisfying nod.

  “Ms. Silverhartz and I are business associates and I need to talk to her. Find her, please. Tell her Weber needs her. She’ll come. And, of course, if you’ll see to it that I am not disturbed while I wait, Ms. Silverhartz and I will express our gratitude in generous ways. Okay?”

  “Okay.” More than a nod now. Genuine enthusiasm. I am pleased by his resilience and help the lad to his feet.

  “And look,” I say cheerfully, “could you send in a sandwich and a beer for me? I’ve worked up an appetite this morning.”

  I stand behind the door while he opens it to leave, but still I can see through the crack at the hinges that the Haitians are discovering Palm Beach’s most exclusive hotel. Welcome to America, I say to myself. Good luck. The first of many uniformed men bounds out of the bushes and draws his gun on a black woman with a scarf wrapped around her head.

  I slam the door quickly and sit back in a rattan chair to await dear Statia, the woman who once made my heart sweat: my former beauty, lean and restless, hard-mouthed and cat-faced. The first time I ever saw her, almost twenty years ago, was on the cover of the Shiny Sheet stacked inside the pink vending machines along Royal Poinciana Way. She was a debutante, she was coming out, she was bending over a table signing the Social Register. A presidential candidate had his hand on her hip. She was lovely. Three weeks later I was in bed with her learning the game I’ve Got A Secret Place. I never knew for sure if we were right for each other, or if our relationship was simply a prerequisite for growing up.

  What I do know is we were married once and pissed away a fortune. Which under her guidance we promptly recovered. By age twenty-six she was sneezing blood into the finest Chinese silk. By twenty-seven her septum was reinforced with stainless steel plating. By age twenty-eight we acknowledged our hatred for each other; at thirty she wed Gerald Silverhartz, well-known bauxite tycoon and international power broker. Now, six years later, we are still in business together and the hatred’s gone, replaced by a quiet, honest affection. That’s best, because I don’t want her out of my life. She is someone to look at and say, we’re alike, you and I. Hell bent, the both of us, and yet heaven does its best to stay on our side.

  From Statia I inherited Tericka. On the surface, the acquisition was another convoluted, hushed, little-said-much-implied business deal. Statia sent a messenger across the bay one day ten months ago with a monogrammed note: Weber—Please house mother and child for a day or two until we can put them on one of our boats to the islands. Stash. Tericka stepped out of the limousine, looking very girlish, very fragile, in a flowered dress and straw espadrilles. The baby was asleep in her arms. Stash had managed to put one of the new astronauts on the payroll to deliver from Florida to Houston a special something for a special someone. Tericka was a clause in this unwritten contract. Which said, I imagine, get her and the kid out of my life. I let them in reluctantly. After three days, I couldn’t let go, and nobody came to retrieve them.

  I begin to worry that perhaps the attendant fellow is right this moment turning me in to a roomful of arguing Pinkertons. A knock on the door makes my adrenaline zing, my heart fly about like a loose bird inside me. Nothing matters more here than tone of voice. Statia was the first to teach me this.

  “What is it, damn it?” I shout curtly.

  “Room service, sir. Roast beef and Guinness.”

  “Is the roast beef bloody rare?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Horseradish?”

  “Uh, yes, sir.”

  I pull the door open so that I’m hidden behind it. “Push in the service,” I say, “and that will be all.” I grab the silver cart and wheel it in, taking a quick bite of the sandwich, which I must instantly spit out because my mouth hurts so much. What I see outside stops me from closing the door fully. The Haitians are all queued up, cowering before a force of lawmen. One old man is weeping, pulling a few dirty dollars out of his ragged pants and throwing the money on the ground. In front of my cabana, several of the local citizenry review the situation. Perhaps they hope for a good price on a gardener or yardman. Goddammit, where is Statia? I haven’t seen her for weeks. For all I know she’s still in New York, or God knows where, allowing the clergy of commerce to worship her. Leo, I see, has been nabbed and handcuffed. He is set down in a lawnchair and doesn’t hesitate to call the bartender for a cocktail.

  I withdraw back into my cabana, resigned to my skewed fate. Statia could be anywhere, could be receiving the dry old tongue of a Trade Commissioner at this very moment. My attendant taps on the door and enters carrying a telephone which he plugs into a wall jack. “Sir,” he says respectfully, “I haven’t had much luck locating your party. Would you care to use the telephone.” I must tell him I am too distressed to push the buttons properly and he must do it for me. For a half-hour I call out numbers, the boy dials and makes the necessary inquiries without success. My resolve for good health dissipates with each click of the receiver and I experience a terrific urge for vice. Nothing to do but send the attendant for cigars and vodka, and when he leaves I rise from the rattan chair where I’ve been sulking and stab out the numbers to Gerald’s private beeper. In but a few minutes he rings me back.

  “Silverhartz here, what is it?”

  “Gerald, this is Weber and—”

  “Good-bye, Weber.”

  “Gerald, don’t hang up, I have the stink of scandal and grievous harm on my breath today.”

  “One of your many stinks. How did you get this number?”

  “I must see Statia. She must come rescue me at the Breakers.”

  “Heh-heh, that’s a good one.”

  “Gerald, you are a flaccid debilitated kraut and of limited interest to me. I hope you have enough socked away to survive the economic ruin that shall now descend upon your house. You won’t have a penny left to pay the young boys you bugger on your jaunts to Martinique. Good-bye, butt rash.”

  I pitch the receiver back to its cradle and con
gratulate myself on gaining Mr. Silverhartz’s avaricious attention. He is a bully, a pigoid, a charge-ahead pomposity but not so much a fool to keep Statia away from me if he suspects his ass is in any manner endangered by my indiscretions. I am furnished with cigars and clear liquor and send the attendant out to the drive to escort Statia to my little cage when she arrives.

  The room is well fouled with tarry smoke, my blood rushes through my heart vents and valves like the Volga by the time I hear the familiar gravel of her voice pelt the ears of the crowd outside my louvered window.

  “Get out of my way, please. I said move.” Ah, the charm of authority on the lips of a self-possessed and desirable woman.

  Skillfully elbowing a bewildered cop from her path, she points at Leo in his lounge chair, the mechanic double-fistedly gulping a tall yellow drink, and says to a man in a gray business suit, “Rubin, you’re making a mistake arresting that citizen. My lawyers will be glad to explain.” The man sneers back at her but everyone knows Leo is home free. Nobody suffers the lockup in Palm Beach until deserted by the moneylenders.

  She breezes past this scenario, nodding her head appropriately as the poolside attendant points out my cabana to her. Even at this distance she projects invulnerability, even to me, and I know better. I tuck my hands glumly into the pockets of my damp trousers. She enters the room looking eternally young and ready for sport, dressed as she is in a snappy short white tennis skirt and sleeveless jersey. She is full of energy, terrifyingly confident, though her mouth has found the reproach she so commonly employs on me these days.

  “I was over at the Fays’ when Gerald rang, livid, let me tell you,” she says as she closes the door behind her, and then, “Oh my, what happened to you?”

  I smile sheepishly, shrug my shoulders, feel the unwanted scratchy beginnings of the affection I have for the lady. She looks good, though perhaps a bit overwintered from the recent business trip to the cold offices of New York. Her thick dark hair is drawn back from her bony face and held with a peach-colored ribbon. Her lower lip is naturally swollen, a fat slice of fruit. Her eyes are aggressively green. I have remained loyal to all this yet others have remarked that her features suffer from too many fast stops and starts.

  “Statia, sorry to bother you but I’m in a jam.”

  She stands off from me, taking account of my condition. “Ee-yuck,” she says, “that suit looks horrible on you.” She clucks out mild disappointment. “And who hit you in the mouth? It’s all bloody, let me see.” From somewhere in her skirt she has extracted a crumpy wad of Kleenex and dabs at my lips. She sticks a finger in my mouth and tenderly probes. I try to explain.

  “I waa yawging,” I say.

  “Weber,” she says sympathetically, “your front tooth here is broken. Jesus, doesn’t it hurt?” She removes her finger quickly from my mouth.

  “It just throbs,” I say, unwilling to examine the damage myself or to think much about it.

  “What in the world were you doing?”

  “I was jogging.”

  Her geometric eyebrows furrow and she looks at me suspiciously. “You were jogging? My goodness, how did you end up with Leo and those poor Haitians and enough cops for a baseball game? No, don’t tell me, Weber,” she says, exasperated with me, testing her forehead with the back of her hand as if I had just sent a fever into her. “I’d rather not know.”

  “Well, I think you should know,” I say. “I want you to know I was not behaving frivolously.”

  “No,” she says, growling. “I definitely do not want to hear about it. Let’s just clean you up and get you out of here.”

  “Statia, dear,” I say, since I must match her hauteur, “don’t dare patronize a fellow careerist. We are spiritual comforts to one another. A matching set of bookends on the literature of indulgence and immoderation.”

  She blinks deliberately slow and says, “Where’s that boy with my mineral water? I asked him to bring me mineral water. Idoona Fay and I were playing doubles against John and Yoko and I’m thirsty. Idoona’s selling them the McLean estate. You’d never believe it, but she’s really quite good with a racket.”

  This chatter, I know from experience, is a way of punishing me and my trivial concerns. She keeps on until she gets her water, and with her throat freshly doused she turns on me.

  “What has gotten into you lately, Weber? Where’s the class and the dash gone? That tumbledown shack you live in with that child and her baby. It’s just too perverse, even for me. And now this escapade with Leo. And oh what a fool you were to phone Gerald and threaten him.”

  “I panicked,” I admit.

  “I’ll say. He’s furious, he wants you disappeared.”

  “I worry about you, Statia,” I say, trying to make a joke out of it yet unable to prevent a certain amount of righteousness from my voice. “Is there life after Gerald Silverhartz and unrestrained decadence?”

  “How dare you?” she hisses back. “I’m a happy woman, Weber, and you know it. I am hardworking and loved. I am not idle or world-weary like you. Go back to where you belong with your teenybopper. I should tell you that we’ve closed the Space Shuttle deal with Tericka’s bum from outer space, so if you were ever motivated by certain business-wise obligations, you are free of them now.”

  “For your information,” I say, “I love Tericka, I like the baby. You always checked into the headache clinic whenever I tried to talk to you about kids.” I surprise myself because I’ve never said this aloud before. It sounds good to me.

  “Oh, Weber,” Statia says, “you make me feel old and tired. But I’m happy for you, really. In fact, I’m relieved, although it all sounds painfully mature for a fellow like you.”

  I suppose I could bite down on that but I don’t. Her voice has been icy, but she steps away from me with just a brush of melancholy across her mouth. We were most ourselves when we were in bed or bickering, and we both ran like hell from each other when we figured this out.

  Statia picks up the receiver and dials, doing what she does best—business in extravagant fashion. I watch her, thinking, I’m glad I stopped needing you, I’m glad we’re still friends. Statia, you’re a woman, you’re good-looking, you’re awfully rich, your life is sinfully exciting. I try to add all these facts up, try to attach some great meaning to the gilded patterns, the exaggerated blessings, of your life. I can’t do it, for you or for me. We have strong hearts and a certain arrogant commitment to excellence of one sort or another, whether we are outlaws or saints of the new world. And we never gave up anything without a fight, including our marriage. When we were so much younger, down on our luck, very scruffy but destined to rise again, a salesman in a used-car lot condescended to our few dollars that we hoped would buy an old VW bug. I want to smack him, I said to Statia then. Oh shit, Weber, forget it, she said. He’s not tall enough to look down his nose at us. You know what I mean? Why do you have this need to apologize or attack?

  Within minutes Statia has orchestrated a dignified ending to my day. She phones her tailor, her prosthodontist, her chauffeur. She puts her cool hands on my neck and kisses my cheek. I hug her tightly, this woman who is now a goddamn institution. “Good-bye, Weber,” she says. “I’ve got to get back. Let’s get together Monday or Tuesday with Bert. Wear something nice.” She smiles warmly, showing a neat line of teeth, and is gone.

  I feel better. By tearing the roast beef sandwich into little bites I am able to chew it on one side of my mouth. I suck vodka gingerly from its chilled bottle, light a second cigar to keep me company now that I’m alone again. The tailor comes first and leaves me wearing satin racing shorts with a chamois crotch, expensive running shoes, a cotton pullover, and sunglasses capable of concealing the most public of identities. The prosthodontist arrives shortly thereafter and fits me with a gold cap he selects from a small leather boxful of them. “It’s only temporary,” he says. “Of course, many gentlemen today are finding that a golden smile is also a sound investment.” He has amused himself and he cackles. “Think it over,�
�� he says, handing me a script for codeine.

  Like clockwork, Statia’s chauffeur Raans enters the cabana and waits quietly at parade rest until the doctor leaves. When we are alone, he whips off his cap and bows. “Boy oh boy, Weber,” he says, “you’re looking slick.”

  Indeed I am in awe of myself, that simple exercise can provide such change. “Don’t you find it a little queer, Raans,” I say, “that Statia and I share this phoenix quality, that the second we start to smell like shit you can bet roses will be delivered?”

  “Ah yes, you bet. You bet,” Raans says, amiable Raans, so happy to be a handsome Scandinavian in cockstruck Palm Beach. “Where can I take you? The beach? Your broker’s? Down to Hialeah to watch the ponies?”

  “Just home.”

  We walk out side by side, assured and unapproachable. The Haitians are being whisked away in paddy wagons. Leo is gone but I doubt he will be forgotten because too many of the gentry depend on him to keep their intrigues running smoothly. Stash’s Silver Cloud is parked close by. Raans holds the door for me as I slip onto the expansive leather seat. Raans gets behind the wheel and soon we are southbound on Ocean Boulevard, across the Causeway and not far from my neighborhood.

  “Raans, stop,” I say. “I want to get out.”

  “Okay, Weber.”

  I spring out of the car and onto the sidewalk, marveling at how comfortable the new shoes are on my feet. Every muscle is sore but the pain fades as I pick up speed, press ahead to find the limit.

  The Pelican

  In the quiet kitchen the old woman slowly prepared a breakfast of mashed sardines and cocoa tea for the white man and set it before him on the rough, oil-stained table, mumbling at the easy thanks he returned her. She stood back then, watching him begin to eat, sucking her teeth at his hesitation, the reluctance with which he tasted his food. He waited for her to walk to the back of the house, her heels squashing down the backs of her undersized slippers, before he dumped what was on his plate out the window for the cat and left.