“What’s going to happen to her?” I ask.
“Oh, Antonia will probably put her on the first flight back home.” He settles back into his chair. “Some people don’t want to be helped. Nothing you can do.”
After we’re finished eating, Lach informs us that the rest of the afternoon and evening are ours. He grabs his walkie, phone, and a backpack from the picnic table, then disappears into the jungle.
“That was bizarre,” Jess says.
“What?”
“I think he was lying about Agnes. I mean why didn’t Antonia just send her right back up here to finish the challenge?”
“You heard what he said. Maybe she’s cutting her losses.”
Jess shrugs. “I don’t know. That part could be true. I heard Agnes pulled a shiv on her first L’Élu guide.”
I gape at her. “What?”
“One of the women from her L’Élu told me their guide—not Lach, some other guy—wouldn’t give them food after they’d been hiking all day. Agnes lost her shit and stabbed him.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“She stabbed him with the broken end of a plastic spoon, supposedly. But still. I heard the dude wrestled her to the ground in front of her whole L’Élu group.”
“Jesus.”
“I know. It’s ridiculous. You’d think after an altercation like that, somebody would call the police.”
“You know, my concierge said there had been other incidents. Well, accidents, actually. At the volcano.”
Jess laughs. “Oh my God. Please tell me you’re making this up. There’s a volcano?”
“Apparently.” I dig into my aching arch. “Antonia told me the Saint Lucia police basically leave the island to her. I think she’s the only law around here.”
“Really comforting. God.”
I think about the fear in Agnes’s eyes this morning. “I heard Agnes’s family wanted her to marry somebody she didn’t want to marry. So they sent her here.”
“What?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“I cannot believe that shit still happens. Don’t folks know it’s the twenty-first century?”
I don’t reply. I’m dying to know what brought Jessalyn to Hidden Sands, how exactly she’s going to fit into the dynamic of our little three-woman survivor team, but that’s the manager in me talking; it’s actually none of my business. I need to remember that, basically, everybody has a virtual “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging around their neck. But I can’t help connecting the dots. Deirdre, Agnes, and I all seem to be in this group for reasons other than addiction. Maybe that’s what makes us trois, the common thread that ties us together.
Jess shakes her head. “Do me a favor: if I look like I’m about to stab that guy, stop me. I do not want to have to go through this all over again. Or get sent home.”
“Speaking of getting sent home . . .” I glance at Deirdre’s tent. “Maybe we should help her out.”
We unzip Deirdre’s tent flap and slip in a bottle of water, a wrap, and a couple of cookies. I can hear her soft snoring and feel a pang of sympathy. Despite her slowing us down this morning, we have to stick together. It’s the only way we’re going to get through this.
Back at the fire, Jess pushes the smoldering remains with a stick, and the wood rekindles, spitting sparks into the soft navy-blue sky. My gaze drifts off to the darkness beyond. Who knows what animals are hidden behind the cover of trees, burrowing into holes, nestling into beds of cool leaves? Maybe they’re dangerous. Maybe they bite or sting or shoot quills of deadly venom.
I guess I should add them to the list of challenges I’m unprepared to meet out here. I’m not used to failure, but Agnes certainly looked capable—healthy and fit—and she had to repeat her L’Élu. What if I fail to meet the challenge, and they never let me leave this place? What if this is some kind of nightmarish, Sisyphean challenge where I have to relive this torment every day, hoping to survive?
“So. You going to ask me why I’m here?” Jess asks.
“No. I didn’t want to pry. And, also? I didn’t really want to talk about why I’m here.”
She laughs. “I hear you. But I’m pretty sure this is what they want us to do. Why they set up this whole vision quest thing. To get us to face why we’ve come here. So, if we want to get the certificate, we should give them what they want.”
I smile. “Okay, Jess. Why are you here?”
“I wanted things that I wasn’t allowed to have. And even though certain people didn’t like me wanting them, I couldn’t help it.” She lifts her face to the stars, lets her eyes flutter closed.
“You’re not going to stop there, are you? You’re killing me.”
She adjusts her position on the log. “I used to want to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. You know, there’s only been one of us in the Fortune 500 since 1999. One woman of color to attain that title. And only fifteen black men.”
“And you never made it?”
“No. No sir, I did not.” She gives me a wry look. “Full disclosure—I drink large quantities of vodka, which may have had something to do with the disappointing career advancement.”
I eye her. Some instinct tells me she’s only revealing part of the truth. But that’s okay. I have no right to this woman’s secrets.
“Also full disclosure—I already know who you are. About your company, Jax, and your husband. I read that Business Insider article.”
I sigh. “Oh, yeah. That.”
“Is that why you’re here?” she says. “Because of what happened to him?”
I’m not the kind of person who spills her guts at the drop of a hat, but I don’t want to be rude. We’re a team, and we’re going to need each other to get through the next several days. I have to say something.
“It’s been harder than I thought it would be,” I admit. Which is a massive understatement, but true, nonetheless.
“What was he like?” she asks.
“My husband?”
“Yeah.”
He was a good man. Unafraid of failure or of looking foolish. Most importantly, he was not afraid of me. Headstrong, stubborn, always dialed up to ten . . .
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s hard talking about someone you’ve loved then lost.” Her eyes have gone a little out of focus.
“Now that he’s gone,” I say, “I don’t know—I’m just adrift. I don’t belong at work, I don’t belong at home. I can’t seem to figure anything out.”
I go quiet and immediately regret saying as much as I have. Not because Jessalyn doesn’t seem like a perfectly reasonable person to talk to, but because this is the first time I’ve verbalized these particular feelings to a fellow adult. It makes me feel vulnerable.
“So what do you think he wanted you to do?” Jess prods. “Your husband. I mean, did y’all ever talk about it? What you’d do if something happened to one of you?”
“We have wills, of course, but we didn’t stipulate anything about Jax, other than this pact we had with our partners, a kind of Three Musketeers thing. But Perry and I never talked, not about anything specific with Jax. It just didn’t seem . . .”
. . . like death should be in the ten-year plan.
Just then, Lach appears out of the jungle and tells us it’s time to turn in. I’m glad. Jess could be 100 percent on the up-and-up, but I’ve interacted with enough people who are trying to get something for nothing—information, money, a leg up on some deal they want in on—to know I’ve said enough. For now, anyway. And, truthfully, Antonia’s pitch still has me somewhat rattled.
Later that night, I lie awake in my tent. I feel grimy all over, sweaty from the day’s hike, still wearing the same clothes, and I never got to wash my face or brush my teeth. I’ve camped before. Perry and Shorie and I used to spend a few weekends a year at Wind Creek on the lake, sleeping in tents, hiking around the lake, roasting marshmallows at night. But there was always a community bathroom with hot showers and toilet paper, and the only animal was a friendly
dog from the next campsite over.
Those weekends seem like a lifetime ago. Suffused with a kind of sepia light and blurred at the edges. They were so fun, especially the hikes. We’d circle the undeveloped shores of the lake, and Shorie would belt out the entire soundtrack from Wicked. She was obsessed with that show. Perry knew every single word to every song and joined in enthusiastically. My contribution was more along the lines of humming.
On one of the trips, when Shorie was fourteen, we noticed what we thought was a mosquito bite on her calf, just below the back of the knee, but turned out to be a brown recluse bite. Within two days the spot swelled and turned purple, then blistered and scabbed black, leaving an oozing ulcer. She spent two days in the hospital, pumped so full of fluids her normally thin face looked as plump as it had when she was a toddler. She didn’t develop any particular fear of spiders. I, on the other hand, declared that to be our last camping trip ever. Obviously I was voted down on that one.
But this situation is altogether different, in more ways than one. There’s no running water, no toilets—just rolls of paper stacked on the picnic table. There are no marshmallows, no singing, and God-help-me-please, no spiders. I try to think back if I’ve ever seen a nature show on Caribbean arachnids. Maybe it’s best I can’t remember. If they’re crawling on this island, they’re probably exotic and deadly and horrifying, and it really wouldn’t do me a bit of good to know.
I tell my mind to calm, to try to focus on sleeping, but I can hear noises. Or at least I think I do. Whispering, maybe. Or an animal rooting around for scraps of food.
I pull on my boots, unzip my tent, and creep out into the clearing. The fire is smoking, the picnic table loaded with plastic tubs of more food—the next couple of days’ rations, most likely. I have no idea where they came from. I didn’t hear anyone come into camp and drop them off after we’d gone to bed, but that had to be what happened.
Towering trees form threatening silhouettes in the dark. The jungle is surprisingly loud at night. It buzzes and whistles and shrieks with the songs of insects and frogs. Over by Deirdre’s tent, there’s a different kind of rustling, which must be what I heard.
I creep closer. The flap of her tent is unzipped, giving me a perfect view inside. A perfect view of Lach and Deirdre, naked on top of her sleeping bag, legs twined together. Their bodies grind in unison.
I gasp audibly, but they don’t hear me. I know I should leave, stop intruding on this private moment, but I can’t seem to move. It’s the sounds they’re making. Their breathing quickening together, their inhaling and exhaling in dramatic, drawn-out moans. The sound of it shoots arrows through my gut. I used to make sounds like that when Perry touched me. When he held me. Kissed my neck. Explored my body with his hands and mouth.
I miss him so much. I miss him so much it’s a physical pain.
All of a sudden, Deirdre cries out—a series of soft yelps—and I’m finally shaken from my trance. I retreat to my tent and stumble back inside, zipping myself back into my sleeping bag. But I don’t go back to sleep, not for hours.
25
ERIN
In the morning, I wake to the smell of coffee brewing. When I approach the crackling campfire, I see I’m the only one up besides Lach, who’s kicked back in his lawn chair again. I sit on a log near him, and he offers me a protein bar, but no coffee. He whistles while he slurps from his own steaming mug.
“Sleep well?” he asks.
“Yes, thanks.”
He grins at me. “Never a better night’s sleep than one under the stars.”
“Agree to disagree,” I say.
Just then his phone dings. He points at the coffeepot before answering. “Off-limits.”
I nod—miffed that we don’t even get a small cup of coffee to ease us into the day—and he saunters a couple of yards away, talking in French on his cell. I only catch a few words. Rivière . . . attendez . . . volcan. Wait at the river? What’s that supposed to mean? And volcan? Volcano, maybe? I have no idea.
Deirdre doesn’t make an appearance until later that morning and doesn’t make mention of anything that happened last night. She does, however, look fresh and dewy and pretty. Like she’s slept twelve hours in a king-size bed at the Ritz-Carlton. Lach takes the three of us on a hike to a meadow, where he teaches us how to build a fire and construct one-man shelters at the tree line. He props himself against a towering tree laden with green bananas to watch us toil away but is generous enough with the water and granola bars. I catch him gazing at Deirdre a couple of times, but what the hell? Maybe it’s not a bad thing that he’s hot for her. Maybe their hookups will make the going easier for all of us.
That night, after we return to camp and eat, Lach sends us off in different directions to find a place to meditate. I suspect that he and Deirdre take advantage of the opportunity to indulge in another tent rendezvous. Which I’m not judging, okay, but I do hope there’s more to her plan than just getting laid. I hope she actually does have a plan. I’m not trying to be petty here, or misogynistic, but if she’s going to get the royal treatment for screwing the guide, she should really leverage that to see that her teammates benefit as well.
On day three—Monday, I remind myself, thinking if I keep the days straight in my head, I’m somehow better off—we embark on another hike. This one is to a waterfall farther inland than we’ve ventured thus far. It’s a long way. And on the way, Deirdre and Jessalyn pull ahead, leaving Lach and me walking together. I decide to strike up a conversation.
“My husband would’ve loved this. He was an avid hiker. Loved camping too. We used to take our daughter every summer down to this lake. Beautiful place. Not as exotic as this. But still, peaceful.”
Lach doesn’t reply to any of my random, vaguely disconnected statements, just glances briefly at me. But if I can get this guy talking, maybe I can forge some kind of partnership. And a partnership—an alliance—can end up being really beneficial. Beneficial, how? I have no idea.
“He died, in a car accident on the way to meet us at the lake,” I continue. “Which is why I’m here. I haven’t been able to deal with it. Been working night and day like that would fix things. Really messed up some of my relationships because of it.”
I let the silence settle.
“I lost my son a couple of years ago,” he finally volunteers. “He didn’t die. I mean, his mother took him away. Disappeared. Went underground with him. The kid was five.”
“That’s awful. You haven’t seen your son in two years?”
He shakes his head. “I asked my dad to find him. But I don’t think he really tried.”
“Pretty shitty of him, no offense.”
“He never liked her, my girlfriend. Nobody in my family did.” He points to the scar slashing his eyebrow. “I did this the night she took him. Put my face through a glass door.”
I’m quiet for a moment. “Yes,” I finally say. It’s the only way I can think to reply.
Yes, sometimes loving someone is more than we can bear.
Yes, hurting yourself is sometimes the only way to survive.
Yes, there are scars.
We walk in silence a while longer, the tropical birds chee-ing around us. The proverbial dam breeched, Lach chats nonstop. He tells me about the species—Jacquot, bobolink, grackle—as well as the names of the trees—tamarind, kapok, strangler fig.
“Now would be the perfect time to quote a poem,” I say. “I have a million of them in my head. But none with the right words.”
Lach glances at me.
“My husband liked poetry, but he was a computer engineer, so he had a very particular way of enjoying it. He followed this French group that wrote using mathematical principles or constraints, like palindromes or lipograms or the knight’s tour of a chessboard to play with the form.”
Lach laughs. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“They’re just algorithm-based experiments, setting parameters on the writing. He said we all work within constraints to creat
e anything, so we should embrace them. He said we’re all just rats, building labyrinths that we plan to find our way out of.”
“Huh.”
I watch him. “I mean, that’s what you and I and Deirdre and Jess are doing here, aren’t we? We pay you to put us through a miserable five days that I will feel accomplished to have worked my way through.”
“I guess so.”
We walk in silence for a couple of moments before I speak again.
“The only poet he never rewrote was E. E. Cummings. He liked the way Cummings used experimental punctuation and syntax. The arrangement of the letters on the page. He said it reminded him of lines of code.”
“Interesting.”
I hear a hissing sound. It grows louder and louder until we crest the top of the trail, and a roaring column of rushing water comes into view. The four of us stop in respectful silence. The wall of water sheets from a high cliff of lichen-covered rock, white and foamy, into a crystal-blue pool below, and even as far back as we are, a cooling spray mists us.
I close my eyes and shiver, my damp skin going to gooseflesh under my T-shirt. Then I hear a shriek and open my eyes to see Jessalyn and Deirdre gazelle-leaping through the underbrush toward the pool.
I charge after the other two women, galvanized by an equal mix of joy and dread. The thick grass is matted, and my feet keep getting stuck and have to tear through it. I feel a wave of fear, that feeling you get when you’re dreaming that you’re stuck in mud and can’t run from that shadowy man chasing you. Lach’s not chasing me, but he is following, and I can feel my actual blood rushing through every part of my body.
I hate this place. The whole setup feels amateurish and unsafe. And I’m completely at the mercy of these people. I’m stuck on this island run by a two-bit hustler-princess in Louboutin pumps, and my own family blithely signed off on it without a second thought.
And there’s something else. Like that old joke—“terrible food and the portions are so small.” As miserable as the hash was, as annoying as it’s been to sleep in that flimsy tent, to not get a morning cup of coffee and to hike for hours in the crushing heat, I expected more.
Until the Day I Die Page 14