Authors: Charles Runyon
Through the slanted louvres of the shack, Drew watched the
Edie III
ease cautiously into the lagoon beyond the big house. Her diesel auxiliaries growled a low-voiced complaint; a Negro crewman squatted behind the bowsprit with a sounding line. His measured chant came faintly up the slope:
“Cing … cing … kwat … kwat …”
The concrete floor beneath Drew’s stomach was damp from perspiration. He saw Doxie standing self-importantly beside the helmsman, his tight riding pants misshapen by the bulge of his armament.
“Twa!”
shouted the crewman, then,
“Doo!”
The engine whined a higher key as it slid into reverse. An anchor chain rattled, then splashed. The little dinghy creaked down from its davits and rocked in the water. Doxie strode across the deck, paused for a quick look at the shack, then descended the ladder to the dinghy.
Eh eh, trouble comin',
thought Drew, then smiled because the words could have been Leta’s.
As quickly as he could, he carried out the boxes Leta had packed, then stowed them in the grass thirty yards up the slope from the shack. He squatted beside them and peered through the screening grass.
Doxie landed on the white beach, climbed over the groins which extended from the terrace to the sea, and walked beneath the gray, somber manchineels which ruled the black sand beach below the shack. He turned right at the big banyan and strode up the slope. He kicked open the door of the shack and entered. A minute later he stepped out with deep disappointment inscribed on his face. Damn, thought Drew, the man wanted a fight. He watched Doxie return to the yacht, and thought to himself: Now Edith will come out of her hole.
But instead of Edith came two dinghy-loads of black men and women with kerchiefs on their heads. They attacked the house like a troop of commandos, scrubbing, sweeping, dusting, and polishing, while the dinghy shuttled back and forth with trunks, suitcases and crates. The tide rose, the current changed, and the
Edie III
swung out of sight behind the big house. Drew thought of moving to a new vantage point, then decided against it. He’d waited ten years to see Edith alone; a few more hours would make little difference.
It was four in the afternoon when the purr of the dinghy stirred him from a sweaty doze. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear it whining around the northern tip of the island. He hobbled quickly over the ridge and saw the dinghy approaching a clump of gray rocks about a half-mile out. He glimpsed a green scarf blowing in the wind, a white arm holding the tiller, then the dinghy disappeared behind a large hump-backed rock which looked like a beached whale. In it was a woman, alone.
But was it Edith? There was only one way to be sure. From his suitcase he took the skin-diving gear which Leta had gotten from a Frenchman in exchange for a week of love. He returned to the shack, stuck his hand into the hole in the wall, and retrieved a flat, canvas-wrapped package from among the tangled wiring. He dropped it into a plastic bag he found in the kitchen, then added a layer of oilcloth from the washstand. He tied it around his waist and dropped it down the front of his Levis. He left the shack and followed the path down the steep northern slope of the island, twisting through rubbled fortifications left by the defeated French. Emerging on a pebble beach, he left his crutch above the high-water line and weighted it with rocks. He crawled to the edge of the water, pulled the swimfin onto his right foot, fixed the mask and snorkel in place, and slid into the water.
Whale Rock was joined to Barrington’s Isle by an underwater ridge fifteen feet beneath the surface. Drew swam above the ridge, fighting the current which threatened to pull him out to sea. Below him the ridge lay clothed in coral grown in the shape of fans, stubby trees, and human brains laid bare by surgery. Black sea eggs clustered in the sheltered crevices and gently waved their poison spines. Zebra fish flitted through the branch coral; a hundred-pound stingray rippled its wings and glided along the bottom. On each side of the ridge the sea dropped into deep purple depths. He seemed to be floating in space above a strange twilight forest where everything glided and waved and rippled, a slow-motion world which made him feel lithe and powerful. In the water he was a better man than most. Perhaps, if this went well, he would find another place near the sea and become an aquatic animal, returning to land only to reproduce.
At Whale Rock he paused to catch his breath on the boulders which lay at its foot, then started crawling up the gentle slope. When he reached the top he froze and looked down, rigid and trembling.
She lay naked on the black sand below.
She lay stomach-down, her head toward the sea, her feet toward him. She had curled her toes under her feet and was moving her heels slowly from side to side, as though marking time to a song inside her head. Her body curved to fit the rounded shape of the beach, throwing her buttocks into high, white relief. They filled his vision, shutting out the rest of her. He’d grown accustomed to Leta’s dusky body, and the vulnerable look of the woman’s white skin shocked his senses. There was no clothing to break the monotony of flesh, no swimsuit, skirt and blouse, panties and bra, to divide her body into neat categories of arms, legs and torso. She was a sprawled expanse of whiteness, without beginning or end. For an instant his eyes darted here and there in confusion, trying to see it all at once, unable to find a point from which to begin his inspection.
Between his rock and the sand on which she lay was a fifteen foot expanse of frothing, gurgling water. The sun blazed at his back and highlighted her copper hair—
Copper?
But Edith’s hair had been black, black as a raven’s wing, black as a brush-stroke of charcoal. Of course she could dye it; women often did, and there was a good chance that Edith would have wanted to change her appearance after what happened ten years ago. Still, there may have been another woman on the yacht besides Edith, a guest—
Voicelessly, he cursed his uncertainty. He had thought he remembered every pore of her body; now he realized that his memories included only a broad, hazy shape of the woman, a blend of sound, sight, smell and little electric tingles of emotion, a series of impressions which now began to flit through his mind like swallows at twilight….
She was slightly drunk, the hair spilled loosely over her forehead, faint pouches appearing under her eyes, and her voice became a little too clear, a little too precise, a fraction of a decibel too loud. He could smell the hallway outside the secret apartment they shared, an odor of carpets and rich walnut paneling. She leaned against him while he fumbled with the key; her body moved inside the dress, her breath was warm in his ear as she whispered, “Hurry, Drew, you shouldn’t have started it in the cab …”
He could smell her clothing after she had taken it off, scattered over the carpet, still warm from her body…. He saw the quick turning away of her head when she laughed, the afterglow of laughter still in her eyes when she looked back at him….
She stood before the three-panel mirror, cupped a breast in each palm, lifted them high until they trembled like cones of frozen white custard, stroking the pale tips with her thumbs until a darker nodule grew out of the pebbled surface. She regarded her image with an intent, curious, doubting expression: Mirror, mirror, am I really the fairest? She turned and saw him watching in admiration, and the doubt faded from her eyes. “Come here, Drew, let’s see how we look together.” And he, in the residual shyness of a 23-year-old, mixed with a small-town prudishness, had looked into that clothing-store mirror, at the dozens of nude, posturing Ediths receding into the distance, and said: “I’d feel like I was performing in front of a mob.”
… She lay in bed, her arms behind her head, one knee raised, and on her face the quiet, confident serenity of a lovely woman who awaits the attention of an ardent man, storing energy for the athletic contest to come. And her voice, low and throaty, “Will you give me a rub, Drew?” And then the smell of baby oil, the satin sliding of her skin under his hands, the spreading ripples in her flesh, the deep voiceless grunting in her throat as he thumped and probed and anointed the secret recesses of her body…. He had a feeling of creation, as though he were shaping her flesh with his own hands, and when it was finished he would enjoy it—
Drew lowered himself on his stomach, rested his chin in his hands, and studied the woman on the sand. She lay without moving, like an ivory figurehead torn from some ship’s prow and carried by the sea to this shore. Keep thinking of her that way, he told himself; she’s only a woman.
He began at her feet—pink-soled, wrinkled at the instep, with the small toes bent beneath their nearest neighbor. She was a civilized woman, having submitted her feet to the deforming pinch of styled shoes. That ruled out one remote possibility, that she might be one of the poor-white girls who lived around the Cap in the village of Hope. Those girls grew splay-toed from going barefoot.
Her calves were full, her thighs heavy. They looked strong, but a little soft, like an athlete who had let himself get out of condition. She was new to the tropics; her skin had the transparent whiteness of polished ivory. And there, where the straight line of her thigh was interrupted by the abrupt white swell of her buttocks, he saw the faint, pebbled shadow of wrinkled skin which is often the first sign of departed youth. She was no teenager, and Edith would have been twenty-nine this year. She had put on flesh; the dimples on each side of her lower spine went deep into her flesh, like the impressions you make when you push your fingers into bread dough. The deep valley of her spine gentled and widened as it climbed, spreading out into a broad, smooth back. She had shaven armpits, another stigma of the civilized woman. Her hair turned under in back and cupped her ears. It glowed with evidence of a beautician’s care; Drew could almost feel it lying heavy and alive in his palm.
Still, certainty was denied him; her face was hidden in the curve of her shoulder, so he shifted his gaze to the articles on the sand beside her. White shorts, red halter, sponge-rubber sandals with a rubber throng which passed, Japanese-style, between the first two toes. A leather bag with a drawstring, open. A round can of Player’s cigarettes, also open. A wristwatch lay beside her, its diamonds glittering like sugar frosting. A diamond-studded circlet enveloped her third finger, left hand. She was a rich man’s wife, whoever she was—
Suddenly she pushed herself up on her hands. He lay still and watched as she picked up her watch, squinted at it, then put it aside. Supporting herself on one elbow, she probed the drawstring bag and drew out two oval pads. She rolled over onto her back, pressed the pads against her eyes, and stretched her arms out from her shoulders, palms up.
He’d glimpsed her face in the instant before the pads covered her eyes; he’d seen the familiar wide forehead, the gray eyes, the upturned nose and the same sensuous curve of full red lips. In all the years he’d waited, picturing her in his mind, he had never considered how the sight of her would affect him. It was like a sudden, crushing blow on the head; it was like a kick aimed from the ground and smashing into his groin. Nausea twisted his stomach; his muscles went weak and he lay like a limp, boneless sack, feeling his sweat dampen the rock. He pressed his face against the rock and felt his teeth grate against the rough basalt surface; his body shuddered with the sudden, ecstatic agony which comes at the beginning of an orgasm.
He lay quietly until the emotion passed; he brought himself slowly under control. He felt her name start deep in his chest and swell upward; he clenched his teeth to keep from shouting it.
“Edith.”
It was only a whisper, lost in the rush of the water. He swallowed to relieve the ringing in his ears, found his throat dry as dust. He raised his head and looked at her again. This time her body arched backward, stretching the stomach taut between rib-cage and pelvis. Hipbones rose up like two ends of a cradle, padded and softly rounded. Ten years ago they had stood out sharply. Her breasts had once thrust tauntingly upward; now slack-muscled and full, they rolled back and cuddled her chin like two soft white pillows. Her pubic mound was a salient, a pale-forested hillock, a fertile heap of compost sprouting a rich curling foliage. As she braced her heels and shifted her position, he saw the pebbled stress of the muscles in her buttocks; his breath caught in his throat as he viewed the trap which had ensnared him long ago. It was visible for no more than a split-second, like the sly wink of a conspiratorial eye. His breath rasped in his throat, and his heartbeat seemed deafening.
Go, he told himself, go down and swim around and give her time to get her clothes on. Even Edith would not like to be caught naked, and after ten years you don’t want her to die of a heart attack …
He pushed himself up and started to slide backward off the rock. At that moment she sat up. He froze, waited, watched her lift the hair off her shoulders and turn her head from side to side, letting the air circulate around her neck. She stretched her legs before her, inspecting them. She caught her stomach in her hands and squeezed out a whitened roll of flesh. A frown creased her broad forehead; it deepened as she cupped her breasts in her hands, lifting them in her palms as though estimating their weight. She must have known what was happening; she’d passed the peak of beauty and started downhill. Gone was the arching, satisfied smile which these daily appraisals had once evoked. Soon the full-length mirror would disappear from her bedroom; she would start choosing the darkened corners of cocktail bars, avoiding the sunny side of the street, wearing high-collared dresses to hide the sagging throat—
Suddenly, as though angry at her body and wanting to cover it quickly, she grabbed her shorts and shoved her feet into them. Still seated, she worked them up above her knees, then climbed to her feet. Her eyes roved absently over the horizon as she reached down to pull them up; her gaze slid past him and then darted back. A gasp burst from her lips; her eyes went wide, showing white all around her irises.