“Well, I insist that you at least stay for dinner after all ... this. A good meal is the least I can do.”
“What I really think, Dia, is that you ought to grab a shower, have another glass of wine, and go to bed. I’ll call you in the morning if you want.”
She looked up at me with those big dark eyes, the goo on her face unable to hide the beauty of her. “Please, Dusky,” she whispered. “Please. I don’t want to be alone for a while. Stay. Just for a bit, okay?”
“Okay. On one condition.”
“Anything.”
“Wash that green stuff off your face. Or I’ll feel as if I’m having dinner with an acne commercial.”
“God, I must look awful!”
She rushed off to the bathroom while I got another beer from the refrigerator. I took my time with the cold Red Stripe and toured the apartment. It was a woman’s place, no doubt about that. It had all the required knickknacks: butterflies mounted in a glass box, plaster of Paris gnomes and elves on tables, silk flowers in woven baskets, and a stack of
Cosmopolitan
magazines beneath the coffee table. Everything was in its place, neat and clean and sterile. I have been seeing more and more apartments and homes like this one inhabited by the three flight attendants. There is a prepackaged atmosphere about such places. The decorations don’t matter because no one stays there long enough to add a touch of personality. It may well be the mandate of our own transitory lives: Everyone should have at least three home bases, because, after all, isn’t mobility what the future is all about? Don’t worry about the
quality
of the life you live. Worry about the
quantity.
Such places suggest—and wrongly—that mobility is synonymous with experience. And why not gobble up all the experience you can in a lifetime? The result is that the apartments and homes of the world’s transients take on the bleak glow of bus terminals.
I suddenly understood Diacona’s wistful expression when she mentioned that she sometimes regretted not marrying one of the local fishermen and remaining a permanent fixture on the island.
A hundred, or even forty, years ago, she would have. And she would have probably gone on to live a pretty reasonable life. But now she found herself trapped in certain ways by her own worldliness.
Just as we all do.
She reappeared from the bathroom wearing the same white jogging outfit, but looking fresher and happier than before.
“You found the beer? Good.”
“And you look very pretty indeed, Miss Diacona Ebanks.”
“Thank you. You don’t know how much I appreciate your staying, Dusky. Just having someone to talk to will make me feel a lot better.”
“And some food would make me feel better yet.”
I helped her cook. She broiled wahoo steaks she had picked up on the way from the airport. I added lime and garlic and butter. She kept handing me beer and refilling her wineglass. More than once she said that she was a light drinker but tonight she felt like she needed it.
I didn’t argue.
So we ate the good fish and salad and hot turtle chowder on the veranda overlooking Georgetown harbor. It was one of those common tropical nights that always seem too rare: moon-glazed sea, wind in the palms, the lights of boats blending with the glimmer of stars on the dark horizon.
When we had finished, I helped her with the dishes. I washed. She dried. I had more beer. She had more wine. There was something I wanted to ask her before she got too tipsy. The right time never really came. I kept expecting her to mention her sophisticated boyfriend, Jimmy. But she never did.
Finally, I had to take the lead.
“He didn’t seem like that bad a guy, really.”
“Jimmy? Oh.”
I waited through the silence, then went on, “Was there any way he could have known that I was coming to visit you tonight?”
She looked at me, a new sharpness in her eyes. “Why? Are you frightened?”
“Scared to death. It’s just that I had an interesting drive into Georgetown. Someone in a silver Jaguar tried to run me off the road, then took a few wild shots at me.”
For a second, I thought she was going to drop her glass. “Is this a joke? Are you kidding?”
“Does your Jimmy drive a silver Jag?”
“No. A Mercedes. And he’s not my Jimmy. My God, why didn’t you go to the police? You might have been killed!”
I smiled at her. “Well, I was late for our date as it was. And I was hungry.”
She fixed her eyes on me for a long time. Then she returned my smile. “You are something, Dusky MacMorgan.”
“And you are getting drunk, Miss Diacona Ebanks.”
“I’m not!”
“Hah! The first symptom of alcoholism—you won’t admit that you’re drunk.”
She flipped the dish towel at me. I caught it and gave a tug. She could have resisted. But she didn’t. She came tumbling, laughing into my arms. We half wrestled, half nuzzled for a time. Then she turned her face up to mine. The kitchen was well lit with neon. There were gold flecks at the edge of her dark eyes. She had a small crescent scar above her eyebrow, probably from some childhood accident. Her lips were dark and full, lightly glazed with some kind of lipstick.
“Sir, I hardly even know you,” she said vampishly.
“That’s right,” I said. “That’s right.”
She lifted her face up to mine, touching my lips with her nose, her cheek, tracing zeros upon the small of my back with her fingernail.
I kissed her softly, then pulled away, not wanting to hurry her. But she grabbed a small fistful of hair and forced my face back down to her open mouth, her tongue hot and alive and searching.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t leave me tonight.”
“You’re very convincing.”
“You make me want to be convincing.”
I traced the edge of her chin with my mouth while my hands separated shirttail from jogging shorts, then slid up the warm ribbed curvature of her.
She moaned softly, eyes closed, head thrown back.
“The fashion photographer was right. You have developed beyond your years.”
“Ah . . . isn’t it . . . awful?”
“Awesome might be more to the . . . point.”
“Is that a pun?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see.”
Kissing her, I bent and lifted her off the floor and carried her through the living room to the veranda. There was a wide deck recliner there. She stood, watched me for a moment with a strange smile, then pulled the terry-cloth shirt over her head in one sure motion.
“What do you think?” she said.
“I think you are very beautiful in the moonlight.”
She held out her arms to me, forcing my face down again. I felt her hands tracing my sides, searching for something. And then she found it. “And how do you look in the moonlight, Dusky MacMorgan—more to the point?”
“Maybe. If you keep doing what you’re doing, we’ll see in a minute.”
Diacona Ebanks was a young woman who knew no restraint. It wasn’t a matter of taking turns pleasing the other, or demanding of the other. To her, lovemaking was just one long joyous experience to be shared. Shared again. And again. And again. She was like a young and perfect animal, happy to be free of all the social mores and rules of right and wrong. Naked beneath tropical night and above the midnight harbor, she reveled in this ancient freedom. She was like someone who because of some religious restriction was allowed to dance only once a year. But when she danced—look out.
“Do you like this, Dusky?”
“Umm . . . I like that just fine.”
“I like it, too.”
“In that case . . . ”
I felt the weight of her lift and spread, heavy breasts oiled with her own labors. “Yes . . . that . . . only harder . . . yes!”
When we had finished it was nearing two A.M. by my Rolex. Boat lights in the harbor had gradually bunked out, leaving only moonlight and star paths upon the Caribbean Sea. She stood and returned with a damp towel. She wiped my body gently, kissing my back in the path of it.
“How does that feel?”
“Good. The wind’s cool. It feels good.”
“I have a whole week off, Dusky. I was born and raised here. I can show you everything.”
“And I’m suddenly in love with Grand Cayman.”
I felt her stiffen. “I don’t like that word,” she said.
“Grand Cayman?”
She chuckled. “No. Love. It’s so . . . deceptive.”
I pulled her head down to my chest and stroked her long dark hair. “You don’t seem like the bitter type, Dia.”
“I’m not. I’m really not. It’s just that ‘love’ suggests permanence and disappointment all at once.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“You sound awfully sure.”
“It’s a trick of mine. When I don’t know what I’m talking about I try to sound sure.”
“In that case, I’m not convinced.”
“And in that case, I’m suddenly very much
enamored
with the Cayman Islands. . . . ”
5
“Well, well, well, looka what the cat drug in!”
Westy O’Davis sat at the kitchen table of his cottage wolfing down a stack of toast and bacon. I could smell coffee. The light of a bright Cayman morning blew through the open windows. He wore gym shorts tight around his massive thigh muscles, and a loose open shirt.
“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to scrub your floor this morning, Wes.”
“Ah, it’s okay, Yank. My wee Cayman cleaning lady did it, she did. Took some convincin’, though. The superstitious kind.” He paused, a chunk of toast hanging from his mouth. “You look tired, lad!”
“Only because I haven’t eaten. Any more food in that refrigerator, or did you eat it all?”
“Eggs. Plenty of eggs, Yank.”
“If I liked eggs I’d live in Iowa. I’ll finish off this fish, if you don’t mind. And fry some potatoes.”
While I went to work in the bachelor kitchen, Westy outlined our plans for the day. He had already called Sir Conan James’ secretary and made an appointment to see him and Lady James. Afterward, we would stop at Government House to talk with his adviser.
“’Tis hard for an Irishman to say somethin’ nice about the Crown, but they’re efficient if nothin’ else, Yank. Mighty efficient. And they might well have a line on the kidnappers. Sooner the better, I say.”
Our schedule, O’Davis said, would leave us plenty of time to visit his dive-boat operation at Gun Bay Village, go over our equipment, and decide just what armaments we might need for a sea assault. If a sea assault was necessary.
Then he smiled at me and winked. “After that, Yank, you’ll have the evening to yourself—if it was by yerself you spent last night.”
“Are all Irishmen so nosy?” I chided him, turning the potatoes.
“Aye. It’s in the genes. Every Irishman is secretly workin’ on a book. Might even allow you a whole chapter to yerself, Yank.”
“I’m honored. It makes me feel even more guilty about that clunker car of yours.”
His ears perked. “Me car? MacMorgan, you didn’t damage me fine little automobile now, did ya?”
Before I had a chance to answer, he went scrambling outside, pounding across the sand lawn like a country-boy fullback.
I followed him.
When he got to the car he smacked an open hand against his forehead as he surveyed the damage. “Ah, me poor sweet Bess, that American brute has damaged ya!”
“Bess?”
“An’ looka the fender now, would ya! I suppose you were racin’ one of the bloody islanders when you hit the telephone pole—admit it now, MacMorgan!”
“You call that ratty little red car ‘Bess’?”
“An’ looka the windscreen! You’ve shattered her bloody windscreen!” He patted the car fondly and gave me an evil look. “You’ll not be drivin’ me little automobile again, Mr. Dusky MacMorgan.”
“If it always attracts the kind of attention I got last night, I don’t want to drive the car, you crazy Irishman.”
“Yer blamin’ the car for the damage?”
So I told him about the silver Jag, and remorse for the car almost left his face.
“Shot at you, he did, eh?”
“Three times. Lucky for me he didn’t follow up on it.”
O’Davis tugged at his beard, thinking. “One person or two?”
“I only saw one. But he had me almost blinded with those damn bright lights. One man, I would say. Average height, very slim. Right-handed. Probably white, but I couldn’t say for sure.”
“Can’t be many silver Jaguars on the island. My friend at Government House will be able to narrow it down. Until then, Yank, we have to assume the bloody fools were tryin’ ta murder me. No one could have it in fer you after only a few hours on Grand Cayman.” Then he smirked and smiled. “I figure it will take all of two or three days before the townfolk start shootin’ at ya on yer own merit.”