“What?”
“Really. I don’t normally just invite strange men to my apartment. Can’t you see—I was using you. Just trust me for a moment and hide.”
I grabbed her by the wrist and swung her around so that she faced me. The pounding on the door was getting more insistent now. “Dia, I’m not the hiding type. And dammit, unless you tell me exactly what’s going on, I’m going to answer the door myself.”
“No!”
“Then tell me. And make it quick.”
She took a deep breath. I held her hands in mine. She was shaking.
“Okay,” she said, “but then you have to hide.”
“Let’s hear it.”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Six months ago I became involved with a very important man on the island. A married man. I knew it was wrong, but for a time it didn’t matter. I loved him and I thought he loved me. But he didn’t. Later I found out that he was involved with several other women at the same time. For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to end it. I even had my locks changed. I knew that he would come to me tonight after his wife was asleep. He always does. So I just decided to make sure I had company when he arrived. He has a terrible temper, so I had to make sure it was a man big enough to defend himself. I know it was an awful thing to do . . . ”
“That’s right.”
“And I’m sorry, Dusky. I really am.”
I dropped her hands and went toward the door. She ran and jumped in front of me, knocking her wineglass over in the process.
She was almost begging now. “Please,” she said. “Please, just hide in the closet for a few minutes and let me answer the door.”
“Why the hell should I? Neither of us is doing anything wrong.”
She sniffed and brushed at her hair, gathering her composure. “If he’s not gone five minutes after I open the door, you can come out. I was wrong. I know that now. But I was also very frightened. Just this once, Dusky, do what I say. I know we really don’t know each other. But I can see there’s understanding in you, and you have to believe that I am normally not like this. It would mean so much to me.”
So I followed the old vaudeville routine, the one where the secret lover hides from the murderous husband. The fact that I was no secret lover and he was not her husband made it all the more ludicrous. I got down on hands and knees and crawled into the dark hall closet, hiding myself as best I could behind a rack of dresses. The closet smelled of lavender, and I kept wishing Oliver Hardy was there so he could turn, nod his head and say, “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into!”
I kept the door cracked so I could see into the living room. Diacona Ebanks hustled around the apartment, hiding my beer and straightening the cushions.
“Be there in a minute,” she yelled.
The man continued to pound on the door.
There was a mirror in the hall through which I got a partial view of the bathroom. She didn’t shut the door behind her. I watched her strip shorts and shirt off, got a fleeting glimpse of the large and perfect upturned breasts before she pulled on an old bathrobe and wrapped a towel around her head. As a final touch, she smeared some kind of green complexion gook all over her face.
“I’m coming,” she yelled, hurrying toward the door.
Her anxious lover was a tall man with conservative black hair. He wore a white dinner jacket and dark slacks. He was a lot older than Diacona, maybe forty-five. He had ruddy good looks and a refined manner.
Dia opened the door, blocking his entrance.
“What in the bloody hell took you so long?” His accent was British.
“Jimmy, can’t you see? I was in the bathroom.”
“Bathroom . . . humph. So I see. What, may I ask, is that mess on your face?”
Dia still stood in the doorway, refusing to let him enter. “Jimmy, I told you it was over. Please believe me. I’m still fond of you, but it’s an impossible situation and I don’t want to see you again.”
He had the cruel smile I had seen before on a certain type of English army officer. “Yes,” he said, “and you didn’t want to see me last week or the week before that or the week before that. But you always do, Dia. And you always will. You may loathe me in the bright light of day, but you can’t get enough of me in a dark bedroom—isn’t that right, Dia?”
For a moment she seemed on the edge of hysteria, as if she were about to launch herself toward his face. But she visibly gathered herself, voice still calm. “You couldn’t be more wrong, Jimmy. You must believe that. And I warn you—if you ever come to my home again I’ll have no choice but to call the authorities. Or your wife.”
And suddenly, his pomp and inflated ego fizzled like a worn balloon. He remained just long enough to save face, trying to shatter Dia’s composure with ugly words. But she let him have his say, then shut and locked the door when he was gone.
I got to my feet, banged my head on a shelf, and stepped out into the hall.
“You handled that pretty well,” I said.
She took a step toward me, opened her mouth as if to speak, then her face collapsed into one long uncontrollable sob. She hesitated when I opened my arms to her, then fell upon my chest crying.
“How . . . how . . . how could he speak to me that way? After all . . . all our times together. . . . ”
Her words fell apart as she sobbed.
So what do you do when a strange lady chooses your shoulder to cry upon? There’s not much you can do. You stroke the soft hair and pat the back and make comforting sounds, feeling like a fool all the while because there’s no way in hell you can help.
You can just be there.
She cried so long and hard that she began to hiccup, and that made her laugh, then cry some more and finally laugh again.
“My God, I must look a mess,” she groaned in her soft Cayman accent. “I’ve gotten this”—hiccup—“face cream all over your nice blue shirt, and I made you hide in a closet. Dusky, you must”—hiccup—“rue the moment you accepted my invitation.”
“No I don’t. I’ve had more excitement tonight than I’ve had in a long time.”
“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 expr
ession 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 egg
s 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.”
Grand Cayman Slam Page 4
