Troubles in Paradise

by Elin Hilderbrand

  Cash gets all the way out to the driveway before he comes to his senses. He’s been drinking; he should not get behind the wheel of the Rover and he should not piss all his hard-earned money away at the Parrot Club. He has a full charter tomorrow. He should go to bed.

  He does go to bed—back in Tilda’s wing, his face buried in her pillow.

  Working on Treasure Island has been a good distraction. There’s nothing like being responsible for thirty people as they swim, snorkel (often for the first time), and drink copious amounts of alcohol to keep one in the present moment. But on day four of not talking to Tilda—honestly, what’s going on? Has she not thought to call Cash even once?—Cash finds himself short on patience. It doesn’t help that he has a guest on the boat who reminds him of Duncan. This guy, Bradley, is an aggressive, in-your-face hipster. He’s exactly Dunk’s height and build, and he’s wearing jeans—jeans, on a trip to the BVIs!—and a plain white T-shirt that looks like it came out of a three-pack of Hanes but probably was made by Rick Owens and cost four hundred dollars. And he’s wearing a flashy gold Omega. Cash notices the jeans and the watch when Bradley checks in but not his Versace slip-on loafers, which he refuses to be separated from when it’s time to board the boat.

  Cash says calmly, “Take your shoes off and put them in the basket or I will leave you here.”

  “Oh yeah?” Bradley says, squaring his shoulders.

  Cash lifts the rope from the bollard. Everyone is aboard except for Bradley, who remains in his shoes on the dock.

  “Yeah,” Cash says.

  Reluctantly, Bradley removes his precious shoes and hands them over to his girlfriend, who, Cash remembers from check-in, is named Gretchen Gingerman. She puts them in her oversize Fendi bag.

  Bradley stays in the shade of the wheelhouse while Gretchen fetches him drinks. Gretchen has golden hair, is three inches taller than Bradley, and has the face and body of a supermodel; Cash tries not to look too closely but Gretchen Gingerman seems pretty damn perfect. And unlike Bradley, she’s cool. She leans across the bar and apologizes about the shoes, then says, “Bradley has a thing about people seeing his feet,” which is a statement so bizarre that all Cash can do is laugh, and Gretchen Gingerman laughs right along with him. Then Gretchen’s phone rings and she checks the display and says, “That’s him. He must be wondering where his drink is.”

  “He called you?” Cash says. He takes his time making two painkillers. Let Bradley wonder.

  Bradley stays on the boat during their trip to the Baths, since it can’t be done in jeans. Gretchen goes (she’s wearing a gold-lamé string bikini; Ayers would have had a field day, but Cash is inclined to cut Gretchen some slack, and besides, she looks amazing in it) and has a wonderful time. Gretchen also goes snorkeling at the Indians. Cash shows her his favorite staghorn coral formation, where they see a school of parrotfish and a baby barracuda, and when they get back to the boat, Bradley is glowering.

  He says to Cash, “You trying to make time with my girl?”

  Cash holds up his palms. “Just showing her the fish, man.”

  They go to Pirates Bight on Norman Island for lunch; it has a dock, so Bradley can finally disembark. Cash always sits at the bar and orders the mahi sandwich (he isn’t required to socialize during lunch), but he can’t keep from seeking out the two-top in the corner where Gretchen and Bradley are sitting by themselves. This seems a little sad. By this point in the trip, most people have bonded with other guests and all sit at nearby or connecting tables so they can chat. Cash knows he shouldn’t…but he heads over to Gretchen and Bradley’s table. Gretchen is eating the fish and chips like it’s her last meal on earth, swiping her fries liberally through the tartar sauce, but Bradley has only a painkiller in front of him.

  “Not hungry?” Cash asks. He’s poking the bear, he knows this, but he can’t help himself. “Did being on the boat make you nauseated?”

  “He’s fasting,” Gretchen says. “He’s like Jack from Twitter. It’s a control thing.”

  “A productivity thing,” Bradley says. He shoots his watch to the end of his wrist; it actually looks a little big, like it’s his father’s watch. “Not that it’s any of this squid’s business whether I eat or don’t eat.”

  Squid? Cash thinks. Did Bradley, who came on an all-day swim-and-snorkel charter in a pair of skinny Calvin Kleins like he’s Brooke Shields, just call Cash a squid?

  Gretchen is giving Cash big apologetic eyes, probably imploring him not to engage, an expression that doesn’t escape Bradley’s notice. “Don’t ogle him,” Bradley says. He drains the painkiller top to bottom in one long gulp like it’s some kind of party trick. Guess what, Bradley, Cash wants to say. I see it all day, every day. Chugging a painkiller does not make you a badass. “Don’t you have to go swab the decks?” Bradley asks.

  He’s small, Cash tells himself. And he’s insecure, even though he probably makes millions and has a smoke-show girlfriend. “Yes,” Cash says. He grins because Bradley is so mired in his own pointless misery that this seems like the response that would irk him the most. “See you on the boat at one thirty sharp.”

  Their last stop is White Bay on Jost Van Dyke. On the way over to Jost, Cash mans the bar and Gretchen comes in for two painkillers.

  “I’m sorry about Bradley,” she says. “I made him come on this trip when he didn’t want to. He agreed just to make me happy.”

  So is it making you happy? Cash wants to ask. He believes that if you agree to do something you’d rather not do for someone else’s sake, then you should do it graciously, with some enthusiasm, like a good sport.

  “I told him I’d stay on the boat with him when we get to Jost,” Gretchen says. “He can’t get onto the beach without getting wet?”

  “No,” Cash says. “We anchor about ten yards out and people wade ashore.” He laughs. “There’s a reason the bar is called the Soggy Dollar.”

  “We’ll stay on the boat, then. I just wanted to tell you in advance.”

  “You do you,” Cash says. “But I would be a terrible first mate if I didn’t warn you that you’re making a mistake. Leave your boyfriend on the boat and come ashore, just for a little while. White Bay is the most joyous place on earth. You have to experience it. I can’t let you be a bystander.”

  “Aww,” Gretchen says. “You’re sweet to look out for me like that, but I’d better stay with Bradley.”

  “Okay…” Cash says.

  Gretchen comes over to Cash’s side of the bar, snakes an arm around his shoulders, and holds her phone up for a selfie. “Smile,” she says. “I’m going to make you famous.”

  Late that night, Cash’s phone rings. He grapples around in the dark until he finds it on the nightstand. He is, once again, in Tilda’s wing.

  The screen says NO CALLER ID.

  Great, he thinks. Just what he needs, an anonymous call in the middle of the night. “Hello?”

  “Cash?”

  It’s Tilda. Now, on night four, she decides to call. At—he checks the bedside clock—2:17 a.m. Man, he would love to just hang up, but he’s been waiting a long time for this, and besides, he is living in her house. “Hey,” Cash says. “What’s up?”

  “What’s up?” She sounds…angry for some reason. She sounds angry. That’s rich, Cash thinks. She was supposed to call him days earlier, was supposed to call and text and FaceTime, and she said she’d send pictures of every cool detail so he would feel like he was right there with her. Has any of that happened? No, it has not.

  “How’s your trip?” Cash asks. “You having fun?”

  “My trip was great. My trip was the best four days of my life until just now, when I logged on to Instagram and saw a picture of you cozied up with Gretchen Gingerman!”

  “Who?” Cash says, though he obviously knows who Gretchen Gingerman is. What he doesn’t know is how or why Tilda knows who Gretchen Gingerman is. Are they friends?

  “Gretchen Gingerman, Cash, don’t play dumb. She was on Treasure Island today and she pos
ted a selfie with you for her sixteen million followers.”

  “What?” Cash says. Sixteen million followers? “Who is she?”

  “An influencer,” Tilda says. “One of the biggest in the country. Literally every single person I know follows her, and hence, everyone saw you drooling over her in her Lisa Marie Fernandez bikini.”

  “I wasn’t drooling,” Cash says. He can’t believe Gretchen Gingerman is an influencer with sixteen million followers. That’s…insane. He can’t quite wrap his mind around that. “She was just a guest on the boat, Til. Her boyfriend was a world-class jackass and I was nice to her. Not extra-nice, just regular nice.”

  “Her boyfriend, Bradley?” Tilda says. “The one whose father invented Bitcoin?”

  “Yeah, that was him.” Cash doesn’t care about Gretchen, and he cares about Bitcoin Bradley even less, though he’s unsurprised to hear Bradley is a spoiled rich kid without any identifiable talent or skills of his own. “So I’ve been wondering why you haven’t called,” Cash says. “I guess you were just waiting for me to turn up on some famous chick’s Instagram.” He tries to keep his voice light, but actually, he’s furious.

  “This is a work trip,” Tilda says. “My parents laid out a lot of money for this and I’m trying to be mindful of that and do a good job here. You know how distracting the phone can be. It’s black magic that sucks you right out of the present moment.”

  “All right.” Cash closes his eyes and tries to be mindful about enjoying the sound of Tilda’s voice. “How’s it going? Tell me everything.”

  “Our first stop was Midi et Minuit on Anguilla. It was very chic, very French. Edith Piaf was playing over the speakers in the lobby; we were greeted with glasses of Taittinger—that’s their house champagne, hello—and these tiny, airy gougères. The place was so elegant and gracious, it was like we were visiting a fantastically wealthy French aunt with impeccable taste. The rooms were minimalist in the best way. The linens…don’t get me started on how divine the linens were. I sourced everything with their GM. And the lighting in the bathroom was so flattering—I will never look as beautiful as I did in the Midi et Minuit bathroom. The pool was huge and had different areas. It was the perfect temperature, twenty-six degrees—that’s Celsius, I have to convert that. It was cool enough to be refreshing but not chilly. But…the service…well, I thought it was fine, excellent even, but Dunk found it obsequious.”

  Dunk found it. Cash gets out of bed and goes out onto Tilda’s deck. At the mention of Dunk’s name, Cash wants to throw his phone into the pool. “Nothing worse than obsequious service.”

  “Yes, there is, Cash. Slow, careless service is worse. Island time is worse.”

  “I was kidding, Til. I don’t even know what obsequious means.”

  “It means there’s a person fawning over you, trying to anticipate your needs every time you turn around. Like I said, it doesn’t bother me; these people are simply doing what they’re paid to do. Dunk got bent out of shape when he was helping me with the headrest of my chaise and the pool guy nearly took him out.”

  Cash now has to picture Dunk helping Tilda with her chaise, which necessarily puts Dunk and Tilda side by side in chaises, Tilda in one of her skimpy bikinis.

  “How was the second place?” Cash asks.

  “I’m getting there, hold on. So, our two days on Anguilla are sublime, we feel pampered, the place is elegant as hell, and I’m thinking nothing can possibly top it. Then…”

  Then? Cash thinks.

  “We get to Emerald Hill on St. Lucia. Now, Anguilla is a flat white sandbar, no topography to speak of. But St. Lucia is volcanic, like St. John only…much prettier.”

  Cash feels offended by this statement, which is funny, seeing as how he has lived here only a couple of months. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. St. Lucia has these tapered volcanic spires called the Pitons, and Emerald Hill is positioned to display their fifty shades of green to maximum advantage. Now, you want to talk about an eco-resort? You won’t believe how committed to minimizing ecological impact this place is, but in the most aesthetically jaw-dropping way. Listen to this…”

  Cash drifts in and out of Tilda’s monologue. Twenty species of tropical hardwood harvested in environmentally sustainable ways…bloodwood, locust, purpleheart, cabbage wood…walls of crushed coral plaster quarried in Barbados…and the food…mahi banh mi, conch tacos, guava pulled pork…

  “It was so delicious, even Dunk ate.”

  Cash snaps to attention. “He did?” Cash is dismayed to hear that Dunk loosened up enough to let food pass his lips and that he exhibited the behavior of a normal human being.

  “He’s been eating three squares. I mean, I had to work on him for a few days but nobody could resist the breakfast buffet that Emerald Hill lays out. The fruit alone! They have a secret chilled drawer filled with champagne mangoes, but you have to know about it to request them.”

  “I take it our resort will have a secret chilled-mango drawer?” Cash says. Our resort sounds a little too presumptuous, so he quickly says, “The Lovango resort.”

  “You bet,” Tilda says. “But the best part of Emerald Hill is the spa. Dunk and I went for massages and before you enter the treatment room, they ask you to sit in this round shallow pool that’s inlaid with iridescent rainbow tiles. It’s like sitting inside a kaleidoscope.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cash says. “Go back. You and Dunk had massages…together?”

  Tilda pauses. “We each had a massage, yes.”

  “Together? Were you naked under a sheet side by side while you got massages?”

  “Technically, it was a couples massage, but that’s not what I requested. I requested two massages at the same time so that our schedules were aligned and I wasn’t sitting around waiting for him to go to dinner. But the woman in the spa misunderstood and booked it as a couples massage and once I figured that out, I’m sorry, it was too awkward to fix, so I rolled with it.” Tilda pauses. “I kept my bikini on.”

  “Did Dunk keep his shorts on?”

  “I have no idea, Cash. I didn’t check to see what Dunk was doing. I promise you, the massage wasn’t a big deal.”

  “But me in a selfie with Gretchen Gingerman was?” Cash says. “Why don’t you explain what the dynamic between you and Dunk has been?”

  “It’s been…better than I expected, I guess. At first, he was a little over the top with his hokey Australian shtick—Crikey! Good on ya! Bob’s your uncle!—but he’s toned that down and I have to admit, I’m impressed by how informed he is. He did his research on these islands before we got down here—the history, the culture, the industry, the hidden treasures. So, for example, today we had the resort pack us a picnic and we hiked into the rain forest to see this fifty-foot waterfall in the middle of a natural garden. It was like something out of a fairy tale.”

  Cash clears his throat. Does she realize what she sounds like? She “worked on” Dunk and got him eating the chilled champagne mangoes and the conch tacos; he adjusted Tilda’s chaise; they had a couples massage (no big deal!); they hiked with a picnic to the fairy-tale waterfall. Cash can, maybe, accept all that (no, not the massages, sorry), but what about the things Tilda isn’t telling him? Has Dunk touched her? Reached for her hand? Kissed her good night? Rubbed sunscreen into her back? Held her in the water? Played footsie under the table? Has Dunk told Tilda he had a dream about her? Have they had heart-to-heart conversations? Has Tilda talked about Cash, and, if so, what has she said?

  “They have live music at all meals,” Tilda says. “A classical piano player at breakfast, a jazz combo at lunch, a guitar player who sounds exactly like Zac Brown at dinner. The Zac Brown guy is named Ezra, we sort of befriended him and he took us to this local bar in Gros Islet tonight where they had real reggae music, not just warmed-over Bob Marley, and we danced. That’s why I’m home so late. I told Dunk I wanted our resort to have live music at every meal but I didn’t think we could afford it and Dunk said we have carte blanche
and everything is possible.” She sighs. “Tomorrow we go to Eden by private seaplane.”

  “Private seaplane?” Cash says. “I thought it was commercial to St. Vincent and then a prop plane.”

  “Dunk arranged for a private seaplane,” Tilda says. “We save half a day that way.”

  Cash has heard enough. The signs are all right in front of him: Tilda and Dunk are a “we” now. If they haven’t slept together yet, they will on Eden when they’re sharing a villa. This thought—that it hasn’t happened yet but will imminently—is gut-wrenching.

  “You haven’t asked about me or things here, but you should know that I won’t be living at your parents’ when you get back.”

  “Wait,” she says. “How come? Did you find a place, or—”

  “No.”

  “Did…oh, jeez, did Granger say something about you going into his study?”

  Cash feels a hot flush creep up his neck. Granger knows Cash was in his study? He told Tilda? Cash is being monitored, his every move watched and questioned, while Tilda is free to do as she damn well pleases! Couples massage! It was a misunderstanding! Too awkward to fix!

  “Listen, Tilda,” Cash says. “Staying here isn’t working out for me. Enjoy the rest of your trip. I’ll see you around.”

  He hangs up and feels extremely proud of himself—for approximately sixty seconds.

  His phone pings with a text from Tilda: Are you breaking up with me, then?

  No! he thinks. I want you to come home. I want to wake up tomorrow and have things back to the way they were before Duncan Huntley walked into Extra Virgin and ordered his pretentious Australian wine.

  Yes, Cash types. Sorry. His finger hovers over the Send button.

  Picnic at a waterfall, like something out of a fairy tale?