by Junie Coffey
It had all started a couple of weeks ago. Nina had just returned to Pineapple Cay after a two-week magazine assignment on an island farther south. The assignment had involved trekking across the densely forested interior of the island alongside an actor famous for his portrayal of Mafia gangsters in movies, and a naturalist revered for rescuing orphaned animals and nursing them back to health at her wildlife refuge. The idea was that the gentle, animal-loving naturalist would help the tough, hard-drinking actor get in touch with his never-before-revealed feminine, nurturing side, and he would teach her a few street smarts that might come in handy in the jungle. The editor was counting on the inevitable clash of personalities to generate some entertaining anecdotes over the ten-day trek across the island, which Nina would be on hand to record and then write about.
Instead, the actor and the naturalist started a torrid affair on day two of the trek. Instead of oohing and aahing over the wonders of nature, they spent a lot of time in a flimsy nylon tent while Nina and a grumpy Norwegian magazine photographer sat uncomfortably by the campfire a few feet away, with nothing to say to each other. The expedition ended a week later at a luxury hotel on the coast with a waitress dumping a platter of curried rice over the photographer’s head, and the naturalist and the actor spending the night in the local drunk tank after driving a motorcycle across the golf course. The next morning they had a noisy breakup in the town square’s bustling farmer’s market; the naturalist hurled large quantities of tropical fruit at the actor—and Nina had to pay for all of it, since no one else was on hand.
Although it was unlikely that the article would ever appear in the magazine after the actor’s publicist and the naturalist’s PR firm got involved, Nina was happy for the work. She had taken a leave of absence from her teaching job in New York when she moved to Pineapple Cay, and she needed the money. It was pretty easy work, as far as work went. Just a few blisters from her new hiking boots. Still, she was happy to be back home in her little yellow cottage on the beach in Coconut Cove.
The morning after her return, Nina made herself a cup of coffee and carried it out onto the veranda. The day was fresh, and the water was mirror smooth. She sat on the steps with her feet in the night-cooled, soft white sand and let her eyes wander up the beach to the fishing lodge on the point. She could just make out the roof of Ted’s hilltop cabin nestled above the main lodge and the guest cottages. She wondered when and if they’d ever have the dinner date he’d proposed just before he’d left to take some clients fishing in the cays for a week. Her last-minute writing assignment had popped up before he’d come back, and now he’d gone off-island to some big fishing and hunting expo up north to promote his business—this was according to Nina’s friend Pansy, who’d picked her up at the airport last night.
The gentle surf broke on the beach with a soothing shush. Out on the horizon, a cargo ship inched along in the seam of brightening sky where the sea met the air. Nina was thinking about Ted’s slow smile and long eyelashes when her morning reverie was broken by the tinny sound of a portable stereo. It sounded like 1980s muscle rock. Maybe AC/DC. Holding her warm coffee cup in two hands, she looked around, trying to locate the source of the music. It wasn’t coming from the direction of the lodge. Ted owned the long swath of vacant, treed waterfront between her house and his lodge, and the beach was empty. She looked in the other direction. About fifty feet away, through a graceful stand of coconut palms, was a low-slung periwinkle-blue bungalow with a wide deck facing the beach. She hadn’t seen any sign of life there since she’d moved to Pineapple Cay. Assuming that it was a vacation home owned by someone off-island, she’d pretty much forgotten she even had a neighbor.
It looked like the owners were back in residence. The house was definitely the source of the blaring music. As Nina watched, a man emerged from the house and stood at the edge of the deck facing the beach. He stretched his arms above his head in a sort of salute-to-the-sun yoga pose. It appeared that he was naked. What Nina had first thought was a dirty white bathing suit was actually his pale, skinny bare bottom, contrasted against his thin, tanned, and very hairy legs. He thrust his head back and gave a loud Tarzan yell, then sprinted across the sand and threw himself into the surf. He thrashed around in the water, chugging back and forth in front of his bungalow in a lazy back crawl, singing along to the music blaring from his stereo, which Nina now saw was positioned on the deck.
Nina took a sip of her coffee and watched him. Drinking her morning coffee on the veranda was one of her favorite parts of the day. But at least for today, it seemed her peaceful interlude of solitude was over. So much for listening to the gentle lapping of the waves and the birds singing, and to watching the fishing boats head out before the low-grade bustle of a day on Pineapple Cay began. She began to get up, but then she thought better of it. As much as she wanted to get away from the noise, she was afraid that if her neighbor saw her he would think she was spying on his skinny-dip. So, she stayed put, sipping her coffee and looking out at the horizon, glancing over at him surreptitiously every few seconds. After several minutes, the man emerged from the water and strolled leisurely back to his deck, where he slipped into his hot tub with a sigh of pleasure that Nina could hear from her own porch. When his eyes closed, Nina quietly went inside.
She spent the next few hours putting the finishing touches on the never-to-be-published magazine article about the actor and the naturalist. Maybe her neighbor was just glad to be back in the islands and was celebrating the first day of his vacation in paradise, she thought. She put it out of her mind.
It happened again the next morning. And the next. Only the musical selections varied. On day two, it was Neil Diamond singing “Sweet Caroline,” a song Nina liked under ordinary circumstances—which these were decidedly not. On day three, it was Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” and Nina had had enough. She walked down the short, sandy path that wound through a shady stand of coconut palms and banks of cocoplum bushes to the beach in front of her cottage, and then she walked down the strand until she was standing in front of her neighbor’s deck. The music was blaring, but he was nowhere in sight.
“Hello!” she called, trying to make herself heard above the volume of the stereo. She definitely wanted to avoid his naked entrance onto the deck.
No response. She tried again.
“Hey! It’s your neighbor from next door! May I talk to you for a minute?”
After a couple of seconds, he emerged from the dark interior of the bungalow. Mercifully, he was wearing a pair of flowered surf jams, with a pair of enormous headphones around his neck like a necklace. He had a can of beer in his hand and took a slug as he moseyed down the steps and across the sand to where she stood.
“Hey, man,” he said.
Thin and wiry, he had brown hair styled in a boyish bowl cut that flopped around his face as he strolled across the sand toward her. She swiftly categorized him as a frat boy taking full advantage of his mom and dad’s beach house for a few days. As he came closer and halted in front of her, he pulled his sunglasses off, leaving them dangling around his neck on a strap along with the headphones. She realized then that he was considerably older than she had guessed. Under his youthful, glossy locks, his face was beginning to soften and sag. Midforties, she decided. A beach bum gone to seed. A beach bum with an accountant’s haircut. A closet conformist trying to pretend he was a laid-back man of the world. Some unresolved issues from his adolescence, if she had to guess. She sighed quietly and stuck out her hand.
“Hello. I’m Nina, your neighbor from over there.” She gestured toward her yellow cottage, its covered veranda visible through the trees.
“Yeah. I saw you swimming the other day. Nice polka-dot bikini.”
Nina cringed inside.
He reached out casually and slapped the palm of her hand with his own, sliding his hand across hers and hooking her fingertips in his before releasing them. She guessed it was some kind of pseudo-island greeting.
“The name’s Les. Pleased to meet you,”
he said, not so surreptitiously sliding his eyes down to her bosom and back to her face.
Nina resisted the urge to cross her arms over her chest, and stuffed her fists in the pockets of her shorts instead.
“Hello, Les. I moved in about a month ago, and I’ve never seen any lights at your place until day before yesterday. Are you just here on holiday?” she asked hopefully.
“No, man,” said Les. “This is my crib. I’m a professional gambler. I was away on business for a few months. Playing the cruise ships, Monte Carlo, Vegas. I just got back.”
Nina was well aware.
“Really. You’re a professional gambler,” she repeated, skeptically.
“Yeah, man. I’m not one of those high rollers, but I make a comfortable living. The rest of the time, I enjoy the fruits of my labors.” He gestured to his hot tub, a big and shiny propane barbecue, a Sea-Doo parked around the side of the house, and then to the whole beach.
“If you’re a professional gambler, wouldn’t it make more sense to live on an island with a casino?” asked Nina. Even she knew how unlikely it was that he’d see her point and put his house up for sale immediately.
“Ever hear of the saying ‘Don’t shit where you sit’?” he asked. “I like to keep my private life separate from my professional life. My job requires constant diligence. I can never let down my guard. Here, I can be myself. Let it all hang out. Woo-hoo!” he yelled, throwing his empty beer can up onto his deck, where it landed in the hot tub.
Clearly, her new neighbor was a charmer.
“Yes,” said Nina, wondering how to broach the subject of his music in a way that would get the result she desired. “That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. Maybe you don’t realize it, but I can hear your music all the way over at my place. It’s pretty loud, especially for first thing in the morning. I mean, Duran Duran can be a bit hard on the head before you’ve had your first cup of coffee, right?” She smiled to lessen the sting in her words.
“I’m playing it ironically,” he said. “That’s what makes it good. Maybe if you tried listening to it that way, it would solve your little problem.”
“I doubt it. And I don’t think you can listen to eighties music ironically,” said Nina. “Fifties rock and roll and seventies disco, maybe. But not the eighties. And not the sixties, either, for that matter. The music was too earnest. Or too jaded. Something, anyway, that makes it difficult to listen to ironically.”
“Ah, I think I will have to disagree with you there.” Les scrutinized her. “Man, you’ve built a lot of mental cages for someone who lives in a shack on the beach. I thought you’d be cool.”
“My house isn’t a shack!” said Nina, her hands going to her hips. “My point is, your music is too loud. Could you please turn it down?”
Les didn’t answer, just looked down the beach toward the town wharf without making eye contact with her. He was singing the chorus to “Hungry Like the Wolf” under his breath and throwing a few furtive dance moves.
“Another thing,” said Nina, exasperated. “The nudity. I do not wish to see your naked form while I drink my coffee, all right? I see you own a bathing suit. Could you please do me the courtesy of wearing it when you are out and about, at least during daylight hours?”
“Hey, man,” said Les, finally looking her in the eye. “Don’t cramp my style. I’m on a journey on a road that has no map. Blowing with the breeze. I need to feel the ocean air on my skin. It makes me feel alive! A fully self-actualized human being living in the here and now!” He ran his hands over his scrawny bare chest in an offputtingly sensual manner.
“No, no, no!” said Nina, shaking her head. “We already have one of those here.” An image of a saronged Danish Jensen in the lotus position on her veranda, a doobie drooping from the corner of his mouth, flitted through her mind. “The free-spirit position on Pineapple Cay has been filled! Can’t you express your individuality in a way that does not require me to see your bare bum at breakfast?” she said.
“Man, you’re uptight. When I saw you the other day I was thinking that it might be fun if we hooked up, us being neighbors here on this patch of paradise and all, but your vibe is stressing me out. I think I’m going to have to take a pass. See you around.” Before she could reply, he clamped his headphones over his ears, turned, and ambled away toward his pleasure palace. Why was he even wearing headphones? Duran Duran was still belting it out from the deck.
Nina sighed and strolled back to her own cottage. That had not gone as planned. Inside, she finished her coffee and perused the local paper at her kitchen table. She would stop in at the police station when she was in town that morning and file a complaint about noise pollution. There had to be some bylaw he was breaking.
The ringing of the telephone startled her—it happened so rarely. People had a tendency to just show up on your doorstep on Pineapple Cay. It was Philip Putzel, from the college in New York where—until a month ago—she had taught.
“Nina. Good. You’re there. Listen, there’s something I want you to do for me.”
His voice boomed down the line. No time wasted on “Hello, how are you?” He had her on speakerphone, as was his habit. He was probably puttering around his study watering his orchids or looking for a book in his floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookcases. He liked to give the impression—or maybe he really believed—that he had far too many important things to do to give someone his full attention on the phone.
“Hi, Philip,” Nina replied, and waited for his request. She was technically on leave from her job and not required to do anything he asked. However, as head of her department, Philip had approved her sudden request for a leave of absence and even arranged for her to teach some online courses from her base on Pineapple Cay. She felt she owed him one.
“Right. Look. We’ve hit a snag with the Delancy Symposium. It’s scheduled to take place two weeks from now at a resort hotel in Jamaica. The manager just called to say that she’s had to cancel our reservation. Apparently, a soccer team staying there won a trophy and trashed the hotel. All the other hotels in town are already booked up. I had Wendy check, first thing. The point is, we need a new conference venue. Preferably one with palm trees and a pool, because that’s the photograph in the bloody conference brochure. I’ve got fifty distinguished delegates arriving from across the country, and from Europe, India, Australia, and God knows where else, and nowhere to put them. Naturally I thought of you, lolling on the beach down there. Why should you have all the fun while we’re suffering up here in the city? Ha ha.”
It was very unlikely that Philip was suffering, thought Nina. He had a young wife and a new baby, a huge office with a window, a full-time assistant, a big fat salary, and a gorgeous apartment in Manhattan where he never had to lift a finger, thanks to a live-in housekeeper. He was still talking.
“What I want to do is move the conference to your island. What’s it called again? Pineapple Cay? Ha ha.” His indulgent laugh was meant to signify the frivolous nature of the major life change she’d made in leaving New York.
“Wendy can take care of the airline tickets and travel visas from up here. My assistant, Bridget, will take care of the program and delegate registration when we arrive onsite. What I need you to do is line up a venue, take care of the menu, and maybe plan a few excursions for the conference participants. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Philip,” said Nina, “I’d like to help you, but you know, there’s only one inn on this island, and it only has thirty rooms. They’re usually booked months in advance. The main island might be more feasible.”
“No, I want something unique. This is an important event. A lot is riding on its success. I’ll leave it with you, shall I? Wendy will be in touch about a contract. Ciao.” He hung up.
An important event? Nina thought. It was just a conference on tourism—how people spend their leisure time and the things they get up to when they are on vacation. An annual occasion for a group of academics to travel to some scenic location, listen to
a few presentations, and argue a few points to death, then get drunk, overshare, and behave badly. It was not a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on nuclear disarmament. What he meant was that it was an important event for his career.
Although as far as academic conferences went, Nina had to concede that this one was a big deal. Attendance was by invitation only, and Philip had pulled off a coup in being asked to host it this year. He’d even managed to have the event’s title changed from the Wheat Treats Conference to the more refined-sounding Delancy Symposium by replacing the previous sponsor, a breakfast-cereal manufacturer, with Delancy’s Distillery—purveyors of fine Caribbean rum. In a final master stroke, Philip had pushed his pet topic as the theme of the conference—Travelers and Tourists: Unpacking the Beach Vacation—to justify scheduling himself as the keynote speaker due to his status as a leading scholar in the field.
Well, at least I’ll get paid for my time, thought Nina. She wasn’t in a position to turn down a paying gig. She might as well walk over to the Plantation Inn to confirm they were fully booked before calling Philip back to rain on his parade.
The Plantation Inn was a gracefully restored eighteenth-century manor house on the grounds of a former pineapple plantation at the southern edge of the village. It was surrounded by landscaped flower gardens and shade trees, with a row of guest bungalows tucked discreetly in among the coconut palms and flowering shrubs that fronted a pristine swath of beach. Modern creature comforts and amusements like tennis courts, a tiled swimming pool, and a spa had been added while preserving the property’s historic character.
Nina crunched up the long gravel drive in her sandals and sundress. The canopy of banyan trees lining the drive provided welcome shade from the midmorning sun. She skirted the stone fountain in front of the entrance and went up the steps and through the open doors into the lobby of the main building. A breeze wafted through the spacious hall. The French doors that opened to the ocean had been flung wide, and the sea sparkled at the foot of a lush green lawn. From the side veranda, Nina could hear the gentle murmur of conversation and clinking of china as vacationers enjoyed a late breakfast. The lobby was casually chic, with highly polished wide-plank wood floors, whitewashed walls, antique carved-wood furniture, and original artwork. In the corners, low sofas and chairs were grouped around teak coffee tables topped with artfully arranged bowls of tropical fruit and a selection of glossy magazines. Wide-paddle fans turned slowly in the white coffered ceiling.
