by T. C. Boyle
“Don’t be smart, love,” Joe said, popping her bathing-suit strap. The elastic snapped across Georgie’s shoulder.
“Hannah,” Joe shouted, walking backward, tugging Georgie toward the bike with one hand. “Make some of those conch fritters too. And get the music going about four, or when you see the boat dock at the pier, OK? Like we talked about. Loud. Festive.”
Georgie could smell fresh fish in the hot air, butter burning in Hannah’s pan. She wrapped her arms around Joe’s waist and rested her chin on her shoulder, resigned. It was like this with Joe. Her authority on the island was absolute. She would always do what she wanted to do; that was the idea behind owning Whale Cay. You could go along for the ride or go home.
Hannah nodded at Joe, her wrinkled skin closing in around her eyes as she smiled what Georgie thought was a false smile. She waved them off with floured fingers.
“Four p.m.,” Joe said, twisting the bike’s throttle. “Don’t forget.”
At quarter to five, from the balcony of her suite, Joe and Georgie watched the Mise-en-scène, an eighty-eight-foot yacht with white paneling and wood siding, dock. Georgie felt a sense of dread as the boat glided to a stop against the wooden pier and lines were tossed to waiting villagers. The wind rustled the palms and the visitors on the boat deck clutched their hats with one hand and waved with the other.
Every few weeks there was another boatload of beautiful, rich people—actresses and politicians—piling onto Joe’s yacht in Fort Lauderdale, eager to escape wartime America for Whale Cay, and willing to cross 150 miles of U-boat-infested waters to do it. “Eight hundred and fifty acres, the shape of a whale’s tail,” Joe had said as she brought Georgie to the island. “And it’s all mine.”
Georgie scanned the deck for Marlene and did not see her. She felt defensive and childish, but also starstruck. She’d seen at least ten of Marlene’s movies and had always liked the actress. She seemed gritty and in control. That was fine onscreen. But in person—who in their right mind wanted to compete with a movie star? Not Georgie. It wasn’t that she wasn’t competitive; she was. Back in Florida she’d swum against the boys in pools and open water. But a good competitor always knows when she’s outmatched, and that’s how Georgie felt, watching the beautiful people in their beautiful clothes squinting in the sun onboard the Mise-en-scène.
Joe stayed on the balcony, waving madly. Georgie flopped across the bed. Her tanned body was stark against the white sheets.
“Let’s send a round of cocktails to the boat,” Joe said, coming into the room, a large, tiled bedroom with enormous windows, a hand-carved king bed sheathed in a mosquito net. Long curtains made of bleached muslin framed the doors and windows, which were nearly always open, letting in the hot air and lizards.
“I’m going to shower first,” Georgie said, annoyed by Joe’s enthusiasm.
Joe ducked into the bathroom before heading down, and Georgie could see her through the door, greasing up her arms and décolletage with baby oil.
“Preening?” she asked.
“Don’t be jealous,” Joe said, never taking her eyes off herself in the mirror. “It’s a waste of time and you’re above it.”
Georgie rolled over onto her back and stretched her legs, pointing her painted toes to the ceiling. She could feel the slight sting of sunburn on her nose and shoulders.
“My advice,” Joe called from the bathroom, “is to slip on a dress, grab a stiff drink, and slap a smile on that sour face of yours.”
Georgie blew a kiss to Joe and rolled over in bed. It wasn’t clear to her if they were joking or serious, but Georgie knew it was one of those nights when Joe would be loud and boastful, hard on the servants. Maybe even hard on her.
The yacht’s horn blew. Joe flew down the stairs, saddle shoes slapping the Spanish tile. Hannah must have given the signal to the village, Georgie thought, because the steel drums started, sounding like the plink plink of hard rain on a tin roof. It was hard to tell if it was a real party or not. Joe liked to control the atmosphere. She liked theatrics.
“Hot damn,” she heard Joe call out as she jogged toward the boat. “You all look beautiful. Welcome to Whale Cay. Have a drink, already! Have two.”
Georgie finally caught sight of Marlene, as Joe helped her onto the dock. She wore all white and a wide-brimmed straw hat. Even from yards away, she was breathtaking.
My family wouldn’t believe this, Georgie thought, realizing that she could never share the details of this experience, that it was hers alone. Her God-fearing parents thought she was teaching swimming lessons on a private island. They didn’t know she’d spent the past three months shacked up with a forty-year-old womanizing heiress who stalked around her own private island wearing a machete across her chest, chasing shrimp cocktails with magnums of champagne every night. A woman who entered into a sham marriage to secure her inheritance, annulling it shortly thereafter. A woman who raced expensive boats, who kept a cache of weapons and maps from the First World War in her own private museum, a cylindrical tower on the east side of the island.
“They’d disown me if they knew,” Georgie told Joe when she first came to Whale Cay.
“My parents are dead and I didn’t like them when they were alive,” Joe said, shrugging. “Worrying about parents is a waste of time. It’s your life. Let’s have a martini.”
That evening, as she listened to the sounds of guests fawning over the mansion downstairs, Georgie had trouble picking out a dress. Joe had ordered two custom dresses and a tailored suit for her when she realized Georgie’s duffel bag was full of bathing suits. Georgie chose the light blue tea-length dress that Joe said would look good against her eyes; the silk crepe felt crisp against her skin. She pulled her hair up, using two tortoiseshell combs she’d found in the closet, and ran bright Tangee lipstick across her mouth, all leftovers from other girlfriends, the photos of whom were pinned to a corkboard in Joe’s closet. Georgie stared at them sometimes, the glossy black-and-white photographs of beautiful women. Horsewomen straddling thoroughbreds, actresses in leopard-print scarves and fur coats, writers hunched artfully over typewriters, maybe daughters of rich men who did nothing at all. She couldn’t help but compare herself to them, and always felt as if she came up short.
“What I like about you,” Joe had told her on their first date, over lobster, “is that you’re just so American. You’re cherry pie and lemonade. You’re a ticker-tape parade.”
She loved the way Joe’s lavish attention made her feel: exceptional. And she’d pretty much felt that way until Marlene put one well-heeled foot onto the island.
Georgie wandered into Joe’s closet and looked at the pictures of Joe’s old girlfriends, their perfect teeth and coiffed hair, looping inky signatures. For Darling Joe, Love Forever. How did they do their hair? How big did they smile?
And did it matter? Life with Joe never lasts, she thought, scanning the corkboard. The realization filled her with both sadness and relief.
On the way downstairs to meet Marlene, Georgie realized the lipstick was a mistake. Too much. She wiped it off with the back of her hand as she descended the stairs, then bolted past Joe and into the kitchen, squeezing in among the servants to wash it off. Everyone was sweating, yelling. The scent of cut onions made Georgie’s eyes well up. Outside the door she could hear Joe and Marlene talking.
“Another one of your girls, darling? Where’s she from? What does she do?”
“I plucked her from the mermaid tank in Sarasota.”
“That’s too much.”
“She’s a helluva swimmer,” Joe said. “And does catalog work.”
“Catalog work, you say. Isn’t that dear.”
Georgie pressed her hands to the kitchen door, waiting for the blush to drain from her face before she walked out. She took her seat next to Joe, who clapped her heartily on the back.
The dining room was chic but simply furnished—whitewashed walls and heavy Indonesian teak furniture. The lighting was low and the flicker of tea lights and
large votives caught on the well-shined silver. The air smelled of freshly baked rolls and warm butter. Nothing, Georgie knew, was ever an accident at Joe’s dinner table—not the color of the wine, the temperature of the meat, and certainly not the seating arrangement.
She’d been placed on Joe’s right at the center of the table. Marlene, dressed in white slacks and a blue linen shirt unbuttoned low enough to catch attention, was across from Joe. Marlene slid a candle aside.
“I want to see your face, darling,” she said, settling her eyes on Joe’s. Georgie thought of the ways she’d heard Marlene’s eyes described in magazines: Dreamy. Cat-shaped. Smoldering. Bedroom eyes.
Joe snorted but Georgie knew she liked the attention. Joe was incredibly vain; though she didn’t wear makeup, she spent time carefully crafting her appearance. She liked anything that made her look tough: bowie knives, tattoos, a necklace made of shark’s teeth.
“This is Marlene,” Joe said, introducing Georgie.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Georgie said softly, nodding her head.
“I’m sure,” Marlene purred. “I just love the way she talks,” she said to Joe, laughing as if Georgie wasn’t at the table. “I learned to talk like that once, for a movie.”
Georgie silently fumed. But what good was starting a scene? If I’m patient, she thought, I’ll have Joe to myself in a matter of days.
“I’m sure Joe mentioned this,” Marlene said, leaning forward, “but I ask for no photographs or reports to the press.”
“She has to keep a little mystery,” Joe explained, turning to Georgie.
“Is that what you call it?” Marlene asked, exhaling. “I might say sanity.”
“I respect your privacy,” Georgie said, annoyed at the reverence she could hear in her own voice.
“To re-invention,” Joe said, tilting her glass toward Marlene.
“It’s exhausting,” Marlene said, finishing her glass.
Aside from Marlene, there were eight other guests at dinner—including Phillip, the priest Joe kept on the island, a Yale-educated drunk, the only other white full-time inhabitant of the island. There were also the guests from the boat: Clark, a flamboyant director; two financiers and their well-dressed wives, who spoke only to one another; Richard, a married state senator from California; and Miguel, Richard’s much younger, mustachioed companion of Cuban descent. Georgie noticed immediately that no one spoke directly to her or Miguel.
They think I don’t have anything worth saying, she thought. She turned the napkin over and over in her hands, as if wringing it out.
Before Joe, she’d never been around people with money. Back home, money was the local doctor or dentist, someone who could afford to send a child to private school.
Hannah, dressed in a simple black uniform, brought out fish chowder and stuffed lobster tail. The guests smoked between courses. Occasionally, Joe got up and made the rounds with the wine, topping off the long-stemmed crystal glasses she’d imported from France. After the entrées had been served, Hannah set rounds of roasted pineapple in front of each guest.
“How many people live here?” Clark asked Joe, mouth open, juice running down his chin.
“About two hundred and fifty,” she said, leaning back in her chair, an imperial grin on her face. “But they’re always reproducing, no matter how many condoms I hand out. There’s one due to give birth any day now. What’s her name, Hannah?”
“Celia.”
“Will she go to the hospital?” Clark asked.
“I run a free clinic,” Joe said.
“You have a doctor here?”
“I’m the doctor,” Joe said, grinning. “I’m the doctor and the king and the policeman. I’m the factory boss, the mechanic too. I’m the everything here. I give out acetaminophen and mosquito nets and I sell rum. I sell more rum than anything.”
“Well, more rum then!” Clark said, laughing.
Joe stood up, grabbed an etched decanter full of amber-colored liquor, unscrewed the top, and took a swig. She passed it down the table, and everyone but the financiers’ wives did the same. Georgie kept her eyes on Marlene, who seemed unimpressed, distracted. She removed a compact mirror from her bag and ran her index finger along her forehead, as if rubbing out the faint wrinkles.
When she wasn’t speaking, Marlene let her cigarette dangle out of one side of her mouth, or held it with her hand at her forehead, resting her forehead on her wrist as if she was tired of the world. She smoked Lucky Strikes, Joe said, because the company sent them to her by the carton for free.
“How does she do it?” Georgie whispered to Joe, hoping for a laugh. “How does her cigarette never go out?”
Joe ignored her, leaning instead to Marlene. “Tell me about your next film,” she said, drumming her fingers on the white tablecloth.
“We’ll start filming in the Soviet Occupation Zone,” Marlene said, exhaling.
“No western?”
“Soon. You like girls with guns, don’t you, Joe?”
“And your part?” Joe asked.
“A cabaret girl,” Marlene said. “But the cold-hearted kind. My character is a Nazi collaborator.”
Joe raised her eyebrows.
“Despicable,” Marlene said in her husky voice, “isn’t it? Compelling, though, I promise.”
“You always are,” Joe said.
Georgie sighed and stabbed a piece of pineapple with her fork. The rum came to Marlene and she turned the bottle up with one manicured hand. She even knew how to drink beautifully, Georgie thought.
Joe moved her fingers to Georgie’s thigh and squeezed. It was almost a fatherly gesture, Georgie felt. A we-will-talk-about-this-later gesture. When the last sip of rum came to Georgie, she finished it off, coughing a little as the liquor burned her throat.
“More rum?” Joe asked the table, glancing at the empty decanter.
“Champagne, if you have it,” Marlene said.
“Of course,” Joe said. She pushed her chair back and went to discuss the order with a servant in the kitchen.
Georgie shifted uncomfortably in her chair, anxious at the thought of being left alone with Marlene. Next to her she could see Miguel stroking the senator’s hand underneath the dinner table while the senator carried on a conversation about the war with the financiers.
“And you,” Marlene said to Georgie. “Do you plan on returning to Florida soon? Pick up where you left off with that mermaid act?”
Georgie felt herself blushing even though she willed her body not to betray her.
“It’s no picture show,” Georgie said, smiling sweetly. “But I suppose I’ll go back one of these days.”
“I suppose you will,” Marlene said, staring hard at her for a minute. Then she flicked the ashes from her cigarette onto the side of her saucer and stood up, her plate of food untouched. Georgie watched her walk across the room. Marlene had a confident walk, her hips thrust forward and her shoulders held back as if she knew everyone was watching, and from what Georgie could tell, scanning the table, they were.
Marlene slipped into the kitchen. Georgie imagined her arms around Joe, a bottle of champagne on the counter. Bedroom eyes.
Georgie took what was left in Joe’s wineglass and decided to get drunk, very drunk. The stem of the glass felt like something she could break, and the Chardonnay tasted like vinegar in her mouth.
When Joe and Marlene didn’t return after a half-hour, Georgie excused herself, embarrassed. She climbed the long staircase to her room, took off her dress, and stood on the balcony, the hot air on her skin, watching the dark ocean meet the night sky, listening to the water crash gently onto the island.
Some days it scared her to be on the small island. When storms blew in you could watch them approaching for miles, and when they came down it felt as if the ocean could wash right over Whale Cay.
I could always leave, Georgie thought. I could always go back home when I’ve had enough, and maybe I’ve had enough.
She sat down at Joe’s
desk, an antique secretary still full of pencils and rubberbands Joe once said she’d collected as a child, and began to write a letter home. Then she realized she had nothing to say.
She pictured her house, a small white-sided square her father had built with the help of his brothers, within walking distance from the natural springs. Alligators often sunned themselves on the lawn or found the shade of her mother’s forsythia. Down the road there were boys running glass-bottom boats in the springs and girls with frosted hair and bronzed legs just waiting to be discovered, or if that didn’t work, married.
And could she go back to it now? Georgie wondered. The bucktoothed boys pressing their faces up against the aquarium glass to get a better look at her legs and breasts? The harsh plastic of the fake mermaid tail? Her mother’s biscuits and her father’s old car and egg salad on Sundays?
She knew she couldn’t stay at Whale Cay forever. But she sure as hell didn’t want to go home.
In the early hours of morning, just as the sun was casting an orange wedge of light across the water, Joe climbed into bed, reeking of alcohol and cigarette smoke. She put her arms around Georgie and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Georgie didn’t answer, and although she hadn’t planned on responding, began to cry, with Joe’s rough arms across her heaving chest. They fell asleep.
She dreamed of Sarasota.
There was the cinder-block changing room that smelled of bleach and brine. On the door hung a blue star, as if to suggest that the showgirls could claim such status. A bucket of lipsticks sat on the counter, soon to be whisked away to the refrigerator to keep them from melting.
Georgie pulled on her mermaid tail and slipped into the tank, letting herself fall through the brackish water, down, down to the performance arena. She smiled through the green salty water and pretended to take a sip of Coca-Cola as customers pressed their noses to the glass walls of the tank. She flipped her rubber fishtail and sucked air from a plastic hose as elegantly as she could, filling her lungs with oxygen until they hurt. A few minnows flitted by, glinting in the hot Florida sun that hung over the water, warming the show tank like a pot of soup.
