“There’s an incubation period. We might have gotten it right before we left the ship.”
“We feel fine. I do, at least.” He turned away, shaken by intimations of illness in her sunken eyes and her skin’s bluish cast in the television’s watery light.
“We might be spreading it,” she said. “We should get checked.”
“For what? They don’t even know what it is. And if I’m sick, I’m sure as hell not going to a hospital here.”
“I just feel guilty. Being here.”
“Want to swim back out there? They did us a favor when they kicked us off.”
“It’s what happened.” She hesitated. “What I did. I’m alive, and they’re dying.”
“Your situation’s got nothing to do them.”
“Did you know people who were sick?”
He looked at the lights just above the Celeste’s waterline and remembered his cabin mate curled up in a nest of musty sheets, staring at a steel bed frame through glassy eyes. “I do know people. People who are sick.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“One of my friends was sick when I left. Slept three feet above him. Good way to get to know someone. Now he’s by himself, burning up. Wish I could help him, but I’m here. Don’t wish I was there.”
She fingered the hem of her sweater. “They’re obligated to treat him.”
“The Celeste’s registered in Somalia. They don’t need to do a damn thing for him.” He sat down and braced his feet against the railing. “Why did you do it on the ship?”
She turned away from him. “I didn’t want anyone to find me.”
A helicopter cut through the haze above the Celeste. Dave lit a cigarette. “Maybe no one who knew you, but someone found you. Probably one of my friends. Someone like me.”
He didn’t say anything when she pulled her sweater across her chest and withdrew into the room. He listened to the rustle of sheets and felt an impulse to flee, but he’d gotten too drunk to pack his things or form a plan, so he refilled his cup again and again until the wavering spears of reflected light beneath the Celeste blurred together. At midnight, he went inside and drew the curtains. He stretched across his bed and listened to her shallow breaths, the faint inhalations of someone taking life in tentative measures. Her breath caught, and he soothed himself with memories of Miami and the bronzed skin of beautiful men, and then he drifted into uneasy dreams.
While they slept, we gathered on the folds of her sheet to examine her savaged arms and the threads of her sweater. She was, for us, a source of fascination, her twitching as unsettling as it was familiar. She’d been trampled underfoot, in a manner of speaking. At one point, she opened her eyes, considered us, and drifted back into sleep. We left her, then, to dream the dreams of cockroaches.
Professor Cleave closed the bar early. He’d spent the evening mopping the counter with a towel soaked in bleach and thinking about Helen’s blotched skin and the deep shadows beneath her eyes. He wiped down every bottle, scrubbed his hands, and examined his conscience, as well as his face, for blemishes. There was, he decided, no way around confession.
“Awake from the sweet repose of ignorance,” he said, settling into the cab. “The situation has worsened since we saw Desmond.”
We bristled, and he snapped his fingers.
“This is no time for malicious chatter. There are now twenty-one dead on that ship, and I don’t need to tell you what it means that we were driving two of its passengers this morning.”
As he shared the muddled analyses of perplexed epidemiologists and related stories of overworked septic systems, we scrambled to the windshield to view the harbor.
“We need to consider the insidious nature of this pestilence and act according to our conscience.” We turned to face him with curled antennae. “Given our exposure to certain elements, it is incumbent upon all of you to confine your nocturnal wanderings to the car, suffocating as it is.”
To his credit, Professor Cleave considered himself, as well as us, a potential vector of disease. “For my part, I will sleep on the couch. Cora will not find that exceedingly strange.”
His unexpected disclosure put us in a strange humor. We tapped each other’s antennae and fluttered our wings.
“Madness has taken hold, and your gallows humor has taken an inappropriate turn.” He fulminated against the improprieties of dashboard degenerates until he arrived home, where he found Cora and Topsy sitting at the table, listening to the radio.
“Butts has his headlines now,” Topsy said. “He says he’s prepared for the worst, but your man isn’t fit to fart.”
“He’s not my man,” Professor Cleave said.
Topsy brushed cigarette ash from his pants. “It’s no matter now. He’ll be on the first helicopter out if things get bad. Someone should tell him there’s no point making pointless speeches on his way to the airport, but then there’s no sense talking to the senseless.”
“It could be everywhere,” Cora said. “The Reverend said there’s nothing we can do but pray.”
She folded her hands together and fixed Professor Cleave in a clinical gaze. She examined his eyes for signs of jaundice, scrutinized his neck for suggestive lumps, and studied his nostrils for telltale traces of blood. He blamed her for neither her fear nor her inability to comfort; he forgave her for everything except sitting with her hands so tightly clasped in her narrow lap, her small-mindedness, and her empty talk of faith.
“I’ll sleep on the couch. There are things we can all do beyond praying.” He said nothing when she rose from her chair and withdrew into her bedroom, her quiet sanctuary, and Topsy retreated into Irma’s bedroom, his squalid preserve.
In the bathroom, Professor Cleave pulled a chain dangling beside the bulb and silenced the mating calls of a solitary cricket. He looked into the mirror, pressed his fingers to his neck, and repeated Cora’s exacting search for signs of illness. He extruded the last toothpaste from an exhausted tube and brushed his teeth with violent intensity until his gums bled. He slid his tongue across the soft tissue lining his palate, peeled off his clothes, and felt his armpits for swelling. He stepped into the shower stall and rubbed his skin raw.
After making his bed on the couch, he turned off the last light in the house. Each time he neared the edge of sleep, violent twitching jerked him awake. He pressed his fingers to his temples to mute the sound of rushing blood, twisted in his sheet and broke into a sweat, heard Tremor talking about old shoes and saw the shadows beneath Helen’s eyes. He sat up and felt the side of his neck. Finally, he drifted into sleep, stirred occasionally by the light pressure of Topsy’s hand on his forehead and the brush of our wings against his cheek.
In the morning, he tripped over Topsy’s overflowing ashtray and left for the taxi stand, where we nestled beneath old newspapers and shuddered in the presence of drivers cursing the latest breaking news. He sat down beside James Brooks, still known as Brooks Brother with much less irony than in years past, and strained to hear a radio.
“Some Americans jumped from the ship at dawn.” James adjusted the band of a straw fedora resting in his lap. “They were trying to swim to shore and disappeared.”
“I heard nothing coming here,” Professor Cleave said.
“It’s just out. Butts had boats patrolling the harbor. Playing the big man. The police fired in the air to keep more of them from jumping. The Americans are calling it an act of aggression.”
Professor Cleave rubbed his forehead. “This can only end in tears.”
“Butts said it was a deterrent.”
“That won’t be the news of the world.”
“You’d think Butts himself had shot them, by what the Americans are saying.”
“They need someone to blame.” Professor Cleave trailed off to listen to the report of three desperate passengers resigning themselves to unknown currents to escape the relentless spread of sickness. “They’ll be pulling bodies from the water soon enough.”
“He’ll be up to his neck
in this one.”
“And there’s not much above Butts’s neck.” During a commercial for detergent, Professor Cleave studied the smooth planes of his cousin’s face. “You almost look younger than back in Patrice Williams’s day.”
“The beard gave me years when I needed them to meet a woman. Now I’m trying to give those years back to keep that same woman.”
“Who would have seen the way things would change?”
“But things did change.” James rubbed his chin. “We got better tips once we shaved.”
“And now they will change again,” Professor Cleave said. “The fat is in the fire now. It will be hissing away until we can hear nothing else.”
By the time he left the taxi stand, news of the morning’s most spectacular deaths had spread across the island. It moved through the open windows of parked cars, over backyard fences, and between somber friends and erstwhile enemies reconciled in the spirit of sordid speculation. It consumed shopkeepers on street corners, maids at bus stops, and young men in corner bars. The ghastliest strains of information spread with the greatest virulence, feeding on macabre curiosities and rising resentment. Professor Cleave tapped his thumb on the steering wheel until it throbbed. Whatever it was, he thought, it was already inside him, moving through his bloodstream and settling into his lungs. We huddled behind the vents, knowing it was only a matter of time before bipedal mobs turned their fury upon us, flushing us out of every dark corner and pouring rivers of pesticide over everything we touched.
In Room 504 at the Ambassador, no one had slept much. We’d been plagued by nightmares about poison gas and the treads of tennis shoes. Dave had slept sporadically, unnerved by Helen’s presence and the sounds of our scuttling. Helen had awoken several times to strange visions and the sounds of helicopter blades. Hours after daybreak, she stirred to the sight of Dave sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the muted television.
“What’s going on?” She gathered her sheet around her.
“St. Anne’s been quarantined. Every airline’s canceled flights.” He lifted a remote control, and a newscaster’s clipped voice filled the room. “The CDC called for the quarantine. The State Department’s backing it. We’re stuck here.”
She studied pixilated images of garbage bags leaking onto a basketball court and shaky footage of flooded bathrooms and feverish faces.
“They don’t know where to put garbage,” he continued. “Thirty-four people are dead. A few jumped overboard. Said no one was doing anything for them. Guess the police shot at them.”
She looked out across the harbor. “What are those helicopters and boats doing?”
“Looking for survivors. Probably broke their legs and couldn’t beat the current. Search party’s wasting time.”
She drew her sheet around her chest and stepped onto the balcony. She studied the bands of dark blue beyond the harbor and imagined indifferent forms turning in cold currents, past dead reefs and the unblinking eyes of curious fish. She looked over the railing and imagined a fall, the release of one last breath, a weightless drift and gentle dissolution. She saw Tremor, then, standing beside the pool, holding a net and staring up at her. When he didn’t turn away, she backed into the room.
“The bellboy. He was staring at me. Like he was disgusted. Maybe he heard—”
“Just ignore him,” Dave said.
“He probably knows we came off the ship.”
“How would he? And what’s he going to do if he does?”
Helen drew her sheet over her exposed shoulders. “We need some groceries. To stock up on supplies.”
Dave rubbed his eyes and shut off the television.
They walked slowly and spoke little. When they reached the top of the street leading into Portsmouth, a Cessna passed overhead, banked sharply and headed out over the sea.
“I didn’t think any flights were leaving,” Helen said. “Maybe the airport opened.”
“Ain’t open to us. No one’s getting on a plane unless they own one.”
At the bottom of the hill, they followed the harbor road past cinderblock houses. Barefoot children throwing empty bottles into a sinkhole fell silent as they passed. Old men playing dominoes on porches watched their progress. Two women coming from the direction of town lifted their collars to their mouths. A man in torn pants regarded Helen through eyes clouded by cataracts, raised an unlabeled bottle, and pointed at a man kneeling over a gutter, retching.
“He has the American disease.” He staggered to the curb and spat on the ground.
“He thinks we’re sick,” Helen whispered.
“He’s not thinking a fucking thing. Just keep moving.”
A Learjet ripped through the sky. The children feeding the sinkhole watched its vapor trail dissipate. To the sound of glass shattering, Helen started again toward town, carrying the memory of faces hardened by fear. Dave trailed behind her, trying to lose himself in dreams of primordial trees and mountain streams, of some place far removed from worsening headlines and uncertain moods.
Dave had lost himself in a postcard world as flat and fantastical as the world imagined by the ignorant scurvy-ridden captains who’d cursed the doldrums centuries before. We couldn’t entirely blame him. We were dreaming, too, of times long past, when we’d spread functional wings and enjoyed the luxury of unimpeded flight. Dave was more deluded than most, though. That afternoon, he wandered from the Ambassador’s air-conditioned lobby without a single thought to the heat, hoping only to escape Helen. Halfway down the street, he leaned against a wall and looked up at the scorched hills receding further, it seemed, with each step he took. As the first thoughts of water crossed his mind, he smelled something pungent drifting over the wall. He stepped up to a wooden gate and peered between two planks. In a small enclosure filled with flattened cardboard boxes, Tremor stood beside a crate of bananas at the end of a service ramp.
Dave pushed open the gate and stood at its threshold. “Got a minute?”
From a short distance, Tremor studied Dave’s skin and eyes.
“The other night, I got the impression you could help me out,” Dave said.
Tremor took a small step forward. “Depends.”
“I’m looking for some weed. Not much.”
Tremor pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. “Fifty dollars, American.”
Dave whistled through his teeth. “That’s a hell of an opener.”
Tremor shrugged. “That’s the price.”
“That’s twenty, at most.”
“Fifty’s the price of doing business. With people I don’t know.”
“Didn’t seem like a problem the other night.”
“That was the other night.”
“This is bullshit.”
Dave backed onto the sidewalk. A young man with short dreadlocks was walking in his direction, taking the small steps of one accustomed to extreme heat. As he neared, the man peeled his shirt from his back and lissome arms.
“Beautiful day. American?” The man stepped onto the sidewalk. “Maybe you need company. Someone to show you around on holiday. Beaches. Whatever you want.”
Tremor slipped through the gate and spat on the ground. The man stepped off the sidewalk and continued down the street, kicking up dust with the tips of his leather sandals.
“He’s confused. Crazy like a woman or castrated goat.” Tremor dragged his thumbnail across his lips to strip away a fleck of spittle. “People say he’s got a disease. It’s a risk to be seen with him. I won’t do business with him. You know?”
“I get it.” Dave dragged his hand around the back of his neck. “Look, I don’t have cash on me. I’m in 504.”
Tremor’s face twitched. “Everybody has money when they ask for things.”
“Didn’t expect to catch you down here. Didn’t expect the price, either.”
Tremor gestured toward the crate. “I’ll be finished in ten minutes.”
“Throw in some rolling papers.”
“Five dollars.”
�
�I’ll get some in town.”
“Long walk on a hot day.”
Dave looked up at the sun and nodded.
He was standing on the balcony, with a shirt draped over his bare shoulder, when Tremor knocked twice on the open door. He turned to face the room and rested his elbows on the railing. “That a decent beach over that bluff? Or is something better nearby?”
“I don’t know the beaches. I don’t swim.”
“You live on an island and you don’t swim?”
“The water can be dangerous.”
“Still.” Dave arched his back and looked down at the patio. “Poor Helen. She’s another one. Sunning in her sweater.”
Tremor conducted a quick inventory of the room, noting a small purse and a leather wallet on the nightstand. “Is that lady your wife?”
“My wife?” Dave drew away from the railing. “No wife in my life, brother.”
“A girlfriend?”
“Not my type. Not even close.”
Dave entered the room and glanced at Tremor’s nametag. “Trevor.
I’m Dave.”
Tremor averted his eyes from the soft hair covering Dave’s chest. “Trevor’s nothing. Tremor’s my name.”
“Tremor?” Dave sat down on his bed and reached for his wallet. “What’s the story? Name like Tremor, there’s got to be a story.”
Tremor tossed the bag onto the bed. “There’s no story.”
“Just asking. It’s not a big deal,” Dave said, extending a fold of bills. He tensed at the sight of Tremor’s arms and the money slipped from his fingers. “Sorry about that,” he began, but Tremor had already swept the money from the floor and turned to leave.
For most of the afternoon, Dave strolled along the beach beneath the hotel, stepping around patches of soft mud and bits of garbage, too high to think about Helen’s mutilated arms or their dark counterparts. High above, Tremor cursed castrated goats and sunburned devils in green sweaters, and rubbed his fingers where they’d brushed Dave’s.
Those of us on the roof shuddered. Some of us disappeared into drains and air ducts, for there was no saying which way Tremor’s mood would turn. The patio, as it turned out, was no great shakes, either.
The Wonder That Was Ours Page 12
