by Kate Stewart
“Can I help you with anything else while I’m here?”
With curious, crinkled eyes she looked up at me from where she sat. “Do you really make your own electricity here in St. Thomas?”
“Actually, no, we buried a giant extension cord below the ocean from the States.”
It was my best friend Jasmine’s line for people who weren’t smart enough to believe differently. I had never used it until I was forced to pick up iguana crap.
Mrs. Osborne—a seven-day refugee from Long Island—sat with a magazine on her lap, mouth open, her eyes on the surf while she pressed her brows together to try to make sense of it. I bit my lip to keep my laugh hidden. She was old money and hadn’t earned a cent and it was painfully obvious. She’d clearly ignored the thousands of solar panels set up all over the top of the mountains as she was chauffeured in.
What was even more ironic was that I used to spend hours of my life on the phone with women just like her, answering endless questions and catering to their every whim much the same as I was at that moment, but for a much larger paycheck. Watching her ungreased wheels turn was entertaining, but I had a breathing bottle to get back to. “Well if that’s all, I’ll leave you to it.”
The announcement of my departure led to another set of questions. “Is it true we will be bathing with rainwater?”
“Yes, Mrs. Osborne, as I explained when you arrived, we do use the rainwater since there are no real alternate water sources. The rain is captured by the gutters and then drained into a filtration system underneath the house. It’s completely safe. I’ve checked your water level and it looks good for the length of your stay but feel free to give me a call if you need some delivered.” Studying the excess amount of skin around her eyes and the sagging lady flaps underneath her arms, I was sure she wasn’t worried about the pH of the water affecting her skin. Still, she was a beautiful older-looking woman. I had to give her credit, she put in a ton of effort when other women her age wouldn’t.
“You’ll deliver water?”
Please, God, I just want to go to my happy place.
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, well as long as we won’t run out.”
“Have a good night.”
I was halfway to the sliding door that led to my exit and the waiting bottle of wine when she spoke up behind me.
“Wait. Is it safe to drink, you know, or is it like Mexico?”
“Get the Osbornes settled?” I could hear the smile in Jasmine’s voice—she must have known when she took the reservation they would be a pain in the ass. I drove along the mountainside enjoying the breeze and glanced over the cliff to see a cruise ship had come in while I was at the Osbornes’.
“Shit.”
“What?” Jasmine asked through the speakers in the cabin of my Jeep.
“The cruise ship came in while I was dealing with shit, like literally. Now I’ll never get home.”
“What?” she asked absently.
“What to which part? I just picked up iguana crap. In fact, I was summoned to pick up iguana crap. Thanks, boss.”
Jasmine’s laugh belted out while I navigated through a thousand tourists. Shipwreckers walked around like new babies with their cell phones, arms up in selfie poses clicking away at the scenery while risking their lives in the rush of traffic.
“The ship never shows up this late. Damnit, I’m going to miss the sunset.” Routine was crucial to my well-being and the sunset was often a focal point of my day. For me, it was a finish line of sorts.
Parked in traffic, I surveyed the sparkling water next to me. It would never get old. Even when I got gray and ceased grooming, and had grown my own pair of lady flaps, I would enjoy the same view.
“All you do is complain, Koti.”
I shoved a fistful of French fries from my brown-bag dinner into my mouth. “Liar. I hardly ever give you grief. I’m the best employee you have.”
“You’re the only employee I have, so there is no comparison.”
Swallowing my food, I laid on the horn as a van veered slightly toward the median. In the rearview, I saw a lady whose attention seemed to be on anything but driving, her phone hanging out the window to get the perfect picture of the surrounding bay.
“Hey, lady, pay attention to the road!”
Jasmine ignored my shriek. “What are you doing tonight?”
I filled my mouth with more fries to keep from answering.
“Oh… let me guess. Nothing. Again,” she chided. “Come join me, I’m at the wine bar.”
“No,” I cut her off quickly. “No, no. No, lady, no. Last time we did ladies’ night, I ended up flashing my thong to a hundred people.”
And it was the best night I’d spent in St. Thomas, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. If there was one thing I’d learned, it was that you can’t repeat the same good time twice. And the only reason I partook in that night was because I was half-drunk before we got to the bar.
Jasmine’s infectious laughter was welcome amidst the chaos that surrounded me. “That was a great night. And if you would act a little more twenty-nine than eighty-nine we could have more of them. Besides, I only took one picture. One.”
“If that picture even exists.” She was forever threatening me with evidence she never produced. “I’m fine with being a homebody. You know I prefer it.” I laid on the horn again just as an old Cadillac cut off my progress. And seconds later, as if some cosmic force decided battling traffic on a ship day wasn’t enough, a chicken—lady flaps spread wide—appeared on the hood of my Jeep and came straight for me.
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME!” I swung my arm out in a knee-jerk reaction. “Shoo!”
“What? What’s going on?” Jasmine asked, more amused than concerned as I took up the inch of space between me and the car in front and tapped on my brakes to try to get the bird off my hood. The stoic chicken didn’t budge.
“A rooster just jumped on my hood!”
“You are shooing a chicken?”
“Is there chicken-speak etiquette?” Apparently, there was, because the chicken came toward me like it knew I had a freshly plucked, chopped, deep-fried and wrapped relative in the brown sack next to me. “It’s attacking my windshield!”
Honking the horn, I stood on my brakes as the rooster closed in. It would have been an easy jump into the open cabin of my Jeep. I was in full-on panic mode as the bird bobbed and weaved like we were in a Tyson fight. I might as well have put hot sauce on my ear because that bastard was ready to brawl and take a piece of it.
“What do I do?”
“It’s a chicken,” Jasmine cackled, “Shoo it away.”
“You are such an asshole,” I screeched, as her laughter filtered through the speakers. I rarely ever spoke on the phone while driving. Car accidents were the most notorious killer. And my Jeep just so happened to be a deathtrap as well. But the Jeep didn’t actually belong to me. It was on loan like much of the rest of my life. I had no choice but to drive it around the mountainous terrain of St. Thomas. The cloth hood made zero difference in safety. I’d checked. Being able to drive the SUV at all was my first milestone in the many I’d conquered in the last year. I wasn’t about to throw them all away for a psychotic chicken.
I had to keep calm.
I looked for anything I could throw at the real-life version of an Angry Bird to keep it from making the easy leap into my passenger seat, then realized all I had was my dinner. The bird seemed satisfied with intimidation at that moment until I laid on the horn. Apparently, the sound was the chicken’s trigger.
“Oh, come on!” The light I sat at had changed three times and I was in gridlock battling a psychotic rooster. “FUCKING SHIP DAY!” I screamed, hurling the bag at Tyson who let me have round two and jumped off the hood.
“Atta girl, blame it on ship day.” Jasmine was still laughing as a group of people next to me applauded.
“I just nailed it with a chicken sandwich. How twisted is that?”
“I would give my left boob to see what just
happened,” she bellowed.
“Is there something you need, boss? Because I’m off the clock, and I really don’t like you right now.”
“No, you love me. You okay?”
And that was Jasmine, a friend first, boss second, but that wasn’t the order we started in. She’d picked me up off the side of my quarter-life crisis and we’d been inseparable since. “Yes, I’m fine. Just really freaking done for the day. I love you too, you jerk. See you tomorrow.”
She hung up as I battled cars, traffic, and new tourists for another half hour to get home. I managed to sip my pinot right as the sun met the water setting off an endless trail of diamonds too elusive to be captured by anything other than the naked eye.
I inhaled and thanked the God I hoped existed for the gift of it.
I dug my toes into the sand as Bon Iver’s “33 GOD” drifted through the speakers off of my porch and melted the rest of my day away.
“AT EASE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT, THIS is Koti.” The next morning, I sat behind my two-inch desk as Jasmine waltzed in with a handful of coffee for us. I mouthed her a ‘thank you’ as she placed the cup in front of me and took the desk opposite of mine.
I listened to Mrs. Osborne ranting and saw Jasmine waiting for me expectantly, a devious smile on her glossed lips, a fresh story on the edge of her tongue. Jasmine was gorgeous, from the tip of her silky long hair to her dark-skinned toes. She was a bit older than me, but you couldn’t tell because of her exotic looking features—caramel brown eyes bordering gold, a heart-shaped face, and ebony hair. She was curvy, and that day had poured herself into a loud yellow sundress that would look ridiculous on anyone else. Oversized sunglasses sat perched on the top of her head, a clothing staple for her. We were night and day in the looks department. Where she was dark, I was light. My mother had gifted me with silver-blue eyes and her body. I was the pint-size version of her. Where she had made millions with her frame, I was a bit more conservative in my dress. My mother kept her signature blonde locks even as she aged and though I’d inherited those as well, I’d razored them short after I landed in St. Thomas.
Blair Vaughn had been one of the first supermodels and ended her reign on her own terms before she married my father. My parents’ Fifth Avenue penthouse was a shrine to her illustrious career. Every room was covered in framed magazine covers she was featured on. She had owned Manhattan in her day in the way I had hoped to in my own. What she conquered with her breathtaking smile and figure, I’d attempted to master with my father’s business sense.
My mother’s smile won, and my smile was erased by reality. So, I created a new reality, where pavement was scarce and there was always a soft place to land. A place where I didn’t have my mother’s high expectations weighing me down.
Annoyed I was in my own headspace with my mother and even more so with the woman who’d called me every hour since seven o’clock that morning, I assured Mrs. Osborne, again, that she wouldn’t run out of water.
“Koti, I find this disturbing,” she yapped on the other end of the phone as if she was now existing in a third-world country.
“I’ll go ahead and send a truck.” You really need a hobby, lady.
“I’d appreciate it. I just think with what we’ve paid for this rental we shouldn’t have to worry about necessities like water.”
“I completely understand.” You old, flappy bat.
Once I’d put her at ease—though I refused to assure there would be no more visits from the pesky iguana who lived there because she was ridiculous—we hung up.
“Mrs. Osborne?” Jasmine checked her lipstick in a compact she produced from her purse. No matter the time of day, her makeup was flawless. She gathered her hair into a self-adhesive bun. “Cinco de Mayo is coming up,” I joked, as she curled her lip at me. “Should we celebrate with a margarita?”
The first time I met her, in fact, the first time anyone met Jasmine, they assumed she was Mexican or of Spanish descent, which always led to her favorite line, “I’m half filifuckingpino.” Jasmine was raised in ‘bumfuck’—her words, not mine—Minnesota and sounded like one of the cast of Fargo. There were a lot of ya’s for yeah’s, soda was pop, etc.
St. Thomas was an eclectic mix, even with the natives the accents were different, including the neighboring islands. Jasmine had moved to St. Thomas with an ex-fiancé and stayed after he decided he wanted to return to the States, without her.
“You know it was Mrs. Osborne and she’s a pain in the ass,” I said, typing a note on the property file. DO NOT RENT TO THESE PEOPLE.
“That commission is worth it,” she scolded, before I reluctantly backspaced my note with a single finger, one key at a time. I added a death glare in her direction for good measure.
“You’re checking them in next time.” Curling my lip at her, I picked up the phone to fetch Mrs. Osborne her water.
“So, I had sex in a tractor last night.”
With a raised brow, I paused my hand on the number pad and looked above my screen at her. “A… tractor. How is that even possible? How many tractors are on St. Thomas that you could have sex on?”
“At least one,” she said, sitting back in her seat. “I feel a little dirty about this one, I will admit.”
“Really?”
She stood and walked over to the coffee pot to refill her cup. “No, not at all. No regrets, my friend. And now that I think about it, I’m sure it was a backhoe.”
I shrugged. “Well, as long as it was a backhoe.”
“Exactly,” she turned to me, hands propping her up on the counter behind her. Our office was a shoebox, but Jasmine insisted we rent a small space when we managed enough properties to make us more “official.” Yet we never met any of our renters in the office and no one had ever occupied the two chairs we had waiting for clients. Jasmine claimed having a place to show up to made us more accountable. I agreed to a point because if I had it my way, I’d live as a happy recluse and work within the confines of my beach house. She started the company herself, heartbroken and determined to survive in St. Thomas without the man that lured her here and left her to fend for herself while licking her wounds. Our work hours could be grueling at times but, she paid well and after a year of being out of corporate hell, I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else.
“Will you be seeing this one again?”
“Meh, I don’t know.” She pulled up her skirt to show me her thong clad, purpling-brown ass. “But man, is this a sign of a good time or what?”
Sighing, I held up my hand to block the view of her tan globes. “It’s 9 a.m. Do I really need to see your ass this early?”
“I’ll sing you the “Thong Song,” come on.” She giggled, flexing her cheeks to make them bounce.
“Oh, you just go straight to hell.”
I grabbed my phone and purse as she resumed her seat and gave me a wink. “Best video ever.”
I stopped in my tracks. “You have video?”
“Just remember I love you, and I have only good intentions for keeping this.”
Panic raced through me as I thought of the night I’d let all my inhibitions go and I mean let go. The slow spreading smile on her lips revealed she was playing with me. There was no video.
“Where are you off to?”
“I’m getting new neighbors today.”
“Oh, right. The Kemps’ are booked, I forgot.”
“Yep, two weeks. Newlyweds.” I was excited about the idea of newlyweds. My parents and the Kemps bought our neighboring houses within a year of each other when I was five. They both purchased the properties for vacation houses/investment rental homes. And while the Kemps still rented theirs out, my parents were stuck with a daughter who had fled to theirs from New York costing them a year’s worth of profits. While my dad insisted the house had paid for itself tenfold and it was mine as long as I needed it, my mother kept her tongue idle. I knew it would eventually become a bargaining chip. I always felt guilty about taking away some of their retirement income, not to mention th
e small fortune they wasted on a degree I no longer used. While my mother was no stranger to money, Ryan Vaughn had been a scrapper and worked hard for his fortune.
But in a way, even with my mother’s grudge about my current situation, I think they knew that house had saved my life.
Or at least, helped me find a new one.
“Take it easy out there,” Jasmine chimed, as I refilled my coffee. “Careful of those chickens, though we both know you could use a little cock.”
“Classy,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You aren’t off the hook. I want to know what could have possibly led to backhoe sex.”
My phone rang, and I cringed while Jasmine smirked, but it quickly disappeared when I silenced the call. Mere seconds later the office phone rang. Jasmine narrowed her eyes as she picked up the phone. “Good morning, Mrs. Osborne.”
With the back of my floorboard full of clanking wine bottles, I pulled up to my piece of paradise, which was the second to last of two identical cottage-style houses on Vista Lane. To the right of the Kemp house, large boulders crowded the beach giving it an intimate feel, and to the left of my cottage lay a large stretch of silky beige sand and an endless view of the ocean. The builder had only erected two of the three planned houses before the Kemps intercepted and bought the last available lot for more privacy. Aside from the residences on the neighboring cliffs, I basically lived on a private beach, which was the richest real estate you could find on St. Thomas. And though the houses weren’t as modern as others—built in the eighties—they were equally as inviting. Between the two-story twin dwellings lay a wide sand path which was convenient for me.
I parked my Jeep between the two porches cutting off Bobby McFerrin singing to me “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” hopped out and grabbed the flowers and wine before I dug for the last bottle lodged under my seat. I cursed my timing as I heard tires on the gravel behind me.
Crap, they’re early.
I had no idea what condition the house was in and prayed the cleaning lady had done a decent job. Finally getting a grip on the loose bottle, I pulled it out along with the flowers and caught a glance at the retreating cab before I was motored over.
