by Chamber Four
Sharon’s appointment was for five o’clock.
The management of the Hotel St. John had set up a massage table in Duncan Munro’s suite. Munro had a bad knee. He lay on his stomach with a towel over his middle. Sharon went over his back, his shoulders. She handled his knee.
“What happened?” Sharon asked him. “It feels okay to me. It wasn’t broken. How did you hurt it?”
“In a football game.”
Sharon was bending Munro’s left knee gently back as he lay prone. The work went best when you kept the talk going.
“College or high school?” she asked.
“College.”
“Where did you go?”
“Princeton.”
“So, they play a lot of football there?”
“They did.”
“Not anymore?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Why not? Did they kick you out? Were you bad?”
“Don’t be silly.”
Gently, Sharon let Munro’s left leg back down onto the table. She picked up his right leg, she began testing that knee.
“So, what did you play?” she asked Munro. “In football? Were you the quarterback?”
“I didn’t say I was playing.”
Okay. Okay, then. Fine. No talk. No questions. He wanted her to shut up. Sharon could do that. After all, she said, he was Wanda’s client, he wasn’t hers.
The next week Sharon had a call from someone with a British accent, someone named Patrick. “Patrick at the St. John,” he said. He wanted Sharon to take on Duncan Munro’s therapy as a continuing engagement.
“I can’t do that,” Sharon told him. “He’s Wanda’s client. I can’t just cut Wanda out. We don’t do that.”
“Call her,” said the man named Patrick. “We’ll look for you Wednesday, then, shall we? About five?”
Sharon called Wanda. “Go for it,” said Wanda. “Go right for it. It works for me. I heard from Patrick, too, you know.”
“You did?”
“I sure did,” said Wanda. “I heard from him big time. I am a happy camper today. A very happy camper.”
“Why?” Sharon asked her.
“I guess you could say Duncan bought my contract,” said Wanda. “Duncan’s a trip. You’ll have fun. Don’t worry about me. I’m going shopping.”
So Sharon began calling on Duncan Munro. The squid never appeared. Munro stayed on the table as Sharon worked on him. His towel stayed on. He didn’t turn over, he didn’t pat or grab or squeeze. He didn’t even flirt. He also didn’t complain.
“Am I hurting you?” Sharon asked him.
“No.”
“Tell me if I hurt you, okay?”
“Okay.”
At the end of their third or fourth session, when she leaned into his ankle and worked it back, back, Munro said, “Enough.”
“Enough, that hurts?”
“No,” said Munro. “Enough, let’s have dinner.”
Sharon was uncertain.
“You mean sometime?” she asked.
“I mean now.”
“I couldn’t,” Sharon said. “I’m not dressed or anything. Look at me.”
“I am looking at you. I have been for a couple of weeks. You look fine. You’re dressed beautifully.”
“No, I’m not,” said Sharon. “Or, where did you think of going?”
“No place,” said Munro. “Are you busy? Do you have to be anywhere?”
Briefly, Sharon thought of Neil. Did she in that moment discern the ineluctable advent of the next thing? Probably she did. She thought of Neil.
“No,” she said.
Duncan Munro ordered dinner brought up—no ordinary dinner, the kind of dinner Sharon didn’t get every night, didn’t get every year. A dinner on heavy linen, perfectly white, a dinner under silver covers, with a couple of bottles of champagne, a dinner rolled in by two waiters, one to serve and one to light the candles and pop the corks. With them was a tall man wearing a blue suit, an Englishman.
“This is Patrick,” Duncan Munro told Sharon.
“Hi, Patrick,” said Sharon.
“Good evening, miss,” said the Englishman.
“You and I talked on the phone, didn’t we?” Sharon asked.
“Indeed we did, miss,” said Patrick. “Will that be all for now, sir?” he asked Munro. Munro nodded and Patrick shooed the waiters off and followed them to the elevator and out.
“Who’s Patrick?” Sharon asked Duncan Munro.
“Patrick’s an Etonian,” said Munro.
“What’s an Etonian?”
“A good thing to be, where Patrick comes from,” said Munro.
“Are you one?” Sharon asked him.
“I might have been,” said Munro. “But Patrick’s the real thing. Patrick is a man of many talents.”
“He’s like the concierge?”
“The concierge?”
“Yeah. He works for the hotel, doesn’t he?” asked Sharon.
“No,” said Munro. “Not for the hotel.”
They began on their dinner. Munro wore a robe, and Sharon sat opposite him in sweatpants and her FDNY T-shirt. She expected Munro to drink a lot, but he barely tasted the wine. Sharon drank most of it herself. Probably that was part of the thing, long after dinner, of her finding herself with Duncan Munro in the suite’s shower. They stood in each other’s arms under the warm water.
“I think I’ve had too much champagne,” said Sharon.
“Don’t be silly,” said Munro. “You can’t have too much champagne. It’s good for you.”
“It is?”
“Well, at any rate,” said Munro, “it’s good for me.”
“But you haven’t had any.”
“But you have.”
Sharon realized she was a little taller than Munro. She had never before been together with a man shorter than she. She looked him over. He wasn’t a big man.
“I guess you’re not quite built like a football player, at that,” she said.
“You are. Those broad shoulders. Those strong legs. You’d have made a beautiful football player.”
“So, do you think I could have joined the team?” Sharon asked him.
Munro laughed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The fellows would have been all for it, I know that. But this was years ago, remember. Before you were born. Coach had a rule against four-legged showers.”
“Four-legged showers?” Sharon said. “So, is this a four-legged shower we’re having?”
“You bet.”
Sharon giggled. “A four-legged shower,” she said. “I like that. That’s pretty funny.”
“Coach thought so,” said Munro.
* * * *
After Christmas the real winter, the leaden New York winter, took enduring hold, grimly, like a sentence you had to serve, like long, hard time you had to do, day after day after day. The cloud and fog and dirt and noise hung low over the avenues, and along them the lights of the shop windows poured a wet, dripping sheen over the streets and over the traffic in the streets so that Sharon, making her way to work every day from Kew Gardens, felt as though she were going down a mine.
She got to the St. John around five.
“You’re wet,” said Duncan Munro.
“Yeah, I’m wet,” said Sharon. “It’s pouring. You didn’t notice? It’s been raining for two days.”
“I haven’t been out.”
“You haven’t been out? You work in here?”
“Where did you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Sharon. “In an office? An office, I guess. People work in offices.”
“You don’t work in an office.”
“No,” said Sharon. “My work, you’re sometimes better off without an office.”
“Mine, too,” said Munro.
Sharon took off her damp coat and hung it in the closet. When she turned to Munro, he nodded toward their massage table. “That’s for you,” he said.
On the table, a paper par
cel waited. Sharon picked it up. Inside were a pair of plastic sandals from the drugstore and a narrow box about a foot long, covered in black velvet.
“What’s this?” Sharon asked.
“Open it.”
Sharon opened the box and found herself looking down at a string of pearls, not big pearls, not small. She hooked them around her finger and lifted them carefully from their box.
“Are these real?” she asked Munro.
“They’d better be,” said Munro.
“I can’t take these.”
“Sure, you can,” said Munro.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say, thank you, Duncan.”
Sharon picked up the sandals.
“Flip-flops,” she said.
“They’re real, too,” said Munro.
“I don’t get it,” said Sharon.
“You’ll need them,” said Munro. “Where we’re going.”
“Where’s that?”
“South.”
“South of where?”
“South of here,” said Munro. “A long way south. Out of town. Out of the winter. Into the sun, the heat, the light. You know? A few days of sun? A few days of folly?”
“Folly?” Sharon asked.
“Folly. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like that.”
“I’d like it,” said Sharon. “Sure, I’d like it. Where would we go? Florida?”
“Not Florida,” said Munro. “South.”
“The islands? Barbados? I’ve been to Barbados.”
“Not Barbados. Keep going south. Another island. Smaller. A small island I know down there.”
“So, like a resort?” said Sharon.
“Something like that.”
“When you say ‘folly’? We’re talking about your basic beach-bar-bed vacation, is that right?”
“There’s no bar,” said Munro.
Later they lay together in the suite’s enormous bed. Munro lay on his back with his eyes closed. Sharon rose on her elbow beside him. She put her hand on his chest. Munro opened his eyes.
“What if I can’t make it?” Sharon asked him.
“Why wouldn’t you be able to make it?” Munro asked.
“I might be busy.”
“Busy?”
“Yeah. Busy. I might have a boyfriend. I might have a husband.”
“You might,” said Munro. He took her hand. He examined it, turned it over, kissed the palm. “Beautiful hands,” he said. Sharon waited.
“You might have a husband,” said Munro at last. “You might. I don’t know. I haven’t asked. I might have a wife. You don’t know. You haven’t asked. You don’t ask. What do I do? Why am I here? You haven’t asked. You’ve wondered, but you haven’t asked.”
“Why would I ask?” said Sharon.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because,” Sharon said, “look: if I asked you whether you have a wife and you said yes, I’d feel bad about that.”
“And if I said no?”
“I wouldn’t believe you.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“Do I see what you mean?”
“Do you have a wife?”
“No.”
* * * *
They flew from a little airport on Long Island to Miami, then to San Juan, then on down. The plane looked to Sharon like a model plane, like a kind of miniature, until she climbed aboard. Inside was a long cabin with leather chairs on steel pedestals instead of airline seats, a bank seat like a sofa, and a bar. Patrick was with them. He rode forward with the pilots. There was another man, too, a boy, really, with brown skin and a white jacket, who waited at the bar and served them meals.
At San Juan they landed beside a harbor full of the biggest ships Sharon had ever seen, all gray, unmoving: floating gray mountains. Sharon watched from her window as Patrick and another man, perhaps one of the pilots, left the plane and were met by two men in uniform. All four climbed into a Jeep and drove a short distance to a metal building.
“Where’s Patrick going?” Sharon asked Munro.
“He won’t be long,” said Munro. “It’s the Navy, down here. They make you dance around a little. It won’t take long.”
Patrick and the pilot returned, and they took off again. Now the sun was strong in the cabin. The pale walls, the pale carpet, the metal fixtures, the windows, all blazed together. They had been served some kind of rum cocktails after leaving San Juan, and the cocktails and the sun made Sharon sleepy. She lay on the bank seat with her sandals off and her head in Munro’s lap. He stroked her hair. She slept.
“Here we are,” Munro was saying. “Well, almost.”
Sharon sat up. They were on the ground. Out the window was the runway and beyond it a low scrubby flat with a dull green tree line and low buildings, pink, yellow, white. Taller buildings in the distance.
“Where are we?” Sharon asked.
“Port of Spain,” said Munro.
“Where’s Port of Spain?”
Munro smiled. “You know,” he said, “I’m not really sure. We’ll ask Patrick.”
Two men came on board, and they and Patrick collected the luggage and carried it down from the plane, with Sharon and Munro behind them. The air was hot and heavy, and full of the smell of diesel. The sky was a milky blue overcast, but there was no coolness in it. Sharon could feel the heat of the tarmac through her sandals. She followed Munro.
“Is this the island?” she asked him.
“Next stop,” said Munro. He pointed ahead.
A helicopter with a fishbowl front compartment, like a traffic helicopter, sat on the runway before them. Patrick and the other men had put their bags into the machine and now climbed into the front. Munro and Sharon went in behind them.
“Ever been in one of these before?” Munro asked her.
Sharon shook her head.
“You’ll love it,” said Munro.
She did love it. Just at first, when they lifted abruptly up and off, Sharon shrieked and laughed, because the sudden rise made her feel she was falling. But when they banked and turned and took up their course, she loved being able to see. You could see everything. They left the overcast, and the sun flashed on the bright water that passed beneath them, seemingly only feet below. Overhead the sky, light blue, then darker blue, then purple at its top, and at the horizon, low clouds like a cotton lining that surrounded a great sapphire in a jewel box: the world on all sides and above and below clear and bright to the farthest limit.
“This is pretty great,” Sharon told Munro. But he couldn’t hear her for the noise of the engine and the rotors. He was looking off to the left.
“This is really great!” Sharon said again, more loudly. But Munro still didn’t hear. She touched his knee and he turned to her, smiling and shaking his head. Sharon smiled back at him, but she didn’t try to speak to him again.
Now the water went turquoise and a line of surf appeared where the sea broke on a bar or reef. Then land sped beneath them, an island that looked like the round eye of a bird: dark inside a ring of white beach. There wasn’t much to the island. From the air, it looked to be the size of a tennis court; even as they descended, Sharon saw it must be very small. The helicopter landed on the beach: dark ragged palms inland, their tops bent gently by the wind. Under the palms, set back, a low square building, and a group of three people coming from the building toward the beach, two pushing hand carts. The rotors stopped turning, and the pilot and Patrick opened their doors.
“Here we are, miss,” Patrick said to Sharon.
Sharon stepped from the cabin and down onto the soft sand of the beach. She bent to remove her sandals so she could feel the sand barefoot. Munro climbed down from the machine and stood beside her. The wind in her face was strong. It blew her dress against her legs. It blew her hair across her eyes.
“What’s the name of this place?” Sharon asked Munro.
“I don’t know if it has a name,” said Munro. “We’ll ask P
atrick.”
The three with the carts had loaded their bags and were taking them back up the beach toward the building in the palms. Sharon and Munro started walking behind them when Patrick said, “Best put your shoes back on, miss. There are sharp bits off the beach.”
“Oh,” said Sharon. She was carrying her sandals. She stopped, leaned on Munro’s arm, and put them back on her feet. Then she and Munro, following Patrick, walked toward the trees. Behind them, the pilot had climbed back aboard the helicopter and started the engine, and before they had left the beach, he had lifted off.
Duncan Munro had stopped when the helicopter took off. He had turned to watch it rise, pause, and make off the way they had come. He had watched it out of sight. Then he turned and caught up with Sharon. He took her around the waist.
“Now, then,” said Duncan Munro.
* * * *
Sometime the next day it occurred to Sharon that Duncan Munro was not a visitor to the island where they were staying, but its owner. She had slept fitfully. The house they were in was barely a house at all. It was low, made of some soft stone, with deep verandas, screened windows, and louvered doors. The wind blew through the house all night, stirring the curtains, hurrying through the rooms. Sharon started awake, then slept, then started again. Beside her Munro slept deeply. She put her arm around him and lay close along his back. Then she slept for a time, but soon the many sounds the wind made woke her again, and she turned from him and tried to settle herself another way. In the morning when she woke, the wind was gone and so was Munro. She was alone in the bed.
Sharon got out of bed, put on a robe, and left the house by French doors in the bedroom that let out onto a courtyard in the rear of the building: quarters like theirs on three sides with a gallery all around, enclosing a kind of rock garden that had a fountain in the center, a dry fountain. On the open side of the courtyard, a sandy path went out of sight into the trees and low growth.
It was near nine, and the sun was high, but the courtyard was empty, and nobody seemed to be around in the rooms or in the gallery. Sharon looked for the other guests, she looked for housekeepers and serving staff going about their work. She saw none. She went up and down the gallery, peering into the windows of the other rooms. Some were furnished like theirs with beds, chairs, dressers, but showed no sign of being occupied. Some were quite empty. One was boarded up: wooden panels had been screwed down over the windows and over the slats in the door.
