Gone Bamboo (5 page)

8

H
enry lay on his back in the gin-clear water, his mask and snorkel held loosely in one hand, and gave a few desultory kicks with his flippers. A single puff of white cloud drifted slowly across the sun. Around him, the sea was flat and calm, only slightly cooler than the balmy afternoon air and his warm, sunburned skin. He raised his head and looked back toward the beach, around a hundred twenty yards away. He could see Frances, in her black thong bathing suit, the one he'd bought her on his last trip to New York, sitting on a barstool at Tommy's Tropical. She was drinking Heineken from the bottle and talking to a young woman who stood in the shadows under the bar's thatched roof.

He paddled around, repositioning himself so he had a view of his hotel, beyond the reef. Through the open French doors of the second-story balcony, he could just make out a green and black figure moving around inside, probably Esme, the chambermaid, making up the rooms. He put his head back in the water and closed his eyes. He'd give Frances a little more time with Cheryl before heading in.

He was startled by the sound of a pelican crashing into the water around twenty yards off. Henry turned and watched the big bird come up empty, water dripping from its bill. The pelican lifted itself with a few powerful strokes of its wings and quickly resumed its lazy, circular flight pattern overhead, gliding motionless over the reef, scanning the water below for fish.

Henry looked back at the beach again, at Frances. He righted himself, pushed the hair off his forehead, and fitted the dive mask over his face. He put the mouthpiece of the snorkel between his teeth and plunged deep beneath the surface. A few inches above the coral heads, he lay motionless, arms extended, and allowed the current to buffet him gently while schools of brightly colored fish darted around him, shooting in and out of the crevices and drop-offs of the reef. Blue tang, mullet, parrot fish, and grouper moved in and out of the dark areas between projections of brain and elkhorn coral, or hung in space, like Henry, avoiding the bristling black spines of sea urchins. Henry waved his hand over an electric yellow sea anemone and watched as the translucent, hollow tendrils shrank from his touch. The air in his lungs exhausted, he swam to the surface and began to kick slowly toward shore.

He swam straight in, trying not to break the surface. Even close enough to stand, he kept swimming, right up to the water's edge, the large-grained, pillowy sand finally rubbing against his chest. Only then did he remove the flippers and mask and stand up.

Frances and Cheryl, both topless, lay on Henry's beach blanket, each up on one elbow, lost in conversation. Cheryl wore the same black thong bathing suit as Frances, Henry noticed, making her look very much like a younger sister. She was slightly shorter, with dark, somewhat wavier brown hair cut to her shoulders, and a swimmer's body, darkly tanned like Frances's. She wore an ankle bracelet, a thin gold chain that Henry imagined was a gift from Tommy, and a pair of tortoiseshell Ray Bans. There was a tiny tattoo, a seashell, on her right shoulder, and her breasts, though small-nippled and therefore ordinarily not to Henry's taste, were in every other respect remarkably proportioned. Feeling dehydrated, Henry moved his attention to his wife, watched admiringly as the older, taller woman moved in closer to share a confidence with her new friend, was reminded yet again how beautiful she was, noticed for the millionth time her hard shoulders, long legs, strong, graceful calves, and narrow ankles. She half-whispered to Cheryl, her expression impenetrable behind pitch black aviators.

All of a sudden, Frances looked up, and though Henry was certain she'd been aware of him, she put her hand to her mouth in a gesture of embarrassment. "I was just telling Cheryl about you," she said, giggling uncharacteristically.

"Only about my finer qualities, I hope," said Henry, approaching the blanket. He threw his snorkel equipment on the sand and extended a hand to Cheryl. "Hi. I'm Henry."

"Hi," she answered, giving him an unusually firm handshake. "I've seen you around. You bought a couple a' beers at the bar a few times I think." She sat up and drew in her knees, making room for Henry on the blanket. "We didn't have any customers, so I'm kinda playing hooky," she said. Henry glanced over at the empty bar, nodded, and began to rummage in his canvas beach bag for a cigarette.

"Tommy's in Philipsburg," said Frances. "That's Cheryl's boyfriend slash business partner."

"He's trying to find us a generator for the bar," said Cheryl. "We need electricity. A refrigerator if we're gonna do all the things we want to do. Tommy's got a lot of food planned—"

"Tommy was a chef in New York," added Frances, as if telling Henry for the first time. "Cheryl and he used to work in the same restaurant together." She took off her glasses. "You know, that's kind of how Henry and I met." Henry saw her give him a sly look out of the corner of her eye. "We were kind of working in a kind of club, a bar, really. I guess it's not the same thing."

"He's a really good chef," said Cheryl, proudly. "Really good."

"I feel guilty now," said Henry. "You guys have been open, what, six months. We haven't been by to eat. I mean, we live right up there."

"We're lazy," said Frances.
"Really
lazy."

"Forget about it," said Cheryl, cheerfully. "We're still kinda getting our act together. Most people don't even know we're here yet. We spent most of the time since we got here getting set up. You know, finding a truck, where to buy the food, stuff like that. We don't know too many people yet and all. Tommy's still on his Robinson Crusoe thing, a hermit."

"I'm getting kinda hungry now, actually," said Henry, giving Cheryl his most winning smile. "When's the chef get back? I could eat."

"Great!" said Cheryl. "I'll get you a menu!" She flashed an enormous smile, bounded to her feet, and ran for the bar. Henry, unable to avoid noticing the way the muscles moved on her taut, brown ass, followed her progress across the sand.

"Keep looking," said Frances. "Keep looking . . . see what it gets you."

"Just gathering a little intelligence, dear," said Henry. "For the cause." He pushed her back onto the blanket and cupped a hand around an oiled breast, pinching the nipple between his fingers. Frances drew a breath loudly through her teeth, hooked a leg around him, and worked a heel provocatively up his ass, pushing his crotch forward into her hip, then shoved him roughly away.

"Now behave," she said, smiling and straightening her glasses on her nose.

"We don't have everything on the menu yet," said Cheryl, returning to the blanket with a hand-lettered piece of illustration board. "You know, until we get electric." She handed Henry the menu. "You should wait for Tommy to get back. I mean, I know how to make everything, but he's like a lot better at it. He'll be back soon."

"Yo - this is great," said Henry. "Shrimp fajitas. Seafood gumbo. Cool."

"We don't have that yet," confessed Cheryl.

"Grilled lobster, chicken sate, blackened hamburger, ribs - gotta have that - grilled red snapper with tequila sauce - that sounds good. I hope he gets back soon. Boudin noir?"

"He makes that himself, up at the house," said Cheryl.

"Grilled plantains, fried sweet potato . . . This is too good to believe."

"And there's gonna be a special every night. When we open for dinner, I mean. Once we get a light fixture and shit, we can stay open for dinner. Now it's just lunch, you know. You think people would come over for dinner from the marina, we were open for dinner?"

"I'm sure they would," said Henry, knowing full well that they wouldn't. The yachties and boat bums at the marina were creatures of habit and convenience. The wealthy among them ate just up the hill at Frogs, or they went into town. The charter crews and boat bums who made up most of Henry and Frances's friends would hardly forsake the cheap drinks and easy access of the Dinghy Dock and its shepherd's pies and ribs for a trip to the other side of the pond followed by a ten-minute walk across to Dawn Beach. Even the guests at Dawn Beach Hotel, a couple of thousand yards down from Tommy's Tropical, were unlikely to come at night. They would eat in the relative comfort of their refrigerated dining halls, untroubled by insects or scary natives, regardless of how loathsome or generic the food might be.

Still, Henry used the opening, even feeling a little bad about the lie. "I mean, maybe if you guys hung out more, got to know people around here, it would help. If you did a dollar night once a week - they like that around here. Once you get lights, people will see you're open down there at Dawn Beach, maybe come over. The food there is ridiculous. Who wants escargot fucking bourguignonne and beef Wellington in the tropics?"

"That's what Tommy says," said Cheryl, entirely too happy.

"You guys should join us later at the Dinghy Dock," suggested Frances, timing the pitch perfectly. "Get to know everybody, check out the competition."

"Oh . . . I'd love to," said Cheryl, smiling wickedly but clearly troubled by something. "You . . . you'd have . . . you guys have to help me talk Tommy into it. He's become such a stick in the mud. We almost never go out."

"I think this is the man now," said Henry, watching as a battered white pickup truck skidded to a stop beneath the coconut trees behind the bar. "He doesn't look too happy."

"Shit," said Cheryl. "I guess no generator." She took off to meet her boyfriend, kicking sand.

Henry watched. Tommy stood next to the pickup, shaking his head, his hands balled into fists. When Cheryl reached him, she put her arms around him, hugged him like a child. Fifty yards away, words were exchanged, and Henry saw Tommy turn and look over at him and Frances on the beach. Cheryl tugged at Tommy's arm, playfully pulling him in their direction, then broke away and trotted back to the blanket. Tommy waited a moment, then followed slowly, looking reluctant.

"This is Tommy," said Cheryl, when finally he reached them. "Tom, this is Henry and Frances. They live up at the yacht club there." She plopped down on the blanket next to Frances while Tommy shook hands, leaving him still standing, clearly wondering whether to stay and sit or simply make an excuse and walk back to the bar.

"I understand you're looking for a generator," said Henry, trying to help Tommy with his decision. He saw a look of interest come over the younger man, who then dropped to one knee and fumbled in the pocket of his cutoffs for a pack of cigarettes.

"Yeah," he said, lighting a bent Marlboro. "Those . . . miserable . . . pricks in Philipsburg have been jacking me around for weeks. Today . . . today they were absolutely, positively gonna have it for me today. I show up, and they don't have shit. 'Next week, mon. No problem.'" He sucked hard on his cigarette, still fuming. "I got hot and told them to go fuck themselves. Probably not the smartest thing I coulda done. I mean, I still need one."

"I might know somebody on the French side," said Henry. "They might be able to help."

Tommy looked skeptical. The same height as Cheryl, he was darker complected, though he seemed to have spent less time in the sun. His hair was chopped short on the sides, long on top, and looked like it hadn't seen a comb or a brush in months. He had shaved, however, and Henry figured him for twenty-six, twenty-seven years old. He wore expensive Photogray prescription sunglasses, had a sensitive mouth, and Henry noticed his hands, which were heavily callused and scarred. Whereas Henry had long, graceful-looking fingers, Tommy's were shorter and wider; but the way Tommy gestured, used them to illustrate his frustration with the appliance people in Philipsburg, or reach out and stroke Cheryl as if reassuring himself, made his hands look less utilitarian and more like a conductor's. Henry could easily imagine those hands dipping a fingertip into a bubbling sauce, releasing herbs into a gumbo in measured amounts, fluting a mushroom. Watching Tommy, he suspected that he was not unlike his hands; deceptively rough but capable of - even inclined toward - gentler things. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt with Yankee insignia, and Henry noticed a seashell tattoo on his right shoulder that matched Cheryl's.

"I was over on the French side," Tommy was saying. "Went there first. When I started looking, I got treated like a buncha rat droppings over there by some candy-ass frog who runs the hardware store." He sat back and watched the waves lapping up on the beach, sucking on his cigarette.

"The guy I'm thinking about is different. First of all, he's local. A Saint Martiner. Black guy, bit of an entrepreneur, and he takes a lot of pride in his work. He runs . . . I guess you'd call it a sort of movable chop shop over in Sandy Ground. You should really give him a shot. One time, me and Frances, our scooter broke down on a national holiday, and nothing, I mean nothing, was open. Here we were, stuck out at Rouge Beach with a dead scooter. Anyway, the guy who runs the beach bar over there helped us out. He just chucked the scooter in the back of his truck and took us over to see Doc. Him and his little buddies, bunch of kids on bicycles, they had that thing opened up in around two seconds. The Doc looks inside, says it'll be like forty bucks, and tells the kids what parts he needs. Half hour later they have the parts we need, they put the thing together, and we're back on the road. Next day . . . next day, Frances and I bump into the guy in Marigot, and he does like a follow-up on his work. Listens to the engine, checks it out. I'm telling you, the guy's great. He'll find you a generator. And cheap. A jack-of-all-trades. He doesn't have what you want, those kids'll find one for you, know what I mean?"