Gone Bamboo (6 page)

"I guess you guys have lived down here a long time," Tommy said cautiously.

"Almost thirteen years, give or take," said Henry.

"Where you from? New York?"

"New Jersey . . . Frances is from New York. Upstate."

"Yeah," said Tommy, resolving something in his mind. "I think I seen you at the bar . . ."

"You're from the City, right?" said Frances, though Tommy's accent was unmistakable.

"The City." Tommy chortled. "Yeah. I still do that. People ask where I'm from, I say 'the City.' I'm so used to it. Like, what other city could there be?"

"Henry, they live up in that big stone house on the hill, the really nice one," said Frances.

"Really?" said Henry. "Nice . . . I didn't know anybody was living there. We've admired that place for years. It's always seemed to be empty."

"We're sort of house-sitting," piped in Cheryl.

"The owner never comes down?" asked Frances.

"He's there now." Cheryl pouted.

"Rich guy and his bodyguards," said Tommy, cutting her off, clearly uncomfortable with the subject.

"Henry was thinking of getting something to eat," said Frances, backing off.

"Yeah, Tommy. What should he have?" said Cheryl.

"Oh," said Tommy, brightening. "Great . . . great . . . sure. I gotta start up the grill . . . but, yeah, great."

"We're starved," purred Frances, stretching her shoulders back and yawning. "And I could use a drink . . ."

"Cheryl was just showing us the menu," said Henry.

"What do you feel like having?" asked Tommy, getting to his feet.

"I think we'll leave that to you," said Henry.

"Well, lemme buy you guys a beer or a drink or something while you wait," offered Tommy. "It'll take a little while."

"Couple a' Heinekens would be great," said Henry.

As they walked over to the empty bar together, Cheryl mentioned Henry and Frances's invitation. "They asked us out to the Dinghy Dock later for a drink. Can we go? Please, please, please?"

Henry watched Tommy's expression as he scrambled for an excuse.

Frances gave him no room. "You should know now, you've got no choice in the matter. We're kidnapping Cheryl whether you like it or not. So you're just going to have to say yes." She hooked an arm around Cheryl's.

"It'll be funnn," said Cheryl, plaintively.

"I don't know if I have the clothes," said Tommy, lamely.

"Sorry," said Frances. "Won't work. You can show up at the Dinghy Dock in a gunnysack. Nobody'll notice. As is will be fine."

"Drinks are only a buck till seven, and we're buying anyway, so money's no excuse either," said Henry.

Tommy looked around the bar like he wished he could crawl back into the dark and hide.

"We close at five anyway, Tommy," said Cheryl. "And it's been dead all day . . . Please?"

"You're roped in, man," said Henry. "No fighting it. You got two very determined women here."

Henry watched as Tommy's last bit of resistance faded away. "What the fuck," he said, finally. "Sure. Why not? C'mon. I'll cook us something'll knock you on your ass."

Frances and Cheryl got their beers and ran into the water. Henry sat on one of the tall barstools. He could hear the women behind him, splashing around in the water as he watched Tommy behind the bar, adding some wood chips to the charcoal in the small barbecue grill and lighting it.

The day was coming to an end. The sun was getting red and heavy over the mountains, sinking slowly into pink and purple clouds. The shadows of the coconut palms played out over the white sand beach, growing longer and longer, the light growing more precise, moving with the gentle, rustling sound of the fronds in the gathering breeze.

"Snapper good for you?" said Tommy, poking at the fire with a stick.

"Excellent," said Henry, sipping his beer and trying not to press.

Tommy removed two large fillets from an aluminum foil pan filled with marinade in an ice-filled cooler. When the coals were right, he lay them down on the grill. On the side, he lit a flame under a Coleman stove and began to heat a saucepan filled with oil. Producing a gleaming mandoline, he made paper-thin waffle slices of sweet potato on a cutting board, spirits visibly lifting with each slice.

"So you're from Jersey," he said, casually. "Whereabouts?"

"Englewood," said Henry, lying.

"You know the City, then."

"Yeah, fairly well," said Henry, choosing his words carefully. "I've had business there over the years. Been some time since I was there last. I imagine it's changed."

"Nahh . . . It stays the same," said Tommy, testing the oil with a fingertip. "What exactly is it you do? You don't mind my askin'."

"I don't mind," said Henry, innocently. "I'm in real estate. I own some property here, on a few other islands. Got a tiny office on Anguilla. Go over there now and again." This was true as far as it went.

"But you live in a hotel," said Tommy, proving he wasn't a moron. "I mean, if you own places, why live in a hotel? Ain't that kinda expensive?" He glanced over at the Oyster Pond's white walls, just peeking over the palm tops in the distance. "Must cost some bucks."

"Yeah." Henry smiled, flashing a lot of teeth. "It's where Frances and I came for our honeymoon. We didn't want to leave. Sentimental thing."

"Still . . ."

"We get a good rate 'cause we stay year-round. We
like
living in a hotel. You get used to the room service - having somebody turn your bed down, change the sheets every day. Plus, we like know everybody who works the hotel, the whole staff. We're growin' old with them. At this point, it's like staying with family."

"I guess," said Tommy. He picked up the fillets with a pair of tongs, moving them forty-five degrees on the grill to burn a checkerboard pattern into the white flesh.

"You really know what you're doing," observed Henry.

"Sometimes I wonder."

The air under the thatched roof began to fill with the smell from the grilling fish. Garlic, lime, cilantro in equal parts enticing Henry's empty stomach. He turned to watch Frances and Cheryl emerge from the wrater with their empty beer bottles. They looked like a Gauguin study - dark-skinned topless Polynesians. The two women stopped off at the blanket on the way back to the bar, Frances offering a corner of her kaffiyeh to Cheryl so she could dry her face.

Moments later the two of them, dripping wet and shivering, their skin rising in goose bumps, hopped grinning onto two barstools next to Henry, Frances's nipples standing up hard and angry, Cheryl's teeth chattering through laughter.

"Tommy," said Cheryl. "Can we have some of the tequila? We want tequila. We're cold."

Tommy dropped a handful of the sweet potato slices into the hot oil, turned the snapper fillets over on the grill, then reached under the bar, coming up with an unopened bottle of Herradura and four shot glasses.

"Now I
know
I like this place," said Henry, while Tommy filled the glasses to their rims. He raised his, careful not to spill, and invited the others to join him. "To new friends," he said. He tilted his head back and drained his shot. When he put the glass down, Cheryl was already holding the bottle, enthusiastically refilling. Things were working out.

9

H
enry, fresh from the shower and wearing a ripped white dress shirt, sleeves rolled, faded blue jeans, and reef sandals, walked down the red terra-cotta steps from his rooms. Unlocking the scooter in the small parking lot, he could hear the whistling French chanteur at his microphone from the dining room of Captain Oliver's Restaurant across the pond.

The upstairs door slammed shut as he started up the engine, and a few seconds later he felt Frances slide onto the seat behind him, her left arm coming around to grasp him firmly by the midsection.

"Let's go," she said.

He turned the scooter around, and they whipped past the front desk of the hotel, giving a wave and a short beep to the security guard and the night manager, playing checkers in the lobby.

The dirt road from the hotel to the main road that circled the pond was dotted with muddy, water-filled pools from a brief thundershower a half hour earlier.

"Get your feet up," said Henry, shouting through the wind as they splashed past the deserted tennis courts.

"Just watch out for animals," replied Frances, bringing her knees up and squeezing him tighter around the waist. "Chickens, cats,
les chiens, les mangoustes
. . ."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

They drove up the steep, pitted incline and turned onto the paved road. Henry opened the throttle and charged full tilt toward a row of scabbed and patched sleeping policemen, braking only at the very last second to walk the scooter over the damaged humps, the metal bottom scraping cement. He drove completely around the last hump, taking the scooter momentarily off the road into a front yard, the branches of pencil trees whipping his face and Frances digging her fingernails into his ribs to get him to slow down.

The big stone house lay atop a manmade outcropping, halfway up the steep slope of the mountain overlooking the pond from the French side. The imposing stone foundation of its swimming pool and the high surrounding walls gave it a fortresslike appearance. Further up the mountain, beyond carefully landscaped and maintained rows of palmetto, avocado, banana, and flamboyant trees, the main house was just visible from the road. A gabled roof with green wood shingles was supported by heavy mahogany beams and decorated with the gingerbread curlicues and whimsical shapes popular in the islands. The enormous bay windows with heavy shutters could have been made by a master shipbuilder; they had that look of expert craftsmanship.

There was a small, Victorian-style gazebo set off to the left, near a stone archway that led to a private path down to the road. On the other side of the road, another stone archway with a swinging gate indicated the way to the water's edge, where, Henry knew from looking through his field glasses, there was a small wooden dock and a ramshackle, neglected boathouse.

Behind the main house was a smaller, lower structure, which Henry took to be a guesthouse. He imagined that this was where the marshals lived. He stopped the scooter in front of a wrought-iron gate at the foot of a steep, curving driveway and beeped the horn.

Two well-fed weimaraners pushed their snouts through the heavy bars, barking and snarling.

"Nice doggies," said Frances, meaning it.

"Can I help you?" asked an overpumped young behemoth in a J. Crew shirt and perfectly pressed khaki trousers, emerging from the darkness behind the gate. The dogs stopped barking and sat down, looking like bookends. Henry took quick stock of the man's brand-new basketball sneakers, the thick, stainless-steel chronometer around his wide wrist, the tiny earpiece in his right ear, and the concealed clip-on microphone under his collar. Mostly he noticed the gleaming Swedish K the man had slung behind his back.

"Tommy and Cheryl live here?" inquired Frances. "We're supposed to go out for drinks."

Henry observed the man's square-shaped head, his blond brush cut, the thick Marine Corps neck, as he peered out at them through the bars. You could watch the man think. Jarhead, thought Henry.
Semper fi
mothafucker . . .

"Who may I say is calling?" the man asked, the words not coming naturally.

"Henry and Frances," said Henry, cheerfully, trying to look as witless and unthreatening as possible.

"One minute, please," said the man with distaste. He stepped back into the shadows, and Henry could hear him on the radio to the house.

"Marlin One at Station One. Yeah, the gate, pencil-dick . . . I got two people out here on a scooter for the kids. A Henry and a Frances."

"I wouldn't have pegged him for a Marlon," whispered Frances. "Looks more like a Buzz or a Neil. An astronaut name."

"I think he's more of a Dolph," said Henry, "Thor, maybe. You see the neck on the guy? He's lucky those dogs don't lift a leg every time they see him."

"Jealous, skinny?" joked Frances.

"Yeah. I want floppy clown shoes for tits when I get old. Just like him."

Marlin One returned and unlocked the front gate.

"Stay there," he said. "They'll be right down."

Henry heard an engine start at the head of the drive, and a moment later Tommy's white pickup appeared, Cheryl smiling in the passenger seat behind the bug-encrusted windshield. Henry motioned for them to follow, and Tommy tapped the horn in acknowledgment. Cheryl waved at Frances through the truck's open window.

Down a steep, sharply curving hill, past some unfinished efficiency apartments where stray cattle grazed undisturbed on newly sodded lawns, was the entrance to Captain Oliver's Marina. A uniformed security guard lifted the wood barrier blocking access to the parking lot. Henry pointed out an empty space to Tommy in the truck and slipped the scooter into a narrow space between a wall and a fragrant garbage stockade.

Cheryl, in a clingy white dress, low-cut in front, appeared happy to be out and on the loose, whereas Tommy, in his sneakers and athletic socks, looked skittish and defensive. His whole posture had changed from the beach bar. Frances immediately tried to put him at ease; she hooked an arm around his and affectionately led them all down the splintering gangway onto the marina.

A big black dog came bounding out of nowhere, tail wagging.

"This is Meathead," explained Frances. "He's the Dinghy Dock dog. Aren't you, Meathead?" She bent over for a second to scratch the dog behind the ears. When she stood up and resumed walking, the dog ran alongside, panting excitedly.

She took them all the way out the crisscross of narrow planking, nearly to the dark center of the Oyster Pond. On both sides sailboats strained quietly at their lines, creaking rhythmically, masts tilting back and forth, back and forth.

Henry produced a thick, evenly rolled joint and lit it with his battered Zippo. He passed it to Cheryl first; she took a big hit and immediately began coughing. Tears coming from the corners of her eyes but still smiling, she passed the joint to Tommy.

"Tom, watch out." She coughed. "It's good. Really good."

Tommy took a hit. "Yow!" he said, exhaling. "That
is
fucking good. Where . . . where do you get stuff like that? Down here . . . we've been smoking dirtweed."

"We have a friend from the States who brings it now and again," said Frances.

"What
is
this? Hawaiian?" asked Tommy, eagerly taking another hit.

"They grow it hydroponically somewhere, I think," said Henry, happy with the way things were going.

Frances sat down on an electrical junction box for the moored sailboats, and Cheryl joined her, sitting cross-legged on the weathered boards. Henry lay flat on the dock looking up at the stars, Meathead next to him.

"Meteor shower," said Henry.

"And the moon," added Frances. "Look at that moon."

"We've passed out here a few times," said Henry. "After a couple of cocktails or ten."

"It's beautiful," said Cheryl. "Tommy, isn't it beautiful?"

"It
is
nice," said Tommy. "Where's the music coming from?"

"That's the Dinghy Dock," said Frances. "We should go. It's only half price for another hour."

The two couples walked slowly back, Cheryl thrilled to be out, Tommy getting friendlier from the pot and the music, which was getting louder and louder as they got closer to the Dinghy Dock.

"Is that the Stooges playing? I don't believe it!" said Tommy.

"We left all our records in New York," said Cheryl sadly.

"That's Henry's tape, I think," said Frances, pleased.

"Awesome," said Tommy. "Unbelievable."

The Dinghy Dock was packed with charter crews, coke smugglers, mechanics, a drunken mob of Aussies, French soldiers, American bareboaters, and the usual yachties, all clustered around three picnic tables or spilling out from under the Dock's striped canopy to sit on the rails, the chest freezers, or the milk crates. Meathead ran ahead, nails clicking against the wood, to pursue a plate of discarded ribs.

Henry found them a spot by the edge of the dock where people tied up their dinghies, and they sat down, legs dangling over the edge.

A goofy-looking Brit in an overlarge T-shirt came over from behind the bar with a bottle of iced Absolut, a bottle of cranberry juice, and some plastic cups. He put them down next to Henry.

"Henry! How you doin'? Frances. Good to see you. Cheers." Henry gave him four dollars.

"That how they serve everybody?" asked Cheryl. "Or just you?"

"It's usually self-service. You know, pour your own. James is just being nice bringing it over," answered Henry, mixing drinks. Finished with his ribs, Meathead came over and dropped his head on Frances's lap. She petted him with one hand and drank with the other.

"A lot of people here think Henry's some big drug dealer 'cause they never see him work," said Frances, shaking her head and smiling.

"Doesn't that cause problems?" asked Tommy.

"Nah . . . Smuggling is an honorable profession down here. They've been doing it for centuries. An ex-dope smuggler is much more acceptable than somebody in
real estate,
so let them think what they want. If I deny it, they all smile and wink anyway, so what the fuck."

Henry saw Tommy happily moving his foot to "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and smiled covertly at Frances, who just stuck her tongue out at him. The kids were coming along.