Jennifer Haigh (36 page)

He landed in Boston in the middle of a snowstorm, sober and shivering; he'd sold all his winter clothes. Paulette met him at the gate, looking old and tired. He could see at a glance the pain he had caused her. It was in the fierce way she clasped him, her hungry eyes examining his face.

I'm sorry
, he thought.

It was nearly the only thought he would have that weekend. Paulette took him home to Concord, where he showered and ate, then slept for two days straight. Finally he sat at the kitchen table and told his mother everything.

Oh, not everything. He omitted some loose nights, some scrapes and misfires, a dope squabble involving an ex-con named Duane Farley, ending when Scott pinned the guy to the ground and held Farley's own knife to the guy's throat. He did not mention the four joints discovered in his rucksack at the Mexican border, disaster averted when Penny disappeared with the border agent for ten minutes and came back smiling.
You're a free man
, she said.

Apart from these events, and others like them, he told his mother everything. He finished with words that would haunt him forever.
I want to come home.

He met her eyes then, which were brimming with a feeling he couldn't name.

When is the child due?
she asked.

Six weeks
, he said.

He had asked permission to leave his wife and child—not yet a wife, not yet a child, but alarmingly close on both counts. His mother had listened, wearing a look very like sickness. Then silently shook her head.

No.

"Hi, Pen," he told the machine.

He had burrowed into the mound of pillows, hugging one—a hard frilly cylinder the size of a football—to his chest.

"I tried you before but the line was busy. I'm here on the island and wow, it's gorgeous. But then this massive cruise ship—you wouldn't believe the size of it—"

He was surprised when the beep came. Had he already used up the tape?

"Hi," his wife said."Did you find Gwen?"

"Baby!" Joy flooded him."I can't believe you're there! Why didn't you pick up?"

"I was in the bathtub." She sounded distracted, a little breathless.

"I had to run for the phone."

"Oh, wow." He paused a moment to contemplate this, Penny naked in the living room, the moist flesh of her belly, the droop and swing of her now-generous breasts.

"I love your tits," he swore, his voice breaking with grief at the way he'd once insulted them. He was nearly sick with remorse.

"What's the matter with you? Scotty, are you high?"

Well, that was marriage. Through a staticky connection, over a thousand miles, she could hear cannabis in his voice. She had seen him stoned hundreds of times. For years she'd scarcely seen him another way.

"A little," he admitted."Pen, I found something in my rucksack.

Remember Smoky Joe?"

"Oh, Jesus. Hang on a minute." To his surprise the line went silent. Their new cordless phone came equipped with a hold button.

Penny used it when her sister called late at night on a manic rant, oblivious to the time difference. She had never used the hold button on him.

For no reason, he remembered that she was still naked.

"Sorry," she said when she returned. "This place is a pigsty. I can't find anything. Your brother called awhile ago. He left a message."

There was a sourness in her voice that made her sound older, much older, than the naked girl in his head.

"Billy," he said."Yeah, I called him. Some snotty British guy answered the phone."

"'Gwen's hotel was Pleasures,'" Penny read.

"Excellent!" said Scott."Did he say anything else?"

"I didn't talk to him. Sabrina answered."

"Pleasures," Scott repeated."Okay, good. Hey, I'm sorry I smoked.

I love you, Pen."

"Me too," she said—to which part, he wasn't sure."Listen, I have to run. Let's hope Ruxton doesn't make you piss in a jar."

"Where are you going?" He glanced at the bedside clock. It was nine thirty on a Saturday evening. Where could she possibly have to go?

Penny sighed."Sabrina is sick, and I can't get Ian to bed for love or money. You may be stoned on a Caribbean island, but we're right where you left us."

She hung up the phone.

The next morning Scott arrived at the Ambrosia Café at five minutes to nine, so that a stranger's brother could drive him somewhere, beat him senseless, and rob him blind. That he'd hatched this plan while sober was a distressing thought.

He took a seat on the porch and waited. Two little girls in white dresses raced down the sidewalk, veils tracing behind them like vapor trails. He thought of his daughter's First Communion, the spring after they'd moved to Gatwick; how profoundly it had moved him, Sabrina like a tiny bride in her dress and veil. Her hair was redder then, and she bore a startling resemblance to his sister at that age. Scott had a clear mental picture of Gwen at seven, thanks to a framed photo that still hung in his mother's parlor. It had been taken the morning of Gwen's First Communion, before everything went awry in their lives. His parents stood arm in arm, smiling. In front the three children in Sunday clothes, Billy, Scott, and—still normal then, still innocent—lovely red-haired Gwen.

Gwen. For the first time it dawned on him that she could be in actual danger, kidnapped, held hostage. That he could be walking into a dangerous situation, for which he was—face it—tragically ill equipped.

Now, for instance. Getting into a car with a total stranger who'd want to be paid for his trouble. How much? Scott hadn't even asked.

"Hey, man," said a voice."My brother say you need a ride."

Scott looked up. Standing in the door of the café was the little businessman, the kid with the fragrant bag of weed.

"Yeah," said Scott."That's me."

"Come on. I got a car in the back."

"You're not old enough to drive."

"I'm eighteen, man."

"Bullshit," said Scott.

"Okay, sixteen."

"Fourteen, tops."

The boy laughed."Thirteen, but it doesn't matter. On Saint Raphael you got a car, you allowed to drive."

Scott doubted this was true."This is a terrible idea," he said.

The boy shrugged elaborately. "You don't want to come with me, you don't come. But you want a taxi for the whole day, it cost you two hundred dollars. If you can find one. It's Sunday, man."

"How much do you want?"

"Fifty," said the boy."Less maybe, if we do some other business."

Scott pondered this. He was persuaded by the boy's logic. And by the memory of his emerald weed, its haunting skunky smell.

"Let's go," he said.

They sped across the island in the boy's Plymouth Reliant, its bench seats covered in wooden beads that vibrated Scott's sacrum in a way that was not unpleasant. It was late morning, the sun nearly overhead. They stopped briefly in the parking lot of a barbecue joint, where Scott purchased a quarter ounce of weed. An eighth would have been plenty, but the boy, whose name was Gabriel, seemed disappointed. He'd been hoping for a bigger sale. He brightened visibly when Scott twisted up a joint.

"What, you not going to share?" he asked, outraged.

"You're just a kid," said Scott.

The boy laughed."I been smoking this shit since I was six."

Afterward the morning took on some jingle. The sun burned.

The sky blued. Scott rolled back his sleeves and stretched his arm out the window. He hadn't done a wake-and-bake in years. Penny claimed that it polluted the whole day—Penny who thought nothing of firing up the television at dawn, fouling her clean sleepy brain.

As they drove he explained his mission. "No problem," Gabriel answered—brisk and professional, like a concierge at an upscale hotel.

They crossed over what seemed an immense mountain, the cheesy little engine huffing mightily. Scott remembered his father laughing at these wrecks, Lee Iacocca's K Cars, back in the eighties: the bargain-basement parts used interchangeably on sedans, convertibles, and coupes, the square bodies designed, it seemed, by an unimaginative child asked to draw a car.

"How old is this piece of shit?" Scott asked.

"Same as me," Gabriel said.

"How many miles?"

"Whatever I say. Look," he said, pointing to the odometer, which read 514.

A moment later they were whizzing down the mountain. Scott leaned back and closed his eyes, recalling the Speed Racer cartoons of his childhood, the car that could swim and leap and fly.

"We coming to the big resorts." Gabriel gave a low whistle.

"Fancy, man. You not going to believe it. You can't see them from the autoroute." He pointed to a turnoff, marked by a stucco archway, a jauntily painted sign that read SUNSET POINT. And, in smaller letter: Guests Only. Private Access.

Scott frowned. "I don't think that's it." Shit, he thought. He'd been so shaken by his conversation with Penny, so moved and humbled, that he'd forgotten the name of the hotel.

"You don't
think
? You not sure?"

"I can't remember the name exactly."

They passed another a second turnoff, then a third. BREEZES RESORT. CALYPSO BREEZE. BIMINI BEACH CLUB. MONTEGO CAY.

"They all sound the same," Scott said.

"Come on, man." Gabriel seemed to be losing patience, so they pulled onto a dirt access road and smoked another joint.

"Listen, man," the boy said, his equilibrium restored. "We running out of resorts. We got one more up ahead"—he pointed—"and that's it."

They approached another turnoff, another flowering hedge, another stucco wall. The sign said WELCOME TO PLEASURES.

"That's it," said Scott.

They turned. Halfway up the drive was a booth manned by a uniformed attendant. At the sight of the K Car he shook his head and frowned. Scott motioned for Gabriel to roll down his window. "Hey there," said Scott.

"Are you a guest here?" The man was brown skinned and built like a linebacker. His calves looked stuffed with softballs. His thighs were cased in bright green shorts.

"Um, not exactly. I'm trying to find my sister." He glanced over the guard's shoulder, as though Gwen might appear from behind him.

"If I could just talk to someone at the front desk. Reservations, or whatever."

"There's a phone number for that," the man said.

Scott nodded energetically. "Okay, good. But since I'm already here—"

"I can't let you in," the man said."You're not a guest."

"What about visitors? Surely you allow visitors?"

"This is private property. If you don't get that thing out of here, I have to call security."

Gabriel threw the car into reverse and backed up squealing. They veered onto the autoroute.

"Motherfucker," he said. To Scott's surprise he seemed truly rattled.

"He was just doing his job," said Scott.

"No, man." Gabriel turned his head and spat savagely out the window."He's light skin. He take one look at my black face and treat me like shit. That's how it work on this island. You light skin, you a Frenchman. You dark skin, they treat you like shit."

Scott blinked. If asked, he'd have described them both as black.

The world seemed suddenly more complicated than he'd ever imagined. He'd had this feeling before, at the birth of his daughter, or watching "Jens" Jensen solve a calculus equation. It was a crushing awareness of his own idiocy, all that he would never understand, or even see.

They turned back to the service road where they'd smoked the joint, and settled on a plan. Gabriel would wait in the car. Scott would approach Pleasures on foot.

Scott checked his reflection in the rearview. His eyes were red and heavy lidded, his hair wild from the wind. He ran a hand through his hair and set out walking.

Half a mile later, he found a break in the hedge and shimmied through it, the branches scratching his arms. He felt buoyed by this small success. Before him stretched a manicured lawn. He crossed it with an easy stride, as though he belonged here, a carefree tourist on vacation. He heard squeals and laughter in the distance, the thwack of a volleyball. The sounds of leisure, of wealthy white people—he thought of Gabriel in the hot car overlooking a power plant—enjoying themselves in the sun.

He headed in the direction of the sounds, following a path through a grove of mangrove trees. He stopped a moment to admire them, their trunks long and swanlike, the arching necks of primeval creatures half buried in the earth. He was grateful for the momentary coolness, the soft sandy path beneath his feet.

Ahead was a sunny patio, paved in flagstones. Scott stopped short.

Everybody was naked.

Naked people stretched out on chaise lounges, bubbled in the hot tub, tiptoed barefoot across the hot flagstones. Naked breasts wobbled invitingly. Dicks and scrotums danced and dangled. A naked girl careened down the water slide, bouncing and squealing. In the vast swimming pool naked volleyball was under way.