Bahamarama, page 11
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
I walked into the bar. It didn’t really look like a bar. It looked like the sultan’s harem quarters. White tile, bleached sandstone walls, gauzy damask sheets hanging ceiling to floor and dividing the long narrow room into a series of intimate sitting areas with couches and overstuffed chairs. I half expected Scheherazade to beckon me to her settee and beguile me with tales.
Waiters, all wearing some kind of Vietnamese black silk pajama outfit, filled drink orders at a grottolike chamber that was cram full with bottles of liquor and wine. There were a few stools in front of it, and people sitting on them, but no one I knew. Oil lamps gave the room a glow of just-past-twilight. The music was cool and jazzy, and playing just low enough that I could hear the sounds of people partying above it. But the layout made it impossible for me to see who was there without parting the gauzy sheets and poking my head into each of the cozy little sitting areas. I made my way through the place, sticking my head through sheets and looking around. I startled a man and a woman making out on a couch. I startled two men making out on a couch. I startled a group of men smoking cigars and drinking brandy.
Finally, I stuck my head through some sheets and saw people I knew. Or, at least, recognized. They worked for Barbara at the magazine. I just couldn’t remember their names or what they did. One of them, a guy in black horn-rimmed glasses with spiky black hair, spotted me and waved me in.
“Zack,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
“Peter Prentice,” he said. “I’m the style editor.”
“Right.”
“We met on your boat at the office party.”
“Sure, I remember.”
And before I could ask about Barbara, Prentice had turned to the twenty or so others in the sitting area, and announced: “Hey, everybody. This is Zack, Barbara’s friend.” There were hi’s and hellos and someone said “Hi, Zack, Barbara’s friend” and the others laughed. Prentice introduced me around. I met the assistant art director, the makeup person, two lighting technicians, and the caterer. I met the stylist and three of the models. I had to agree with Barbara. Bryce Gannon did have an eye for talent. I met other people whose functions were uncertain, but who were associated with the shoot in one way or another. After a few minutes, I finally found myself back with Peter Prentice, and asked if he had seen Barbara.
“Oh,” he said, looking around as if he had suddenly noticed she wasn’t there. “I guess she left. Yeah, that’s right. She left with Bryce. It was a while ago.”
I stepped out, not bothering with good-byes. Back in the reception area, I asked the front desk clerk if he would mind calling the Albury Beach Club.
“Certainly, sir.” He handed me the receiver and punched the numbers. The Albury receptionist answered and got Chrissie Hineman on the line. No, Barbara still hadn’t been to the dining room. I waited while she checked to see if the lights were on in Hibiscus cottage. No, she said, no sign of her there either. I thanked her.
I handed the clerk the phone and asked him: “Can you tell me what room Bryce Gannon is in?”
“Why no, sir, I can’t.” He smiled. “But I can ring it if you like.”
“I like.”
He handed me the receiver again and began punching the numbers on the console. I let the phone ring ten times. No one answered.
“Would you mind dialing it again?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Dial it again. Just in case you got it wrong the first time.”
The front desk clerk was clearly offended. How dare I question his switchboard capabilities? But he redialed the number anyway. He did it slowly, overexaggerating for my benefit. This time I watched him punch the numbers: 2–1–1–4. I let the phone ring a few times.
“Guess no one’s home,” I said. I handed the clerk the receiver. He didn’t wish me a pleasant good night.
I walked out of the reception area and onto the hotel grounds. The Bahama Sands was a swank place, but it wasn’t a big place, maybe twenty or so duplex bungalows sitting close to one another and connected by shell paths. I found a door marked 114. Dim light shone from under the door, but there were no windows on this side of the bungalow so I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside.
I knocked on the door.
“Hello,” I hollered. “Anyone there?”
I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do if Gannon opened the door, even less sure what I might do if it turned out that Barbara was with him. I pounded on the door again, and when it didn’t open, I walked around to the back of the bungalow. I had to cut through a croton hedge, breaking a few branches and making a minor racket.
Each side of the bungalow had a small terrace that opened onto a view of the ocean, and I stepped to the terrace behind 114. The sliding glass door was pulled shut, the blinds drawn.
I rapped on the sliding glass door.
“Gannon,” I said. “Are you in there?”
I rapped again.
“Goddammit, open up.”
I grabbed the sliding door’s handle and rattled it, trying to jiggle the lock loose. That’s when a voice said, “May I help you, sir?”
A flashlight cast a beam in my face, and when it lowered, I could see one of the security guards standing on a pathway.
“Is this your room, sir?”
“No, I was looking for a friend.”
The guard shone the light in my face again.
“Are you a guest here, sir?”
“No, I’m not,” I said.
And I walked away.
I wanted a drink when I got back to the Albury, but I didn’t want to stand around making happy talk with the crew at the bar. So I went back to the cottage. I had a choice between the Schramsberg ’98 and the Beefeater’s. I picked the gin. I poured some in a glass and squeezed lime in with it. Then I sat outside in an Adirondack chair facing the ocean.
The wind was blowing stiff and it felt fresh and good. I looked at the stars. There were lots of them. I picked out the easy ones—Orion and the Big Dipper and Scorpio. Then I started making up constellations of my own—Oreo and the Gravy Ladle and Scallopini. Christ, I was hungry.
I poured another drink. I looked at the stars some more. One of them looked particularly bright. It might have been Venus, not a star, I don’t know. I yelled at the star that might have been Venus as loud as I could yell. It felt good to yell, so I yelled again. How long would it take for those yells to reach the stars? Light years, millions of light years. What if my yells didn’t hit the stars but just kept right on going and going and going? Would that make me immortal? Sure it would. I yelled again.
Then I went inside to make another drink. Only I fell onto the bed instead.
22
First light seeped through the jalousie windows and nudged my brain toward something that, in lower life forms, might almost pass for consciousness. Catbirds tittered. A lonesome dog yelped. A rooster did its rooster thing, a rival crowed in counterpoint, and then the first rooster started in again. The ocean boomed its backbeat. It was the Bahamas Philharmonic in full crescendo.
I willed open a reluctant eye.
The pillow I embraced was comely as far as pillows go, its foam as responsive as foam can reasonably be. Given time and utter depravity, we might have gotten to know each other on a much more meaningful level. The sheets were twisted and knotted. The blanket was on the floor. My mouth was sour, my skull throbbed, and life at that moment truly sucked.
There is a particular hell that lies between rage and despair. And I was stranded there. By strict definition, cuckoldry requires a state of marriage. While no vows officially joined us, Barbara and I had—or, at least, I’d thought we had—an understanding. So, if indeed she had spurned me for another, I figured I was at least a common-law cuckold. What was that song all the Carnival road-marchers were singing on our trip to Trinidad? Something by Shadow, the reigning calypso king. “Man, why you act so surprised?/You got no money/You got no house in town/Your woman done horned you/That’s what a woman do.” Caribbean lyricism—it always cut to the chase.
Then again . . .
Barbara simply wasn’t the kind of person who would let someone down so hard. Especially someone she professed to love. She had not a shred of cruelty in her. She was loving and good, and even if she had suddenly decided the two of us were not meant to be, she would at least be gentle and forthright about it. She would not disappear into the night and leave me so alone. It was shabby behavior, and it was beneath her.
Then again . . .
Bryce Gannon was an impressive guy. He and Barbara did have a history. There had even been a ring and a wedding date and all that. Then, enter Chasteen and exit Gannon. Yet, forgiving all, Gannon rushes across the wide, wide ocean and rescues his damsel from impending calamity. I knew Gannon must have some substance, some core of goodness, or else Barbara never would have taken up with him in the first place. Reunited in such idyllic circumstances, maybe the old chemistry had gone to work. And maybe Barbara had responded in a way that might seem altogether out of character.
Then again . . .
I felt the wave of nausea that comes when one has drunk too much and eaten too little and must have food immediately or else sink farther into the mire. When had I eaten last? The closest thing to a meal had been the minibar peanuts at the Los Altos Inn. That was Friday, this was Sunday. No wonder I felt like hell. It wasn’t the rum and the gin, it was hunger. OK, maybe it was both. But I definitely needed some breakfast.
I looked at the bedside clock. Its face was blank, not even blinking. I pulled the chain on the bedside lamp. Nothing happened. The power must have gone off. It happens a lot in the Out Islands.
I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Not much improvement over the day before. My eyes weren’t quite so puffy, but the cut on my cheekbone was festering. I ran hot water on a washcloth, then held the washcloth against the scab until it softened. Then I worked up some soap lather on the washcloth and rubbed the cut. It stung, so I figured it must be doing some good. I brushed my teeth. I drank three cups of tepid tap water, then forced myself to drink a fourth. I tried not to look at the Beefeater bottle to see how much damage I had done. I slipped on shorts and a T-shirt, and headed down to the main house.
I found Mr. Pindle and some of the kitchen staff sitting on stools at the back door of the kitchen. I asked them if there was any chance a man might get a cup of coffee.
“No chance at all,” said Mr. Pindle. “Electric broke up.”
“Got any idea when it might come back on?”
There were snorts and laughs, and a big woman wearing a white apron said, “You want, I got some orange juice in the icebox.”
“I want.”
She fetched me a big glass of it, then another, and then a third.
“Got some hot pipes this morning, don’t you?” said Mr. Pindle, and the others laughed.
The orange juice made me feel better, but only just barely. I needed to fight pain with pain. I left the main house and cut across the dunes and onto the beach. I had it all to myself. I eyed the north end of the island, about two miles away, and set my course. I stuck to the narrow hard-packed stretch that lay in between the loose dry sand and the lip of the incoming tide. A hundred yards and I was into a pretty good rhythm. Maybe a nine-minute mile. Not all that impressive, but not all that bad considering how long it had been since I had worked out. I might even make it the whole way without upchucking.
Every now and then a wave would roll in and I’d go splashing through it thinking it might make a good shot for a TV commercial about some new pill to combat impotence or depression or pattern baldness. Happy music would be playing. I’d have a couple of golden retrievers running along beside me. About halfway through the commercial I’d jog up to the front steps of a charmingly restored Cape Cod beach bungalow where my chemically balanced wife would hand me a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade. We’d laugh about the golden retrievers romping in the yard. I wouldn’t be sweating nearly as much as I was sweating now.
I ran past the spot where I had plucked Lord Downey from the ocean the evening before. Should I drop by and check on him today? Nah, probably best just to let it go. If the old guy had recouped his good senses, then the incident would only embarrass him. If he was still out of it, then he wouldn’t know the difference. I ran past the Bahama Sands. Should I drop by and check on Bryce Gannon? Nah, probably just best to let that go, too. Whatever was going to happen would soon play itself out.
23
I was pretty winded by the time I reached the end of the island. I stood there watching the current rip through the bight. It was an outgoing tide and it was draining the flats on the back side of the island. Blue heron and white ibises were stalking prey on the emerging slivers of sandbars. The air carried the sour, fetid smell of sea things drying in the sun.
I followed a path off the beach and pretty soon I was walking through Dunmore Town. Church bells were ringing and people were walking along Chapel Street decked out in their Sunday best. For such a small place, Harbour Island has an abundance of churches, at least a dozen within Dunmore Town alone. I stopped on the street outside St. John’s Anglican Church and watched as the crucifer led the procession from where they were gathered on the stone steps out front, through the doors, and down the aisle. The congregation joined in on “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.” It was one of my favorite hymns. I considered slipping in the door and finding a spot in a back pew and singing along with them. But I wasn’t dressed for it. Plus, sweating out the previous night’s overindulgence had created an aura around me that would not be appreciated by my pewmates.
I was walking up the hilly driveway to the Albury Beach Club when I heard the crunch of tires on rocks behind me. A voice chimed out, “Beep-beep!”
I turned to see Steffie Plank at the wheel of a golf cart.
“Hello, stranger,” she beamed, pulling the golf cart to a stop. Steffie works with Barbara. Her official title is “assistant to the publisher.” She is three years out of Rollins College and on the fast track for whatever the heck she sets her mind on doing. Steffie started at Orb Media as an intern, working for free just to get a little experience in the magazine business, then quickly made herself indispensable, knocking off every task that was thrown at her with grace and good humor and consummate skill. Now Barbara lives in fear that Steffie will jump ship, head to New York, and go to work for a big magazine, one that would pay her two or three times what she gets at Orb Media.
Steffie’s long brown hair was streaked with blond, and she had a yellow hibiscus tucked behind one ear. On anyone else it might have look affected, but not on Steffie. She was wearing a long green sarong and a plain white T-shirt that had been gathered tight around the bottom and knotted on one side. I noticed right away that she had nothing on under the T-shirt, so I tried to concentrate on her face, which is easy to concentrate on. It is wide and friendly and flawless, set off by big brown eyes flecked with the tiniest specks of gold. The eyes add to the impression that Steffie actually glows.
“It’s so good to see you,” Steffie said, giving me a hug. I hugged back. The hug was, perhaps, just a beat or two longer than it needed to be, which was all my doing, but I don’t think Steffie minded. I felt more uplifted by the hug than if I had gone to church. Maybe I would start my own church and station Steffie at the door to give people hugs on the way out. St. Zack’s Cathedral of the Much-Needed Embrace, we’d call it. It would be a big hit with forty-plus men who are fresh-sprung from prison and beginning to feel a little sorry for themselves because their girlfriends have ditched them.
“Want a lift?” Steffie asked.
I hopped in beside her and we puttered up the driveway. Steffie swerved to miss a coconut in the road. She said: “So where’s Barbara? She decide to sleep in?”
I am pretty lousy at masking emotion. Steffie saw it on my face.
“What is it?”
“I haven’t seen Barbara.”
“You what?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“Not since you got here?”
“She didn’t come in last night.”
We pulled into the driveway under the shade of the bougainvillea arbor. Steffie turned off the golf cart.
“Wow,” she said.
“Yeah, wow.”
“Where do you think . . .?” She shook her head, not finishing the sentence. I put a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me just go ahead and ask you straight. Is there a chance that Barbara might have gotten back together with Bryce Gannon or something?”
“No way. Why would you even think that?”
“Because I don’t know what else to think.”
We sat there, quiet, the day getting hotter by the moment. There was no breeze. The air was sticky and sodden. On the ground, by one of the golf cart tires, a green anole caught a small white butterfly, but was having trouble turning it into breakfast. The butterfly flapped its wings and the lizard let it go, watching calmly as it fluttered off in a wobbly flight pattern. When the butterfly crash-landed a few feet away, the green anole pounced upon it again.
Finally, Steffie said, “There’s no way Barbara was with Bryce.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s just no way. He’s so not Barbara.”
“He used to be her fiancé.”
Steffie shrugged it off.
“Bryce Gannon is good-looking and all. And he’s a great photographer. But he’s such a lech. He was hitting on me from the moment he got here and he was hitting on all the models. And what’s he, like forty, or something?”
“A real old-timer.”
“You know what I mean. He should just act his age, that’s all I’m saying.”
