feet. Tanned, muscular, she looked as though she could swim five or six miles without pause. I liked the way she looked, her voice, the forthrightness of her “Do me a favor.”
“Sure. What is it?” I said, surprised at her approaching me. Women rarely do. I don’t appear to be the hero type. I look like the man in the Panama hat; the one who should be dressed in a white linen suit, sitting on a rattan chair drinking foul concoctions, fanning my sweat, plotting the hero’s destruction, cigar ash falling on my tie, burning little holes in my shirt. I’m not like that, of course. I am the hero type. An aging Clark Kent without the silly underwear, as one woman called me after I rescued her daughter and son from pirates who had taken their sailboat and held them for ransom on a small island not far from St. Ursula.
“When we go through customs, let me carry one of your bags. And tell them I’m with you. Please.”
TWO
CHANCE AND RUMBLE waited in his rusted blue Land Rover as we came out of Customs and Immigration. A large man, six five and a half and weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds, his thick black hair fell nearly to his eyes, shaggy over his neck, with a well-trimmed van dyke on his chin. Barefoot, with rings on each toe, he wore a brown cotton vest and a worn, weathered yellow bathing suit. Rumble sat wriggling on his lap, tongue out, watching as I approached them.
“Thanks.” The woman smiled, offering me her hand as we stood on the side of the road, beyond hearing range of Ursuline officials, her single small duffle bag sitting on the pavement. “I hope I didn’t inconvenience you, I just thought I’d have an easier time getting through immigration if I was with someone who looked as though he knew his way around.”
“Don’t say goodbye yet.” I took her arm, leading her to the Land Rover. “The immigration officials can still see us and they might think it’s a bit peculiar if we come in like friends and part like strangers. Come on, Chance will give us both a ride. I’m Frank James, this is Chance.” I pointed to the mountain seated behind the wheel.
“And where’s Jessie,” she asked, then rolled her eyes with embarrassment. “I guess you hear that kind of joke a lot, don’t you?”
“So often that it’s not a joke. It’s a pain in the butt, okay?” My voice had The Edge to it, a phenomenon Chance named three years earlier when I nearly decked a drunken preppie charter boat captain who kept hassling me about trying to pull off a bank robbery on St. John, insisting we would make a great pair of desperados, sailing around the islands in his boat. He wouldn’t let it go, regaling everyone in the bar with tales of our future exploits, pounding me on the back, rubbing my head and shouting as he told the other drunks that I was, after all, Frank James.
“I’m sorry.” She extended her hand again. “Let’s try again. My name’s Elizabeth. Ford. I go by Liz.”
We shook and I opened the Land Rover’s door. Liz climbed into the seat next to Chance. I threw her purse, duffle bag and my stuff in the back and got in next to her. Rumble jumped into my arms, licking my face, wiggling, wagging his stumpy docked tail. For a change the Rover started at first crank. We drove down Ocean Road, water from the uncovered foam rubber cushions soaking into our clothes.
“What kind of a place is Smugglers Inn?” Liz spoke, grabbing my arm as Chance swerved to avoid a large pothole in the road. “I’ve got reservations there, but I don’t know anything about it.”
“There are three good hotels and eleven lousy ones on the island,” Chance said. “They all cost between a hundred and three hundred bucks a night. Smugglers is the nicest, it’s only two and a quarter and it has Ron Martin, the best manager on the island. Delano’s, over on Little Coconut Bay is filled with cockroaches, bedbugs, has hot, small rooms, contaminated water, and costs two hundred.”
“Sounds like I’ve got one piece of luck anyway.” She did not sound happy.
“There’s an added major advantage to Smugglers.” I grinned at her.
“What’s that?”
“The hotel sits on a bluff on the east side of Smugglers Bay. My place is on the west bluff. If you’re sitting on the hotel verandah you can see me sitting on mine.”
“How grand.” Her voice hung between sarcasm and disinterest, but there was a glint her eyes that allowed me to convince myself that she was hiding a spark of curiosity.
“I’ve got a better idea, though,” I said. “Why don’t I meet you at your hotel in about an hour? I’ll take you to dinner at the Tabard Inn.”
Saying nothing, she rested her head against the back of the seat and groaning softly, closed her eyes. Chance wove the Land Rover around a series of potholes along a section where the pavement was eroded by waves crashing constantly over the sea wall. When she did reply it was in a tired defensive tone, edgy.
“Look, you’ve been a help, Frank, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I need time alone. That’s why I’m here. I’ve got a lot to sort through, plans to make, letters to write. I don’t have time to look at your etchings.”
I shook my head. “Poems. I don’t etch. I write poems. But I don’t show them to people. Ask Chance. And you were rude. Sometimes dinner really means dinner.”
Chance nodded. “It’s true. I haven’t read more than five of his poems in four years.”
She smiled, the tension in her face easing slightly. “Sorry. I’ve had a bad few days. I have to rest a while and have time alone.”
I grunted, and we rode in silence. Time alone I understood after seeing her throw her ring into the Caribbean from the sun deck of The Yellow Bird. I’d been single-minded in my pursuit of solitude after my divorce.
There was no other traffic on the road for the first few miles. At the junction of North Road and Ocean Road on the west side of Salvation Hill, a bunch of kids in three Mini Mokes ran the stop sign and nearly forced us off the road. They were singing and hooting, waving beers as they pushed on by us at a curve, nearly crashing into an empty dump truck passing us going the other direction, probably headed to a beach where, under the cover of darkness, the driver could steal a load of sand for a construction job.
Chance drove slowly, giving me time to talk to Liz Ford. Waves crashing against the sea wall and we were damp from the spray, but he kept a deliberately slow pace. At one point he stopped by a roadside hibiscus hedge and picked two blossoms.
“For your hair.” He handed two of them to Liz. “Put one over each ear.”
She did, laughing. “You do that with practiced grace.”
I patted Chance on the shoulder. “According to the usual reliable sources, it has been said if you see a woman with a hibiscus in her hair in the morning you can make book she’s spent the night before with Chance.”
“These islands are full of mythmakers.” He popped one of the remaining flowers in his mouth. “They make good eating too.”
She laughed again. We rode the last three miles trying to describe Smugglers Inn’s Ron Martin to her.
“He’s tiny,” Chance said. “Less than four feet, eight inches tall. He claims to be eighty-six and says he was a gag writer for Milton Berle.”
“No one’s ever been cruel enough to check his story,” I
