Lights Out (10 page)

Eddie heard the thump of a tennis ball and looked through the row of scrub pines. He saw a ball hit the backboard, bounce back, saw a racket swing and meet it, saw a tanned arm. A tree blocked his view of the rest of the tennis player’s body, but he knew who it was. He moved a little closer.

Mandy was working on her backhand. Eddie had played some tennis, enough to know she was good. She wore a white T-shirt and white shorts, both soaked, and white sneakers, reddened by the clay. She grunted softly with every stroke. Without realizing it, Eddie had drawn closer still. Soon he was standing at the side of the court.

The ball took a bad bounce. Mandy stretched for it, saw him as she swung. The ball flew over the backboard.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Look at you.”

“Don’t call him a pig,” Eddie said. “He’d be insulted.”

“I know what it is. Where’s your gun?”

“I didn’t shoot it,” Eddie said, surprised. He’d never shot anything, didn’t want to.

“Who did? Br—Mr. Packer?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is he?”

“Stalking another one.”

Her gaze slid down to his chest, moved back up. “You made me lose the ball.”

“It’s the pig’s fault.”

“You could help me find it. It’s my last one.”

Eddie hefted the animal off his shoulders and laid it on the side of the court. They walked around the backboard, into a thicket of sea grapes and low bushes. No ball in sight. Eddie raised a branch to search the undergrowth, pricking his hand on a thorn. The bugs, the thorns, the heat
—Muskets and Doubloons
had left all that out.

“Forget it,” said Mandy. “There might be balls in the shed.”

The shed stood at the end of a short path that began on the far side of the court. It had a window glazed with cobwebs and a doorway with hinges but no door. Mandy walked ahead, her sweaty T-shirt and shorts clinging to her body. Her calves, like JFK’s, bunched and lengthened with every step, but Eddie couldn’t watch them in the same detached way. He felt a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with the heat.

They went inside, out of the sun now, but Eddie felt no cooler. At first he couldn’t see anything. He could hear Mandy breathing close by, and smell her too: fresh sweat, in no way repellent. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. The shed had an earthen floor; there was a heavy steel roller in one corner, a wheelbarrow and a mound of red clay in the other. On the walls hung wide brushes and wooden tennis rackets, warped in a way that reminded him of a bent pocket-watch in a painting he had seen somewhere.

“Don’t see any,” he said.

“No?”

There was a silence. Then her hand was between his legs, soft and gentle, but there. Eddie had had a few girlfriends, but none of them had ever reached for him quite like that, not even after they’d been going together for months.

No one said a word. Their mouths came together. They began to make a little world for themselves where the elements—their bodies, their sweat, pig blood—were hot and wet. It was a world dominated by rhythm but quiet, where sounds were moist and speech was monosyllabic and unrehearsed; a world full of irresistible animal smells. Eddie didn’t resist. He sank down with Mandy on the mound of red clay.

After, they just lay there, bodies together but minds drifting apart. Their minds had to be drifting apart, because Eddie was thinking about
Muskets and Doubloons
, and how could she have read it? Today was a day for learning how much it had omitted about tropic isles. Then Mandy said, “I knew it would be like this,” and Eddie thought that maybe their minds hadn’t diverged very much after all: they were both thinking about what had happened and that it was good. He was trying to
think of a way to convey this to her, to tell her about
Muskets and Doubloons
and maybe even other things from his childhood, when there was a tremendous boom in the sky, followed by the screaming of a low-flying jet.

“Jets can’t land here, can they?” Eddie said.

“They’d better, nature boy,” said Mandy. “That’s the money man.”

8

T
he wild boar, now minus its coarse hair and internal organs, turned on a battery-powered spit over a driftwood beach fire. JFK basted it with a paintbrush he dipped into a kettle of lava-colored liquid. His hands were long and delicate. Eddie stood beside him, tossing wood on the fire whenever JFK gave the signal. JFK was singing under his breath.

Gonna get some goombay goombay lovin’
Gonna find a goombay goombay girl.

Over the flames and across the beach, Eddie could see the dinner party, sitting in the thatch-roofed bar. They looked good, all fresh tans and white cotton, linen, silk. The dinner party: Packer, Evelyn, Jack; and Mr. and Mrs. Trimble, moneyman and wife. Their voices carried in the still air.

Packer said: “You’ve never seen it?”

Mrs. Trimble said: “No, but I’m looking forward to it, aren’t you, Perry?”

Mr. Trimble replied inaudibly.

Packer said: “You’ve come to the right place, Mrs. T.” He refilled their glasses from a chilled pitcher of planter’s punch.

“They be talking about the green flash,” JFK said to Eddie. “Biggest lie in the islands. Bigger than we gonna have jobs for everybody or I won’t come in your mouth, baby.”

“There’s no green flash?”

“I be raised in this country, man. Seen so many sunsets to make me sick. But never not one time the notorious green flash.”

The sun set. Colors appeared and disappeared, but there
was no flash, green or otherwise, not that Eddie saw. He heard Packer.

“There! Right then! Did you see it?” He was on the steps of the bar, gesturing with his cocktail glass. Planter’s punch slopped over the side, staining his white trousers; he didn’t seem to notice.

“I—I think I did,” said Mrs. Trimble, standing beside him. “I certainly saw something.” She turned to her husband, watching behind them. Mr. Trimble: tall, beaky nose, concave chest, crewcut. “Did you, Perry?”

Mr. Trimble shook his head.

“Oh, come on now, Mr. T,” said Packer. “Right there—” He pointed and slopped again. “As plain as the …”

Evelyn appeared. “I don’t think so, Brad.” Her voice was cold. “Not tonight.”

“Jesus Christ, Ev, what do you—”

She cut him off. “Why don’t you freshen our drinks, Brad.”

“No more for me, thank you,” said Mr. Trimble. He came down off the steps, over to the fire.

“Hello, gentlemen,” he said. “Perry Trimble.”

They shook hands with him, identified themselves.

“JFK,” Trimble said. “An interesting name.”

“That be my first name only,” said JFK.

“And your last name?” asked Trimble.

“Never be usin’ it,” said JFK, and turned to baste the pig.

Trimble gazed at it. Overhead the sky was darkening quickly; the reflection of the fire danced in the lenses of Trimble’s thick glasses. “Pig, I believe.”

“Wild boar,” said JFK. “Last of the big-game animals found in these islands. Ceptin’ for in the water, of course. Down there we got more creatures than my wife got excuses.”

“You’re married?” said Eddie.

“Formerly,” JFK replied, his eyes blank. “In the distant long long time ago.”

Trimble was still examining the pig. “You don’t mean to tell me someone shot it, do you?”

“Sure I do,” said JFK. “Ernesto Hemingway himself the great white hunter came to this very Galleon Beach fish camp to hunt the wild boar.”

“But this particular pig. Did someone shoot it?”

“The boss. He did shoot it. Mr. Packer he a sportsman, and a dead shot with the three-oh-three.”

“I don’t call that sport.”

“No?” said JFK. “What you be callin’ it then?”

“Butchery.”

JFK laughed. “Butchery be my job, man. Don’t need no three-oh-three for that. Just a cutlass and a dog to lick up all the lickins.” Still laughing, he dipped the brush in the kettle and swabbed lava-colored baste on the glistening carcass. The baste smelled of onions, garlic, pineapple, and something sweet and smokey that Eddie couldn’t identify. He was going to ask what it was when he noticed that Trimble was staring at him; at least, the twin reflections of the fire were angled his way.

“You’re Jack’s brother.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He seems like a take-charge type. Not afraid of getting his hands dirty.”

Eddie nodded.

“A project of this magnitude needs someone like that. Although a little seasoning doesn’t hurt either.”

Meaning he liked Jack or he didn’t? Eddie wasn’t sure and didn’t know enough about the project, or any kind of business for that matter, to know whether Trimble’s remark made sense. He said nothing.

“And how about you?” asked Trimble. “What do you think of it?”

“It’s a beautiful place.”

“I’ve seen better,” said Trimble. “And worse. Beauty isn’t really that high on the list of prerequisites. Ever been to Cancun?”

“No.”

“Or Florida, for that matter. Complete absence of beauty. But I wasn’t asking about the site. I was asking what you thought of the project.”

“I’m no expert.”

“I realize that. I don’t need an expert. I was interested in your opinion.”

“I’ve only seen the plans.”

“And?”

“It looks very … grand.”

There was a silence. Then Trimble nodded, the twin fires blurring in the darkness like taillights in a time-exposure photograph.

“In a well-chosen word,” said Trimble. “And what’s your involvement in all this grandeur?”

“I’m just here for the summer, helping Jack set up the waterfront program,” Eddie replied. He had an idea. “Do you have time for a trip to the reef?”

“I wasn’t planning on it. Should I?”

“I would.”

“Why?”

“Hard to put in words. You really have to see it. Then the answer’s sort of obvious.”

The twin fires blurred again. “And after the summer?”

“I’m supposed to start college, at USC.”

“Very wise,” said Trimble.

A breeze stirred. The pig sizzled.

Eddie joined the others for dinner. They ate in the bar, sitting at a round wicker table. In the middle was a big glass bowl filled with sea water. Hibiscus blossoms floated on top and tropical fish netted by Eddie a few hours before—tangs, sergeant majors, royal grammas—swam below. Candlelight sparkled on the scales of the fish, the cutlery, the jewels on Mrs. Trimble’s fingers. Packer poured champagne, then raised his glass.

“A toast,” he said. “To our guests, Perry and the beauteous Mrs. T.”

“Hear, hear,” said Jack.

“And to this beauteous place,” Packer added. “To the Galleon Beach Club, Hotel, and Villas.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Jack said.

They raised their glasses, drank. Eddie, looking up, saw the moon over the water. He had never seen it so white, so defined, so clearly not a disc but a ball, massive, powerful, even dangerous in some way.

Mrs. Trimble, sitting beside him, followed his gaze. “Beauteous,
isn’t it?” she said, too quietly for anyone to hear but him.

Eddie smiled. Mrs. Trimble smiled back. She had platinum hair, an unlined face, plucked eyebrows, dark brown eyes. He couldn’t guess her age. Her husband looked about sixty.

“I hear you’re quite a swimmer,” she said.

“Jack’s the swimmer.”

She studied his face for a moment, then glanced across the table at Jack. He was draining his glass. JFK, wearing a white shirt and black vest, arrived with the first course—spiny lobster tails, an hour out of the water.

“Richesse de la mer,”
he announced, in what sounded to Eddie like perfect, unaccented French.

They drank champagne. They ate lobster tails, conch salad, roast pig.

“The sauce is delicious, Evelyn,” said Mrs. Trimble. “Do you mind telling me the ingredients?”

JFK was summoned. “Onions, garlic, pineapple, herb.”

“Herbs?” said Mrs. Trimble. “What ones?”

Jack spoke before JFK could answer. “Lots of different herbs grow on the island. They’ve all got local names.”

“How interesting.” She turned to JFK. “Have you got an herb garden?”

“Many many,” said JFK. “I could be carryin’ you to one in the morning.”

“Wonderful. Let’s plan on it.”

“Mind slicing me some more?” said Jack. JFK moved off to the cutting board.

Packer poured more champagne. Eddie noticed that Mr. Trimble laid his hand over his glass, wondered whether Packer might leave his own empty. But he filled it to the brim, gulped, said, “Evelyn’s old man tells me you’re quite the world traveler, Perry—if you don’t mind me calling you Perry …”

Trimble nodded; now it was the candlelight that was reflected in his glasses.

“So tell me, Perry, in all your travels, have you ever come across a setting like the one we’ve got here at Galleon Beach?”

Trimble laid his fork and knife on his plate in the all-finished position. “I’ve seen some nice places, B—Brad. But as I was telling your able employee here—” He nodded across the table toward Eddie; Packer’s eyebrows rose. “—it takes a lot more than setting to make a project like this work.”

“He’d be a lot more able if he got a haircut,” Packer said with a loud laugh. No one joined in. Eddie saw that Evelyn’s fingers were wrapped tight around the stem of her glass, as though she were choking it.

“What does it take, Mr. Trimble?” Jack asked, pushing his own glass away.

“In a word? People. It all depends on the people.”

“Christ, I’m glad to hear you say that,” Packer said. “Hasn’t that been my code since day one, Ev?”

Evelyn said: “What do you look for in people, Mr. Trimble?”

“Perry, please.”

“Perry.”

He gazed down at his plate. There was still a lot of roast pig on it, untouched. “Values, Evelyn. I look for values.”

“Values?” said Packer.

“Honesty. Integrity. Loyalty. Reliability. Faith—in spouse, in family, in God.” There was a silence, followed by a loud pop from the driftwood fire. Trimble looked up. “That’s all. It’s simple.”

“What about imagination?” Jack asked. “Drive, determination, education, shrewdness, brains?”

Trimble smiled. He had big, uneven teeth, angled, jagged. “That’s my end,” he said. “The question was what do I look for in my people.”