The Sea Grape Tree (15 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A
s soon as Eric opened his eyes he remembered it was his parents' wedding anniversary, a day anything but warm and fuzzy all his years growing up. Old as he was now, he still groaned when it came around. The very date was scarred by the annual rage of his mother because his father was absent again, marked by the exchanged grimace with his brother, David, when the quarreling started in the kitchen that night. When he was nine, the family had moved to the suburbs, and Eric had hoped it would lead to a middle-class truce between his parents. But apart from the slightly larger house and a new school, the only change to the family had been an address closer to the printer where his father worked the old Heidelberg press, and closer to his father's favorite pub.

“There was a bar in our neighborhood with your name,” Eric had said to Danny Caines soon after he met him. “The Danny Boy, a little place in Shaker Heights.” Caines had smiled absently while he punched numbers into a calculator.

The anniversary didn't go well from the outset. After a breakfast of cereal with milk starting to sour, Eric discovered that the Jeep's key was missing. To make matters worse, it was a Saturday and Shad wouldn't be coming in until later and couldn't help him with the search. There was only one key to the Jeep and, since only he and his bartender drove the vehicle, sharing the key was seldom a problem. When not in use, it hung on a nail outside Eric's apartment door.

After searching his apartment and the kitchen without results, Eric looked at the rusting Jeep sitting in the parking lot. Nothing came to mind about the location of the key. He'd never thought of himself as forgetful, but here it was, a reminder he could do without, that his memory was going. The platinum-white hair, the wrinkling of facial skin (looking more sinister every year under his bathroom light), were evidence of advancing age that he tried to ignore, but to have events disappear from his memory, that he found reprehensible.

“Just shoot me when I start forgetting stuff,” he'd said on more than one occasion to Arnie across from his desk long, long ago.

He returned to the kitchen and poured himself another cup of coffee. If he calmed down, he decided, the key's location would come back. Sitting at his usual table, sipping his coffee, feeling the morning breeze springing up, watching it ruffle the leaves of the almond tree on the island, all that came to him was a feeling of apprehension about what was ahead.

“Morning!” Danny walked in from behind, startling him.

“Morning,” Eric answered. He wiped a few drops of coffee from his leg and licked his finger. “Coffee?”

“I'm good.” The investor pulled out the chair beside Eric and sat down. He seemed quiet, thoughtful even, a change that had been coming on since his first exuberant days in Largo.

“Had a good Friday night?”

“An interesting night, you could say.”

Eric shot a glance at his companion, hoping he would lighten things up with a joke, but the man was looking at his fingernails now, his face stern.

“You ready?” Danny said suddenly.

“We have to use your car, though.”

“No problem,” the younger man said, standing, pushing the chair in, anxious to be gone. Eric jumped to his feet and they walked to Miss Mac's driveway, where the rental car was parked.

The morning's agenda was to drive to nearby locations researching the competition, the other small hotels on the northeastern shore. The first stop was a hotel in Port Maria. Danny pulled up on the side of the road and they sat in the car and eyeballed the Spanish-style mansion with its sagging shingle roof and overgrown garden.

“The guests have to cross the main road to get to the beach,” Eric pointed out.

“And the beach is full of seaweed.”

“The owners, nice people, have been struggling for years.”

“Why?”

Eric slung his arm out the window. “Probably poor marketing, I don't know. Never seems to have a lot of guests, from what I can see.”

“That's our problem right there.”

“My place was pretty full.”

“Yeah, but you didn't make any money.”

“If there'd been a few more rooms, like the new place—”

Danny shook his head, still staring at the stucco building. “I don't know. It'll take a lot of promotion, much more than we budgeted.”

“You're right,” Eric said, and sighed, excuses exhausted. It was make-or-break time for Danny and the project, he knew. He, too, had almost reached the point of throwing up his hands and saying it wasn't worth it—the budgeting, the applications, the upcoming Parish Council committees—with no profit guaranteed. Owning and operating a new hotel was going to be a bitch. Even running the bar had become a balancing act he'd tried to block out, and he was tired, plain tired of it all. He'd lain in bed the night before and figured that, as deep in the hole as his overdraft was, if he sold the bar, he could pay off the debt and start again, living out his life on his Social Security check in Miss Mac's boardinghouse.

They drove into Port Antonio, Eric directing Danny to a hotel on top of a knoll. Four two-story buildings surrounded a grassy central area, a parking lot to one side. The men got out and stood looking down at the circular harbor below, where three sailboats lay at anchor.

“Great view, eh?” Eric said.

“Amazing,” Danny agreed, pivoting on his heel to look at the activity behind them. Two tennis courts and a swimming pool were abuzz with visitors with varying degrees of sunburn, lying, talking, swinging rackets.

“Somebody's making money here,” Danny commented. “What's different about this place?”

“It's a little bigger than the last one, twenty-five units, all town house–style. The owners sold off half the units while they were building, sold them as condominiums. The corporation collects monthly fees, manages the condos, and rents them out when the owners aren't in them. Then they rent the rest in a hotel operation.”

“I like that,” Danny said, rubbing his chin with his hand. “It'll give us cash flow at the beginning, makes a whole lot of sense.” He liked it a lot, and all the way down the hill and winding back along the coast road, he talked of selling some of the units in the new hotel prior to construction.

“My mother and her girlfriends would love that. I know about five people right off who would buy. I could keep one and my mom could come down and relax. She needs to stop working so hard, anyway. She would love it here, it would remind her of St. Croix, and I could get Cameron to sell off the rest, what you think?”

While Danny was driving in half reverie, Eric started thinking about his own parents and how they'd never visited Jamaica after he moved down. Granted, they'd been older than Danny's mother, but they'd never come, never wanted to come. On further thought, he hadn't extended a genuine invitation for them to come down. It was too late, of course, with them in the ground all these years. His reverie continued aloud when he called Simone later.

“I'm feeling guilty,” he said. “But all I can remember about my folks is the bickering, and I didn't want it in my space. I didn't want them bringing it to the hotel. They always seemed so angry, you know.”

“I hear you,” she said, sighing. “I always thought it was my mother's bitterness that drove my father to drink.”

“I went back for the funerals, but—”

“Stop beating yourself up about it.”

“Easier said than done.”

“They're dead now and it's over.” She had on her wise-woman smile, he could hear it. “Maybe in your next life you can fix it.”

“Shit! Don't tell me I'd have to come back with them two.” He groaned and she chuckled.

“You didn't turn out so bad. Anyway, change of subject. Have things improved down there?”

“Danny was close to pulling out of the deal, I could tell, but today I took him to see a place that's making money, and he got really excited. I think he's back in the saddle.”

As he slipped off his shorts to get into bed that night, Eric thought about how quickly some things could change—like people's minds, and worries about senility (with the finding of the car key under a notebook)—and how other things stayed the same, like bad memories from childhood.

“Happy anniversary, yer Irish bastards,” he murmured into the pillow, certain they were still fighting, wherever they were.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

D
rink?” Roper asked, his hand resting on a crystal decanter, the silver tag around its neck declaring it whiskey.

“Thanks.” Danny nodded from the antique chaise lounge he'd perched on. His skin blended into the chaise's mahogany arm, Sarah noticed. He was looking especially handsome tonight, with a pale yellow shirt and matching handkerchief in the pocket. She was glad she'd covered the roots of her hair with a dye she'd found in Port Antonio, and she was glad she'd been bold enough to ask Sonja if she could invite him over.

“Sure,” Sonja had said right away. “Do you think he'd like lamb?”

Her hope was that her hosts would like Danny enough to make him a regular guest at the house and she wouldn't have to sneak him downstairs anymore.

Over dinner later, Sonja and Roper got into a discussion about a scandalous memoir that a musician had written about his family, and Ford and the couple argued about whether artists should cross over between genres or stick to their own. Their voices got louder while Danny struggled to cut his lamb chop with his fork.

“Maybe if you use your knife,” Sarah said under her breath.

His eyes sought Sarah's. “No American style, huh?” He switched his fork to his left hand to pick up the knife and sawed away at the lamb.

The ease with which the residents of the house had eaten and chatted on previous evenings had evaporated tonight and an awkward formality had replaced it. Roper was argumentative, Ford distant, and Sonja off balance. After the debate died down, they ate dessert with the hum of the overhead fan keeping them company, but the tension seemed to lessen when they moved to the deck for brandy.

“How many businesses do you have now?” Sonja asked Danny.

“It depends what you mean,” Danny answered. “I have a few malls and—”

“And you started with—” Roper said, handing him a brandy snifter.

“Beauty salons.”

“Interesting,” Roper said. He sat down and threw one arm over the back of his chair. “You must have been pretty young when you started.”

“My mother was a beautician and I ran errands for her, then managed the place.”

“You didn't go to college?”

“No time and no money,” Danny said with a sad smile. “Had to hit the ground running.”

Sonja raised her glass. “Let's have a toast to hard work and the hotel. Heaven knows we need it.”

“Money all round!” Roper added, sounding a little tipsy already, and they all raised their glasses and toasted the new venture.

“You come from St. Croix, I understand,” Sonja said.

“Yes, I come from a town called Frederiksted.”

“How big is the island, anyway?” Ford asked.

“Twenty, thirty miles, I forget,” Danny answered.

Roper frowned. “That's tiny.”

“You were quite young when you left,” Sonja commented.

“Yes, but I went back a couple times with my mom in the summer. We stayed with my grandmother, but she lived in the projects, you know, so it was kind of . . .” He was using his hands, pushing them together like crowded furniture. “That's all I remember, how small everything seemed when I went back.”

There'd been no tension, none at all, yesterday afternoon when Sarah and Danny had lain intertwined in her room, the beds pushed together and the sheets tangled under them. She'd been relishing the security of his thick arms around her, when Danny rubbed her cheek with his thumb.

“Why you holding back?” he'd asked.

“What d'you mean?”

“I can tell you want to have sex, but it's like you're holding your breath, and you keep your eyes shut tight the whole time.”

“Doesn't everyone?”

“Not the way you do it, like you want to get it over with.”

“I'm fine, I'm fine.”

“You not enjoying it, though.”

She'd sighed, hating to sound like a woman lamenting. “It's always been that way, something I've learned to live with.”

“What's going through your head when you have sex? Talk to me.”

“I want to have sex, like you said. I do, I swear it.” She'd pushed back her hair and looked up at him. “Believe me, there's nothing I want more. But when we start, it's like the brakes go on. I get this—a kind of panic attack, and my heart starts racing. I can't explain it.” She stroked his arm. “Let's not concentrate on me. I want you to enjoy it. I want you to go for it and not wait for me.”

“Is that how it was with your last boyfriend? You told him to
go for it
?”

“John? He got used to it. I haven't had many boyfriends, by the way. My roommate thinks I'm a bit weird.”

“I'm not going to get used to it, trust me.”

“I understand, really, I do. We don't—”

“I have an idea.” He'd pulled back to look at her, his eyes now serious and dark. “Let's stop having sex for a while. Let's just spend time with each other, get to know each other better. Maybe we rushed things too much. From now on, we just going to take it nice and easy.”

“You are the sweetest man.” She'd given him a kiss, holding his bald head between both hands, and she'd felt him getting hard against her leg, but they'd dozed off together for a half hour before he left.

More relaxed by the brandy, Danny took control of the conversation, talking about boutique hotels and condominium hotels. Roper answered his questions, saying that he'd visited all of them and giving his opinions of each. When that topic was exhausted, Sonja asked about his family.

“My father was from Grenada and my mother from St. Croix,” Danny said, shrugging. “They never married. My father went to New York before I was born and my mother came to the States as a maid and brought me up there.” He dabbed at his scalp with the yellow handkerchief.

“Your father—” Roper started.

“My father was a character, I'm telling you. He was a sailor, worked on ships going up and down from New York to the Caribbean. He couldn't settle down, not in one place, and not with one woman, not my father!” His parents' indiscretions appeared to amuse him, if anything.

Soon after, he thanked his hosts, and Sarah walked him to the door. “You want to take a swim tomorrow after painting, maybe go to this place I heard of, Boston Beach?” he asked.

“Sounds good.”

When she got back to the deck, her housemates were on their second brandies. Judging from their silence, she knew that they'd been talking about Danny or her or both.

“Friendly chappie,” Roper said after a minute, the words thick with scotch and wine and brandy.

“A good business head,” Ford said.

“I'm glad you approve,” Sarah said, and took a sip.

“Just what Eric needs,” Sonja added. “A man who looks at the bottom line.”

“I'm sure he looks at the bottom line,” Roper said, wriggling his eyebrows and chuckling.

“Stop talking about the guy behind his back,” Sonja protested.

“I'm not talking about him behind his back, not Sarah's back, anyway,” Roper declared. “He's a good businessman, but I have to be honest. I—”

“It's none of your business, Roper,” Sonja said sternly. “Leave it alone.”

“I'm just trying to explain to Sarah, my love, that Danny is not—you know—from her background.” He turned to Sarah, fatherly all of a sudden. “I hope you don't plan to have anything long-term with the man, Sarah. He's a nice enough fellow, but a bit too rough around the edges for anything serious. No college education. Mother was a maid, parents not married, father a womanizer. Unstable background, wouldn't you say?”

“Roper—” Sarah started, her throat going dry.

Ford sat up. “I don't think—”

Roper kept going, reasoning it out. “I mean, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, you know. When we met him, he was dating one woman. Now he's seeing you. He's probably like his father, not ever going to be happy with one woman, I wouldn't think. And he didn't even blink when he talked about his father, did you notice? That's not a good sign to me.” Sarah stopped breathing. Unable to speak, she looked at the man she'd started respecting, thought of his multiple paintings of nude women and knew that his talk about fidelity was as much about himself as about Danny.

“You've had too much to drink, Roper,” Sonja admonished him. “It's Sarah's friend you're talking about!”

“I'm just stating the facts, sweetheart,” Roper answered, one hand waving by way of explanation. “They have very little in common. Sarah is a cultured young woman, her father a physician. She's had a good education, exposure to people in the arts. She'd have to start from scratch and teach him how to hold a knife and fork, how to match his verbs to his subjects, all—all kinds of things.” He stopped and scratched his beard. “Not somebody she could take home to mother, is he?”

“I'd rather not—” Sarah started, wanting a civilized end to it, the words
don't make a fuss
colliding with her anger.

Roper ignored her. “I mean, England is the kind of place—”

“You're too damn snobbish, that's your problem, Roper,” Sonja interjected. “You forget you're a black man yourself, and we didn't come from a
cultured
British background, neither one of us. We came from slaves, unless you've forgotten. You sound like those brown people who look down their noses at—”

“This has nothing to do with color, Sones, it's about class.” Roper shrugged. “The man has no class, pure and simple.”

“I think we should change the subject,” Ford said, clearing his throat.

Roper ignored him. “I know I sound old-fashioned, Sones, but let's talk the truth here. Danny would be totally out of place with Sarah's lot in England, and I'm sure she'd feel out of place with his friends in—in the Bronx or wherever he's from.”

“Roper,” Sarah said as calmly as she could, hearing her voice shaking, “I appreciate your opinions, but I'm old enough—”

“You know what I mean, Sarah. Can you see him browsing art galleries or bookstores or a museum? His life and yours are going to be miles apart. I'm just suggesting that you make it a holiday affair, that's what I'm trying to say.”

“And maybe you should make it none of your business,” his girlfriend responded.

Sarah stood up, knocking over the small table beside the lounge chair and sending her glass flying. She stared at the shattered glass at her feet.

“I'm sorry, but I've had quite enough,” she blurted out before fleeing the deck.