What Happens in Paradise Read online

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  He calls Paulette Vickers to let her know that he and Floyd will be down on Saturday to stay at the villa for a couple of weeks, and might she be able to meet him at the dock with the keys?

  “Certainly, Mr. Steele,” she says. “I’m happy to know you’re using it. A beautiful villa like that shouldn’t sit empty. I asked your mother if she wanted me to rent it and she said to hold off for the time being.”

  “My mother is overwhelmed,” Baker says. “She doesn’t need more to worry about. I’ll handle all things relating to the villa from now on.” He wonders if he’s overstepping, but all of the goodwill he’s put in with Paulette is paying off because she doesn’t question it.

  “Very good,” she says. “I’ll meet you at the ferry dock on Saturday with the keys.”

  Baker hangs up and feels an elation so strong he could levitate. The only string tying him to earth is…Irene. Baker should call her and tell her his plans.

  But…what he just told Paulette is true—Irene is overwhelmed. She doesn’t need one more thing to worry about. She doesn’t need to fret about Baker and Floyd on St. John or about Anna relocating.

  Then again, Irene had been perfectly clear that she would not tolerate any more secrets. Secrets are lies, Irene said.

  Baker’s trip to St. John isn’t a secret. Of course it’s not a secret. Paulette knows he’s coming, and before he and Floyd leave, Baker will have to tell Anna.

  Once Baker is down there and settled in, he’ll call Irene. This will give her a few more days of relative peace. That’s the kind thing to do.

  Rosie

  February 21, 2006

  My life is a house that has been ransacked. My heart, which I had so recently reclaimed as my own, has been stolen again. Some might say I’m being careless with it.

  Friday afternoon was the start of Presidents’ Day weekend, which brings nearly as many tourists as Christmas and Easter now because schools in the Northeast—Massachusetts, New York, and a few of those other densely packed states—give their students a winter break. The problem with the visitors who can afford to come when the weather is the most inhospitable at home is that they tend to be demanding. They want their Caribbean experience to be just so—the sky must be clear, the mangos ripe, the cocktails strong and delivered right away.

  Caneel Bay was at maximum capacity. Every room was booked at high-season rates, and along the front row on Honeymoon Bay, it was all return guests, the ones Estella calls “the patronage”: Mr. and Mrs. Very Important of Park Avenue, the Big Deal Family from Lake Forest, Illinois, the New Moneys from La Jolla. I recognized them (and yes, I called them by their real names: Mr. and Mrs. Vikram, the Caruso family, the Burlingames). Their eyes lit up when they saw me but I always reintroduce myself, just in case.

  “Oh, yes, Rosie, how are you! Wonderful to see you again! How has your year been?”

  I said my year had been good, though nothing was further from the truth. But there was no way I could tell the New Moneys about my excruciating breakup with Oscar and how disappointing that had been because he’d promised me that once he got out of jail he would work in a legitimate business, maybe even get a job alongside me at Caneel, but instead he was back to selling drugs to people on the cruise ships. I didn’t complain that I was still living at home with my mother and Huck. The returning guests, the patronage, loved coming back and seeing a familiar face because it made Caneel feel like home; it made it feel like a private club where they were members. For me, it was primarily a business relationship. The tips were double what they would have been with complete strangers.

  In most cases, anyway.

  The guests at Caneel are 95 percent white. There are a few Japanese here and there, a couple of rich South American businessmen (rum, casinos), and the occasional black American couple or Indian family, so when Oscar came in for drinks with Borneo and Little Jay, they stuck out. They wore baseball hats on backward, heavy gold chains, those ridiculous jeans that drooped in the ass.

  Estella saw Oscar first. She came over while I was at the bar getting cocktails for a trio of pasty-white gentlemen who had just anchored their enormous yacht out in front of the resort, and she said, “Oscar here, Rosie-girl, with his clownish friends.”

  “Send him away,” I said.

  “I wish I could, Rosie-girl, but they’re paying customers just like the rest.”

  “Keep them out of my section.”

  “Oscar asked for you.”

  “All the more reason.”

  “Okay, I’ll give them to Tessie.”

  I loathed Tessie, so this was killing two birds.

  I dropped the drinks off with the yacht gentlemen. Yacht Gentleman One was tall and bald with a posh English accent and what I knew to be a forty-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe (I’d picked up some useless knowledge on this job). Yacht Gentleman Two had dark, slicked-back hair and such distracting good looks that I nicknamed him “James Bond” in my mind. Yacht Gentleman Three was a doughy midwesterner with silvering hair. I knew he was midwestern because he stood up and introduced himself.

  “Russell Steele,” he said. “Iowa City.”

  His manners caught me off guard. Normally, men like the ones he was with either ignored me, made a pass at me, or snapped their fingers so I would move faster. They did not stand up and offer their names like they were crashing a party and I was the hostess. And thank goodness they didn’t—on an average holiday-weekend night, I had over a hundred customers. How could I possibly remember them all?

  “Rosie Small,” I said. “Pleasure.” I had already forgotten his last name, but I did retain his first name, Russell, and Iowa City, because the place sounded so…American, or what I always thought of as American. Iowa City evoked cows in pastures, silos, corner drugstores where kids bought malted milkshakes, church socials, marching bands, and grown men wearing overalls. “Enjoy your drinks. Let me know if you’re interested in ordering food. The conch fritters are very good.”

  “Conch fritters, then,” Russell from Iowa City said. “I’m not sure what they are but if you say they’re good, I’m up for trying them. In fact, bring two orders. That okay with you guys?”

  The other two gentlemen were poring over a sheaf of papers printed with columns of figures. James Bond looked up. “Yeah, yeah, Russ, get whatever you want. Bring some sushi too, you pick. Enough for three, please.” James Bond handed me his AmEx Centurion Card and said, “Start us a tab, doll.”

  I wanted to tell James Bond that I was not a doll, I was a person, but I figured I’d get back at him by ordering the most expensive sushi on the menu—sashimi, tuna tataki, hamachi, unagi. I could see poor Russell looking very uncomfortable, like he wanted to stick up for me but didn’t know how. He was, quite clearly, low man on the totem pole of this particular triumvirate as he had neither the flashy watch nor the movie-star good looks (nor the Centurion Card). He might have been the brother-in-law of one or the other, a sister’s husband whom they had brought along to the Caribbean as a favor or because they lost a bet.

  He didn’t know what conch fritters were!

  I went to the register to put in an order for the fritters and two hundred dollars’ worth of sushi—I could have doubled that; James Bond wasn’t the kind of man to complain about his bill or even check it—and studied the name on the Centurion Card.

  Todd Croft. It was a solid, whitewashed name, symmetrical and masculine, like the real name of a secret superhero—Clark Kent, Peter Parker. I wondered if it was made up. I didn’t care as long as the card worked, which it did.

  I kept tabs on Oscar out of my peripheral vision. He ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon, which Tessie made a big production of carrying out in front of her, label displayed, like she was one of those chicks on a game show giving away the grand prize. The pop of the cork cut through all the chatter and the restaurant quieted so that I could clearly hear Harry Belafonte singing, “Yes, we have no bananas.” People whispered and sneaked glances at Oscar and I yearned to tell them to stop. Couldn�
��t they see that was what he was after?

  I then watched the Big Deal Family’s daughter, Lucinda Caruso, who has made sure to tell me every year for the past three years that she “recently graduated from Harvard” (which I take to mean that she has yet to find a job, a theory reinforced by the fact that she signed every charge to her father’s room), approach Oscar’s table and proceed to take the fourth seat. Lucinda was wearing a very short, sequined cocktail dress that would have been better at an event where she remained standing. I overheard her say, “Are you guys rap stars?” I rolled my eyes, not only because Lucinda was feeding the beast but also because she probably couldn’t imagine a black man having the money to order Dom unless he was a rap star or a professional athlete. I could have shut her up by telling her the truth. He sells drugs, Lucinda! But it was none of my business.

  The yacht gentlemen’s food was up. I set one order of conch fritters—piping hot, golden brown, and fragrant, served with a papaya-cayenne aioli—in front of Russell from Iowa City. This is my favorite part of the job, other than the money, introducing the Caribbean to people who have never experienced it. I plunked the tower of sushi—the way Chef had arranged it was quite impressive, and the fish was so plump and fresh, it looked like art—in front of Todd Croft.

  “There you go, doll,” I said. “Enjoy.”

  Russell from Iowa City barked out a laugh so surprised and genuine that I gave him a wink.

  The night progressed. It was busy. I kept one eye on the yacht men—after all that, they barely touched the sushi—and one eye on Oscar and his friends. Lucinda stayed at the table; they ordered another bottle of Dom. Mr. and Mrs. Big Deal stopped by the table and tried to entice Lucinda to go with them to the Chateau Bordeaux, but she refused to leave, and the second her parents were out the door, she rose from her chair and sat on Oscar’s lap.

  At that point, I turned away. I knew Oscar was showboating just to goad me into reconsidering my decision, but I hadn’t done all my soul-searching only to cave because I couldn’t stand to see him with a silly rich girl on his lap.

  I tended to my other tables. I was even nice to Tessie. When I saw her heading out with a third bottle of Dom, I said, “Tonight is your lucky night. Oscar is an excellent tipper.”

  Around ten, things started to quiet down. Two of the yacht men—Todd Croft and the tall, bald Brit—left, and Russell from Iowa City moved to the bar and planted himself in front of the television to watch a basketball game. When I checked the screen, I saw Iowa was playing Northwestern. I went up to him because I had a minute and also because Todd Croft had left an even five hundred dollars for a three-hundred-and-twenty-dollar check.

  “You’re rooting for Iowa?” I asked.

  “Northwestern, actually,” he said. “My alma mater.”

  “Ah.” I knew more about football than basketball, and nearly all my basketball knowledge was limited to the San Antonio Spurs in general and Tim Duncan in particular because he hailed from St. Croix and some of my Small cousins had actually played a pickup game with him once on the courts in Contant. But it was best I change the subject. “So, your friends left you behind?”

  “They went into Cruz Bay,” Russell said. “Looking for women.” He held up his left hand. “I’m married, with two boys.”

  “Well, your wife is a very lucky woman,” I said, and I patted his shoulder. “Your next drink is on me. How did you like the conch fritters?”

  “I loved them!” he said. “I was meaning to ask if you knew a place I could get some real Caribbean food. I have the day to myself tomorrow and I want to explore.”

  “Well,” I said, “if you want local flavor, go to the East End. There’s a place called Vie’s on Hansen Bay.”

  He took a pen out of his shirt pocket and pulled a cocktail napkin off the stack. “Vie’s?”

  “She makes some mean garlic chicken and the best johnnycakes,” I said. “For a few dollars, you can rent a chaise on her beach.”

  “Is there shade?” Russell from Iowa City asked. He held out a pale, freckled arm and I thought, This poor guy. God bless him.

  “There’s shade,” I said. “Here, I’ll draw you a map.”

  I clocked out at eleven, sorted my tips, marveling at my windfall from Todd Croft, and decided that I would stop by the Ocean Grill at Mongoose for a drink on my way home. I headed past the Sugar Mill on my way to the parking lot and stopped to say hello to my wild donkeys, Stop, Drop, and Roll. They always looked a little eerie at night, more like ghost horses than white donkeys, and the backdrop of the stone ruins of the sugar mill only heightened the otherworldly effect. But I thought of these three like pets—they rarely wandered off the grounds of Caneel—and I couldn’t ignore them.

  In retrospect, I should have realized that Oscar knew this. He jumped out of the shadows and grabbed my arm.

  “Baby.”

  I gasped, though I wasn’t exactly surprised. A part of me knew there was no way he’d left. I had already planned to turn on the flashlight of my phone and sweep the back of my car before I climbed in. “Let me go, Oscar.”

  He held tight. I checked behind him for Borneo or Little Jay or even Lucinda Caruso, but there was no one on the path in either direction. If I screamed, Woodrow or one of the other security guards would hear me and escort Oscar off the property but the last thing I wanted was everyone all up in my business. As soon as it got out that Oscar had shown up at the restaurant and made trouble, my mother would hear about it and somehow twist it into being my fault. She would say that I had led Oscar on or had acted recklessly by walking to my car by myself.

  Oscar didn’t let go. He pulled me to him so close that I could smell the champagne on his breath. “I need you to come back, baby.”

  I said, “We’ve been over this, Oscar. I’m not changing my mind.”

  “You got another man, then? That brother from Christiansted?”

  He was talking about Bryson, a guy I’d gone out with a few times in college. Bryson lived on St. Croix.

  “It’s none of your business, Oscar.” I succeeded in reclaiming my arm. “I’m tired, I’m going home, good night.” I turned around. “And you know that if you come anywhere near the house, LeeAnn will call the police and you’ll go right back to jail.”

  Oscar said, “I’m going to Christiansted tomorrow to kill that brother.”

  I stopped in my tracks. Had anyone else said something like that, I would have scoffed, but what had landed Oscar in jail was stabbing his friend Leon for borrowing his Ducati without permission.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” I said.

  “Try me,” Oscar said. Then he suddenly dropped the tough-guy act and sounded like himself. “Rosie. Try me.”

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I said. “Why do you come here when you know I’m working? There are ten other places you and your friends can hang out. Why come to Caneel? Because you want me to know you have the money to order Dom Pérignon? I don’t care! You want me to see that girls throw themselves at you? I care even less! I loved you when I was a girl—fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. But I’m a woman now, Oscar, and I’m moving on.”

  “Baby,” Oscar said, and he grabbed the strap of my purse.

  “Get off me!” I said. I put a hand against the unyielding muscles of his chest.

  “Stop bothering the lady!”

  Both Oscar and I turned to see who jogging toward us? Russell from Iowa City, that’s who.

  Oscar laughed and I thought, Oh, dear Lord, no. It was probably a midwestern thing to defend a woman’s honor but it would end in disaster for Russell from Iowa City. I would have to call out for Woodrow after all.

  “What you gonna do about it?” Oscar said. He kissed his teeth. “You gonna stop me?”

  To his credit, Russell from Iowa City did not appear even a little afraid. He looked serious and disappointed, as though he were an assistant principal who had found his favorite student misbehaving and a suspension was coming.

  “Yes,” Russell
said coolly. “I’m going to stop you. Rosie, are you heading home? Can I escort you to your car?”

  I tried to give him a look that said he didn’t have to defend me and he shouldn’t defend me because the consequences would be dire. Oscar would beat him to a pulp, or maybe just hit him once, or maybe just humiliate him, but whatever course of action Oscar took, it wouldn’t be worth it. I could handle Oscar; Russell from Iowa City most certainly could not.

  Russell held out his arm like an old-fashioned gentleman caller. I sighed and hoped that maybe, just maybe, Oscar would be more afraid of violating his parole than of being shown up. I linked my arm through Russell’s.

  From there, things happened fast. Oscar pushed Russell from behind and Russell let go of my arm and grabbed the front of Oscar’s shirt and they tussled while I searched the shadows for Woodrow on his golf cart—where was he?—and then, the next thing I knew, Russell from Iowa City had Oscar in a death grip and Oscar was gasping for air. It looked like Russell was about to snap his neck and I found myself fearing that Russell was going to kill Oscar instead of vice versa.

  “Now,” Russell said in a calm-but-disappointed-assistant-principal voice, “I’m going to let you go. But you are to leave Rosie alone. Do you understand me?”

  Oscar choked out an affirmative and Russell tightened his grip so that Oscar squeaked like a chew toy.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Russell let Oscar go. Oscar buckled at the knees, stumbled a few yards away, and bent over in the grass, turning his neck to be sure it still worked.

  Russell offered me his arm again.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” I asked him once we were safely at my car.

  “My father was a navy man,” Russell said.

  I stood on my tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “My hero,” I said.

  The next day, almost without thinking, I drove to the East End to Miss Vie’s at Hansen Bay. I was like a woman possessed because there was no good reason to go all the way out to that side of the island; normally, if I wanted to go to the beach, I parked at the National Park Service sign and hiked down to Salomon Bay. But I somehow convinced myself that, on the Saturday of the holiday weekend, even Salomon would be overrun and that the only way to escape the crowds would be to go to Hansen Bay. Besides which, now that it was in my head, I couldn’t shake my craving for Miss Vie’s garlic chicken and johnnycakes.