clothed Amira sat on the quilts in the cool blue reflection of the rain coming down. A pitcher of water poured into her basin had allowed us to wash up and she mentioned that this current rain was welcome.
“Rainwater’s important here,” she said. “The ground water on this island has an awful, brackish taste.”
“I thought it rained every time you turn around, in the tropics.”
“We don’t get much in the summer, but winter monsoon season is pretty fierce. Lots of frequent, short showers.”
I wondered if she realized she spoke of Saipan almost as her home? And hadn’t it been, for almost three years?
“This is shaping up like a typhoon,” she said, looking toward the window. The shadows on the walls were darker, moving more quickly, and the wind sounded angry. The direction of the rain seemed to have shifted, coming down straighter, hitting the tin roof of the one-story house next door in hard pellets, unrelenting liquid machine gun fire.
She asked me questions about home, pleased that Paul Mantz had remarried (“That Terry is a terrific gal”); I gave her more details on her husband’s remarriage, which only seemed to wryly amuse her, now. She had no idea her disappearance had been the center of such worldwide attention and seemed rather flattered, even touched. Bitterly, though, she commented that the multimillion-dollar naval search must have largely been an excuse to pry in these waters.
She also spoke of her life in Saipan, which was very solitary. Other than Chief Suzuki, Jesus Sablan, and a few officials, like the
“The Chamorro family next door,” she said, pointing toward the window, and the rat-a-tat-tat tin-roof rainfall, “has been kind.” She laughed softly. “I got to know them on my trips to the privy…it’s in back of their house. They have a little girl, Matilda, maybe twelve, a sweet thing. She knows some English, and I tried to help her with her homework, now and then. I gave her a ring with a pearl as a keepsake…. Her parents are nice, too, they give me fresh fruit, pineapples, mangoes, which is something I can’t find at the Japanese market. Food’s awful—everything’s out of a can or a jar.”
“I noticed,” I said with a smile.
The room turned white from lightning, and the thunderclap was like cannon fire.
“Are you sure this rain won’t be a problem?” she asked. “For us leaving tonight?”
“No, it’s helpful,” I lied. “Listen…it’s getting close to time. I’m going down and check on the chumps in the lobby…. You better look around this room and see if there’s anything you want to take with you.”
Her laugh sounded like a cough. “I don’t think I’ll be looking back on this room with much nostalgia.”
“Well, look over your personal items, things you brought with you…wrap up a little bundle, if you have to, but travel light.”
She smirked. “Don’t worry.”
“I’ll go down and distract the fellas…. Wait maybe a minute after I leave, then go down to my room and slip inside.”
She nodded.
I was almost out the door when she clutched my arm. I leaned over and kissed her. “We’re gonna be apart for two, maybe three minutes,” I said. “Think you can bear up?”
She shook her head, no; she was smiling but her eyes were moist. “I’m afraid.”
“Good. That’s healthy. Only the dead are fearless.”
“Like Fred.”
“Like Fred,” I said, and touched her face, and stepped into the hallway.
It was empty. My hunch was the entire floor was vacant, except for Amy. The only other person I’d seen who seemed to be staying here was the desk clerk or the manager or whoever he was, who had the first room off the little lobby. I moved down the stairs, and through another empty hallway.
In the lobby, the check-in desk was unoccupied, and the ceiling fan whirred sluggishly over two Chamorro assistant coppers in their threadbare white suits. I knew them both: fatso Ramon, of the cantaloupe head and blankly stupid countenance, was seated in the rattan chair where Jesus had been previously plopped; and across from him was the short, burly officer who Suzuki had brought in to sub for Jesus. They were playing cards, of course, with what seemed to be the same greasy deck. Billy clubs and matchsticks again littered the rattan coffee table.
“Where’s Jesus?” I asked Ramon.
“Paint town red,” Ramon grinned. It wasn’t as nasty as Jesus’s grin but it was nasty enough.
“Oh, he’s still out with the chief?”
Ramon nodded, fat fingers holding the smeary cards close to his face, eyes almost crossing as he studied his hand.
Then I asked the burly character, who had a lumpy sweet-potato nose and pockmarks (though the latter weren’t nearly in Jesus Sablan’s league), if he knew how to play Chicago. His grasp of English was obviously less than that of Ramon, who having played a few hands with me this afternoon, frowned at my apparent interest in joining them.
“No!” Ramon said. “No play. Go hell.”
This rebuff was fine with me. I didn’t really want to play cards with these wild boars; I was just keeping them busy long enough for Amy to slip down the stairs and into my room.
Which, a few seconds later, was exactly where I found her, wearing her weathered wrinkled flying jacket, pacing and holding her stomach; my room seemed darker than hers, perhaps because my window onto the house
