“Well, yes, the flashbacks seemed to overtake her. But when she spoke of them in New York, she was more worried than frantic. Even if they did make her feel as though she was losing control, it was not regarding handling herself with her child. She did not have it in her to abuse. I’m certain of it. No, Liz, I must say, it struck me that she wanted to face the flashbacks head-on and eliminate the source from which they sprang.”
“But didn’t you tell me she was reluctant to discover who the figure in the shadows was?”
Nadia did not reply. The two women stared up at the ceiling in silence. Liz wondered, could we have found a reasonable motive for suicide? Or, for the murder of the figure in the shadows?
“Ayeeeeeee!” Nadia shrieked, jumping from her bed and shaking a lizard from her sheets. Liz jumped up, too. Laughing, Nadia said, “Do you happen to have an extra postcard?”
“Eleven September 2001,” Nadia said aloud as she wrote the date on the postcard. “Someday, we hope, we will all sit down together and we will tell you how we came this far to find you,” she added and handed the card to Liz.
“The occasion for this postcard is easier to sum up,” Liz wrote. “Just call it ‘The Curious Incident of the Lizard in the Nighttime.’”
After signing their names on the postcard, the two women got into their beds and, pulling their sheets completely over their heads to shield themselves from falling wildlife, attempted to drop off to sleep.
September 12 dawned pink as the inside of a seashell. Liz looked at it, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, through the lens of her camera. She had not slept well with the lizards chirping above her through the night. While she headed down the beach to photograph the Fijian sunrise, Nadia had gone in search of coffee at the island’s tiny shop and outdoor dining complex. Liz was zooming in on the “Cast Away” island when Nadia signaled her from the front of their grass hut.
“Come here right now,” she ordered.
Nadia strode down the beach with a purposeful air that only made her look comical, dressed as she was in a sarong and flip-flops. “It’s very bad in the States,” she declared. “You must come immediately.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Manhattan is under attack.”
Liz stood stock-still.
Nadia repeated the news. “Manhattan is under attack.”
“By what? By whom? And Boston?”
“Not Boston. My contacts tell me Boston is not yet hit.”
“Not
“I hope it will not be. But it’s not just New York. The Pentagon has been hit.”
There was just one television in reach and it was not quite on the island. Nadia outlined the unbelievable as the two made their way to it. Housed on a luxurious yacht anchored offshore, the television was only accessible via boat. Unfortunately, all of the island’s kayaks were already tethered to the yacht. Stripping to reveal bikinis, Liz and Nadia grabbed Styrofoam boards fitted with plastic windows, designed to be used by leisurely swimmers to look at life on the coral reef below.
“Normally, I could swim this distance,” Nadia said, “but under the circumstances, I don’t trust myself.” It was the first time she indicated her own agitation over the news.
The swim was anything but leisurely. Once on the yacht, they strained to see, on a miniscule television screen surrounded by some half-dozen tourists, the media coverage of the terrorist attacks on New York City. One viewer expressed confusion.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why are we finding out about this a day later? They keep saying this happened yesterday.”
“We’re eighteen hours ahead of New York time,” the yacht owner explained. “In real time, the planes flew into those buildings while we were sleeping, at around three in the morning here. But it was around eight in the morning yesterday in New York City.”
Nadia prevailed on the yacht owner to let her use his radio. Liz stood transfixed in front of the television. Despite the tropical heat, she shivered. Nadia pulled her aside.
“My contacts say U.S. airspace is closed and is likely to remain so for days. I must move urgently. I cannot tell you where. It is best that you do not accompany me. I shall take the next Piper Cub to the main island.”
“I’ll help you pack.”
“There’s no need.”
“Yes, there is. It will steady me.”
With the images of the attack in her mind, Liz was grateful for the swim board as the two made their way back to the island. As Nadia strode toward their hut, Liz rushed to the outdoor dining area, which was open an hour earlier than normal. On the blackboard that usually announced the day’s specials, someone had written, “Breakfast on the house. We pray for the USA.”
Liz accepted two coffees, two bananas, and two slices of pineapple bread and carried them back to the grass hut. “Please eat some of this. You don’t know when you’ll have another meal.”
Nadia waved her hand toward a Piper Cub in the sky. It was headed for their island. “No time now,” she said.
Liz removed a notebook from the Ziploc bag she kept it in and stuffed the pineapple bread in its place. She zipped up the bag. “At least take this,” she said.
“And you take these,” Nadia said, handing Liz the postcard they had written during the night and a wooden bangle bracelet. “For Ellen.”
“Then you still have hope for her?”
“In times like these, hope may be all we have.”
As Nadia slogged through the sand, Liz stood before their hut, gazing at the extraordinary beauty of the sea spread out before her. Islands that she knew were surrounded by fabulous coral reefs thrust themselves up from the water, looking as remote and unspoiled as any place in the world could be.
Ravenous for this peacefulness, ravenous, even, for breakfast, Liz fetched the fruit and coffee and downed every sip and morsel of the meal for two, sitting cross-legged in the sand. Every so often she pressed her hand into the sand, as if to get a literal grip on the world.
Then she went to the boat dock, which was the hub for both boat and plane rides to and from the island. Learning she could not even leave for the main island until the following day, she signed up for a midnight fishing expedition. Then she swam to the yacht again and watched, as did people around the world, the relentlessly repeating images of planes slamming into New York City’s Twin Towers.
Finally, the day came to an end and, long after night fell, Liz made her way to the boat dock. No one else had signed up for the fishing expedition. Nonetheless, the guide was eager to take her out in his small motorboat.
“It will help you to sleep, the fishing,” he told her as he steered the boat out onto the black water.
“It’s so strange,” she said, “not to be in my newsroom when news like this is breaking. Here I am, a world away, in paradise.”
“The world is smaller than you think. When it comes to World War III, no one on Earth is a world away. And nowhere on the planet is paradise.”
Feeling stripped of the one illusion that had helped her get through the day, Liz tried to steady herself by looking at the sea. When the boatman turned off the motor, the vessel settled on water so still that the stars shimmered on the surface. Looking up, Liz realized the points of light were arranged in unfamiliar constellations. She was so far from home that even the stars offered her nothing to steer by.
The boatman brought her back to earth by handing her a drop line. “I’m sorry for the children tonight,” he said, as Liz dropped the lead-weighted line, with a small plunk, into the water. “This is a time for nightmares.”
They sat in silence, mulling over that thought for a long time, the serenity of the scene quietly protesting, “It can’t be so.” Then, Liz felt a strong pull on her line. With much ado, she hauled in a twenty-inch fish, the largest she had ever caught anywhere in the world. Under the boatman’s flashlight, it was revealed to be bright blue.
