He started to cross the street when he saw a group of young people headed his way. They looked like they were between fifteen and seventeen, four boys and three girls. One of the boys was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. He sat back down on the bench and waited for them to approach.
“ Wanna sell the Yankees cap?” he said when the group was within hearing distance.
“ Not really,” the boy said.
“ Fifty US, right now,” Broxton said.
“ It’s yours.” The boy tossed Broxton the cap. Broxton reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.
“ You’re crazy, right?” one of the girls said.
“ No, I just like the Yankees.” Broxton handed the kid a fifty.
“ I like ’em, too,” the kid said.
“ Yeah, about fifty bucks US worth,” another one of the girls said and they all laughed and continued on their way.
Broxton set the cap on his head, looked both ways, remembering that they drove on the opposite side of the street in Trinidad. Then he crossed and started toward the path that led up to the hotel. His underarms felt like Velcro as they attempted to stick to his skin with each stride. He tried holding them straight, without swinging them, but it was no use.
They were out of sight, but that didn’t worry him. They’d probably gone to the restaurant for a quick bite to eat or a cold drink. It didn’t dawn on him that they might be in one of the many rooms till he entered the lobby.
He pulled off the cap and looked around. He headed toward the restaurant, glanced in and didn’t see them, then he put the cap back on and started toward the front desk, ready to pay for information from the desk clerk, when he saw the girl’s picture encased in glass on the wall outside the restaurant.
She was wearing a skintight, hip hugging formal in the black and white photo, and she looked like a glamour queen. The caption on the poster read, ‘Stormy sings the blues live at the Hilton every Sunday night.’ Stormy. Broxton wondered what her real name was. He knew he couldn’t go to the front desk and ask about her. Any questions he asked, no matter how much he paid, would be repeated back to her and he didn’t want that. So he turned back toward the restaurant, went in and took a seat by the back wall, facing the door.
Thirty minutes later, as he was finishing his ham and eggs, she stopped by the front of the restaurant wearing tight Levi’s and a pale pink, loose fitting silk blouse. She was beauty personified, she could make old men quiver and young men swoon. Broxton was neither young nor old though, so he raised his hand to get her attention, but he dropped it as quickly as he’d put it up when Kevin Underfield came into view wearing a beige suit and tie.
Not the running sweats he’d come in with, Broxton thought. He watched as Underfield gave her a slight kiss on the lips and he looked away when the man roamed his eyes around the room. He turned his head back as Underfield patted her on the rear, before turning and walking through the lobby and out the front door. Then he raised his hand again as she entered the restaurant.
She saw his waving hand, caught his eyes and started toward his table. He stood as she approached. She was stunning and each step she took stole more of his breath away. Her deep brown eyes were clear as windows and they seemed to be laughing, and her perfect teeth, gleaming from her smile, seemed to light up the room.
“ You look better without the hat,” she said, as she pulled a chair out from the table and sat down.
Broxton sat and stared.
“ Come on, put your eyes back in your head. I’m good looking, but I’m not that good looking.”
“ You’re for sure the prettiest woman that’s ever sat down at a table with me,” Broxton said, meaning it.
“ You’ve been following me,” she said. “Why?”
“ Not you. Him,” Broxton said. He reached up and jerked the hat off his head.
“ Your hands are shaking. Are you nervous?” she asked.
He held his right hand out in front of himself for a few seconds and watched it. It was indeed quivering slightly. “It must be you,” he said. “Do you always have this effect on men?”
“ I hope so,” she said. “Now why are you following him?”
“ You wanna go see Tammy Drake at the Normandy tonight?” he asked. “It’s a special show for the diplomatic corps. I’ve got a couple of tickets.” Warren had given him the tickets because the prime minister was supposed to be at the dinner concert. He’d planned on asking Maria during lunch, but the woman sitting across from him shot out an aura of sex and danger that tingled his spine and set his feet to tapping under the table. He couldn’t help himself, something about her just reached out and grabbed at him, tugging at all the right places.
“ Maybe. You’re kind of exciting, but first why were you following Kevin?”
“ I came to Trinidad planning to ask Dani Street to marry me,” he said, “but when I get here I find she’s engaged to somebody else. I’m curious about him, and I have to admit, I’m curious about him and you.”
“ That’s it? That’s all? You’re only interested in him because of Dani? Nothing else?”
“ Isn’t that enough?” he said.
“ I’d love to go with you,” she said, “but you know Kevin is going to be there with Dani.”
“ I know,” Broxton said.
“ I’ll meet you here. Tonight at eight. At this table,” she said. Then she stood, and in a second was gone.
Broxton sat for a few minutes, musing over his strange morning. He thought about Dani and he thought about Maria. He was in love with the former and beginning to care about the latter. There wasn’t any room in his life for a woman named Stormy who sang the blues. He told himself he was only going out with her to find out about Kevin Underfield, but even as he finished the telling he knew it was a lie.
He raised his hand to get the waiter’s attention, then made the international sign for asking for the check by holding one hand flat and pretending to scribble on it with the other. He accepted a knowing smile from the young man, left a generous tip and made his way out of the restaurant. Most of the staff watched him as he left and his waiter flashed him the thumbs up sign. It took him a few seconds, but it finally dawned on him. They all knew Stormy. They were giving him the recognition young men give other young men when they think they’ve scored with a beautiful woman. He shook his head and left.
As he passed the house phones he thought about calling and inviting Maria to lunch, but he didn’t want to have lunch with one woman while he was thinking about dinner with another.
Eleven hours later Broxton drove a rented Nissan Sentra into the parking lot of the Normandy Hotel, and although it was only a few minutes drive from the Hilton, Broxton felt he knew Stormy’s life story. She had been talking nonstop the whole way. She managed to tell Broxton that she was twenty-five years old, her name really was Stormy, she was born in Port of Spain just after all the lights went out because of a tropical storm. She had a younger sister, Jenna, and a brother, Gary, living in Canada. She had been singing since she was a little girl. Tammy Drake was her idol and the two women were very good friends. But about Kevin Underfield, not a word.
He parked the car and went around to the passenger side to open the door for her, but she was out of the car before he made it around. “What a lovely night,” she said and she inhaled deeply. She was standing under a light that wasn’t doing a very good job of illuminating the parking lot, but it was doing a superb job of illuminating her. The soft light reflected off her bare shoulders and winked through her long hair, giving her an angelic halo that contrasted greatly with the devilish look in her shining eyes.
“ Before we go in,” she said, “I just want you to know that Kevin and I were an item a while ago, but we went our separate ways. Today at the hotel was sort of a test. We both needed to see how it would go. It didn’t. It’s over now, we both know it. I think we both knew it before we started, but we had to give it one last try just to make sure that none of that old flame was still there. It wasn’t. It’s gone. What we did is nothing to get excited about and Dani never has to know about it. It would only hurt her.”
Broxton nodded, but he thought what they did was wrong. If Kevin was really in love with Dani he didn’t need to test himself by sleeping with another woman. But he held his tongue. He didn’t want to argue with her.
“ Let’s go in,” he said, and she took him by the arm and allowed him to lead her into the restaurant. They were late and Tammy Drake was already on stage, singing a slow ballad. There were people on the dance floor and tables off to the right and outside on the large balcony.
