his lemon teeth like a row of golden amethysts.
“I’m Ike.” He held out his long, skinny fingers, nicotine-stained, wrinkled by seventy-odd years in the tropical sun. “My very deep and eternal pleasure.” He quickly stood, waving his pink cap above his head like a semaphore.
Ike felt, for an instant, a good deal younger than he was.
“I’m a friend of Walter’s.” Isobel took his hand. “He told me to look for you. He told me I could not miss you.”
“I bet he did too,” said Ike. “You can sit out here with me all day, and I’ll do the best I can. Buy you a drink too. But if you want to see Walter, he is over there.” He waved his hat toward the far end of the bar.
She slung her coat over her wheelie. “I’m sure we’ll have a chance for a drink. I hope so.” Then Isobel made her way through the people packing Billy’s. From what she could see the lunch looked awfully good.
When Walter glimpsed her his face must have changed, because Billy, who was removing his empty Diet Coke bottle, dropped his long, heavy jaw, and said, “Walter?”
“You look great.”
She twirled around for Walter to see. “I changed in St. Thomas.”
“I’m glad to see you, whatever you’re wearing.”
“St. Thomas is not very pretty. Not like I expected.” She hopped onto the barstool beside him, the one where Tom Maloney had been a couple of months before.
“I thought it was supposed to be some kind of paradise. I guess there may be resorts somewhere.”
“On the other side of the island,” said Walter.
“The cab driver told me I was on the wrong side of the island. To me it looks like Brooklyn. No charm at all. Anyway, I’m starving. They don’t feed you on airplanes anymore, do they?”
“Except in first class,” Walter said.
“It was full. I couldn’t get in even at full fare.”
Last night’s sensation returned; she was definitely… different. Unsettled and unsettling. At first, when she turned around for him, she seemed flirtatious. Now, to his disappointment, she was not. She was just nervous.
Isobel ordered a club sandwich and fries. He did too. He watched her gobble it as he picked at his own.
“Anyway, the weather is nice here.” She spoke as she ate.
“How is New York?”
“Miserable. Windy. Cold. Really. Just… fucking… miserable.”
“You ever miss Fiji?”
“A lot. Sometimes. I miss London too. And Paris a little. I’m half French, but I was never French, exactly.”
“How so?”
She went at the sandwich again.
“My mother had this thing about France. I think she really hated it. I bet something terrible happened there but she’s never said what. I like to think it may have involved her mother. Not a very nice woman. I’ll bet that’s why mom went to Fiji. That’s why she was so glad about my father. She was a nurse. She worked in Fiji although she didn’t have to. She’s retired now. We had a house in Paris. I spent some time there when I was little. Americans think the French don’t like them. That is certainly true. But it’s the English they really despise.”
“You always liked London better than Paris?”
“Indeed, sir. I did and still do.” No village sing-song there. She spoke her father’s English.
“And Fiji most of all?”
“Fiji is heaven. The politics are rotten, of course. Where aren’t they? But Walter, the Pacific-it’s blue and clean and endless, not like this dirty shithole Atlantic, filthy and polluted to the bottom. Not here, I mean,” she said, seeing the hurt in his face. “It’s beautiful here. But the North Atlantic doesn’t compare. There’s no better place in the world than Fiji. No fucking better place.”
Her expression changed in mid-sentence. She put her food down.
“I met him.”
“I know. You told me last night.”
She nodded.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
“I will. It’s very complicated. He sent me another letter telling me-”
“Not here. Finish up and let’s go.”
Billy leaned over the bar. He watched Walter and Isobel leave. Then he waved to get Ike’s attention, but Ike only shrugged his shoulders and turned to see the two walk out of sight.
Billy shook his head and picked up a bar rag for which he had no particular use.
St. John
When cold weather comes to Connecticut, Grosse Pointe, or Georgetown, some pack up and head for St. John. Having tried it once, they may do so again. If they rent the same house two or three winters in a row, they are very likely to buy, and thus become one kind of local-the kind who maintain a northern home as well. The other locals live on St. John all year. Walter’s Chicago apartment did not disqualify him admission to the second group.
Naturally, Ike belonged to the latter class: not rich like some of the full-time retirees, former snowbirds from here and there. But not by any means poor. He’d always been a worker, an entrepreneur and a saver like everyone in his extended clan. He didn’t care at all what he looked like, but Ike watched his balances closely, with eyes like magnifying glasses.
Despite the moderate temperatures, Ike disliked this time of year because of the crowds. They turned Billy’s into a madhouse. Billy’s first-rate kitchen did not help. Nor did his well-stocked bar. The tourists wanted Billy’s signature drink. It was called the “Bushwacker,” a word locals also used in place of “tourist” to indicate the absence of respect and affection.
Except for lunchtime, when he preferred to sit outside and sneer at the Bushwhackers’ colorful get-ups, the staff knew to keep Ike’s table free even while he was out stretching his legs-a few yards this way, a few yards that-or in the back relieving himself, which could be a prolonged affair. His table was his until he announced that he was gone for the day. He didn’t drive anymore, not at his age, and he couldn’t walk very far. But one of his many grandsons was always somewhere around, ready to take him wherever he wanted. Grandson Roosevelt drove him most often, but today he was on another island attending to family business. Walter and Billy were never sure they knew all of Ike’s family businesses. Ike himself was long since retired. Grandson Kennedy picked him up at Billy’s soon after Walter and Isobel left. When Billy first arrived on St. John, he asked Walter if Ike’s whole family had been named after dead Presidents. “Not the girls,” Walter said.
Now Ike was back. He liked to walk in on his own, so Kennedy dropped him off to the side of the square. Ike shuffled into Billy’s with the slow, elegant step that seemed to most a matter of choice. Jenna, a nineteen-year-old waitress from Indianapolis who’d been at Billy’s almost a year now, said, “Hey,” and looked toward his table, agreeably free of colonists.
“Seen Walter?”
“No.” She had Ike’s usual in hand, and set it onto one of Billy’s fancy new bevel-edged coasters.
“Billy,” he called out. “Where’s Walter?”
“Beats me.” Billy was boisterous with the huge success of the lunchtime shift. “Where’s Jimmy Hoffa, Judge whatshisname, or the guys who really killed OJ’s wife? They ain’t here neither, in case you need to know.”
Ike exchanged sympathetic glances with Jenna. He raised his glass to her and she smiled before moving on to other more profitable duties.
Ike saw Billy sending him a long, significant glance across the room. It said, “I make it a hundred to one they been fucking their brains out all day long.” It also said, “What do you think?”
Ike fixed his mouth to turn his smile down at the sides. He did this to reinforce the silent message he sent back to Billy. The message was this: “More chance you fucked three different goats during lunchtime!”
