“Isobel-”
“Walter, Walter. Please don’t. Don’t be hurt. I never wanted to hurt you.”
She was young and he was not. He was experienced, so experienced, and she was not. What was it about her? Time had not dulled all his senses. He’d missed some things, sure, but you always missed some things. You never got it all right. Why had it taken him this long? Why didn’t he want to know? The pain. The pain. It came to him now. It came to him the way it always had, the way it had in Vietnam and Laos and ever since. The unease he sensed when she called him the night she met with Leonard-the feeling that something was missing when he read her article-the shock that went through him when Debra Melissa described the cowboy. It all came to him now like the floodgates had been thrown wide open. He looked at Isobel. Her eyes begged him to be silent, but he said it anyway. “You saw him, didn’t you? You knew all along.”
“Walter-”
“No,” he said, looking away, waving her off.
He finished his drink. Isobel didn’t touch her ice tea. The moment passed, although both knew the memory would last forever. She offered to drive him to the airport, but he said he’d catch a cab. He kissed her on the forehead when they said goodbye. His lips lingered a moment-too long? The scent of her hair caused him to close his eyes. He could tell it was an uncomfortable parting for Isobel. On the plane, he tried to convince himself she meant it when she said, “ We will see each other again. We will.” Didn’t he know her? Couldn’t he tell how she felt? Nor could he keep Leonard Martin at bay. He saw the fat, suburban attorney, disheveled and depressed. He saw the lean, trim Michael DelGrazo. He saw the cowboy in Clarksville-saw him in his own cabin. And Isobel knew from the beginning. He had opened the iron gate to his soul and let her in. Knowingly. He had shared with her things he had never shared with anyone. Purposely. He had kept no secrets from her. Gladly. He had loved her not at first sight. She was different, special. He earned this one. He had given himself to her. Completely. And she betrayed him. How had he missed it? There were so many things lately he failed to see, none more painful or more humiliating than this.
He fell asleep in first class, frightened he might never again run his hand across her bare hips, down her legs, across her knees; never again wake her in the morning, kissing her nipples, watching as she opened her eyes, smiling. In his dream he chased her across an open field. She climbed a flight of marble steps outside a large building, a building with no doors. He struggled to reach her as she stood atop the stairway. He climbed as fast as he could, yet made no progress, got no closer. He had trouble breathing. Then, finally, he was within reach of the top. Just as he was about to touch her, she stepped back out of sight. He crawled the last few steps, then, gasping, he looked up to see the Indian woman, smiling, offering him a pendant. And there was Leonard Martin. Behind him stood a young Vietnamese mother desperately clutching her two children. All three wept. Leonard had a rifle in his hands. He lifted the gun, shifting its weight against his shoulder, and pointed it at him. Isobel was nowhere to be seen. Leonard squeezed the trigger. Walter woke up trembling.
New York
Tom Maloney walked in the back door. It was an entrance he’d been shown months ago, when the idea of retaining Walter Sherman first came to mind. At the time he considered it no more than another skill available on the open market. True, the market he spoke of wasn’t quite that open, and this particular skill was available only for a handsome price. Nevertheless, Maloney believed that if it existed, it was for sale. “If I want it-it’s mine.” Anything that was for sale could be his. Price was never a factor. How many kings had he ransomed in his day? What he’d acquired was indeed exceptional. “Crack and hack,” it was called. Get in. Get the code. That’s it. Simple? Sure, but close to impossible. Once you beat it, however, it’s over. No one and no place was immune, not even the Caymans. Besides, he’d used it before. He thought it was strange that he’d been inside twice already, once just to read it, and a second time he actually put something in. He’d not taken anything out. Now he was about to use this technology, this mechanism, this mumbo-jumbo magic for the purpose it had been invented. When the message appeared on his computer screen, he didn’t believe it. The chill that ran the full length of his body could have frozen hell. He’d gone to cash his lottery ticket and it was nowhere to be found. He lost it. He looked at the keystroke instructions. Letter by letter he read them half out loud. He canceled out his connection and started all over again from the very beginning. He was not far from turning the computer off and restarting it. He was like a man searching his sock drawer, frantically tearing apart the pockets of a coat he hadn’t worn in years, desperately looking for his missing car keys. He knew they weren’t there, but he couldn’t help himself. The correct home page appeared. He typed his code in the special box, watching the letters and numbers as he pushed them down. They showed up as asterisks on his screen, and so, for no reason at all, he deleted them and did it again. One by one he pushed down on the computer keys until each one could go no farther. Of course the code had been correct the first time. He knew that, but he was no longer in control. Things were speeding up. His heart rate and respiration soared. He struggled to keep his thoughts straight. He began to sweat. He felt sick, lightheaded, about to throw up. The message popped up again: Account Closed.
St. John
February is high season. The Caribbean sun blazes from early morning until early evening. For those on the beaches, a sunblock with a number at least as high as thirty is recommended. Lean and pretty young girls in skimpy bikinis, and not a few middle-aged, fat guys in Speedos, seem to be everywhere. Even the rain, which comes down in short, sudden outbursts in the late afternoon, makes the tourists glad they’re not in New England or the Midwest. “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” has been heard more than once on the streets of Cruz Bay. The island is as packed as it ever gets. In addition to the bushwhackers, day-trippers from St. Thomas crowd the shops and bars near the dock in Cruz Bay. St. John’s taxis, pickup trucks with rigged canopies and benches for their riders, drive load after load from the dock to the beaches. The ragged, narrow streets are jammed, and every so often someone from Ohio or Iowa or someplace like that drives the wrong way on a one-way street. Traffic gets snarled, tempers frayed. New Yorkers in new shorts and pastel shirts show their true colors. All the island’s restaurants are full, and for many, getting a table at lunchtime is almost impossible. Later in the evening, when the last ferry has taken the final load back to the rock, things get a little quieter. The best places still manage to turn their tables twice for dinner. A reservation is a necessity. February is a tough time for the locals. Even at Billy’s, some days go by without Ike or Walter making an appearance.
“There’s two kind of locals,” Ike once said. “February and March.” He wasn’t talking about himself, about the real locals-those who’ve been on St. John for generations, the blacks born and raised there. He meant the newcomers. He was talking about people like Walter and Billy, and whatshisname, the pop singer living on his boat out in the harbor, and all the others who left their roots on the mainland to take up the island life. There were those who came for the lifestyle, flat broke or loaded with all the money they needed, and there were those on the run looking for a place to stop. These were the February people, according to Ike. They could be found eating lunch or dinner at Billy’s alongside the tourists and visitors. Or they might be the ones waiting tables, crewing the charter boats, hanging out on the beach, living on the cheap. Walter was not a February person. “Never was,” said Ike. He was a March person. He tolerated high season, taking comfort in the certainty that it would end, the crowds would lessen, if not leave altogether, and life would return to normal.
Walter came back from Atlanta and stayed home. It took Clara no time at all to see what happened. She wouldn’t be seeing that girl Isobel around here anymore. She did what she could to care for him, but Clara had no medicine for Walter’s blues. He moped. He sulked. He sat alone on the patio until all hours of the night. He didn’t talk much. Clara told her sister. Her sister told her friends. They told theirs. Before long everyone knew. It’s a small island, and they do know everything. To make matters worse, Walter had that CD Clara had heard a million times, The Best of the Cadillacs. It was a rare day she enjoyed listening to that one. He played that one song, “Gloria,” too many times to Clara’s way of thinking. It was hopeless, she concluded. How could he miss both of them? At the same time? Poor man. His sadness was not a pretty sight. She figured he had to hit the bottom of lonely before he could pick himself up. She prayed it wouldn’t take him long. Ten days into his depression, Clara said she needed to
