“I never felt anything with them. I never felt this pain when they went away.”
“Mmh.” She glanced up.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Afraid? I’m not afraid of anything and I’m especially not afraid of you. You can’t even swim well.”
They both laughed. She rolled her tongue along the inside of her cheek, struggling to look serious.
“Mary, I feel like I could sit here with you all night and it would more fun than anything I’ve ever done.”
Mary looked down at the black water just as the sky lit up the wall of gray behind them. Three seconds later, thunder reverberated across the bay. Edward turned his head into a gust, sending his hair over his forehead. The storm clouds hung over the mountain like smoke, and whitecaps rolled in like lines of TV static. A few waves slapped against Mary’s boat.
“I don’t think you’ll want to stay here. It’s about to start raining.” She stood up.
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Can’t you smell it? It’s raining on the other side of that ridge.”
They climbed down into Mary’s boat. She started it as soon as Edward took his seat, and they motored away from the pier. When they passed outside the bay, cold rain started tapping the windscreen. A minute later, it erupted like a string of firecrackers, coming down in sheets on flanking gusts. Mary’s arm muscles flexed with her grip, keeping the wheel turned a quarter to the port to keep them on course. She kept the throttle high to try to outrun the storm, but by the time they came up on the north side of Peter Island, the water was pouring down. They huddled against the windscreen with little effect. They were under a thunderhead, Mary told him. Edward had seen many of them from a distance. It was a like being under a mountain of water. He looked back at the water filling the small boat and then at the lights of the village, grateful they were near the shore.
Lightning flashed, a long, jagged, lava tear through the black. It hit somewhere on the other side of the dunes. For a moment, fiery gold outlined the ridge, every tree, bush and lump. The clouds lit up, massive swirls and crevasses, monstrous grey forms billowing down from above.
Mary powered them over the whitecaps of the inlet like a skier moving over the moguls of a hellish course. Over and over, they jumped, the propeller whirling free, the boat crashing down into the next wave, the motor grinding into the sea, and Edward’s backside pounding into his seat. Over and over, until they made it into the bay where the surface leveled out and the boat stopped bucking.
When they were against the pier, Edward grabbed the ladder. He climbed up and got ready to catch the line. Mary was still seated and holding the wheel. He had to keep a hand up as a visor against the rain.
“I should get home,” she called up to him.
“Don’t be silly.” Edward pointed up into the air with an index finger. “There’s lightning. Tie up.”
Mary looked up at the mouth of the bay for two seconds, a black void without any navigating lights, before turning the key and killing the motor.
After tying up, they ran to the door and stood under the awning, laughing at how thoroughly soaked they were. When they were inside, Edward got a fresh towel and gave it to Mary. He yanked down another towel off the shower curtain before letting her into the bathroom. She went in and closed the door, and he started drying himself.
“I got clean shorts and a T-shirt you can use,” Edward said to the bathroom door. “You can stay in any of the rooms.” He kicked off his flip-flops, and peeled off his shirt as if it were a second skin. He stepped into the kitchen and took off the rest of his clothes, toweled himself over before putting on a dry pair of shorts. “I got seven rooms for you to choose from.”
When Mary called out for the clothes, he handed them to her through the small slit she opened. After that he started some water boiling, sliced a lime up and got out two cups.
“If you’re hungry, I got chicken. But I’ll need to thaw it. Otherwise, I got some fruit.” He waited for a reply. “You all right?”
The whine of his blow dryer was the only response. Lightning flashed and the window brightened with the blur of the rain hitting it. Two seconds later the thunder shook the house.
After the water was boiling, he made two cups of tea. He stood in the kitchen doorway, listening in case she needed anything. Ten minutes later Mary opened the bathroom door and stepped out. She was in his T-shirt and wore the towel as a skirt. Edward stood up and faced her. The light from the bathroom penetrated the thin cotton delineating the curves above her hips. She had her hair down, and must have spent all the time fixing it because it looked gorgeous and fine with the style of a woman who spent hours in a hair dressers chair doing whatever women did there. It fell around her face, highlighted in auburn and even waves to just over her breasts.
Mary held the towel at her stomach with one hand in a pose that reminded him of Botticelli’s Venus on her seashell. In that moment of perfection, he half expected her to start speaking Italian.
“Your shorts don’t fit me.”
“I’m sorry. Please, I made tea.”
He went into the kitchen and she followed. They both took a cup and leaned against the countertop, holding their cups with both hands to kill the chill, listening to the storm outside.
“Now don’t argue. You can stay in the main house.”
“Aren’t you breaking the rules?” Mary tilted her head and smiled, narrowing her eyes on him. She took a sip from her tea, and crossed her legs, the towel opening on the side to expose a few more inches of glossy, smooth leg.
“Well, come on.” He had to look away. “There are extenuating circumstances.”
“Is that real?” Mary pointed to the ancient, black rotary phone on a shelf next to the fridge.
“Yeah, I might as well put in one of those Morris code machines—”
Mary laughed and went over to it, putting an index finger into a number and turned the dial.
“It’s like something from the Adam’s Family. Takes, like, an hour to dial a number. God help me if I’m in a hurry to dial the police. Have to take a break after dialing half the number.”
Mary’s laughter came out easy and it made Edward smile.
“It belongs in a museum. Why doesn’t the owner buy a new phone?”
“Well, this is just the servant’s quarters.” Edward picked up the teapot and refilled his cup. “Anyways, I guess no one ever uses it. I know I don’t.”
“Not even to call family?” Mary looked up from her cup at him. “Will you ever call your parents? Tell them where you are?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. One day.”
“You shouldn’t stay mad at your parents.”
“Yeah, I know. I should send them a postcard. How about you? Why don’t you like staying home with your family?”
Mary shrugged. “My sisters and mother love to argue, which I don’t like. And they love to gossip and I really don’t care to hear who’s divorcing who or who’s got a new girlfriend. Guess I like being simple.”
Edward laughed through his nose. One of Mary’s eyebrows rose.
“Is that funny?”
“Well, to some, being called simple is an insult, but I guess it’s really not so bad.”
“Not to me. My father used to say he was a simple man.”
“Can I ask – if it’s not personal – how did he die? I mean, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“It was a long time ago. Over ten years now. For a long time, I wouldn’t talk about it because I felt guilty. We had had a big argument. I wanted to go on a school trip to Saint Kitts, but my father didn’t want me to go. He wanted me to help him or study – I don’t remember which, but he wouldn’t give his permission, and I was so angry that I told him I wouldn’t help him fish anymore. A few days later, he said he was going north for fishing. It was nothing out of the ordinary. He prepared his boat and left in the morning before anyone had woken. We expected him to return after dark. When he didn’t come home that night we called the police. I didn’t sleep. I stayed in the living room on the couch, watching the door, listening for his footsteps.