“The coast guard began searching for his boat the next day. Another fisherman found it. It had been adrift just east of Anegada, about sixty kilometers north. When they boarded the boat, they found him lying on his cabin bunk. They told my mother it was just like he was asleep. He had had a heart attack. Probably felt some pain and went inside to take a rest. He didn’t have any catch on board, so we know it happened early, before he started fishing.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Not anyone’s fault really. We wouldn’t have known if he had health issues. My father never visited a doctor.” Mary stared into her cup. “But, well, I always did wonder what if I had gone with him.”
“Mary, you can’t think that way. Nobody can see the future.” Edward shook his head. He reached out and squeezed her arm.
“Yeah, I know.” She shrugged, pressing a smile.
He looked at her in the borrowed T-shirt and her towel skirt, her breasts inches away from him and her brown eyes, and he wanted to take her into his arms and protect her from all the world’s ills.
“Look, tomorrow I’ll make breakfast. You drink orange juice? Eggs and toast, OK? I got clean sheets and extra toothbrushes. And, like I said, you can stay anywhere you want. You know where you want to stay?”
Mary looked at him, giving him an almost imperceptible nod, her lips slightly parted.
“If you need something – anything – I’ll get it. If I don’t have it, I’ll make it out of wood. If you want a pizza, I’ll call for one, but it might take a few hours to dial the number on my phone.”
Mary laughed and he knew he was happy like he’d never been. And they stayed like that, looking at each other for a time, Mary smiling, nodding with a movement like a shiver. They slowly leaned in, spiraling down a gravity well toward each other until he turned his head and kissed her on the side of the lips. He pulled back to see the effect, but before he could, she pulled him to her and kissed him full on the lips. Her eyes were closed.
After some time, they pulled back away from each other, needing to breathe. Then he grabbed her around the waist, pulled her into him, and held her head against his, their lips connecting them. This time he closed his eyes and let the feeling burn through his body. With his other hand at the small of her back, he pulled her hips into his, one of her feet between his, her breasts against his chest.
With storm throwing rain against the window, it felt like they were merging. The floor and kitchen dropped. The mountains, clouds, and entire world fell away below them in a feeling that could only be described as spiritual. Frenziedly they kissed again and again until they had to pause for air. Her hands pressed into his back, beckoning him on. He brushed her hair off her ear and tasted her earlobe and she bent her head away. He continued on, his lips traveling down her cheek to the soft flesh of her neck.
“Oh, Mary, I love you,” he sighed.
He felt her moan more than he heard her reply.
~~19~~
Eight months later.
The warm wave washed over his head as soon as he pushed away from the incline, but that was expected. Edward was used to the strong current at the mouth of the bay where he had started. When his face broke the surface, he put all his force into his stroke, pulling his body horizontal while kicking. He continued this only a short distance before taking in a full breath and diving under. His arms stabbed forward and pulled back, burrowing him down a few feet. There he swam thirty feet with dolphin kicks, a technique Mary had taught him for bypassing the turbulent surface. When he came up, he took in a gulp of air and continued regular strokes. The route had become so familiar to him that he didn’t bother looking up when the currents shifted and the surface leveled out. He knew what it meant. A few strokes later, his hand brushed the sandy bottom and he crawled out of the water.
Edward found shade under the two palm trees he knew so well. They leaned out over the sand and shallows. Behind them was brush, piles of palm fronds and a few old coconut husks at the base of the cliff. He sat on the sand, out of the surf, and leaned back on his arms to rest, looking off at the three houses wobbling in the midday heat. Edward looked down at his flat stomach. Whose was it, he asked with pride. His skin was teak-brown, his hair long, slightly curled, and cut just above his shoulders. To his delight, when he talked of cutting it short, Mary complained.
Edward stretched, twisting his upper torso to the left and then right. When he was turned, he noticed the evidence of their recent excursion to the island. Mary and his footprints still marked the elevated sand behind him. He couldn’t remember if it had been two or three days now. He couldn’t remember if it had been Saturday or Sunday when they lay together at this very spot. They had raced. Mary had beaten him to the island of course. Edward was stronger, but she understood the tensions and currents of the sea better. She was slippery, more aerodynamic – he said dismissively after she won. She had an almost supernatural ability to avoid the waves that he hit like oversized speed bumps. After they had climbed out of the water, and sat resting, he had kissed her. Mary had looked around for sailboats and signs of life, before doing the same to him. She knew him too well and what he had wanted. They had kissed for a long time. Then he had peeled up the cups of her bikini top and worked his way down.
How long did they spend making love that day? He had no idea. They lay facing each other naked afterwards. His energies completely expended from the swim across the bay and his release with Mary, he fell asleep. When he opened his eyes some time later, they were still embracing and Mary was watching him, her eyes reflecting the daylight like crystals of brown sugar.
Half the time, he didn’t know what day it was, and this didn’t bother him. Time had lost its usefulness in his life. On the island there was no schedule. He didn’t need to know when nine o’clock came because he was always at work. He didn’t care if it was noon. He ate lunch when he was hungry. He didn’t go to bed at eleven-thirty. He went to bed when he was tired. He was sure there was a vitality that had grown inside him because of it, because he lived by these natural cycles of his body and environment and not notches on a disk hanging on the wall. Following the clock was following a corralled path. He was sure this was the cause of some abnormal anxiety like claustrophobia; instead of walls pushing in, it was timelines, deadlines, and due dates that inflicted people.
When he felt like it, Edward stood and stretched, taking in a good breath in preparation for his return swim. His nose twitched, and he detected something strange in the normally homogeneous ocean air. He sniffed at it a few times before realizing what it was.
Cigar smoke.
He froze, listening into the breeze for a while. Hearing nothing, he made his way down the narrow path of beach, following it around to where the skirt of sand ended at the wall of mangroves. There the smell was more pronounced. A light haze hung inside the still jungle. He took it in with several whiffs, determining its contents, sweet scents like vanilla and cherries. Edward peered around the trees, looking for movement past the overgrowth and thinking about the hidden shack that he had forgotten about. Having come to think of it as abandoned, he hadn’t visited it a second time. He pushed his way between two ferns and stepped onto the narrow animal path.
Voices erupted and he pressed himself against a thick palm trunk. Laughter. He froze with his opened hands against the tree, holding his breath. Men. More than one speaking in fast Spanish. One laughed. Another spoke in a blur of words. Edward didn’t understand any of it, except a curse word he’d often heard from the Puerto Ricans who lived in his old apartment building.