Perry looked delighted. He said, “How delicious.”
Isolde stepped to the door and shouted, “Woody! Perry’s going to put the patio furniture into the pool!”
“Okay, honey!” Woody shouted.
Isolde pointed the knife at Perry. She said, “Put it all in the shallow end.” Perry watched her chop tomatoes. She added, “That alligator hates junkies.”
“Jolly old Mrs. McCracken?”
Isolde glanced up. “What does my mother have to do with it?”
Woody noticed that just about every time Perry went into the house, Isolde came out to check on how he, Woody, was doing, or to bring him water, give him encouragement and a kiss and the latest hurricane news. Like figures in a Swiss clock, Woody thought. One goes in, the other comes out.
Isolde served up pasta with vegetable sauce and salad on plastic plates. Chip and Perry took folding chairs out to the pool deck and ate and smoked and scratched themselves. Isolde and Woody ate in the living room, watching the hurricane news.
Woody said to her, “You knew Perry before, didn’t you?”
She frowned down at her plate of pasta and nodded, and Woody waited. She was thinking, Now? Tell him now? But her nerve failed her. She panicked at the thought of telling him about Fiona. Isolde said, “He was famous in Jamaica.”
Woody said, “Was he a junkie then?”
She said, “He used a lot of drugs, but he was different then. Everyone liked him. His bar was a success. The drug thing didn’t seem so bad—” She paused, then said, “I guess it was bad. Really bad. But no one realized until it was too late.”
Woody said, “That’s all you have to tell me?”
Isolde felt herself beginning to shake. “I’ll try to remember more,” she said. She picked up their empty supper plates and carried them into the kitchen.
Woody went back to putting up the shutters. The sun had set, but there was light enough to see. It was very hot and humid. The others took turns helping him. Meanwhile, they cleared the yard of branches, coconuts, and other debris, brought plants and orchids into the garage, lowered patio furniture gingerly into the shallow end of the pool. Chip and Perry acted increasingly strung out and irritated. Woody tried to ignore them.
Perry and Chip came outside, and Isolde, who’d been helping Woody, went back into the kitchen. Chip lit up a cigarette. Perry signaled to Woody that he had something to say. Woody turned off the electric drill. Perry said, “You’ve got the words wrong, you know.”
Woody said, “Words?” He asked what words Perry was talking about. The words, Perry said with irritation, to the Rolling Stones song Woody was singing over and over and over.
“Song?” Woody said.
Chip said, “‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’”
Woody apologized. He’d been concentrating on what he was doing.
“Well, I can tell you,” Perry said, now very angry, “it’s not ‘I was standing in line with Mr. Jitters.’ The correct version is, ‘I was standing in line with Mr. Jimmy.’”
Woody said that he liked the other version. Perry said, “It’s wrong.” He’d gone red in the face. He said with shocking force, “And you’re a bloody awful singer.”
Chip said, “Hey, Perry, cool it.”
Woody raised the electric drill to about an inch from Perry’s heart and clicked it on and off, saying, “Fuck you. I’ll sing whatever I want. You keep singing ‘Danke shon, darling, danke shon/Thank you for all the joy and pain.’ Now that’s bloody awful.”
Woody and Perry stared at each other, until Chip pulled Perry away.
Lord Jitters, Woody thought. Fuck him.
It was almost dark when a battered white Lincoln turned into Woody’s driveway. The driver blew the horn. Chip trotted down the drive, followed by Perry. Two large black men climbed from the front seat of the Lincoln and stood behind their open doors, looking bored while Chip chattered away. Then Chip and one of the men walked into the street and out of sight, returning almost immediately. The black men got into their Lincoln, shut the doors, reversed down the drive, and were gone. Chip and Perry sauntered past Woody, who called after Chip, “Found my check yet?”
Some time later, Chip and Perry carried their two folding chairs and a jar lid ashtray back out onto the pool deck. Woody found them there, smoking and chatting, their air of tension gone. Perry was saying to Chip, “Oh, it was the usual, fraudulent trading, false pretences, fraud against a gaming casino, purchasing a Rolls-Royce with a worthless check. But I knew they were going to arrest me two days in advance. A detective came round and said that for fifty thousand pounds the case against me would be dropped. Because I believe in God and England, I told him to get stuffed. Then I packed my bag and hopped it to Brazil. I met Ronnie Biggs there—” He noticed Woody and paused.
Chip looked around, saw Woody, and jumped to his feet. He stepped over and dropped the cell phone into Woody’s shirt pocket with an air of irritation, saying, “Take it. I’ve been carrying that damn thing around all afternoon.”
“We’re almost done with the shutters,” Woody said. “Isolde’s pretty pooped.” He told them they could smoke in the guest room too, as long as they closed the door.
Perry thanked him, but said that the guest room was hot, so he’d smoke out here by the pool as long as he could. Woody could tell that Perry regretted his earlier outburst.
Isolde slipped into the master bedroom and opened her closet door. From the top shelf she brought down an old tin cash box. Inside were loose photos of her grandparents, father, mother. And five photos of Fiona: Isolde looked at them now, imagining herself coming from that shower wrapped in a towel and taking the rabbit-ear antennae out of Fiona’s hands, saying, “No, little darling, those are not for you,” and Fiona giving them up, grumbling a little... Isolde imagined this scene every day before she went to sleep, but sometimes it came to her when she was driving or in school or cooking. The scene was so real to her. Isolde kissed a photo of Fiona and said, “Sleep tight.”
Woody found Isolde lying on the bed. She’d been remembering when she met Perry, at his bar. Those amazing blue eyes, that English accent. She’d gone after him... Woody said he needed her help again outside. She told him she was too tired to move. He said that Chip and Perry were so relaxed now they were even less useful than when they’d been strung out. The good news was that only three shutters remained to be put up.
Isolde told Woody that they had to talk. Woody felt his heart skip. He said, “Talk now?” Isolde was silent, then told him it could wait until the storm was over. He saw ashes falling all around him like dead snow. She was going to leave him, just as his first wife had. Woody thought that when it came to the human heart, he was so blind, he was an idiot. He’d been astounded when his first wife left him for a middle-aged veterinarian.
The noise of the wind grew louder and rain gusted against the house, ceased, and gusted again. The weatherman said that the western edge of Hurricane Ernestine was coming ashore in the Miami area. Perry brought in the folding chairs from the pool deck and Woody closed all the doors. Isolde and Woody split a bottle of Cabernet and everybody watched a film on video, though Chip and Perry had to take regular cigarette breaks, going into the guest bedroom and shutting the door, so they missed a lot. The film was La Nuit de Varennes, with Hanna Schygulla and Marcello Mastroianni. The characters are passengers in a coach driving through the French countryside during the revolution. Mastroianni plays the aged Casanova. He’s wonderfully gallant with Hanna Schygulla, but thinks, Too late. He has difficulty peeing and remarks afterwards to Hanna Schygulla that “God punishes us where we have sinned the most.”