Tracy began to cry.
Quickly, the American man told Carlo that he must hold the gun. The girl could fool them and put water in their fuel lines.
But as soon as he and Cammie were out of earshot, he said, “He’ll drink more now. He has to hold the gun. He won’t be able to do anything to her.”
“I won’t do it,” Cammie said. “What’s wrong with that man?”
“Don’t tamper with them,” the young man whispered. “Don’t do that.”
“I won’t do it unless he lets her put her shirt down.”
The young man barked at Carlo. He would take this chance because Ernesto was asleep and Carlo thought that the young man was wealthy and he knew that the young man knew the Big Man who gave orders to Chief. Carlo reluctantly nodded his head and turned away. Catching a look from Cammie, Olivia jerked down her blouse. Carlo asked for food. Tracy pulled back the covering on the casserole. Like a dog, Carlo leaned over to sniff at it. He knocked it from the table, and the glass broke into large pieces on the floor. After motioning for the young man to open more beans and tuna, Carlo made gestures that told Tracy to give him cigarettes.
Tracy’s mouth parched, instantly.
None of them smoked.
But then she remembered the cigar box Michel had kept in his cabin. A dim picture flickered. She had seen him, only once, with a black French cigarette in his hand. He had been about to leave the marina. “Olivia,” she asked urgently, “did Michel smoke?” Olivia nodded, her mouth slack. “Get his cigarettes now.” Olivia scampered, slipped and fell, but got up and was back in a moment. She lit a cigarette for Carlo and placed it between his lips.
“Bueno,” Carlo said. He spread his legs, the hair of his crotch springing through a rip in his canvas trousers. He pulled Olivia between his legs. The young man was about to begin opening the tins when Olivia, holding up one finger to show Carlo she would be gone only a moment, got up and ripped open one of the MREs with her teeth. She added water. Then she opened a fresh bottle of wine with the boat’s corkscrew and poured him a glass. Carlo smiled. Olivia lit one of the cigarettes for herself.
Tracy brought down the CD player, inserted a CD, and Emmylou Harris sang about a teenage wedding and how the old folks wished them well. Carlo rocked and moved his hips. Then the batteries in the player slowed, and Tracy rushed to load new ones. Carlo finished the cigarette and stepped on it with his bare foot. He began to eat. After a few bites of the MRE, Carlo said, “Shit.” He began throwing the open one and all of the others over the side. Tracy took the moment of his sightless rage to nudge a jug of water under the seat in the saloon with one noiseless foot.
The young man opened a can of tuna and two cans of beans and one of corn. Tracy emptied all of it into a bowl, and Carlo ate, the gun propped inside his elbow like a child. He threw the opened cans into the water.
“Do you really know where there is piping? If you do, maybe we can show them we’re filling the tank and I can talk them out of . . . this.”
“This. By ‘this,’ you mean murdering me. You are a coward. I know where it is,” Cammie said.
“Then get up.”
“I want a shirt. From my mother.” Tracy pulled off her shirt and gave it to Cammie. “And no one is steering this boat.”
The young man pointed to Tracy, and Tracy, reluctantly, looking back at her daughter, ascended the steps to take the wheel. Cammie said, “Follow me. It’s near the small toolbox, up there, where the life preservers are. Some of it is, that is. It’s all over the place. They use it for the plumbing and if they bust a water line.”
“What happened to the sail?” the young man asked. Cammie didn’t answer. She unwrapped a twisted tie from a loop of tubing and proceeded back to the tank. Carlo called for her to put on one of the lanterns so he could see her.
“I don’t have it. Go get it,” Cammie said. The young man looked frightened, indecisive. “What the fuck do you think I’m going to do? Jump in while you’re gone? There are sharks down there.” He went to bring back the lantern and switched it on. By the dim light, Cammie sucked until the fuel was primed, then began to pump by hand.
She stopped.
“Why did you quit?” asked the young man.
“It’ll work, but this isn’t long enough,” she said. “I have to find a longer piece. And when I do, and get it connected, this is going to take until morning, you piece of shit.” The young man looked as though she had struck him. No matter how ugly things were, this boy was nothing to worry about, Cammie deduced. He looked more distraught than she did; and he was the predator.
Cammie set about searching for more pieces of piping, lifting, unrolling them, and measuring them against the side of the sailboat until she found one that would stretch between the motors with room for motion. She could not decide if she should hurry or if hurrying would only hasten what the men would inevitably do to them. Buying time meant that Sharon Gleeman, or someone, could possibly show up and interrupt this gruesome show. But for days, no one had. Cammie finally decided that she would proceed with as much speed as she could, which wouldn’t be much, and chance that the men would need to leave or miss their connection. However, their leaving didn’t mean that she would not be raped and her mother killed. Those things would take only moments, and Ernesto had the impassive eyes of a grizzly. He was neither more nor less interested in them than he was in eating or taking a shit. He would not reflect, before or afterward, on her blamelessness or his blasphemy, any more than a grizzly would think about the morality of eating a fish. The only bargaining card Cammie had possessed over the matter of the fuel was already played. Whatever happened next was buried in a deck, facedown.
“Go tape it on,” she told the young man.
“They told me to watch you.”
“Are you their puppet?”
“I suppose,” he said. “But I’ll help you.”
“Yes, you help me. What a good idea.”
They pumped without speaking, trading hands when Cammie’s cramped, for half an hour.
“What happened to you? Did playing pirates in the bathtub get out of hand?” Cammie asked.
“Your mother loves you.”
“Are you suggesting that yours didn’t? And you do this because you didn’t get the right bike when you were nine?”
“No, I just said she loves you.”
“Are you suggesting that I don’t upset her by getting myself murdered? Your mother loves you, too, if she’s alive.”
“I know she does.”
“Even now, she would love you.”
“Yes,” said the American boy, deeply ashamed. “She would. Unless this went any further.”
They looked at each other, for a moment only a boy and a girl in a serious jam.
Then they heard a slithering plop as Carlo slipped off the seat and onto the floor of the saloon.
Olivia jumped away from him and said, “Valium.”
Day Twelve
Janis’s husband, Dave, went back to the office on Monday, eager as any war hero to show off his scar. The staples wouldn’t come out for a few days. The four-inch pucker that snaggled along above his hip looked particularly lurid. Jan hoped he didn’t have the impulse to whip up his white coat and show his patients while he tapped their fillings.
He kissed Janis at the door. “I’m sorry you had to miss your trip. I really am,” he said.
She shrugged.
“Don’t be mad, Jan. I told you to go. I wish you had.”
Relenting, she gave him a hug. “Go on. I have about sixteen loads of laundry to finish that no one did during your confinement, and I have to get a press release out for the Boo Bop,” she said. Slowly, now that the girls were in high school, Janis was resuming her work, one event at a time. For this gig, a masked Halloween ball to benefit the local blood bank, she was in charge of publicity and collecting local celebs. What fiery hoop did you not have to jump through to get a richie who’d drop six hundred bucks on a coat in an afternoon to write out a fifty
-dollar check to charity? Well, she had some friends among the local newshounds, a couple of athletes who’d grown up in Westbrook, too. In fact, she wanted to get the laundry in and jump around a bit on her little trampoline, maybe lift a few hand weights, in part to burn off the aggression.
The half of her who wasn’t a dutiful and sympathetic wife was still fuming. Dave would indeed have been just fine had she gone on the cruise. Men were such infants when it came to any sort of illness. He’d lain there, moaning and calling out for juice and broth . . . while her friends . . . While her friends . . .
Sunset drinks, she thought. Old stories. And water, water, water, and sun, her natural elements. She fantasized about them all, tipsy on tropical ambiance and pure sloth. No need to dress up for stuffy dinners, as she had in Hawaii at the dental convention. Just lying about like louts, as they had when they were seventeen. Janis let herself slip back to the nights when the four of them cruised from Pepe’s Taco Stand, past Holy Innocents Cemetery, around the corner to Miller’s Meadow, to shine their lights on whatever couple was parking there. They’d end up with their butts parked on picnic tables at Custard’s Last Stand (was political correctness unknown then?), their faces bathed in flamboyant green-and-pink neon. And school. Olivia with her uniform rolled over twice at the waist to make it shorter and her boots with the Ur stiletto heels. Tracy with a man’s baggy sweater (in the regulation navy blue) that hung down to her knees and was cuffed to her elbows. Holly with her black lipstick.
How perfectly awful they’d all looked. Like living trailers for some badly outdated horror movie.
And how cool it had been.
Janis figured her friends would be in Grenada by now, buying Spanish trinkets, handmade jewelry, and duty-free cologne.
The sluts.
She called Tracy’s phone. No answer. She’d wanted to leave a message, liberally peppered with four-letter words, but even the answering function didn’t kick in. As she gathered the sheets, she flipped on the Weather Channel. Tropical Storm Eve was making its way across the Caribbean and might make landfall in Texas as soon as the end of the week. But they were already on land, so it was fine. Janis made a mental note to check the channel again later. That had been their one worry, the remote chance of getting stuck crosswise of a hurricane.
Emma called down, asking for her double tank tops.
“In the dryer!” Janis called.
“I have to go out!” Emma cried. “Can’t anyone ever do anything around here except me? I already used up half of June, my only vacation, bringing Dad lemonade—”
“Look, they’ll be finished in ten minutes,” Janis said wearily. “Take Nubs out.”
“Oh, my God, I just said, can’t anyone do anything . . . Alexandra, Mom said to take the dog out!”
“I told you, not your sister. I’m going to bring Uncle Jim and Ted dinner tonight, so if you could make your bed, too, please. I’m making beef Stroganoff. Is that good for you, too?”
Emma flounced past, carefully donning her white and then her black tank. “You could walk the dog, Mom, I mean honestly. You’re jumping on the little thingie and not going anywhere.”
“It’s my little thingie, and it’s your dog, Emma Rose! Please, hurry up. . . . If that dog pisses on the rug again after I spent the whole last week with Spot Shot—”
“Oh, my God!” Emma huffed. “Nubs! Come on! Let’s go for a run. I can’t handle the stress. God.”
Janis took the laundry into the living room and sat down again. She called Dave’s office.
“Dave?” she asked when he picked up. “How do you feel?”
“Weak,” he said. “A half day will be enough. You were right. I shouldn’t have come back so soon. I feel like I could fall over.”
“Everybody does. It’s only been a week. It’s mostly the general anesthesia that’s the killer. Honey, I want you to do me a favor. Before you come home, call that guy at Channel Five you know, the one who’s the meteorologist?” Dave had put porcelain veneers on everybody from the local news anchors to several outfielders for the White Sox. Until they grew old enough to be embarrassed by it, he would arrange for the girls to meet his famous patients at car shows and the opening of car dealerships.
“What’s up?” Dave asked.
“I’m worried about Tropical Storm Eve. I’m worried about where Tracy and the girls are.”
“The girls,” Dave said.
“What do you call the dental hygienists, David?”
“Uh, sorry,” he said.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Janis went on. “But I’m surprised Tracy hasn’t called me. I’d like to know what the status of the storm is in the Caribbean. Grenada is the Caribbean proper, right? Not the Atlantic?”
“I almost failed geography. Ask Emma.”
“Well, your friend, he could just make a call.”
“I’ll do it right away. Next call I make,” Dave said. “Second thought, don’t tell Em and Alex, though. Don’t scare them. It’s probably nothing. Don’t you think? But let’s put your mind at ease. I’ll call right away.”
He rang Janis back twenty minutes later. “There’s no weather out there, Jan. So rest easy.”
Janis began to jog on her trampoline and tried to relax. But she could no more relax than cause the hands on the kitchen clock to spin forward until Tracy was at her kitchen table, drinking coffee and nagging Janis to get a treadmill—that cheesy little thing was going to ruin her knees.
Holly knew it had to be close to midnight. She had no way of measuring time, but the small, battery-operated lantern had begun to dim.
Lying on her stomach, trying with all her strength to ignore the shrieking of her leg and focus her efforts, she used the claw hammer alone until the hasp of the lock broke entirely away. But the lock was still fast. If she used something else, someone on deck would hear the pounding and know there was another person on the boat. With a long nail, she poked at the guts of the lock, to no avail. She heard no clicks, no tumblers sliding or shifting.
But then she heard music.
She raised her head.
What was this? The music was loud. The CD player was battery operated. Why were they playing country tunes? If it was a signal to her, she couldn’t imagine what it was. Through the crack under the door, she had watched as Olivia’s breasts were roughly flipped out of her bra by the man with the grimy hands and had seen Olivia cringe. She didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that Cammie was next. Holly decided to believe that the music was intended to cover up the sounds of her maneuvering. She reached behind her into Lenny’s tool kit and found the smaller pry bar. With the corner of one edge of the tip inserted into the lock, she swung her arm back as far as the limited space would allow and bashed at the lock. Nothing happened. She hit it again. The lock seemed to loosen slightly in its metal wall.
Steadily, Holly pounded and pounded, harder, surer, and with greater abandon. Emmylou Harris sang of breaking her heart and making believe.
“I thought you said you didn’t have anything like that,” the young man called, accusing Olivia.
“I was thinking of poison, and then when I thought of this, he wouldn’t let me get off his lap,” she said, shrugging.
“How did you get it, then?” Cammie called to her.
“I sent your mother,” Olivia answered.
“Will he wake up?” Cammie asked the young man, referring to Ernesto.
“Probably not, but if I were you, I would ask your mother to put some of her pills in the whiskey just in case.”
“She’s not my mother.”
“I didn’t mean the little woman. The tall woman, your mother.”
“Fuck you,” Cammie said.
“Yes,” said the young man.
“Where are you from?” she asked.
“New York. The Hudson River Valley.”
“Long way from home.”
“We both are.”
“My hand is tired again. You pump,” Cammie said, rubbing her palms.
“I’m going to tell my mom about the pills.”
While the young man pumped the bulb, Tracy slipped down from the cockpit and forced open Olivia’s cloisonné box, dropped three Valium into Ernesto’s glass, then covered it with three fingers of whiskey. She shook the box.
The pills were all but gone.
The whiskey was going down.
“Who is that boy?” Tracy asked.
“Mom, take the one VHF radio up with you and keep calling. Keep calling for anyone.”
“No, you do that,” Tracy said. “If he wakes up, Olivia is here.”
“I’ll give him more booze,” Olivia assured her.
Ernesto groaned, and his mouth lolled open. Then he sat up, keen as a serpent. “¿Se acabó?” he roared at the young man, his head weaving in slow, metronomic sweeps, until it fell again to the tabletop. With difficulty, Ernesto sat up again.
The young man shook his head. He pointed at the small bulb of the hand pump. Olivia held out a black cigarette and lit it. She sat down and lit a cigarette, too, and crossed her legs. She poured herself a glass of wine and put it to her lips. Ernesto drank a glass of whiskey, a huge draft, and shook his jowls, setting it down long enough for Tracy to slip another pill into her hand. She watched anxiously to see if it would dissolve before Ernesto drank again. Olivia threw back her head as if she were swallowing. She stood up and allowed the knot on the sarong she wore around her waist to seem to slip, then hastily covered herself again. Ernesto winked at Olivia. She regarded his glass. The pill was a tiny wafer, hardly visible in the golden liquor.
But they were down to the remnants of one bottle of whiskey and a single slender bottle of wine. Who could be awake after taking thirty milligrams of Valium?
Was Holly dead? Tracy thought. A part of her prayed that Holly was still wisely hiding. She must have heard this—the rough voices, the weeping, the shouts, and the music. She would have come running to help. Nothing would have stopped her. Another part of her prayed that Holly was dead, that she had died in her sleep. For the rest of their deaths would be much worse. And unless she could reach this strange, clean, broken young man, they would also be prolonged.