Gone Bamboo

  "God!" said Cheryl. "Everybody's horny today."

  Henry's suit looked like sharkskin, sharp edges at the shoulders, thin lapels, a slim metallic-blue tie. Instead of the usual chunky steel Rolex, he wore a paper-thin platinum Piaget on a narrow alligator-skin band, and the shoes, though ancient, looked expensive and well cared for. In full view of the appalled diners, Henry ran his hands over Madame Bigard's chunky thighs and into her armpits. Flushed with excitement, she held up a hand for a waiter and called for digestifs for the table.

  "The kitchen is still open, Henri, you bad boy . . . cochon," she said. "Mange, j'insiste."

  "Non, Mimi," said Henry, leaning around to peck first Cheryl, then Frances on the cheek. "Just cognac."

  When Henry's lips approached Frances, she turned her face to him and fastened her teeth on his lower lip, holding it for a full two seconds.

  "Gawd!" said Cheryl, fanning herself with her napkin. "You look great!"

  "Merci bien, mademoiselle," said Henry, charmingly. "And may I say you look pretty damned ravishing yourself." He looked perfectly at ease, leaning back in his chair, one arm slung across the back of Cheryl's chair, the other continuing to massage Madame Bigard's neck.

  Tommy, unhappy with the indisputable fact that he was no longer the center of attention, ordered a double espresso, determined to sober up.

  Cheryl accepted a creme de menthe from an insistent Madame Bigard, following Frances's example.

  Madame Bigard was brought a snifter of cognac with Henry's, the two of them clicking glasses and exchanging chin-chins.

  "How was your trip?" inquired Cheryl, still gaping at Henry's suit.

  "Fine, fine," said Henry, exchanging a conspiratorial glance with Frances that no one at the table could miss. "Had the wind the whole way back."

  A waiter arrived with a plate of petits fours, and Madame Bigard forced Henry to eat one, feeding him by hand, Tommy getting the idea now that this was a relationship that went back a few years - probably a lot of years. Henry looked so goddamn at ease in his sharkskin suit, the imposing-looking Frenchwoman wriggling on his lap, the whole floor staff of La Case d'Or hovering attentively while other customers paid their checks and slunk away in a huff.

  "Henri knew my hoosband," said Madame Bigard, reading Tommy's mind. It seemed everybody was doing that tonight. "My hoosband . . . a very bad man." She laughed. "Like Henri . . .

  "Are you a bad man too, Tommy?" she asked. "I think you must be."

  "Tommy's a very nice man," said Frances, cutting him to the bone, then adding, "but he's a little bit bad, I think." She gave Tommy a piercing, flirtatious look that made his heart race. Across the table, Cheryl looked almost sorry for him.

  "Do you know each other from here?" she asked, eyes on Henry.

  "Non. Marseille," said Madame Bigard. "Henri, my hoosband, they are friends . . . from business. Restaurant business. You see?" She gestured around the room. "When my hoosband die . . . Henri helped me."

  "What happened?" asked Tommy, feeling mischievous, sensing an uncomfortable subject, wanting Henry to sweat a little for a change.

  "He was shot," said Madame Bigard, without skipping a beat. "Corsican," she pronounced, as if that explained everything. "They are all either gangsters or policemen. N'est-ce pas?"

  Tommy was pleased to see Henry blushing.

  35

  Kevin was happy. Little Petey's mysterious disappearance had allowed him an undisturbed week of lolling around in the sun. Whether Little Petey was at this moment back in the City, burning pictures of saints in his hand and swearing omerta, or festering in a car trunk somewhere, or simply oiling up poolside at the casino, it made no difference to him. He was happy for the extra time with Violetta, who, to his delight, had actually begun to return his affection.

  The Dominicans didn't mind the time off either. Kevin had advanced them some money to run off and amuse themselves, and though they hadn't run very far (he could hear them now, downstairs at Ruben's bar, arguing over who among them was the bigger maricon), they had been content to spend their days drinking and whoring with only a minimal discharge of firearms.

  Kevin unwrapped the stuffed panda he'd bought for Violetta at the Dawn Beach gift shop and propped it up on the pillow for her to find when she returned from the shower. He slipped on a new white, short-sleeved, button-down shirt, pleased with how tan it made him look in the mirror. He fussed with his hair for a while, trying to comb it over the bald parts, then giving up, thinking it was possible, just possible, she could love him anyway.

  He certainly hoped so. Though lulled into occasional forgetfulness by the week off, his mind kept returning to the money he'd get when he finished the job. Enough to stay on this island forever. The day before he'd seen a lot for sale, a ways down the dirt road, and Kevin, experienced in construction, imagined himself building a small cottage, with maybe a garden, having a whole slew of multihued, barefooted children, the rest of his life spent dreaming in the sun, drinking milk stout (similar enough to Guinness), and making love to Violetta. Fifteen thousand could go a long way down here. If he needed more, later, he could work construction - they were always putting up hotels and condominiums.

  Kevin put on cotton slacks and huarachis and waited for Violetta to come out of the bathroom.

  She wore the Indonesian wrap he'd bought her that afternoon, and though she still looked shyly down at the floor, he was sure she must have liked it - it looked so damn good on her; she looked like the woman in those Bob Hope, Bing Crosby films what was her name? Her long black hair shone under the single naked bulb, and he was pleased to see that she wore the necklace. When she saw the stuffed panda, the corners of her mouth rising, her eyes widening with pleasure, Kevin wanted to shout with joy. He looked forward to dinner like a kid on his first date. Maybe tonight she'd talk to him.

  The Wednesday meetings of Alcoholics Absolutely Always were held at the Surf Club in Grand Case. All the Dinghy Dock regulars, Henry and Frances included, were charter members, and most proudly sported their AAA T-shirts, given out at the first meeting a year ago. Each member, at the beginning of meetings, would fork over twenty bucks to the club's secretary-treasurer; he, in turn, would pay the cooperating bar owners at the Surf Club, Cha Cba Cha, and Jimbo's. Members were then allowed one hour of unrestricted drinking at each establishment.

  On this Wednesday, the Surf Club had laid on music, a trio of French kids playing Bob Marley covers. They had set up a tent next to the rear beach deck for the musicians, and the place was packed with dancing people. The harder core AAA members, identifiable by their shirts, or in some cases by reputation, were staked out at the bar, three deep, gulping down shakers of margaritas and tall frosted glasses of Long Island iced teas. The more sensible members and most nonmembers (paying customers) stuck with beer, distributed at high speed by two hardworking part-time bartenders who labored over an ice chest, popping bottle caps and handing out Foster's and Red Stripes and Heinekens to the heaving mob.

  Though it was early in the evening, things were already degenerating into the usual spectacle of public lewdness, bad behavior, and profligate urination. A gnarled tamarind tree that grew from the center of the Surf Club's deck was already filling up with brassieres. According to accepted custom, women would tear their bras off in full view of the chanting crowd and try to hurl them as high into the branches as possible. The brassieres would then stay in the tree until they blew away or fell apart.

  Aussie windsurfers smoked spliffs with ex-ski bums from Colorado under the sea grape tree. Irish carpenters and machinists went shot for shot with South African army deserters, retired firemen from New Jersey, tax evaders from New York, off-duty French paratroopers from the barracks in Marigot; all arm-wrestled, sang along, argued, groped, boasted, bitched, and generally raised hell around crowded wooden tables, saying things that no one would remember in the morning.,

  Henry and Frances were listening to Day Tripper's theory that repressed farts were the direct cause of cellulite. Da
y Tripper's girl-friend, Janet the Planet, whose own crenulated thighs had no doubt inspired his theory, lay facedown in a plate of chicken wings nearby, draped in a French tricolor after having thrown not only her brassiere but every other one of her garments into the tamarind tree.

  "It's the mee-thane," insisted Day Tripper, barely understandable after countless drinks. "Great bloody enormous fucking air pockets . . . 's why she's such a cow . . . 's it . . . Mee-thane."

  "You're a pig," said Frances, not bothering to show the AAA's president for life and chief operating officer the respect a person of his high office would ordinarily expect.

  "I'm off," he said, slobbering beer into his beard. "I'm going to Cha Cha Cha." Most nights, this pronouncement would cause the whole AAA mob to surge onto the street, forming a loud and unruly procession to the next bar. But people were enjoying themselves too much, the music was loud. In a few minutes, when the Surf Club reverted to cash bar, most people would be too whacked to care. Day Tripper left alone; Henry and Frances were relieved by his exit.

  In the tapas garden, Kevin struggled to make sense of the menu while Violetta smiled at him from across the table and a French waiter hovered at his elbow. The bartenders, bracing for the onslaught from the AAA, hurried to load ice buckets with beers, shove rented Portosans into place, and close off the main dining rooms.

  "I'll have one a' these . . . accras, then," said Kevin. "Howzat, Vi? Accras. Bueno? And gimme one a' these satays and a quesadilla, whatever that is." The waiter jotted all this down and skipped off to the kitchen without comment.

  "Superior fuck," muttered Kevin. "Thinks he's too pretty for the home team." He sipped his whiskey and calmed himself by admiring Violetta in her new Indonesian wrap. Brazilian samba issued from hidden speakers somewhere, and tall, bronzed French girls in cutoffs so short you'd need forceps to remove them chatted amiably with shorter, paler men in pleated slacks and neatly pressed button-down shirts. It was a young crowd, mostly French, but quiet compared with the place down the block, where Kevin could hear screams and shouts, breaking glass and live music.

  ((Merde!" said their waiter, as he put the plates down at their table. He'd just caught sight of Day Tripper at the front entrance, weaving through a group of tourists on a beeline for the bar. The waiter turned and called out a warning to the bartender, "Ils sont arrivés!"

  Day Tripper staggered into the garden, shouting hellos to friends real and imagined. "Margarita," he was calling, reaching for his fly at the same time. "Gotta have a piss first." He looked around for the Portosans; then, like a bad dream, Kevin saw his lunatic gaze fasten on Violetta, and Day Tripper changed trajectory and came toward their table, an out-of-control cruise missile with a leering, idiotic grin on his face.

  "'S my girlie," he said, resting a tattooed arm on Violetta's shoulder and sending a shock wave through Kevin's brain. Violetta looked up at Kevin like a trapped deer. "My favorite little girlie," slobbered Day Tripper. "Give us a kiss."

  Noticing that Kevin was standing up, and, even in his drunken condition, seeing that those thick, muscular arms could cause him serious pain, Day Tripper sounded a belated retreat. "Sorry . . . sorry, Dad. Didn't see she was on duty. I got it, got it . . . got it. Good for you. Cheers." He offered a conciliatory handshake to Kevin, who was still considering whether he was going to plunge his fork into Day Tripper's thorax or simply grind his glass into the man's face. Kevin slapped his hand away as Day Tripper dug his grave deeper. "She's bloody good, mate . . . Cheers, really . . . Good bang for the buck, right? Right!"

  The waiter, seeing how Kevin's face was lighting up, the veins in his neck throbbing like hungry boa constrictors, stepped between them and pushed Day Tripper toward the exit. "Non, non, non," he said. "Pas ce soir. You bozzer ze customers." A bartender joined him, making sure that Day Tripper was pointed toward Jimbo's down the street and gave him a gentle shove.

  Day Tripper, torn between his desperate need to piss and his natural instinct for belligerence, chose to follow nature's call and tottered on a serpentine path to the beach.

  Kevin, his evening ruined, felt a gesture was called for. He had been humiliated by this rotten Brit; he could barely bring himself to look Violetta in the eyes. Leaving her at the table with a casual smile, he strolled back to the rear beer garden, where the Portosans were. But he didn't use one. Instead, he kept walking, disappearing into the dark backyards of Grand Case. He ducked under clothes-lines, kicked a few chickens out of his way as he doubled around, circumventing the restaurant. He almost tripped over a barbecue grill, avoided a stray dog, and finally made it back to the street, darting unseen across the narrow lit space between shadows to catch up to Day Tripper. His rage building, he opened and closed his hands, eager to wrap them around his tormentor.

  When he found him, Day Tripper was standing, facing the bay, still pissing over the seawall. He was singing, "I'm a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my bollocks, and here is my spout."

  Kevin walked up behind him and, without even bothering to look around, clamped one hand on top of Day Tripper's head with near concussive force. He grabbed a handful of Day Tripper's hair between his fingers, clapped his other hand across his chin and mouth, and, with a single, swift, and terrible jerk, snapped the man's neck. A thin stream of urine continued down Day Tripper's pants leg as Kevin picked him up by the belt and hurled him headlong over the seawall.

  There was a wet slap below as the body hit the beach, and Kevin felt immediately better. As he walked back to the tapas garden, he realized that that teapot song was still with him. Maybe later he'd sing it to Violetta. After he cleaned up the lyrics a bit.

  Henry and Frances, along with a few of the more well-behaved AAA members, eventually made it to the tapas garden. They had no reason to notice Kevin, nor he them. They had a quick drink at the bar, wolfed down a couple of quesadillas, and soon left for Jimbo's. After nachos and a few shots of tequila, they had a taxi drive them back to the Oyster Pond, taking along Janet the Planet, who seemed to have lost her ride.

  The official investigation into the death of Reginald Joseph Stang, aka Day Tripper, of Manchester, England, was pretty much concluded moments after the discovery of the body.

  That this notorious drunk, brawler, braggart, and professional urinator had been found dead at the foot of the seawall was hardly an unforeseeable consequence of a less than laudable life. No one, not even his friends, was surprised. Some said it was a long time coming. While taking a leak, the inebriated Day Tripper had simply toppled off the wall and broken his stupid neck. He was bundled onto a gurney and covered with a sheet without anyone for a second considering the possibility of foul play. And, even had the French police suspected as much, it would have mattered little. Most were damned glad to be rid of the loathsome foreigner. They were all too accustomed to answering calls complaining of the late Mr Stang's destructive antics. Day Tripper was gone. That was all that mattered.

  Henry and Frances read about it the next day in the Chronicle.

  "You know," Frances said, "I'm trying to think of one good thing to remember him by . . . and I can't. Is that bad?"

  "Fuck him," said Henry. "Didn't like him then. Don't miss him now. Rest in piss."

  "Still . . . I feel kind of bad. Janet . . . you know."

  "Janet is way better off without that turd. And Saint Martin's drinking establishments and adjoining properties, they smell better already. What do they call it? A communal sigh of relief. Are we going to the wake? It's inevitable."

  "Ask me after I get over this hangover . . . before I start planning on another."

  36

  Things to Do Today," wrote Kevin on his yellow notepad. Next to the number one, he wrote, "Pay More Attention to Personal Hygeene."

  When he'd rolled into bed the night before, he'd caught Violetta in the mirror wrinkling her nose at him. This morning, with her asleep in the ratty, upstairs room at La Ronda, Kevin sniffed his own armpits and could tell she'd had reason for offense. It was all so new
, what was happening to him. Giving a shit about somebody else. That was new. Suntan. New. He was thinner. All the swimming and the work on the vans - that was something too. Black. Violetta, after all, was black. That was definitely new. By the time he'd got it settled in his mind that, yes, no question about it, she was black, he was already in love with her, and it was too late to worry about how improbable such a thing was. Kevin, after all, had spent most of his life referring to anybody who wasn't as white as he'd been as a nigger. Indians, Puerto Ricans, even Italians, the darker ones - they'd all been "niggers."

  Maybe he wasn't going to go out and join the NAACP, but something was happening to him. His head was changing. Things were looking different now. He would need this list to keep track of the changes. The things he was going to do. His plan for this newer, better life.

  He couldn't think of item number two yet, so he decided to take care of the first thing on the list. After his shower, maybe something would occur to him. He grabbed a towel and walked down the hall to the communal bathroom.

  When he opened the door, Paulie Brown was sitting on the toilet, reading a year-old copy of Time.

  "There you are," said Paulie. "I din't wanna wake you."

  "Jaysuss," said Kevin, not expecting this. "What happened the other fella?"

  "Little Petey?" said Paulie, unembarrassed to be caught on the bowl. "You . . . you go ahead there, you gotta shower, I'll be done in a minute . . . Yeah. Little Petey? Well, we gotta talk about that . . . Lemme get through here on the crapper, and I'll see you downstairs there at the bar. I can't believe this shithole. A real fuckin' tropical paradise he puts you in. I don't blame you it was you that greased him." He looked around. "Fuck! No paper."

  A squeaky-clean Kevin joined Paulie at the empty bar. In the rear kitchen area, some of the whores were feeding their children breakfast, watching the Spanish soap operas on TV, and gossiping.