Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 03 - Insatiable (12 page)

“For the woman who took out Kurt,” she leaned back in her chair, “anything.”

I smiled, now was not the time to come clean that I’d actually missed my chance to kill that fucktard. “That’s nice to hear.” I put my elbows on her desk and she shifted toward me. “This is Ana Maria,” I said, nodding my head in Ana’s direction. “Her parents just murdered her cousin.” Easy maintained eye contact. “They’re not very nice people, but they are powerful.
 
They hired a guy named Blane to shoot Alejandro in front of Ana Maria and me.”

“Why?”

“He was trying to change things.”

“That’s a dangerous hobby.”

“One I’ve decided to get into.”

“How dangerous are we talking here?”

“If you have to ask, you shouldn’t do it.” Easy leaned back. She chewed on the inside of her lip. I waited for an answer. We all sat there while Easy Robbins thought. The hum of the fluorescent light, the clicking of the fan, filled the space. My chair wheezed when I repositioned myself.

Easy opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a bottle of rum followed by two shot glasses. She looked over at Ana Maria and brought out a third. “I like to think that you did me a favor,” Easy said, unscrewing the top of her bottle. She poured the first shot, without lifting the bottle, the second, and as the third filled she said, “I’d be happy to do one for you.” She smiled. The fan blew strands of her sandy brown hair around her face. “What do you need?”

“A ride.”

Easy raised her eyebrows. “Where we going?”

“St. Thomas.” Easy put a shot in front of me, moved one over to Ana and then raised her own. She looked at me to say something. I raised my glass. “To new friends.”

Easy smiled. “And old enemies.”

We all brought our glasses to the center of the desk, clicked them together and then poured the rum down our throats.

FAST TIMES

With a deafening roar Easy Robbins’s plane lifted off into the sky. The sun glinted against the windshield and my stomach lurched. The sea was suddenly far below us. The sky seemed like a dome fitted to the flat platter of the earth. I had the sensation that I was in a snow globe.

I turned to check on Blue and Ana Maria. Blue looked out the window with his ears perked and his tail twitching. Ana Maria’s hand was pressed against the glass of her window. She looked down at the water, her mouth a tight line.

To take my mind off the fact that we were floating thousands of feet above the earth, I prepared myself for the next meeting. Was it possible that Maude Flemington was going to be as willing as Easy Robbins to help me? I thought back over her profile. Her picture showed a small black woman smiling at the camera, a disembodied hand hung over her shoulder and part of her hair was also cropped. Was it possible that the nicest photo Maude Flemington had of herself was taken while embraced by someone she felt the need to cut out?

I looked over at Easy. She was wearing aviator shades and a calm expression. I saw her eyes behind the sunglasses switch from looking at the horizon down to her instruments and then back to the world below. “How long?” I asked into the microphone that curled in front of my face.

“About an hour left,” Easy told me.

“You know a Maude Flemington?” I asked.

Easy didn’t answer right away. She looked over at me for just a second and then back to the sky. Easy nodded curtly.

“Yeah?”

Easy took a deep breath. She cleared her throat.
 
“We used to date,” Easy said.

I laughed. Easy didn’t think it was funny. “Sorry. Sorry,” I said, gaining control. “For a second I thought you were gonna tell me something like she wouldn’t help me or she was dead or something.”

Easy looked over at me. “You’re going to ask her for help?”

I nodded. “I want to stay on an island for awhile. I need a base camp for at least a week and I can’t do that without a little help from authorities.” Easy turned back to the sea. “Do you think she’ll help me?”

Easy didn’t answer for a minute and the butterflies in my stomach started their steady circling again. The left wing dipped toward the earth and we veered in its direction. In the distance a dark green mound of land rose out of the crystal water. “I guess she might,” Easy said.

“Why wouldn’t she?” I asked.

Easy shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s just…” The sentence hung in the air, Easy’s voice was replaced by the incessant hum of the propellers.

“What?” Easy shrugged again. “When did you guys break up?” I asked.

“Look,” Easy sounded suddenly angry, “she’s kind of a coward. Actually she’s a big coward. We broke up because she wouldn’t admit to anyone that I was more than a friend. You know? And that just sucks. How are we supposed to build a relationship if she won’t even tell her friends, let alone her family, that I’m her girlfriend?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Yeah, well. We’ll see what she’s really made of.”

“She wouldn’t turn us in would she?”

“I don’t know.”

An island was right under us now. It looked like the head of a broccoli. It was small and very soon it was behind us. We spent the rest of the flight with just the sound of the engines.

Landing in St. Thomas harbor was an exceptional experience. It was my first time in a seaplane and it brought my heart into my throat to head toward the water with the purpose of landing on it. But Easy was a subtle pilot and despite the voice screaming in my head that we’d sink, crash, light on fire, die horribly, we didn’t do any of those things. We landed lightly on the surface of the sea and motored by fishing boats and giant cruise ships to dock in a hangar.

I climbed out of the plane, feeling a little unsteady. Blue and Ana Maria joined me on the dock and we all looked around. The shore was lined with warehouses. To our left loomed a huge cruise ship.

“That thing is enormous,” Ana Maria said.

“It looks even bigger next to Frenchtown,” Easy replied.

“Frenchtown?”

“This neighborhood is called Frenchtown. Behind these industrial buildings are small residences that have been in the same family for generations. It’s also one of the main restaurant districts on the island.”

“Where’s Maude?” I asked. Easy rolled her head in the direction of a small rectangular structure labeled Immigration and Customs. “Do you want to come with me?”

“I think it’d be best if you went alone.”

“All right.” Blue followed me as I crossed to the building that held a bit of my fate in its four walls. I lifted my chin and held my head high as I crossed the empty space. Talking to Easy was one thing. It was unlikely she would turn me in, it wasn’t her job and she didn’t seem the type to help out the law. Maude, on the other hand, worked for the government. It was possible that beyond refusing to help, Maude would report me to authorities. That thought gave me a moment of pause and my foot hung in the air refusing to take a step. I forced myself to keep walking. It was a risk but so was crossing a street, flying in a plane, and drinking as heavily as I enjoyed. Life wouldn’t be much without risks.

Blue sat next to me and I knocked. A moment of listening to shuffling on the other side of the door followed by a “just a minute” passed before Maude and I were face to face.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi,” I held out my hand and she shook it.

“May we come inside?”

Maude looked down at Blue. “OK.”

Inside I slid my sunglasses up onto my forehead taking my bangs with them. Maude looked at my scars and then away not wanting to be rude.

The small office was tidy. A poster reading “Hang in there” illustrated by a big-eyed kitten swinging from a string hung above her chair. I sat down across from her white desk. Blue sat next to me, his snout hovering above the desk by about an inch. The desk had two piles of paper on it. One labeled in, the other out. A calendar with a daily affirmation sat next to a clock that ticked away the seconds. Maude’s pens were all the same and they lived in a mug at the top of her desk. A window that looked out onto the marina was lined with healthy houseplants all leaning toward the sun.

“Maude, my name is Sydney Rye.”

“Nice to meet you, how can I help?”

“I’m going to ask you a big favor. You, of course, have the option to refuse but I hope that you won’t.”

She nodded, waiting for me to continue. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun at the back of her head. The round collar of her white blouse was freshly starched. I looked down to the pin on her breast of a fish that looked a like the one on the bumpers of trucks for Jesus. I faltered for a second wondering if this was a different Maude. I just couldn’t see anyone loving kittens, doilies, Jesus and me.

“You probably don’t recognize me.”

“I don’t think we’ve met,” she said in a mild West Indian accent.

“No, we haven’t, but you belong to a site about Joy Humbolt.”

Suspicion crept into her eyes. “I don’t see-”

“Look at me again, Maude,” I said, leaning toward her.

“You are-” her voice faltered.

“Yes. I was.”

“My God.”

She leaned back in her chair and stared at me.

“I need to stay on St. Thomas for a little while, about a week, maybe more. I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. I don’t want any record that I was ever here. Do you understand?”

She nodded her head and then asked, “Are you in trouble?”

I smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Always. Can you help me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s complicated and I could lose my job.” She looked up but didn’t make eye contact. She looked out the window, her brow furrowed in thought. “I guess I could make up names for you or I could-” she stopped speaking but turning away from the window continued. “I could just forget I ever saw you.”

I looked out the window and saw Easy by her plane with Ana Maria. They were unloading our luggage. Ana said something and Easy laughed. When I turned back to Maude she was looking at me. “Can I rent a room without a passport or any paperwork from you?”

“You’ll need ID but that is all.” Maude wanted to help me. I could tell from the deep wrinkle in her forehead that she was hiding in this office. That deep down inside she didn’t want to be wearing a skirt that cut her off at the calves. That the poster of the kitten drove her as nuts as it was driving me. The affirmation for the day suggested taking a deep breath and smiling. I think Maude wanted to do something else.

I stood up. “I guess I’m all set then. I didn’t realize it was this easy.”

“Yes,” Maude smiled. “I will forget I ever saw any of you.” She stood up and we shook hands. I walked out of the small office and she followed. Easy was watching us. She tried to lean casually against the plane’s wing but didn’t quite pull it off. Maude looked over at her and some of the color drained from her cheeks. “Easy’s helping, too.”

“Yeah.”

“Did she tell you I would?”

“Nah, I found you myself. I thought I could depend on you.” She looked up at me and smiled. Maude had a high brow and large brown eyes with long, thick lashes. Her nose was wide and set above thick lips. Her teeth were white and her smile infectious.

Easy found us a hotel in Frenchtown. The owners, an American couple originally from Philadelphia, were more than happy to let us stay. They thought it was really sweet I was taking my new half-sister on a vacation to get to know her. What with our parents getting married, we should bond. They thought Blue was a real treat and didn’t even bother to ask for his paperwork. I used my Melanie Franks ID, paid in cash and everyone was happy. Especially me when I saw that they were writing my information down in a giant notebook rather than a computer.

I sat on the balcony of our room watching the waves slap against the flood wall in front of the hotel and sipped on a beer. Ana Maria was showering and Blue snored happily on one of the single beds. The beer was cold, the sun was warm, and I was feeling pretty great about myself, my plan, and the future.

Easy went out to buy a laptop from one of the duty free shops on Main Street. The hotel had free wireless internet and I was looking forward to making more contacts, to recruiting more soldiers.

I heard the shower turn off and moments later Ana joined me on the deck wrapped in a white terry cloth robe. Using a towel to dry her hair she asked, “You hungry?”

“I could eat.”

“I’ll order up some food.”

“Get a burger for Blue.”

Blue’s head popped up at the sound of his name. He stretched out on the bed, extending all his limbs, then with a slight shudder relaxed and closed his eyes again. Ana walked back into the room and I returned my gaze to the sea. A small island, which looked uninhabited, faced the hotel. Every time a boat passed, its wake would send sprays of foam up the seawall.

A knock on the door pulled me away from the view. I passed Ana. She was sitting on the bed next to Blue petting one of his ears. She held the phone with her other hand. “And one rare burger. Really rare,” she said. I opened the door to Easy. She was carrying a single shopping bag.

Once the food was ordered we all gathered around the computer. Ana’s face glowed blue as she leaned over the screen. “Here we go,” she said. “I’ve got her email and her phone number how do you want to do this?”