Gone Bamboo (9 page)

They swam on, the water grew shallow, and soon Tommy could stand on the soft, swaying sea grass. A few moments later, they were sitting side by side, Henry storing the snorkel gear on a dry rock by the water's edge.

"Onwards and upwards," said Henry. "This way."

Tommy followed, able to walk upright at first, using his hands occasionally for support. Henry was up over the first pile of black rock very quickly. From there, leaping like a mountain goat, he picked out the most direct route to the top. They reached an almost vertical incline, and Henry just went straight up - there were plenty of moss-covered ledges and pits in the rock face where one could grab hold, so Tommy labored, sweating, after him. At first, each new handhold led fairly easily to another, but soon it became more difficult to keep up with the older man. When Tommy stopped and looked down, he was horrified at how high they were. Below, on the sailboat, he saw Frances and Cheryl watching him through binoculars. Cheryl waved, and then they were whistling and cheering. Tommy was suddenly reminded that he was still buck naked.

He'd fallen behind. Now painfully aware of how far he had to fall if he lost his grip, he began to pick his way up more carefully. He didn't know how he was ever going to get down. His knees felt trembly and uncertain, and little bits of pebble and dirt began to roll past his head as Henry hoisted himself over yet another ledge and waited for him to catch up.

When they were standing side by side under an outcropping of scrub-covered rock, the wind began to pick up. They were above the protective barrier of grassy bluff now. Tommy could see the ocean and feel the salty gusts coming off it. He wanted to go back.

"I'll help you over this part," said Henry. "It's a little tricky here." His back to the wall, legs splayed, he held his hands together to give Tommy a boost. When Tommy put his right foot in Henry's hands, he heaved him easily up and over the scrubby projection overhead. A mass of twigs and spongy vegetation in his face, Tommy grabbed frantically with both hands for somewhere to hold on.

There was a terrifying, inhuman screech, and a barely apprehended flash of white - the beating of wings, Tommy thought as he felt himself falling backward.

He plummeted straight down. For a long, a very long second, he was free from the earth, death an absolute certainty.

Then he felt himself grabbed out of the sky. Henry's arm was around him, and in the next second he felt himself slapped against the rock face like a stolen pass. He was alive. And Henry had saved his life.

"Almost lost you there, bro'," said Henry.

"Wha . . . what
was
that?" gibbered Tommy. "That
noise?"

"Baby boobie," said Henry, calm and smiling like it was only laundry he'd just saved from a two-hundred-foot fall onto the coral, the deep creases around his eyes indicating amusement. "Must have disturbed a nest. Good thing mama boobie wasn't around. Now she
really
would have caused a racket. Anyway . . . No problem, mon. We can go around."

"I don't know," said Tommy, his legs Jell-O now.

"Not to worry," said Henry, moving laterally along the ledge. "It's not bad from here. Besides," he said casually, "you really don't want to try to go down this way. The other side is easier. We could have come up that way, but this way is more fun."

"Fun," said Tommy.

They moved around the rock horizontally until they were over the sea. Waves rolled over sharp coral beneath them, the wind stronger than ever. Tommy fought to regain control of his shaking limbs, not wanting to show fear but desperate to get back to the safety of the boat. Finally reaching a more gradual incline, Henry led him up to one last heap of boulders, made a few perilous hops, and was quickly at the top. Tommy, his knuckles and knees scraped and bleeding, reached up, took hold of Henry's proffered ankle, and was pulled to the bald, black peak. Exhausted, he sat down across from Henry and took his first breathless look around.

"Nice," he said. "Nice view."

He was grateful to be alive. Leaning into the wind, the sweat drying at his hairline, he looked at the endless body of water below them. The sailboat in the lagoon looked like a bathtub toy, and on one side he could see Saint Martin on the horizon, on the other, Saint Barts.

"Hey, Tommy," joked Henry, squatting on his haunches, "I can see your house from here." He raised the camera and snapped off a few shots of cowed Tommy on the peak.

"What's that one?" asked Tommy, doing his best to show interest in something other than clinging to life. He pointed to a shadowy silhouette in the distant sea, afraid to remove his hand from the rock for more than a second.

"Oh, that's Saba," said Henry. "It's a volcano." He identified the surrounding islands of Saint Eustatius and Saint Kitts, named the barren rocks of Hen and Chicks and Molly Beday. Unexpectedly, he prodded the disposable camera into Tommy's hand and said, "Take my picture."

It sounded, unusually, like an order, and Tommy was surprised how quickly he responded, without thinking about it. He took two quick shots of Henry, squatting atop the rocky crag, high above the sea.

"Shoot the roll," said Henry. "There's only a few shots left." He rose and adopted a mock heroic pose, standing on one leg, like a running Mercury, leaning precariously over the edge. Another pose, this one Washington crossing the Delaware, eyes shielded from the sun. Tommy kept taking pictures, anxious for the film to run out so he could go back to holding the rock with both hands, but Henry kept at it. One minute an Egyptian hieroglyph, the next, Nijinsky, each pose loonier and more dangerous. Finally the film ran out, and Tommy tried to hand him back the camera, but Henry ignored it, fixing him with a stare of such sudden and unexpected gravity that Tommy thought he might be knocked off the rock by the force. Henry sat cross-legged across from him, his eyes steely gray and unblinking, a panther examining its lunch. "I want you to do something for me," said Henry, and Tommy knew, with terrible certainty, that whatever Henry was about to say was what this had all been about from the first. The boat, the rock, maybe everything - it all came down to this. Frightened and unbalanced, he cocked his head and held on, trying his best not to show fear, pretending it was the Lower East Side, not the top of a rock in the middle of the ocean.

"I want you to do me a favor. And I want it to be a secret. Between us."

Tommy couldn't imagine what favor, what outrage could possibly follow. What could Henry want from him that was worth all this? He wondered for a millisecond if Henry was gay.

"Take the camera," said Henry. "Take it to the Dock Shop when we get back. They'll develop it right quick for you, you put a rush on it, pay a couple extra dollars. I'd like you to take those pictures . . . and show them to Charlie."

There it was. There it was. Tommy felt as if the rock under him had moved. He felt cut loose, like he was holding on to the top of a teetering flagpole. Charlie. He knew about Charlie. This changed . . . everything.

Henry placed a hand on Tommy's shoulder. "It's not what you think." Tommy shook off the hand and almost lost his balance.

"Steady, steady," said Henry, withdrawing the hand. "Just listen . . . listen to me. I just want to talk to the man. Show him the pictures. See if he wants to talk to me. It's simple."

"You knew. The whole fucking time. The whole time."

"Tommy, please understand . . . I've known Charlie a long time. It's been a while since I've seen him, and there's something I want to talk to him about."

Angry and betrayed, Tommy just shook his head, barely able to hear Henry over the rush of blood in his ears. "Sonofabitch" was all he could manage.

"It was a surprise for me," said Henry, "when Charlie showed up here. It presents me . . . to be honest, with some difficulties. Especially with his new friends. I imagine . . . I hope . . . it was a surprise for you too." He stopped to examine Tommy's reaction. "I mean . . . you were never involved . . . in the crew . . . nothing like that. I'm right about that, right? I'd sort of counted on you not . . . you know . . ."

He was silent for a moment, just watching Tommy. "No. I didn't think so."

Feeling like an utter and complete fool, Tommy blinked away tears. "That's what all of this is about. Isn't it? The generator, the bar, the boat trips . . . it's all about this." He looked down again at the boat, at the two brown shapes stretched out on the deck. "Your wife . . . she's in on this too."

"I tell Frances everything."

"Friends," he said, bitterly. "Big friends. So helpful . . . so nice. I guess we look pretty stupid to you."

"Look," said Henry, trying to be conciliatory. "I couldn't just walk up to the house with a potted plant and say, 'Charlie, ol' pal.' I've worked for the old man. Okay? Back in the bad old days. Like a lot of folks down here, I'm not terribly anxious for the U.S. government to take a sudden interest in my life. I am what I say I am. Just a guy with a wife he adores, a home . . . who just wants to spend the rest of his life in the sun, grab a little happiness, live simply. I didn't lie to you. I'm not a bad guy. Being an old friend of Charlie's is not exactly an asset these days, you've gotta admit. Apparently a lot of them are going to jail."

"And you're working for them," said Tommy.

"No. I don't work for anybody. Not here."

"Who the fuck are you? How . . . how . . . how do you know him then? He hasn't left his corner in twenty years. You make it sound like you met him at a cocktail party."

"Look . . . you're pissed at me, and I don't blame you. We used you. A little bit. But the friendship part. That's for real. That's not bullshit. This is not a scam. This is my home, okay? We've lived here for over ten years, and this is who we are. I'm not here to hurt Charlie. There's no ill will. Not from me. Charlie could hurt me. Badly. I just want to talk to him. My intentions" - Henry smiled for the first time in a while - "are strictly honorable."

"Who are you to him?" asked Tommy.

"I worked for him once," said Henry. Tommy was taking indecent pleasure in his apparent discomfort. "I did some things for him . . . Look. I'm not asking you to betray the man. I know you wouldn't do that. Just give him the fucking pictures. Show him the pictures of your new friend - the silly American expatriate. Tell him what I said. Tell him any damn thing you want. There's nothing I can do about that. Just . . . let him decide, okay? I'd rather you didn't go squawking to the marshals. That's all I ask. Charlie wants to blab to them, let it be
his
move. Show us both that respect is all I ask . . . please. The old man wants to drop a dime on me, there's nothing I can do about it."

Henry sighed and looked forlornly over at Saint Martin. "See that piece of ground over there? That's
home
for us, man. That's everything to us. We've gotten to know you, you've gotten to know us. We let you in. That's who we are now. We decided to put our faith in you. We're in your hands, okay? Just pass the message. Show him the pictures. Then we'll both find out . . . what he wants to do." Henry stood up and shook off whatever else he was thinking about. He looked older. "That's it," he said. He extended the hand once more, this time to muss Tommy's hair like his father had once done. "Let's go back."

They were halfway back to Saint Martin. Tommy sat sullenly by the bow with a beer forgotten in his hand, Cheryl asleep below. Frances approached Henry at the wheel and whispered in his ear. "How'd it go?" she asked.

"Mezza mezz,"
said Henry. "We'll just have to wait and see."

16

C
harlie Wagons, in an apron, baggy blue jeans, espadrilles, and a T-shirt that said HEY MON! stuck a bony finger into Tommy's lobster sauce and took a taste.

"Nice flavor," he said.

Tommy, standing next to him at the range, arms crossed across his chest, explained. "It's all about reduction. You gotta reduce, reduce, reduce. And you don't let the brandy flame the shells. That's the mistake everybody makes. You burn the little hairs the lobster got on his tail there, you do that . . . you get a burnt taste. And you roast the garlic first, before you use it."

"You gonna put some butter?" Charlie wanted to know.

"At the end I put the butter," said Tommy. "Right at the end. That's called
monter au beurre
you wanta know."

"The fish... can I flip'em?"

"Yeah, go for it."

Charlie turned down the flame under the copper
sautoir
next to the saucepan and drained the extra oil into a coffee can by the edge of the range, holding three grouper fillets in place with a spatula. He confidently turned the fillets over, skin-side down now, and put the whole pan into the oven.

"What's that gotta go, like, five, six minutes?" he said, wiping his hands on his apron.

"Little more," said Tommy, "if you don't want it wet in the center."

"I don't," said Charlie. "Call me a fuckin' philistine all you want. I like fish cooked alia way through. Meat, that's another thing. I can have that rare. But fish . . . I want that cooked."

"Okay. Seven minutes." Tommy sighed. In another pan, he sweated some shallots in butter, added some mussels, some stock, and some white wine, threw in a few sprigs of fresh thyme from Charlie's garden and, as the mussels began to steam open, tossed them with a few medallions of lobster and some bay scallops.

"Again . . . you mount with the butter. Heart attack food, that's what I like." At the very end, as he removed the pan from the flame, he stirred in a heaping teaspoon of red lobster roe. "Where's the vegetables? The vegetables! Shit!"

"Awright, awright!" said Charlie. "You're a fuckin' ball-breaker . . . Here." He sprinkled some blanched, julienned vegetables in with the mussels - carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, and snow peas. "I know, I know . . . correct seasoning . . . I'm tellin' ya, I dunno how that broad puts up with you over there." He ground some fresh pepper into the mix and then sprinkled a little kosher salt.

"Okay. Now all we gotta do is eat it," said Tommy. "I wish I was hungry."

"What's eatin' you is what I wanna know," said Charlie. "You been on the rag all day."

"I gotta talk to you. After," said Tommy.

"Talk to me now, you got a problem."

"After. We'll talk after," said Tommy, turning his back and yelling down the hall. "Cheryl! Where the fuck is she? Che-ryl!"

Don, the lead marshal, an older man with a barrel chest and gray hair, stuck his head into the kitchen from the patio. "I think she's still in the shower, Tom, I can hear the water running."

Tommy shook his head, pissed off.

"You smell what those jerks ate for dinner tonight?" asked Charlie, when Don disappeared. "You can
still
smell it. Smells like a buncha chinks livin' here . . . boilin' dogs or some shit."

"They burned the garlic and the ginger," said Tommy, in no mood.

"I got a nice wine picked out. Nice an' cold," said Charlie, proudly. "Pooly Foomay. That okay?"

"That's fine," said Tommy. "I'm gonna go get her. The food's fuckin' dyin' here."

"Give the girl a fuckin' break, willya?" said Charlie. "She's inna shower. You don't want her clean? What's with you?"

Tommy stalked down the hall into the bedroom he shared with Cheryl, opened the bathroom door, and said, "Dinner's ready. You're holding up dinner."

"I'll be out in a second," said Cheryl. "I'm just rinsing."

"Hurry," said Tommy, closing the door.

It was an uncomfortable dinner with little conversation. Cheryl, still wet from the shower, ate in her bathrobe, not speaking to Tommy. Tommy, anticipating his talk with Charlie, picked at his food, lost in thought. The fish was dry and overcooked, and Charlie was defensive and a little hurt that no one was saying anything nice about the meal.

When the plates were finally stacked in the dishwasher, after the espresso was finished and Charlie had lit his after-dinner cigar, Cheryl went back to the living room to do her toenails in front of the TV.

"Can I talk to you now?" asked Tommy, worried about the marshals overhearing. "Downstairs?"

"Let's have an Amaretto," said Charlie. "Maybe we can shoot some pool." He pushed his chair back and headed for the recreation room.

He had difficulty on the stairs, a tightly wound spiral of decorative wrought iron. Tommy had to help him down. The room was done all in green. Back in the late fifties, it had been a sort of sanctum for the old man; now, with the difficulty of negotiating the steps, he seldom came down here.

Behind a broad teak bar, an enormous picture window faced into the swimming pool below water level. On the other side of the thick glass, there was a muted splash, and two pairs of legs, exercising marshals, swam silently past. There were trophy fish, marlins and sailfish, mounted on the walls. An antique pool table stood in the center of the room, green felt lit by a Tiffany chandelier, color, green. The other light fixtures, scallop-shaped wall sconces, only added to the undersea effect, and the moving ripples from the pool lights played over the green leather easy chairs, green felt card table, green and beige carpet. A few listless tropicals hung in the water in a recessed aquarium, opening and closing their mouths, and the liquor bottles behind the bar were illuminated from below by little spots, recessed into the wood, the tiny green points reflecting off Charlie's glasses.

Tommy took the photographs from his back pocket and slid them across the bar to Charlie.

"What's 'is? Dirty pictures?" said Charlie, coming around the bar with two snifters of Amaretto. He glanced up at the swimmers, not yet touching the photos.

"We went sailing with that American couple," Tommy began. "I told you about them . . . Anyways, I'm sitting on a rock out there in the middle of the ocean, and this guy - his name's Henry - he asks me to take these pictures." He paused for a sip of Amaretto, his mouth dry. "So I take the pictures, right? And this is the thing . . . He says to me, he says he wants me to give the pictures to you."

"To me?" said Charlie, startled. "He mention my name?" He lifted the photographs in one hand, lost his purchase, and they spilled onto the floor. Tommy got down on his hands and knees and collected them. This time he laid the pictures out on the bar for Charlie to look at.

"He said, 'Give these to Charlie.' He says he wants to meet with you, talk . . . without, you know,
them
knowin' about it."

"You didn't tell him nothin' . . ."

"No!"

"I mean before. I mean, how's 'is sonofa—"

"That's the whole thing. I didn't say nothin',
nothing.
He knew it all already. He knows you. He says you know him."

Charlie leaned over. His eyes moved slowly along the row of color snaps. He picked one up off the bar with hands that trembled slightly and stepped over to the pool table to examine it under the light. It was a full-length pose, Henry leaning naked over the edge of the rock, hand shielding his eyes, a silly grin on his face. Charlie went back and looked at another one, the color gone from his lips.

"And what's this guy callin' himself?" he asked.

"Henry."

"That's right, Henry. You said that. Henry what?"

"I don't know," said Tommy, feeling foolish. "Just Henry is all I know. I . . . I never asked. I could probably find out for you, you want."

Charlie looked at each photograph carefully, each pose more ridiculous than the one before.

"Where'd you meet this guy again?"

"On the beach. Cheryl met them on the beach."

"She didn't say nothin'?" Charlie thought better of the notion and dispelled it. "Nah . . . she didn't say nothin'."

"She wouldn't."

"I know, I know."

Charlie shook his head, exasperated by a picture of Henry, this time posing as a nude King Tut, high atop the peak on Isle Forchue.

"The wife . . . She a good-lookin' broad, tall, dark, green eyes . . . name a' . . . Frances?"

"Yeah!" said Tommy, anxious to know what was going on. "You
know
them?"

Suddenly, Charlie exploded with laughter, his whole body shaking. "Yeah," he wheezed. "I know this guy. I know this
testadura.
Henry. Sure, I know him pretty good." He kept laughing, wiping his eyes with a cocktail napkin from the bar, his face growing red. "Tommy, I'm slippin' . . . I tell you. I shoulda heard this guy comin'. This guy, this guy, you can hear his balls clankin' together a mile away. An' the wife. The wife!
Minchia!
She got balls even bigger. The biggest! Sonofabitch . . . Henry an' Frances . . . She still look good? She was a good-lookin' woman. It's . . . it's been a while."

Tommy just nodded, confused and somewhat displeased at Charlie's reaction. He'd felt betrayed at being used to get to Charlie. He'd expected, hoped for an ally, and now this reaction. It wasn't at all what he'd anticipated.

"They live here?" asked Charlie.

"In the hotel, the yacht club over there, the other side a' the pond."

"They stayin' in a hotel?"

"They
live
there, he says. They say they been in the same place for years."

"You believe him?"

"About what? About livin' here? Yeah. They know everybody, everything on the island. They're wired up down here."

"That's fuckin' rich," said Charlie, chuckling now, his color returning to normal. "Them livin' here the whole time."

"You're gonna talk to the guy?"

Charlie looked again at the photos. "He's worried, I bet, right?" He jerked a thumb at the pool, the two marshals still swimming back and forth. "About them. He knows I'm a rat now, an' he's worried."

"You ain't a rat, Charlie."

"You call it what you wanna call it. So. What else he say?"

"He said it was up to you. He said you had to decide whether to tell anybody or not, that it would mess him up bad if you did."

"I'll bet it would," said Charlie. He picked up the picture of Henry leaning over the edge. "Look at this guy . . . Look. He's got his balls hangin' right over the cliff. You know what he's sayin'?"

Tommy had not the slightest idea.

"He's sayin', 'Here I am, Charlie.' That's what he's sayin'. An' he's askin' me what I'm gonna do about it. He's bettin' I ain't gonna do nothin'. That's what he's sayin'."

"What are you gonna do?" asked Tommy. "You gonna see him like he wants?"

"Of course I'm gonna see him," said Charlie. "Are you kiddin'?" He laughed out loud again, a thin, raspy cackle. "I wouldn't miss this . . . I wouldn't miss this for the world."