In Flames (7 page)

The next morning when I awoke I felt buoyant as a seabird.

Passion buried questions about Elaine as effectively as black lava earth shoveled by dark pallbearers hid her husband's casket. Before opening my eyes, I sensed the bed empty next to me. She'd slipped out early and quietly. I moved my hand around in her sheets, smiling, feeling good about her and about myself, and the way things seemed to be working out despite confusion and risk. Although I was still too inexperienced with women to tell anything for certain, when I smelled the lingering fragrance of her skin beside me on the bed, for the moment this was all the reassurance I needed.

I lay there listening to morning sounds outside on the club grounds, a sweeper moving down the hall, workers raking gravel paths, all comforting domestic sounds.
The general was a liar
, my considered certitude,
a disgruntled jilted lover
…why else would he tell me he thought she was guilty. He was playing some sort of twisted game, something I couldn't decipher, toying with me, and I wanted no part of his sick sport. I only wanted Elaine.

I rose slowly from the bed and glanced out the window. The sky looked like rain, almost the way it did in springtime up north, but a great deal darker. If it really started coming down, if a tropical storm swept in over the island, I'd need foul- weather gear. I thought Elaine might have something I could wear, something that used to be Ferg's. I stepped outside and the heat smacked up against my body, wet and dense. Rain-thickened clouds did nothing to cut the force of implacable sun glaring down on San Iñigo. When it didn't rain, the humidity heated up to Turkish bath proportions. I arrived at the terrace and Elaine was already behind the bar, clipboard in hand. Reluctant to reveal what was going on between us, I wasn't sure what exactly I should do next and merely waved.

She glanced at me quickly in reply, and returned to checking her list of chores to get done around the club. “Jorge! Señor Dan's breakfast…”

I sat down to a bowl of grapefruit sections with local mountain honey, and a melon with fresh lime juice and chopped mint. It was good, everything was good. And from time to time, I spotted her eyeing me.

“How are you feeling, Dan, weather getting to you?”

“I'm all right, thanks.”

She left her clipboard behind on the bar and crossed the terrace. This was the first time she behaved so openly toward me in full view of the staff. Before saying a word, she regarded me up and down, a hint of hesitancy shadowing her face. “You got connections stateside?” Right out of left field. Elaine was full of surprises.

“I know some people, I'm still in touch up there.”

“They rich? Or broke.”

“They're doing okay.”

“I guess you know Xy Corp. here is nearly bust. All those lawsuits after Iraq.”

Christ almighty, she took the wind out of me. I reached for more fruit juice, no rum in it, not at that early hour, but I wouldn't have said no to a shot or two right then. She was picking her words carefully, to shock or inform, I couldn't say for sure. She looked at me as if she were a schoolteacher grading my performance, and I was too confounded to make a move.
Did I love this woman last night in her own bed, is she the same person with whom I lay contentedly only hours before
…this woman whose husband's grave was still fresh. Elaine, the army general's sacrificial lamb? One thing was uncomfortably clear: I was still clueless about her as long as I wanted her lovemaking. I preferred her a victim of circumstances, not a perpetrator.

“Dan,” she said, “it looks like you could end up leaving here broke, nada to take home. Xy Corp. could collapse whenever. But I'd rather you didn't leave, really, I'd like you to stay. The heart wants what the heart wants.” The sound of her footsteps pacing the terrace tiles gave her words a determined rhythm, each word standing on its own, followed by a pause to let it sink into my brain. Her ambiguous small smile, lip gloss, all this suited her strange personality. A piece of corporate jargon was making the rounds among some club members, scuttlebutt about Elaine's “optics,” a phony synonym for “appearances,” something that looks good or bad in a public relations sort of way. A few members seemed to think she was simply slutty, a gold digger, at least one eye always out for the main chance.
She was the general's lover. That's why…
But I came to believe she was nobody's fool, her confounding behavior a guise for all seasons. She continued to pace the terrace,
I'd rather you didn't leave
…and I looked at her the way I looked at her the night before, amazed as she seemed to be making up her mind about me, irretrievably. I should have been cross with her for her cold-eyed prediction about my employer, but she gave the chilly forecast an almost reassuring sound…
really,
I'd like you to stay
. Elaine had that way about her, appeasing, she could turn it on or off. She didn't control you, until she did. She had no fixed center, and this absence allowed her a freedom of improvisation, and she spent her life winging it, successfully, taking her wherever her heart wanted to go.

“Maybe you could get a government contract down here, Dan, do a little something extra on your own, something on the side. Maybe make another hundred thousand a year, even more if you're any good.”

Any good
…Again, if anyone else said this to me, I'd have been insulted. “Good at what, Elaine?”

“Listening…watching…nothing difficult, not for you. You're a good watcher, I can tell.”

An island woman crossed the terrace with a basket of fish. “They're fine,” said Elaine. “Take them to the kitchen, I'll pay you tomorrow.” She turned around to face me again. Our eyes met, and I thought I detected a flash of impatience in her look. She placed her hand on mine, wanting my complete attention. “So how about it, Dan?”

“Making lots of money, at what? For whom—”

“For the government.”

“Whose?”

“Ours, what do you think, that this place has any money to spend?” She took out her cell phone and started texting. “That okay?” She showed me the message:
Princeton cottage deke architect fab prospect yr nu art gallery can he call.
“That's you, right?”

“I guess so. What art gallery? Call who?”

She hit SEND.

“Reg. He's a member. That was quick. Look.”

A text message came back:
lunch today club.

“Now don't miss it. I'm sticking my neck out for you, Dan, don't screw up.”

A ceiling of low gray clouds thickened, and the heat grew even more oppressive than usual, humidity as high as the temperature, and still no rain despite a threatening sky. A frequent rumble of distant thunder could have been government artillery in the eastern mountains, shelling the rebels' remote hideouts.

I looked around the club terrace.

“Table, señor?”

“Is Señor Townsley here?”

A man at a nearby table waved and stood up from his chair, right hand extended, napkin tucked in his soft collar. Despite a wet heat, he wore a tie and a blue-and-white-striped cotton seersucker suit. “Dan? I'm Reg…” His face was formless, the expression calm despite all he was rumored to know, his lips parted in a kindly smile that his official position demanded…U.S. cultural attaché, a representative of life's finer things. Fifteen years of service should form a face, gentleness ebbing with experience, but Reg Townsley was also aware of his responsibilities as station chief. He never dropped his gentle smile. “Have a seat, Dan.”

“Thanks. Heat's a killer.”

“Ignore it, I do. Try more tennis. Stretch yourself, you'll live longer.” Although in his midforties, Townsley was already an old man, his true age—the years in his eyes—counted by his time in San Iñigo. While his thinning hair retained a soft mousy color like a boy's, his face had a permanent flush, and I guessed high blood pressure, that and maybe too fond of drink. To a stranger's eye his reddened skin texture might give a false impression of good health, a sporty type, but every minute in San Iñigo made Reg Townsley older and wearier. The new U.S. ambassador, a man of sixty, was a youthful novice compared to any diplomat with even a few years on the island. “The ambassador is pleased to hear about you, Dan, he loves your background. He's big on art, has a great collection back in Houston. You see, it's like this now…” He leaned closer to me, voice dropping into confidentiality. “The ambassador wants to create a better impression here, show more of a cultural interest in San Iñigo, not just commercial. Things aren't going so well, it's wartime, even if you'd never know it down here. Last week I spent four days out on the cliffs over the north coast, at the most forward operating firebase we have. And what the whole experience confirmed, at least for me, is that any real will among these people to fight insurgents is driven by us. No U.S. money, no U.S. firepower, and it's no counterinsurgency anywhere on the island. The extremists win. The liaison officer in the para group at the firebase said it outright—we leave San Iñigo, and he leaves the paras. No one feels any incentive to fight on their own. We're the whole show. They're pretty much a raggedy-ass bunch, corrupt, and only out to save their own skins. As well as hustle a buck from us, of course, wherever and whenever they can. The ambassador wants to open up on all fronts now, and this includes the arts. Right across the board we're making social investments, we're here for the long haul, and we're going proactive, grabbing a revived momentum. Like I say, trouble often starts in the arts. So we're funding a new gallery downtown, killing two birds, covering all the bases, that sort of thing, kind of like a listening post…”

He waited for my response. I could guess at what he meant, but I had no idea of details. Neither had Elaine when I asked her.

“We need a gallery director with creds. Yours are excellent. Architect, Princeton…Elaine spotted it, and she's right. You look worried, Dan. Relax, the gallery is fully air-conditioned, and I've hired an assistant, he's already started, a good kid, College of the Caribbean grad. Diego.”

“I've got a contract with Xy Corp.”

“No problem, hang on to it. We want you to keep your hand in, always looking busy, overworked. This job is evening and weekends, closed Monday to Wednesday. Diego does all the drudge stuff. We'll match Xy, dollar for dollar. You won't be an employee, you're a contractor, an entrepreneur, your own man. Legally, it's all your gallery. The Cristoforo. Just sign the papers and we're off. You're completely indemnified, full faith and credit of Uncle Sam. So tell me, what's to lose?”

“What do I do?”

“You listen and watch. And you don't make enemies. Everyone is a potential friend. Elaine says you're a first-class watcher. I take her word for it, she's a damn good judge. Think of the work as a kind of living Facebook.”

“The art appeals.”

“People should too. You're a people person, Elaine told me exactly that when I called her.”

Exactly
…“I don't know, Reg, I don't have special training, not for watching people.”

“Just plain observation, what's so hard about that? Surveillance isn't illegal here, you know, as long as it's outside the target's home, same as in the States. And the reason for all this is the best there is, your country's security.”

It amazed me the way human beings went on about their business, persisting in the face of all plausible discouraging information, as if forever trapped in some all-encompassing Stockholm Syndrome. There was no dissuading Reg Townsley, he pushed right on. “You're perfect, Dan. That you have another life, another job, this is all good stuff. You're fresh. You have a lot of interests. And you haven't had time to pick up bad habits here. Soon enough you'll come to enjoy it all.”

We'll match Xy, dollar for dollar
…That part was enjoyable. And flattering. Nothing put me off about the pay, as there was no guarantee I'd find any work after my one-year contract with Xy ran out, if it lasted even that long. A second job that wasn't a job, work that was more like a hobby, watching the world go by, reporting on what I saw, this definitely appealed, implausibility be damned.

“One thing, Dan, speaking of Facebook, we looked up your page, it's way out of date.”

“Who's got time, it's such a bore.”

“That's my point. Liven it up a bit. You're not taking enough risks. We've got guidelines you can follow. Give San Iñigo a big plug on your page, show how interesting this place is. All you can ever do is give it your best shot, Dan. Something aesthetic, let it reflect your growing profile, an art lover, soon
le gallerist
. Stuff about how San Iñigo sort of grows on you, and how you love all the pretty sunsets out there. Look at those gorgeous colors.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God
—poetry, Dan, and from a Jesuit priest no less. Throw in something like that. With lots of pictures. Load up on the vernacular, local stuff from the gallery, snapshots of your work by the sea, people here will swallow it all with relish, they'll love you.”

“No pictures of the new harbor, I'm not allowed to.”

“Of course not, no, there you're right. I mean the sky and all. Look at it now.”

“It's not sunset yet.”

“And it's mainly a lot of burn-off from the refinery, I know that's what gives it so much color. But hey, lookit, everything has upsides, that much is incontrovertible. Optimism, Dan, never resign yourself to anything but the upside.” Which even to me sounded more like a religious proclamation than sober assessment, a wishful and romantic dreaming within a dream, far from any more obvious realities in San Iñigo. But no matter, I agreed. I accepted Reg Townsley's offer to run their art gallery listening post.
In for a penny, in for a pound
—my mistaken philosophy.