Natasha pondered a moment. She had been drinking rum punch or white wine all week. “Whiskey,” she said. “I’ll have a whiskey.”
“Bourbon?”
“Yes. Neat.”
Grace nodded and walked off.
The heavy man held up his glass as if to offer a toast. “Whiskey sour,” he said. “I haven’t had one in ten years. This is the first one. Ten years. I’m an alcoholic.”
Natasha remembered smelling alcohol through his heavy cologne in the morning. She almost said something; it seemed pointless now to keep any kind of pretense about things. But she saw the shadows under his eyes and the way his hands shook. He was just someone suffering this, like everyone else.
Duego was drinking water. He took a long swallow of it, set the glass down shakily, then rubbed his eyes. The muscles of his jaw tightened.
Natasha took the rolled napkin from its place on the table, removed the heavy silverware from it, and put it to her eyes, trying to gain control of herself. Duego offered her some of his water.
“Where is Grace?” Constance said.
As if summoned by the question, the tall woman appeared in the doorway and started toward them. Constance reached up and took her drink off the tray and gulped it down. “Bring me another one, please,” she said. “Make it two more. Doubles both. Please.”
Grace nodded, setting Natasha’s glass down, and turning to move off.
Natasha lifted her glass and sipped from it, but caught Grace’s eye as Grace started away and nodded at her questioning look. “Yes. Me, too.”
The heavy man also ordered more, and Duego, as if wanting merely to keep up with the others — there was something grudgingly acceding in the gesture — touched Grace’s elbow and ordered a screwdriver. She moved off, seeming to glide away in the yellow wraparound skirt.
“I haven’t had a drink in ten years,” the heavy man said. “My name’s Walt Skinner. I’m an alcoholic.” This time, the meaning of the words seemed to arrive in his mind as he spoke. His eyes welled up, and he took the last of his drink. “My wife’s here somewhere.”
“I do not usually drink,” Duego said. “I do not like the taste of it.”
“I do,” said Constance, “and I do. I do drink and I do like the taste. And I want to get very drunk today.”
“Jesus,” said Skinner, wiping his eyes with his fat fingers. “I can’t find my wife. She’s here somewhere. I can’t feel a thing. This isn’t touching a thing.” He put the glass to his mouth and took what was left in the melting ice. His hands shook. He kept moving one leg, a nervous up-and-down motion, toe to the ground, heel raised, the movement of someone normally much thinner, so that the ticlike nature of it glared forth, the frenetic shaking of panic. “We’re from New Orleans. You think they’ll keep us from flying there?”
“Everything’s grounded,” Constance said.
“I guess I ought to go looking for her. This feels so helpless. All those people and there’s nothing we can do. My wife went off with some lady friends this morning. She might not even know.” His face seemed to register this possibility. The mouth dropped slightly, the eyes widening, all the color leaving his round face.
Duego said, “I am from Orlando. I have no relatives in New York.”
Both men seemed now to be waiting for Constance and Natasha to speak, to say where they were from. It was a peculiar moment: social expectation spun over appalling actuality. Natasha nearly laughed, and an odd braying sob rose from the bottom of her throat. “She’s moving back to Tennessee,” Constance said. And in the next moment Natasha did laugh, turning away from them. The laughter turned to tears.
Constance patted her shoulder. “It’s all right, honey. I know it is. It’s all right.”
Natasha feared allowing herself to think so. Thinking so could bring on the thing through some terrible convergence of fate: Faulk deciding to go down there and stand on the street, looking up. And perhaps he was looking up when the plane hit. It was as if she could cause this to be true by accepting the probability that it was not true. And then something like premonition came to her that things were only beginning. There were other horrors to come.
Tall, stately Grace came back with another tray of drinks.
“That was fast,” Constance said. “Just the way I like it.”
Grace set the drinks down. For a few moments, they all drank and were silent. Natasha began to feel as though she were violating some kind of morality, greedily taking this form of analgesic help in the face of the unbearable visions of the morning. She finished her drink and excused herself, wanting solitude now, moving away from Constance’s questioning expression across the wide lawn leading down to the beach.
She walked there through the hot sand. And when she reached the edge she felt a deep pang, centered in her chest, just below her neckline. For a moment she thought her heart might be stopping. She put her hands there and looked for a place to sit down. It came to her that she might never get up if she let herself sink to the ground in this moment. Unsteadily, slowly, she walked into the water, feeling the cold pull of it and then the slap of it as it came back, wetting her to the knees. The pain in her chest wall lessened. She waited, crying soundlessly, while the water sucked back, pulling sand along the sides of her feet, foaming there, and then rushing at her. Iris would be worried and trying to call. Iris would know where Michael was. Michael would call her. And why hadn’t he called? The circuits, the overloaded circuits. She looked out at the horizon, that straight dark border under the moving sky, and it terrified her. The waves came in.
Finally she turned, and here was Constance, being helped along by Walt Skinner. They both had their drinks.
“I’ve switched to vodka,” Constance said, holding up her glass. “For my fourth double.” Then she stopped and seemed to consider. “Sounds like something from a tennis match. Fourth double.”
Skinner held his drink up. “My second.”
“That’s your fourth,” said Constance.
“Okay. I stand corrected. I must’ve miscounted.”
“How many did you have this morning?”
“Nothing this morning. I’m goddamned certain of that.”
“You’re lying through your teeth.”
“Madam, I have no teeth. I wear dentures.” He laughed with a low snorting sound, enjoying his own humor, staggering, and she helped him stay on his feet. Together they splashed unsteadily into the water, holding on to each other. They were in almost to their knees when Skinner fell back into a sitting position, holding his drink up, spilling none of it. “Looka that,” he said. “Didn’t lose a drop.” He seemed to be grasping at the fact. There was something hysterical about it: a moment of mastery over the physical world. “We’re stuck in paradise. We’re the lucky ones.” He held the glass higher.
“Shut up,” Constance said. “Don’t talk like that. Jesus.”
“You gonna stand there?”
“Cold.” She sat down carefully. “I am never ready for it to feel so cold.”
“It’s warm as toast,” Skinner said. Then he seemed to recall himself. “Goddamn. What’re we doing, anyway? I don’t know where my wife is.” The water rushed away from them and then came back in foam.
“I’m beginning to believe you made her up,” Constance said.
“I hope we bomb the living shit out of them all. Nuke the fuckers. Pardon my language.”
Natasha started back up the beach.
“Don’t leave,” Constance called to her. “We came to get you.”