“Thank you,” Dominick said.
“You better fuck his cousin good between now and then,” Sal said.
It was still early enough in the afternoon for the beach to be unbearably hot. Even in the shade of the striped umbrella, Sarah felt uncomfortable, but she suspected this had less to do with the heat than with her sister’s conversation. Heather was telling her that she’d wanted to kill her husband the moment she’d found out. The island was French, women went topless on the beaches here. Heather sat bare-breasted on the blanket under the umbrella, saying she’d wanted to smash in his face with a hatchet. Her sister sitting topless made Sarah feel yet more uncomfortable, people walking by. She herself had not yet found the courage to take off her bikini top. Probably never would.
“Like when he was sleeping,” Heather said. “I wanted to pick up a hatchet and smash in his face.”
“Oh come on,” Sarah said.
“I mean it. Smash his face in. Then leave the house, fly somewhere out of the country, disappear from sight.”
The beach was on the southern side of the island, in an isolated cove far from the many hotels clustered on St. Bart’s Atlantic side. The house their parents owned was on a small verdant hill overlooking the beach, a good thousand yards from the nearest house, a twenty-minute Mini-Moke ride to the nearest good hotel in Morne Lurin. Mollie was inside the house, napping. Yolande, her mother’s housekeeper, was sweeping off the wooden verandah that ran around the house on three sides. The sound of her broom swished a whispered counterpoint to their conversation, such as it was. The tide was going out. Lazy wavelets lapped the shore. All was tranquil and serene, but her sister was telling her she’d felt like doing murder. Sarah didn’t want to hear any of this. She felt trapped on the sweltering beach.
“This was after I found out about his little bimbo,” Heather said. “He used to come home late from the office, tell me he was working after hours on this important account, that important account, I believed him. Her name was Felicity, I wanted to kill her, too. I kept wishing I’d come home and find him in bed with her, kill them both with the same hatchet, chop up their faces, disappear from sight. Come down here afterward, but this’d be the first place the police would look, am I right?”
“Probably,” Sarah said.
“This was right after Halloween, when I found out. It was a Sunday night, a woman in the building was giving a Halloween party. I went dressed as a sexy witch. Doug went dressed as a hairy warlock. Some guy supposed to be Dracula kept chasing me all over the place, telling me he wanted to bite me on the neck. Doug had the gall later to tell me it made him jealous, the count wanting to bite me on the neck. He’s screwing little Felicity blind two, three nights a week, he pretends to be jealous of some drunken jackass with fake fangs.”
She shook her head in wonder. A drop of sweat rolled down between her naked breasts.
“He called her later that night,” she said. “That’s how I found out.”
“How?” Sarah asked.
“I got up to pee — I always pee the whole night through when I’ve had too much wine, don’t you? Doug wasn’t in bed. This is three in the morning, I think, ‘Where’s Doug?’ Reasonably, no? Three in the morning? Is Doug in the bathroom? Is Doug also peeing? Will I have to wait in line? Or shall I go use the bathroom down the hall, off the study? But no, Doug is not in the bathroom, the bathroom is empty. So I relieve myself, as they say, and I go back into the bedroom, and Doug still isn’t in bed, so where is Doug? Overwhelmed by curiosity — as who wouldn’t be, my dear, it’s three in the morning — I go out in the hall, and I see a light burning in the study, and I call out ‘Doug?’ and I hear a click. Click. Just a tiny little click but I know it’s somebody hanging up a phone. Three o’clock in the morning, and my husband’s making a phone call down the hall. Well, he comes out of the study wearing nothing but pajama bottoms and a shit-eating grin, and he tells me he had to look up a word in the dictionary. A word? I say. Driving me crazy, he says. Couldn’t sleep. A word? I say again. What word? I’m still believing him, you see. I’m still thinking I must be mistaken about that click, it couldn’t have been him hanging up the phone, it had to be something else, maybe he was just closing the dictionary. Eohippus, he tells me. That’s the word he was looking up, three o’clock in the morning. Eohippus. You mean like the horse? I say. He says, ‘Yes, exactly, but how do you spell it? That’s what was driving me crazy.’
“Well, that’s reasonable, too, no? I mean, that’s something a person can understand, am I right? The burning question of whether it’s i-o or e-o? Three o’clock in the morning, we’re standing in the hall; and he’s telling me he got out of bed to go look up eohippus and it’s e-o, and now he can go back to sleep, which he promptly does, snoring, with his hand tucked between my legs. The next night, when I get home from work and he’s still at the office with one of his important accounts, the bastard, I look up eohippus. It’s e-o, all right. I figure, ‘Listen, there are stranger things than a man looking up eohippus three o’clock in the morning.’ But then the phone bill comes on November seventh.”
“Uh-oh,” Sarah said.
“Indeed. Listed under long-distance calls for the first day of November at two forty-eight in the morning is a call to Wilton, Connecticut. Twelve-minute call, so maybe I wasn’t wrong about that click, hmm? Gives the phone number and all, lo and behold. I call the phone company and tell them the number is unfamiliar to me, can they please let me know to whom it is listed? Very cool and very calm, to whom, mind you, even though my hand is shaking on the phone. The operator tells me the phone is listed to one Felicity Cooperman, who is a junior copywriter at the agency, who by the way curtsies me half to death every time I go up there. Nineteen years old if she’s a day, and my husband is calling her at two forty-eight in the morning on All Saints’ Day. That was when I decided to smash in his head with a hatchet the very first opportunity I got.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Sarah said.
“Cooler heads prevailed,” Heather said, and smiled.
She herself looked nineteen when she smiled. Big girlish grin cracking her face, blue eyes squinching shut. Thirty-two years old, still looked like a teenager, firm cupcake breasts, flat tummy, the long legs and lithe body of a team swimmer — which she’d been in high school. Well, no children. Which, considering her present situation, was a blessing, Sarah guessed.
“I called a lawyer recommended to me by the woman who threw the Halloween party who’s herself been divorced three times. I told her a friend of mine was having trouble with her husband, and so on and so forth, lying in my teeth, I don’t think she believed me for a minute. Anyway, the lawyer tells me I should put a tail on Mr. Douglas Rowell, which I agree to do, and it turns out I was mistaken in my surmise, he isn’t screwing young Felicity blind two, three times a week, he’s screwing her deaf, dumb, and blind every day on his lunch hour, plus the two, three times a week he has to work late on all those important accounts of his. You should hear the tapes, Sarah, they’re...”
“You’ve got tapes?”