Edward crawled around a large palm tree’s trunk trying to absorb the texture of it, its fronds and the way the sun blinked through its leaves. Looking straight up, he fell carelessly onto his back and found his head next to a frightened crab with its claws raised.
“Hello.”
He put the end of his pencil in front of the crab. The creature pinched it, holding on for a few seconds. When it let go, it scuttled defensively backwards and around the palm’s trunk. Edward moved to follow the creature and take in its colors and texture. He put a hand on the ground and his chin on it, blowing granules of sand away as he breathed out his nose, scrutinizing the crab’s form. After a minute, he sat up, grabbed his sketchbook, and began drawing. He stopped when he heard the noise.
It started out as only a buzz in the air, barely noticeable over the waves. Soon it became the BRRR! of a motor. Edward lifted his head to see between tree trunks. The boat appeared from out of the dunes. It was a blue boat – about twenty feet long with a single outboard engine, small compared to the charter boats at the Road Town dock. The boat turned into the bay and moved along the beach, a starburst of glare on its windshield masking the driver.
Just as it passed him, near the middle of the bay where the seaweed darkened the water, the driver cut the power and the boat glided to a wobbly stop. The driver stood and stepped into the back, and then Edward could plainly see the very feminine curves of a young woman. He quickly crawled down against a hibiscus bush on the edge of the tree line and stretched his neck to get a better view.
It was obvious she was a local. Wide, dark eyes on a rounded, Creole face. A cute button nose. She had her hair tied back tight, amassed in a knotted bun. The loose ends of this hung down just above the collar of a cotton shirt. As she moved to pick up something, the breeze caped her unbuttoned shirt. This revealed blue jean cutoffs, a narrow waistline, and a flower-print bikini top underneath. A wave rolled by, slapping into the boat. The craft seesawed; and for a moment, it appeared she would fall over. Edward pulled his hands in under him, preparing to push himself up and run to help. But she threw out a hand, in what must have been pure reflexes, caught the side, and remained standing.
When the boat leveled out, she used both hands to lift a cage up and over the side. The square trap was the size of an old TV and hit the water evenly on one side. It quickly disappeared below the surface, pulling along a rope that ripped over the side and yanking out a dirty white volleyball-sized float. This plunked into the water before settling on the surface.
The woman turned, picked up another trap, and tossed it over the other side of the boat. She watched it settle, and when she looked satisfied, she returned to the captain’s chair. But before she sat down, she looked out at something. She brought a hand up to block the glare and looked off at the houses with a great deal of concentration. Edward looked over and saw what it was. He had left his front door open.
The woman leaned over the windshield, peering at the beach, her gaze following the route Edward had taken. Could she see his tracks? As her head turned, Edward pressed his stomach into the sand, and brought his chin down against his hands to narrow his profile behind the shrub. Her gaze stopped on his hiding place, and she tilted her head and squinted. Edward was ready to stand and give an awkward wave and give an awkward explanation about why he was hiding. Before he moved the woman lowered herself into the seat and started the motor.
Sitting straight-backed, with her head still locked onto his position, she pushed the throttle up. The motor buzzed, the prop drilling into the water. The bow lifted as the boat moved off, turning toward the far side of the bay in a wide turn back toward its mouth. When she reached the choppy waters outside the bay, she gunned the motor and moved off out of view.
Edward stood up and slapped sand off his knees.
“You idiot. Why didn’t you say hello?”
He sat down under the palm tree, grabbed his pad and pencil, turned over a new page, and started sketching. With her image fresh in his mind and an excitement running through him, he finished filling one page in a few minutes. He felt like a zoologist who had spotted a creature once thought extinct and continued working, staying there for an hour, flipping over three more pages to work on different perspectives of his new subject. Mysterious and beautiful. Skinny but shapely. Rugged yet sophisticated. Edward played with the idealization of her form. In one sketch she was an African warrior princess. In another her boat became a rocket ship.
~~10~~
A putrid wave billowed out of the fridge like hot smoke. It burned his sinuses and watered his eyes. He let go of the fridge door, waving his arms around and reeling backward until he hit the wall. The door slowly swung closed. He threw up the kitchen window, lifted his shirt over his nose, and took in a minute’s worth of breaths before returning to the scene of the crime.
The unpowered fridge had become a massive Petri dish after three days in the tropical climate. Beiges, whites and browns had become yellows, greens and blacks. These spots grew in colonies along the edge of the door and bottom paneling. Bread had become tree bark. The chicken in the freezer had become gelatinous like a jellyfish that had washed up on the shore. The smell was from a burst egg. Pus oozed out of a crack, down the side, and onto the shelf below.
Edward found a box of garbage bags under the sink. He yanked one out, whipped it open, and started throwing everything into it – eggs, chicken meat, bread, vegetables. He coughed and shook away his nausea. He had eaten leftovers the first day, but didn’t dare eat the raw food by the second when he ate a dozen wild bananas and canned beans. Three bananas were this morning’s breakfast. He figured he had two days before he went through all the canned foods and starved to death.
A few black flies were flying a holding pattern around the kitchen. They buzzed his head every few seconds. He swiped them away with an elbow as he worked. He slid banana peels off the counter and into the bag before cinching it closed. He ran the bag outside, placing it on the side of his house. He found spray cleaner under the sink and began machine-gunning the inside of the fridge with orange-scented foam. He braced the door open with a mop stick and let the foam work its miracles for ten minutes. After that, he wiped down the insides with five handfuls of paper towels.
When he heard the motor buzzing over the breeze, he grabbed the binoculars he had brought in from the washroom and ran outside. Standing just in front of his doorway, he pressed the rubber of the eyepieces against his brow and looked out over the white haze of sparkling water. He turned the center dial, bringing the bay’s entrance into focus.
He was just in time to catch the boat as it appeared out on the open waters behind the inlet island. But it wasn’t blue. It was cherry red. A speedboat. The sleek craft appeared like a drop of blood on the cobalt sea beyond. It puttered across the gap at what must have been its lowest speed, slowly disappearing behind the island. He let the binoculars drop to his side and sighed. He could still see the two floats bobbing on the surface where the woman had dropped her traps. She had to return to retrieve them at some time.
Edward walked back inside, returned the binoculars to stand on his computer desk, and went into his bathroom, now lit only by ambient light, and started brushing his teeth.
“How’ you doin? – I’m doin fine, thanks for asking.” Edward said to his darkened reflection, moving his brush around the inside of his mouth using mostly muscle memory. “Where’r you going today? I’m going to the village to report the power outage. Oh, that sounds lovely. Yes, I think it’ll be super fun. How do you get to the village? I don’t know, but I plan on just walking in a straight line.”