“What? No. I didn’t”
“How can you draw my face like that?”
“Like what?”
“Those details – you must have taken pictures. Where are the pictures?”
“No, I swear, I swear I didn’t.” He put a hand on his chest.
Edward shook his head slowly and moved his hands together as if praying – praying that she would calm down. She looked down at the facial profile he had done and then reached up to her face to touch the dimple on her right cheek as if surprised it was there.
“So, you drew me like you drew that drum fish?”
Edward didn’t answer. The question was a trap. He swallowed hard.
“You’ll be smart to stay away from me or I’ll report you to the police.” Mary let go of the page she held and had turned for the door before it drifted onto the bed.
“Mary, wait. I’m no stalker. Please don’t – I just draw a lot. I draw everything. I really didn’t mean to scare you—”
“You didn’t scare me.” She stopped at the door.
“OK. Well, I didn’t mean to make you mad – it’s just I have no electricity and can’t even email my friends, and I’d hate to make one of the few neighbors I ever see mad at me.” Edward grabbed the nearest sheet. “I won’t keep them. I’ll tear ‘em up. I’ll burn them if it makes you feel better.”
Mary, holding onto the door’s frame with one hand, turned to face him. She glanced down to the page and then up to Edward several times. She moved her hands to her hips and glared at him.
“You’d tear up your own artwork?”
It was another trap question. If he said yes, it meant the drawings of her weren’t important. If he said no, it meant he had just lied. Edward bit his lip.
“Because they bother you. They’re not very good anyways—”
“What do you mean? They’re not bad. I don’t think you’d destroy them if you were a real artist—”
“They’re just basic sketches.” Edward was completely confused at what he was arguing for now, but he liked that she was still talking.
“But you spent a lot of time on them.”
“So, you want me to keep them? I don’t understand, but whatever you want—”
“Oh, forget it. I don’t want to argue.” Mary let her hand fall to her sides. She shook her head and fluttered her eyelids, but stayed facing him. “It just seems strange to do that, draw someone without asking.”
“I do it all the time – I swear. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset and I’m not scared.” Mary huffed. Her lips contorted around, and she looked down.
Both of them looked around the room, avoiding looking at each other. Edward wondered how to end this strange non-argument argument they seemed to be in.
“So, if you’re not angry, can I still go with you to Road Town?”
“Well,” she said and shrugged. She looked to the side and bit at her cheek, apparently unsure about what she should think about him. “Well, we have to leave soon. I have things to do.”
She turned and walked out. Edward quickly slipped on his shoes and a shirt, grabbed some cash from the desk, and ran out after her.
~~~
Mary had kept them on a straight course for the center of Road Harbour. After a bumpy forty-minute ride, they entered the welcoming arms of the bay that cut into Tortola Island like a shark bite. In the middle where the mountain ridges were dotted with pastel houses, the water under them cleared and lightened to the color of turquoise and blue topaz. Where seaweed darkened it, the glassy surface reflected the houses along shoreline. Most of Road Town was at the base of the mountainside as if these structures had broken off from the incline, slid down, and spilled out into the water in the form of piers and hundreds of sailboats, catamarans, and yachts of various sizes.
Mary pulled up to a public pier where three dinghies faintly tugged at their lines. After she killed the motor, she got up and threw a line around a pole. Edward followed her up a ladder and down the pier to a small fishing store where she bought about two pounds of bait and chum, dropping handfuls of the slop into her bucket. Bloody slime coated her hands and this didn’t appear to bother her. She put a cover on the bucket and washed her hands under a faucet outside the store.
“Would you like a soda?” She asked him as she shook her hands dry. Her tone had cooled after the long ride. “I always get one. I have a weakness for orange.”
“Sure.”
They crossed the road running along the shoreline and walked into a convenience store with walls plastered with posters advertising junk food. Edward jumped in front of her at the counter and paid for two bottles of an English soda that Mary had picked out. The cashier uncapped these with an opener and handed over two straws from an old jar on the counter. They walked outside and sat at a picnic table beside the store, looking across their drinks at each other.
“You talk differently to the clerk in the store,” Edward said.
“I do?”
“I mean different than when you spoke with those tourists or me. More accent.”
“Oh, well, that’s because you sell more when you speak like your customers. People like you better when you sound like them. I guess that works the same with the way one dresses.” Mary shrugged and planted her straw into her soda.
“Where did you learn so much about fishing?”
“My father was a fisherman. Spent a lot of time on a boat – so, are you really an artist?”
“Me? I guess, but I don’t make a living from it. Can we define ourselves by what we love to do – even if we don’t get paid for it?”
“Some people call themselves one thing, but do something else. If you do it that seems like enough.” Mary held the straw in her fingers, turning it around and around and then squashed a drop of condensation sliding down the neck of her bottle with her thumb.
Edward took a drag on his straw, watching the soda’s level drop in his bottle.
“You ever want to be one of those people that have so much money you can own a house and never use it?” Edward asked.
“You mean rich?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t need to be rich. As long as I have my family and a home.” She took a sip and looked up at him below her brow and thick hair. It was an innocent pose, but Edward found it too alluring and had to look away.
“But - but wouldn’t your family be better off if you’re rich.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Rich people have to work more. I’d rather spend more time home than work.”
Edward bent his head down and laughed.
“Is that funny?” Mary gave him a side glance.
“Well, a lot of women would say you, well, shouldn’t just stay home. You should work in an office, you know, be a modern woman.”
“Mmh.” Mary rolled her eyes. “I see those modern women come through here all the time. Afraid to touch a fish, afraid to get their hair dirty, don’t know how to cast a line. When one of those women can kill and pluck a chicken, I might listen to her.”
On the road in front of them three girls walked by. Obviously familiar with Mary, the girls waved and called out to her. They eyed Edward and asked her if she was doing extra work. Mary replied that she wasn’t and waved back as the girls moved on down the road.
“Extra work?” Edward asked.
“They think you’re a tourist and I’m showing you around.”
“Oh.” Edward bit his lip.
Mary took a drink of her soda. They sat in silence for a while. Edward rubbed at the back of his neck, watching a seagull swoop down and land on a sidewalk trashcan. The bird glanced into the canister before pecking out a plastic bag of chips and shaking out its contents.
“Tourists are always asking for something.” Mary started shaking her head again. “A boat ride to a special beach. Discounts for meals. Bottles of liquor. Marijuana – which I will never touch. When they’re on vacation here, they think everyone’s their personal servant. Talk like we’re invisible. One time I gave these two couples a ride to Apple Bay – on the other side of Tortola. During the entire ride over there, they went on about what they had stolen from the hotel. I couldn’t believe they’d be so happy to talk about that. I’d be ashamed, myself. They seemed to think it was quite funny.”