My part in the exchange of services was to drive the getaway car for an off-hours heist at an island supermarket.
It was an anxious wait on my part, sitting in the oversized convertible trying not to look conspicuous, but Toni and Win emerged fifteen minutes later empty handed. The supermarket had nothing they were willing to steal. “There’s no point liberating over-the-hill bananas,” Win complained.
We spent the night together in a motel room I had taken as a single, the women slipping in later under cover of dark.
So we shared the undersized double bed the room provided, taking turns being the one hugged in the middle. We gave the impression of liking each other to unwholesome excess.
The next day, we drove around the island looking for signs of Molly, checking out even the most unprepossessing roads. As a precaution, Win stayed in the motel in the morning while Toni made herself scarce in the afternoon. The wanted posters that had been circulating had pictures of them together as if inseparably joined at the hip and we thought this was the best way not to attract notice.
To wean Toni and Win away from their life of crime I paid for their meals with what I told them was a stolen credit card. They were resolutely opposed to accepting charity from anyone, particularly from a man. Their entire lives, Toni had confided, had been awash in emotional debt.
On the second afternoon of crisscrossing the island, I noticed, or thought I did, Molly (or a woman who resembled Molly), walking a small white dog of familiar if indeterminate breed.
Why didn’t I say something to Toni? Why didn’t I ask her to drop me off or to turn down the road and follow the woman with the pet dog? I have no answer to those questions, but the fact is I said nothing. It’s possible that I wanted to stay with Toni and Win one more night, which was the way it played out.
Toni and Win were planning to leave the island late the next day — they were careful about not staying in the same place too long — after giving the search for Molly one further extended try.
I was with Win this time when I saw Molly park her bicycle at the central marina and board a sailboat called Lothario. There were two others also on board, but I couldn’t tell if they were the same two I had seen with Molly at the Paradise One Restaurant.
My plan was to come back after Toni and Win had gone off and wait for Molly where the Lothario had been anchored.
When we returned to the motel, we said our goodbyes, one hug leading to another, two hugs leading to one last roll in the bed. It was that hard to separate. And I knew I couldn’t go with them, much as I might have wanted to.
At first I thought the sounds were coming from us, only louder this time and longer lasting, the amplified sighs of exhausted pleasure, but to think so had been a useful self-deception.
I was in the bathroom when the gunfire started — Win had just stepped outside to load the car. I could almost swear I heard Buck’s voice saying, “On the count of three, let the shit rain.” The shelling of the motel went on for at least five minutes — I later learned there were fifteen expert marksman shooting at us — which was when I lost consciousness, which was when the dream of death flashed before me only to be obliterated by the black hole that followed.
After the ambush at the hotel, nothing would be the same again, but wasn’t it always that way.
PART TWO
(Confessions)
68th Night
The doctors lie when they say I have no memory. Look, I remember everything. To tell them they have it wrong is only going to make them angry so I keep this wisdom to myself. It could be that I have already told the doctors they lie and it slipped my mind. It is also possible that the doctors say I have no memory (while knowing it isn’t true) to protect me from the team of interrogators who refuse to believe my answers to their questions.
Something happened to me a while back from which I haven’t fully recovered. I am strapped to a cot in what appears to be a hospital ward, though that was true yesterday. It may be true again tomorrow. Reality changes in this place from day to day, from hour to hour.
“What is this place?” I sometimes want to know.
“We’re the ones that ask the questions, dummy,” the interrogators say.
I like that they call me dummy. It is something to hang on to, a familiar name. Otherwise, I am no one.
The interrogators — there are three who interchange — like to get the answer they are looking for, the one they have in mind before they ask the question. I do my best to please, but my best tends to fall short.
An example: they’ve asked on several different occasions where I met Antonia and Winifred for the first time and when this meeting took place. Each time, they’ve asked, I’ve come up with a different answer, which is always, it seems, the wrong answer.
It stands to reason if I keep on inventing new answers, eventually I’ll hit on the right one.
If I get it right, they tell me, if I tell the truth (meaning their truth), the quality of my life while strapped to this cot would improve immeasurably.
On certain days, I never know in advance which ones, visitors are allowed.
Today, as a matter of fact (perhaps it is no longer today), my parents, recently dead, come to see me.
“The authorities informed us of your accident,” my mother says. “Your father and I were most unhappy to hear of it.”
“What did they say?” I ask, wanting to get the whole picture or at least complete the patchy jig saw puzzle I carry around in my head.
“Well,” my mother says.
“We can’t say anything,” my father says. “We’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
My mother winks as if to say wait until old stick-in-the-mud is out of the room.
Moments later, as if on cue, my father announces he’s going to the men’s room, having rushed from home without taking time to do his business. My parents embrace and tears fall on both sides before my father actually departs.
“So?” I say to my mother when we’re alone.
“What so?” she asks, so I spell it out for her. I need to know what the authorities said about me.
“Please,” she says. “Are you asking me to betray your father? Is that what you’re asking your mother to do. In a marriage, if one person has a deep dark secret, so has the other. That’s the nature of a marriage.”
“Not really,” I say.
“I will never betray your father without his permission,” she says. “What did I always tell you when you were a child?” she says.
“There was more than one thing,” I say, curious as to what she has in mind.
“I distinctly remember telling you on several occasions: you can never go wrong, son, by telling the truth people want to hear.”
I can’t remember her ever saying that to me, but maybe she has.
“What if you don’t know what the truth is?” I ask her.
“That’s the kind of question that’s gotten you in trouble before,” she says, “isn’t it? Everyone has a right to make a mistake once if they admit it afterwards.”
At this point my father returns, drying his hands on the side of his pants. “I can see something’s going on here,” he says. “What has mother said to you behind my back?”
“Nothing bad,” I say. “Nothing about you.”
“What did you tell him?” he asks her.
“The two you,” she says, “you’re so much alike which is why you’re so suspicious of each other.”
“What did you tell him?” he says as if it were the recording of the first question.
“I told him,” she says, winking at me, “that your father and I believe that if you tell them the truth, they’ll let you come home to us.”