She sat down at the side of the road, fanning herself with a plate-sized leaf she'd plucked, and thought about him, standing there in her doorway. The way his T-shirt had clung to his body; the way his eyes had glinted when he looked at her; the tentative smile that had come into his face now and then. These few details, and his name, were all she really knew about him. Why then, she asked herself, did she feel such a sense of loneliness, thinking she might never see him again? If she was so desperate for the physical comfort of a man then she could find it readily enough; either here on the island or back in New York. It wasn't about the presence of another body, it was about him, about Galilee. But that was nonsensical. Yes, he was handsome, but she'd met more beautiful men. And she knew too little about him to be enchanted by his spirit. So why was she sitting here moping over him like a lovelorn fifteen-year-old?
She cast her makeshift fan aside, and got to her feet. Whatever the reasons for her feelings, she had them, and they weren't about to evaporate just because she couldn't get to their root. She wanted Galilee; it was as simple as that. And the possibility that he'd sailed away without telling her where she could find him made her sick with sorrow.
Niolopua was sitting on the front step when she got back to the house, drinking a can of beer. There was a ladder leaning against the eaves of the house, and a great litter of pruned vines on the lawn. He'd been hard at work, for a while at least. Now he was simply sitting in the sun, drinking his beer. He made no attempt to conceal what he was doing when Rachel appeared. He didn't even stand. He simply squinted up at her, his face pouring sweat, and said:
"There you are…"
"Were you looking for me?"
He shook his head. "I was just surprised you'd gone, that's all."
He set his beer can down at his side. It was not the first he'd had, she saw. There were three more empty cans sitting there. No wonder the shyness he'd evidenced at their first meeting had disappeared. "You look like you didn't sleep very well," he said.
"As it happens, I didn't."
He reached into his bag and pulled out another beer. "Want one?" he said.
"No. Thank you."
"I don't always drink on duty," he said, "but today's a special occasion."
"Oh?" Rachel said. "What's that?"
"Guess."
She could no longer keep up a pretense of bonhomie: his tone was irritating her. "Look, I think you should just pack up your tools and go home," she said.
"Oh do you now?" he said, popping the beer can. "And what if I said to you: this is home."
"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied, and went to open the front door.
"My mother worked here all her life. I've been coming here since I was a baby."
"I see."
"I know this house better than you'll ever know it." He turned away from her, now that he was certain he had her attention. "I love this house. You come, one after the other, and you act like the place belongs to you-"
"It doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the Geary family."
"No, it doesn't," Niolopua said, "it belongs to the Geary women. There's never been any men come here. Just women." A look of contempt crossed his face. "Why can't you have your husbands service you? Why'd you have to come here and…" the contempt deepened "… and… defile everything?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Rachel said, turning back from the door and going to stand right beside him. Niolopua didn't avert his gaze. He stared right up at her with something very close to hatred on his face.
"You don't think about what you do to him, do you?"
"Him?"
"It's not like there's ever any love."
"Him."
"Yes. Him."
"Galilee?"
"Yes! Of course!" Niolopua said, as though she was an imbecile for asking the question. "Who the hell else would it be?" There were tears in his eyes now: of rage, of frustration. "My mother was the only one who ever loved him.
The only one!" He looked away from Rachel, and tears dropped from his eyes onto the wooden steps. "He built this house for her."
"Galilee built this house?" Niolopua nodded, still not looking up. "When?"
"I don't know exactly. A long time ago. It was the first house to be built on this shore."
"That can't be right," Rachel said. "He's not that old. I mean he's what, forty? If that."
"You don't know what he is," Niolopua said. There was a measure of pity in the remark, as though Rachel's ignorance was more profound than a lack of information.
"So tell me," she said. "Help me understand."
Niolopua took a mouthful of beer. Stared at the ground. Said nothing.
"Please," she said softly.
"All you want to do is use him," came the reply.
"You've got me wrong," she said. He didn't respond to this. At last she said: "I'm not like all the rest, Niolopua. I'm not a Geary. Well… no that's not true… I married a man I thought I loved and his name happened to be Geary. I didn't realize what that meant."
"Well, my father hates you all. In his heart, he hates you."
"Your father being?" She paused, realizing the answer. "Oh Lord. You're Galilee's son."
"Yes. I'm his son."
Rachel put her hands over her face and sighed into her palms. There was so much here she didn't comprehend: secrets and anger and sorrow. The only thing she grasped with any certainty was this: that even here, even in paradise, the Gearys had done their spoiling. No wonder Galilee hated them. She hated them too. At that moment she wished every one of them dead. A little part of her even wished herself dead. There seemed to be no other way out of the trap she'd married into.
"Is he coming back?" she said after a time.
"Oh yes," Niolopua replied, his voice monotonal. "He knows his responsibilities."
"To whom?"
"To you. You're a Geary woman, whether you like it or not. That's why he's with you. He wouldn't come otherwise." He glanced up at her. "You've got nothing he needs."
He was being cruel for the satisfaction of it, she knew, but the words stung her nevertheless.
"I don't need to listen to this," she said, and leaving him on the steps to drink his warm beer, she went back into the house.
It's no accident that events of great significance, when they happen, do so in clusters; it's the nature of things. Having been a gambling man in my youth, I know from experience how this principle works, for instance, in a casino. The roulette table suddenly becomes "hot"; there's win after win after win. And if you happen to be at the right table at the right time then the odds are suddenly tipped spectacularly in your favor. (The trick, of course, is to sense the moment when the table cools, and not to keep betting beyond that point, or you'll lose your shirt.) Observers of natural phenomena large and small, astronomers or entomologists, will tell you the same thing. For long periods-millions of years in the life of a star, minutes in the life of a butterfly-nothing of moment seems to happen. And then, suddenly, a plethora of events: convulsions, transformations, cataclysms.
Of course it's the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they're happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly-all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.