"What do you mean?"
"You can't use it."
"I helped build it." She was indignant. "What're you talking about?"
"Nobody can use it till tomorrow."
"Why on earth not?"
"It has to set," Kimberly explained.
Thelma frowned and looked confused. "What?"
"The sand needs time to set. Otherwise, it'll all fall in and fill up the hole."
"Are you crazy?"
"No, it's true."
She shook her head. "I've never heard of such a thing."
"It's true," I chimed in. "You never use a sand latrine the first day. I thought everyone knew that."
Thelma wrinkled her face. She looked quite perplexed, and vaguely suspicious.
"Where am I supposed to go, then?" she asked her sister.
"The same place as always." She nodded toward the jungle. "I'll get Billie and Connie. We'll all go together, from now on."
"What about me?" I asked.
Thelma narrowed her eyes at me. Kimberly, though, is always a sport. She knew I was mostly kidding. "I think you'll be fine right here. We won't go far."
"Don't you think you might need a guy along for protection?" I asked.
"We'll be fine, Rupert."
"Have it your way."
So all the gals went trooping off into the bush without me. I stayed where I was, but quit working on the journal for a while. I didn't want any distractions, in case Wesley might pop up out of nowhere and make a try for me.
Even though I felt vulnerable, I was fairly safe. I was surrounded by stretches of sand, for one thing. For another, I was fairly well armed -- a spear, a club and a selection of rocks within easy reach.
Also, the gals never went very far. They only pushed into the jungle far enough so I wouldn't be able to see them. I could hear their voices, though, so I knew they'd be able to hear me if I had to yell for help.
Nothing happened.
It's been pretty uneventful, since then. I've just kept working on the journal here, taking my time, keeping an eye on the gals. Kimberly and Billie went in swimming for a while. Connie went for a climb on the rocks, but never wandered out of sight. Thelma has mostly just sat around and napped.
I'll probably try to take a nap, myself.
It may turn out to be a long night.
---------—
Day Four
----------
The Diversion
Thelma turned in, last night, shortly after dark. That seemed to be a good thing, since we needed her out of the picture. She'd worried me, the way she had spent so much of the day sleeping. I was afraid she might be wide awake, ready to stay up all night, and manage to wreck the ambush we had planned.
I said as much to the others, after she'd gone off.
"It's not uncommon at all," Billie said, "for people to sleep a lot more than usual when they're going through tough times emotionally. It's a way of escaping from the pain of the situation."
Billie had been a high-school teacher before marrying Andrew. She'd taught English, but you have to learn a lot of psychology to become a teacher -- at least in California. That's probably how she picked up the stuff about escaping with sleep. Or maybe she picked it up watching Oprah.
Kimberly said, "Sleeping's about the last thing I feel like doing."
"You're a lot stronger than Thelma," Billie said.
"A lean, mean, killing machine," said I.
Which earned a friendly smirk from Kimberly, a roll-upward of the eyeballs from Billie, and a snarl from Connie. (You can't please all the people all the time . . .)
Anyway, we kept sitting around the fire and talking about this and that for another hour or so. We mostly avoided the topic of the ambush, but I bet it was the main thing on all our minds. We were talking about trivial stuff to keep ourselves from dwelling on it.
I felt awfully shaky, and even got goosebumps from time to time. Not because there was a chilly breeze, either. There was a breeze, but it was warm and felt good. It felt so good that I'd taken my shirt off, just after sundown.
I'd started wearing a shirt, now and then, especially during the hottest times of the day -- to keep from getting a sunburn. It wasn't so much a shirt as a blouse, actually. A bright pink silk blouse that belonged to Billie. It had been retrieved from the inlet, along with so many other things, by Andrew and Keith. The lower back of the blouse had gotten burnt off, but otherwise it was fine.
Billie is the one who picked it out for me to wear. That was way back on the day after the yacht blew up. (Seems like about ten years ago.) It was the best of the lot. I said she might want to keep it for herself. She told me, "If I need it, I'll know right where to find it."
So far, she hasn't asked for it. She's been happy just going around all the time in her bikini. (As I might've written way back at the start of all this, she is sort of a borderline exhibitionist. We'd be seeing a lot more of her, I bet, if her daughter wasn't around.) Billie uses some pretty heavy-duty sunblock. When she runs out of that, maybe she'll start wearing more clothes. I'm not looking forward to it. I like her attire just the way it is.
The way things are going, however, we'll probably all be dead long before we need to worry about running out of sunblock.
Never mind. I don't want to think about what the future might hold for us.
Back to a subject I can write about with a certain amount of pleasure -- the wardrobe.
Kimberly has continued to wear Keith's bright and flowery Hawaiian shirt most of the time. She never buttons it. The shirt is always open, often blowing behind her in the breeze, giving me a wonderful view, whenever I look, of her bare brown skin and her skimpy white bikini.
Connie wears her own skimpy bikini. Hers is orange. But she keeps her T-shirt on nearly all the time. The T-shirt is white, large and loose. Sometimes, it hangs off one shoulder or the other. It covers her all the way down to about mid-thigh, like a short dress. The material is so thin that you can see through it.
Thelma has continued to wear the same . . .
Thelma.
I guess I'd better stop wasting time, and get to what went wrong.
I'm not real eager to do that.
Procrastination, thy name is Rupert.
"We'd better get on with it," as Billie said last night by the fire.
We had been doing some procrastinating, ourselves.
"Is everyone about ready?" she asked.
Kimberly didn't say a thing, just made a single nod with her head.
"Are we really gonna go ahead with this?" Connie asked.
"Unless you have a better idea," Billie told her.
Connie wrinkled her nose.
"He hasn't left us any choice," Kimberly said. "It's him or us."
"Are you two really gonna kill him?"
"If we can," Billie said.
"You've got the knife," Kimberly said to her.
Billie had Andrew's Swiss Army knife on her hip. The thick plastic handle was tucked down the waistband of her bikini pants, all the blades and tools folded in.
"Do you want to be the one to use it?" Kimberly asked.
The two women stared at each other, the firelight flickering in their eyes.
"You want to, don't you?" Billie said.
"Yes."
They were not exactly beating around the bush.
"Okay," Billie said. She pulled the knife out, leaned sideways and passed it to Kimberly.
Kimberly shut her hand around it, and pressed her fist against her belly.
Billie glanced from me to Connie. "Do either of you have any questions?"
"Guess not," Connie said.
"I'm ready," I said. "Just don't let him kill me, okay?"
Kimberly got to her feet.
So did Billie. "Good luck, you two," she told us. "Make it look good."
"We will," I promised. "You be careful out there."
Side by side, carrying their spears, they walked away from the fire. I was facing the fire (and Connie on its other side) so I had to look over my shoulder to watch them. They went to the stream -- the usual routine -- drank from it and brushed their teeth (using fingers). Then they wandered over to the rocky area at the north side of our beach. As they started to climb, Connie snapped, "Quit watching. Jerk."