“Alexandra!”
Conner’s shout echoes across the resort. I return to the bungalows as swiftly as possible.
“Alexandra!”
Conner dashes between the bungalows, torch aloft, awakening everyone. Bleary-eyed guests step out of their homes, wondering why there is so much commotion. Pamela and Gwen leave their bungalow.
“What’s happening?” Gwen asks.
I answer by way of a confused shrug.
Conner runs towards us. “I can’t find Alexandra. She slipped out of our room when I dozed off. Has anyone seen her?”
I step forward. “I think I saw someone walking around the bungalows about an hour ago. Maybe less.”
Breathing heavily, Conner looms over me. “You did? Where’d she go?”
I point to the beach. Without waiting for us, Conner runs to the beach. The rest of us follow, scores of torches lighting the way. People call Alexandra’s name, fanning out from one end of the beach to the other. We find nothing.
Conner approaches me. “Are you sure it was her?”
“I didn’t get a good look.”
“Why didn’t you call out to them—see who it was?” Conner demands.
“I… I don’t know.”
I feel so incompetent. The guests on the beach—Gwen included—look at me like a jury delivering a guilty verdict. For a moment, it seems that Conner will throttle me, but he turns away and begins calling his wife’s name again.
Dawn. A cry from Dellas brings us running back to the beach. Alexandra sprawls on the shore, caressed by waves, and appears to be sleeping. She wears a long gown, now covered with wet sand and seaweed.
Dellas kneels beside her. “She wash up from de sea.”
Alexandra is dead. Conner strides towards us, staring at the body. Sitting on the sand, he rolls Alexandra’s head onto his lap. Mercifully, her eyes are closed. Head bowed, he brushes sand from her face. No one says a word.
Exhausted, I draw the heavy curtains in my bungalow to block the morning sun. The image of Alexandra’s body sprawled on the beach seems burned onto my retinas because I see nothing else. Collapsing onto the bed, I feel an odd lump beneath the pillow. It is a box of cookies with a note.
Phillip,
You’re awfully thin. I worry about you. Don’t tell anyone about this.
Gwen must have pilfered the cookies from the supply room when Conner wasn’t looking. Perhaps Conner gave them to Gwen to win her favor. I devour every cookie in the box.
I sleep longer than necessary; maybe the cookies put me into a sugar coma. When I leave my bungalow, it is already the later half of the afternoon. I enter the restaurant to an argument already in process.
“We’re not going to stand for this!” Nelson slams a chair out of his way.
Robby stands opposite him behind a long table. “That’s the way it is, mate.”
Curtis stands beside Nelson with a helpless, confused expression. Pamela and Gwen sit at a nearby table.
“What’s going on?” I ask Curtis.
Before Curtis can reply, Nelson snaps, “They’re cutting off our meals—that’s what’s going on.”
“I don’t understand,” I reply. “Where’s Conner.”
“I’m right here,” Conner says from behind me. He walks to his rattan chair and takes a seat.
“You have no right!” Nelson rages.
For a man who just lost his wife, Conner seems remarkably at ease. “You and your boyfriend are a drain on this resort. We can’t afford to carry your dead weight anymore.”
“So this is how it’s going to be, is it?” Nelson glares at everyone in the restaurant, daring someone to speak up. “We’ve surrendered our freedom for Conner’s protection and now he lords over us like a tyrant. Go ahead. Sit there… all of you too petrified to speak, but mark my words, the next time he decides to starve someone into submission it will be one of you.”
“Conner, this doesn’t make sense,” I say, taking up their cause. “They’ve caught fish and provided food for the resort.”
Conner leans back in his chair. “They eat five times what they bring in… especially the fat one.”
“But what are we going to do for food?” Curtis says to no one in particular, sounding as though he was a child just informed that Santa died.
Conner gestures to the sunlit bay with an expansive sweep of his arm, like a game show host revealing a wonderful prize. “You’ve got an ocean filled with food. I suggest you get to it.”
“Wait, just hold on a minute,” I raise my hands to calm everyone down. “What’s happening here is part of a larger problem. We can’t keep relying on the food in the supply room.”
“We can if we supplement it with fish from the sea,” Robby interjects.
I shake my head. “Even then, you’re only prolonging the inevitable. Someday the supplies will run out. We’ve got to think beyond the storeroom. We’ve got to work with the islanders.”
Several people scoff at this. Conner smirks to Curtis, “It looks like you got your answer.”
I address everyone in the restaurant. “Not everyone on the island is a murdering thug. Just look at Dellas.”
Dellas, who leans against a pole nearby with her daughter in her arms, seems startled that I cited her as an example.
I stand before her. “Dellas, tell them that there is food on the island—there are farms, groves of tropical fruit. Tell them.”
Hesitantly, she nods.
“Of course she’d say that; she’s luring us out of the resort for her friends to kill us,” someone snipes from the back of the room.
Indignant, Dellas straightens up. “What Phillip says is true. Dere is food on de island. Maybe enough for all of us to survive. Papaya, mango, pineapple, and on and on. Dey got chickens and eggs and goat meat.”
“Then why aren’t you there eating this buffet?” Conner asks with a sly smile, and then answers his own question. “I’ll tell you why: Because you know those savages would cut you down the moment you stepped foot outside of this place. No, we remain here. We ration our supplies and catch what we can from the sea.”
Conner points at Nelson and Curtis. “You two knew the penalty for failing to contribute to the resort. From now on, you only eat what you catch. Robby will give you enough water each day to get by. No one is to give you any food, and anyone who does will face the same penalty as you.”
Nelson turns to everyone seated in the restaurant, searching for supporters and finding none.
“Cowards,” he sneers and leaves the room, Curtis close behind.
Conner stares at me, challenging me to say something more in their defense. To my shame, I fall silent.
Chapter Seventeen
Two days have passed since Conner denied Nelson and Curtis food from the storeroom, and they languish because of it. The pair spends most of their time in their bungalow, venturing forth when the sun is the weakest for a futile effort to catch fish. As before, Nelson does all of the fishing, snorkeling in the same patch of reef with the same limited results.
Nelson walks out of the water, back stooped, steps faltering.
“I don’t have the strength anymore,” he dejectedly slaps the empty net bag tied to his waist.
“Maybe Conner will see that we’re starving and he’ll ease up,” Curtis murmurs.