One final errand. In an exclusive jewelry store in the Loop I bought Annalise's Christmas present: a $2,000 white-gold wedding ring with a two-carat diamond setting, to replace the plain gold band I'd given her after our Nevada marriage.
She called four more times during that period. She had leased the house, moved in, hired a gardener to cure the garden's neglect. She'd bought a car for a good price, a two-year-old Mini, "a cute little thing, what everybody down here drives." She'd met some of our neighbors and become friendly with one couple in particular, the Verrikers, Royce and Maureen. "He was born here; his people came down from Miami before World War II. He's a divorce lawyer, but not the sleazy kind. St. Thomas is sort of the Reno of the Caribbean, a lot of women come here to get divorces, did you know that? That's how he met Maureen, she was one of his clients five years ago." She'd been invited to a party at the home of another couple, the Kyles, where she'd met several other locals. "I told everyone about you, the story that you made enough in the stock market so we could move down here, I mean, and that you'll be here before Christmas. They can't wait to meet you."
Chicago had stifled her, but in St. Thomas she had found her element—established herself among the kind of people she related to and the kind of society she aspired to belong to. Her natural charm and friendliness led everyone to accept her without question, which in turn would lead them to accept me.
Her enthusiasm was infectious. As the day of departure neared, I grew more and more eager. My bags were packed a day early. I didn't sleep much the night before—left the shabby confines of the apartment and took a taxi to O'Hare four hours before my flight.
How did I feel that day?
Like I had the world by the tail, man. Like I could ride it anywhere, ride it forever, and nothing and nobody could ever tear me loose.
ST. THOMAS
1978-1982
ANNALISE WAS THERE to meet me when my flight arrived at Truman Airport on St. Thomas. The trades weren't blowing that day and the overheated air dripped with humidity, but she somehow managed to look cool and fresh in a white skirt and madras blouse and white straw hat. She was tanning already, too. I kissed her passionately right there in the lobby and I didn't give a damn what anyone thought about it.
The Mini she'd bought was bright blue. It had a tendency to make farting noises when you started the engine, but it ran efficiently enough. She drove us down off the plateau where the airport was located, into heavy traffic that was mostly tourist-related—tour vans and buses, taxis, rental cars.
Tourists were the island's major drawback then, same as now. There weren't nearly as many in those days, but still they clogged the airport, Lindbergh Beach across the street, the roads into Charlotte Amalie, the waterfront, and the downtown shopping streets. The seventies building boom—villas, condos, a couple of big resorts—was partly responsible. You could lay the rest of the blame on the damn cruise ship industry. St. Thomas was a primary lure because of the size of its harbor and the fact that it's a duty-free port where you can buy Swiss watches, Irish linen, French perfumes, Italian weapons, single-malt Scotches, Caribbean rums, and a hundred other things at bargain prices.
"It gets really bad when five or six cruise ships come in at once," Annalise said as we drove. "One of the first things the Verrikers told me was to stay away from downtown on those days. The only locals who like the tourists are the shopkeepers."
Despite the overcrowding, the island for me was still the tropical paradise the guidebooks made it out to be. Once you got past the ramshackle native quarter, you encountered lush tropical vegetation and old-world charm just about everywhere you looked. Frenchtown, for instance—Cha-Cha Town to the locals—where the descendants of the first Huguenot settlers on St. Barthelemy lived in small, brightly colored frame houses that had been passed down from generation to generation. They were fishermen, mostly, who spoke an ancient Norman dialect and wore square, flat-topped straw cha-cha hats and had little to do with the other white residents.
I had my first look at Charlotte Amalie from half a mile across the bay. A mix of new and ancient commercial buildings set along the curve of the waterfront, private homes spread in a wide arc halfway up the surrounding mountains—red roofs and whitewashed stucco walls sunstruck and shimmering in the humid heat. The broad harbor, the offshore islands, the turquoise blue of the Caribbean dotted with sails stretching out beyond. It's not easy to describe what I felt, seeing it for the first time. The best I can do is call it a sense of rightness, of belonging, as if I were meant to be there. As if my previous life had been a waiting or trial period, everything I'd done a rite of passage. I tried to put this into words for Annalise, but she didn't understand. She just smiled and nodded.
We dropped down to Veterans Highway and drove in along the harbor past the airboat terminal, the slips for the Tortola ferries and glass-bottom excursion boats, the anchored yachts at the King's Wharf marina. Annalise pointed out landmarks along the way. One was Fort Christian, a looming pink-plaster pile guarded by a couple of ancient cannon, built in 1671 by the Danes who'd been the first whites to settle the island. It was not only a tourist attraction, which housed a museum in what had once been the dungeon; it was also, in those days, where police headquarters and the local jail were located.
Near King's Wharf, Annalise turned onto one of the uphill streets. We climbed across Dronningens Gade, the main drag, and up past the old slave market and then around Berg Hill into the residential district. The streets up there were narrow, mostly one-way, forming a maze of curves, loops, angles. It had taken Annalise half a dozen trips before she could make all the right turns without consulting the real estate agent's instruction sheet.
We emerged finally onto a twisty little street called Quartz Gade. The handful of villas along it were on large lots carved out of the hillside below street level; all had red tile roofs and lush gardens and either steep driveways or covered parking platforms. She indicated one as belonging to the Kyles, Gavin and Robin, and a larger one on the hillside above, flanked by huge flamboyant trees, as the Verrikers' home.
Our place was down toward the end. White stucco, red tile roof, walls draped in crimson and purple bougainvillea; driveway and one-car garage set at right angles to the house. There were high stucco walls on both sides. The wall on the east side flanked a steep set of stairs that led down to the next street and beyond. The steps were wide and made of ship-ballast brick imported by the Danes during the mid-1800s; they'd been built because the pitch on some of the hills was too steep for streets and cars and also to provide residents with direct foot access to the shopping district. There were several of these long public staircases in Charlotte Amalie. Once I got to know their locations, I mapped out a series of shortcut routes to and from our villa. The return climb could be a bitch in the heat of the day, even though the crow-flies distance was only about a quarter of a mile, but we got used to it and used the stairs fairly often to keep in shape.
The villa was built of stone and stucco, and the thick walls cooled the interior. Annalise had said it was small, but that was a matter of perspective. Six rooms, all good-sized, the living room and master bedroom long and wide with high, beamed ceilings. Whitewashed walls hung with tapestries and pictures by local artists. Beige tile floors. Massive old furniture. All the modern conveniences.
Two sets of heavy, jalousied doors opened from the living room onto a wide cobbled terrace that ran the width of the house. Two more sets of doors gave access from the master bedroom to the terrace and to a narrow side veranda. The garden ran downhill some fifty yards: coconut palms and guava trees, oleander, hibiscus, white ginger. The view was spectacular. From one point or another on the terrace you could see most of the harbor, Hassel Island and its mountaintop fort, a section of Water Island, the Caribbean in the distance.