"No, mon. No place for Bone on that kind of trip."
"Alone? I couldn't do it. I'm not ready to singlehand."
"You're ready," he said. "You never be more ready."
The next day I put in fresh stores, fuel, water. Then I painted a new name on the yawl's transom and reregistered her with the harbormaster's office. Annalise was gone; I wanted Annalise gone, too. Her new name, picked at random, was Windrunner.
The day after that, I left early into a stiff wind and an uncertain forecast. I had no idea where I was going. If I succeeded as a singlehander, fine. If I screwed up badly enough so that the yawl lost a mast or broached and went down, so be it. I didn't much care then, either way.
I set sail to windward on a starboard tack and let the trades take me wherever they felt like. I had a little trouble handling her at first, without Bone's sure hand with the rigging and the Dacron, and came close once to a bad jibe. But the lessons I'd learned from him, plus instinct and applied skill, allowed me to regain and maintain control.
The not-caring didn't last long. Singlehanding a thirty-four-foot yawl is work, hard work, and requires constant vigilance even under optimum conditions. When you have a passion for sailing, the work soon translates to pleasure and then to that sense of exhilarating freedom. I could singlehand. I was on my own boat, alone on the open sea. Everything else diminishes after a while, loses some of its importance—even betrayal and a suddenly brutalized love.
By nightfall I was no longer running aimlessly. I reckoned my position by compass and celestial navigation, used the nautical almanacs and logarithmic tables to chart a course that would take Windrunner on a broad loop around St. Croix, and put her on the right coordinates.
The weather held until the afternoon of the third day, when I encountered a rain squall off East Point on the northeastern tip of St. Croix. That was the only real test of my seamanship that I faced. A following breeze had risen, and before long the swells steepened and there was a rough cross chop. Then, as the wind increased, I saw the squall line moving in dark and fast. I double-checked the hatches, lashed down the loose gear, then went forward to replace the genoa with a working jib, again to reef in the main, and one more time to replace the working jib with the storm jib. Rain burst over the yawl in a blinding tropical downpour. The squall lasted about an hour, but despite the driving rain and thrashing sea it wasn't bad as Caribbean blows go. Windrunner showed no desire to broach, and I rode it out with the wheel tied down and a lifeline fastened around my waist and clipped to a backstay.
I stayed out five and a half days. At night I slept on the cushions in the cockpit aft. Every morning I pumped the bilges, ran the auxiliary for an hour to charge the batteries, checked the sails and halyards. I shot the sun at noon and took star sights at dusk and dawn, and kept a daily log. The yawl sailed herself with the wind abeam or on the quarter; those times I ran a piece of the sheet from a cleat on the lee coaming to the wheel's king spoke to keep her off the wind, and made my meals and lazed on deck, communing with the towering emptiness of sea and sky. I saw schools of flying fish, and what I was sure was the dorsal fin of a trailing shark. I passed deserted cays and other boats with their sails bellied fat, and avoided reefs, and once made five knots running close-hauled against the wind.
Bone was right, as usual.
When I sailed back into the harbor at Charlotte Amalie, the poison was gone.
The second dose came two weeks later.
I was all right then. But I wouldn't have been if I hadn't purged myself of the first dose with that long singlehand voyage.
I don't know why I picked that Tuesday to make my last visit to the Royal Bay Club. I don't believe in predestination, cosmic manipulation, any of that crap. It was a random choice of day and time to clean out my locker and cancel my membership. I'd never really felt comfortable at the club, and now there was no longer any need to keep up appearances. Since my return I'd managed to avoid the Verrikers and Kyles and other members, and I intended to keep on avoiding them; the last thing I wanted to have to deal with was pity.
The club was usually more or less deserted in the middle of the afternoon, the hottest part of the day. I expected to be in and out in a few minutes. The fact that Gavin Kyle happened to be in the lounge, and I happened to overhear him talking to the British banker, Horler, was sheer coincidence.
The steward wasn't in his customary cubicle at the front entrance, so I walked into the lounge looking for him. Gavin and Horler were at the bar. I would have done a quick about-face before they saw me, except that voices carry in a mostly empty room. When I heard Gavin use my name, I stopped and listened.
"You can't help but feel sorry for Laidlaw," he was saying in his gossipy way. "He doesn't know how much better off he is without that bitch. She—"
I was on the move by then, straight toward them. Horler spotted me first and jabbed Gavin with his knee. When Gavin saw me, his moon face warped in on itself as if squeezed from within. He squirmed visibly on his stool.
"Go ahead," I said. "Don't let me stop you."
"Christ, Richard, I—"
"Let's hear the rest of it."
Horler muttered an excuse and made a hasty exit. Gavin gulped his drink and started to get up, but I held him down with a hand on his shoulder. His eyes pleaded with me, as if he were a dog about to be kicked.
"I'm not going to make a scene," I said. "I'll just buy you a drink and we'll chat a little."
"I don't blame you for being pissed—"
"I'm not pissed. What're you drinking?"
" . . . Scotch and soda."
I ordered another round for him, a double shot of Arundel for myself. Then I said, "What did you mean, I'm better off without that bitch?"
"I've got a big mouth," he said. "Robin says so, and she's usually right about my shortcomings."
"What did you mean?"
"You don't really want to hear it."
"Why is Annalise a bitch? Why am I better off?"
The drinks came and he slugged half of his. "All right, you asked for it," he said, not quite looking at me. "She wasn't faithful to you. She . . . well, not for a long time."
It was several seconds before I asked, "How long a time?"
"At least six months."
"How many men?"
"I'm not sure. Two that I know of."
"The first?"
"Does it matter?"
"You, Gavin?"
"Christ! I don't play around. Never have, never will."
"Who, then?"
"If I tell you . . . what're you going to do?"
"Nothing," I said. What could I do that wouldn't call attention to me? "I'm not the confrontational type. Or the violent type. I just need to know."
I watched him struggle with it for half a minute. Then he said, "Screw it, I don't owe him any favors," and swallowed some of his fresh drink. "Royce Verriker."
Verriker. I felt a rush of hatred for him. Every man needs a vice; mine is making money. And making friends' wives.
"How do you know?"
"I saw him going into your house one afternoon," Gavin said.
"When you were out and Maureen was away visiting in San Juan."
"It could've been innocent."
"It wasn't. I asked him about it later on and he owned up."
"Just like that, he owned up?"
"You don't know Royce like I do. He's a shit when it conies to women. Likes to brag about his conquests. He never bragged to you?"
"No. But then he wouldn't, would he, if he was screwing Annalise."
Gavin made the rest of his Scotch disappear. "He's been like that ever since I've known him. Dozens of women—that divorce practice of his is tailor-made."