Burt had first seen the island from the deck of a cruise ship five years ago. He had recognized a scene he’d dreamed of years before, while his breath froze on the fringe of a parka, his finger stuck to an icy trigger and his eyes squinted across a frozen Korean landscape. He’d spent his last five vacations on the island, and while Caribbean prices had ballooned, Burt still paid the same as he had on his first visit: thirty dollars a week.
The schooner stopped fifty yards outside the semicircle of black rocks which enclosed the lagoon like the jaws of a giant beartrap. Burt stood at the rail listening to the grinding complaint of the engines as they fought the current which hissed and gurgled around the ship. A black figure clad in shorts moved languidly across the beach, dragged a tiny blue rowboat into the water, and started rowing across the lagoon. Burt recognized Joss’s boatman, Coco. He was a skilled fisherman who knew every submerged rock within five miles of the island. Muscles corded in his powerful arms as he left the lagoon and entered the current. Five minutes later the boat thumped against the hull.
“Mist’ March,” he said, holding the boat steady as Burt clambered down. “I din’ expect you this time.”
There was no time for conversation; Burt took his bulky canvas suitcase from the cabin boy, settled into the forward thwart, and helped push off. When they reached the peace of the lagoon, Burt saw that Coco wore a blue straw hat. The boatman had two other hats, one painted red, the other white. He changed them according to his mood: white when he felt good, blue when he was sad, and red when he was angry.
“Why the blue hat?” asked Burt.
The boy spoke abruptly between strokes. “No guest. No fish. No tip.”
“The woman who’s staying here doesn’t fish?”
“Woman?” Coco’s expression of disgust encompassed the entire sex. “I never take woman to fish. Too much play, too much talk.”
“She talks a lot, eh?”
“She? Man, I never see her. She remain in her cabin all day, walk the beach at night.”
Frowning, Burt opened the side pocket of his bag and took out two rolls of film. “Here’s some new high-speed film. I guess you’ve still got that Brownie I gave you.”
“Yes.” Coco grinned. “Now I maybe change my hat, take you to catch big fish.”
Coco tied up at a rickety jetty of poles and wood planks. It was attached to an unfinished concrete jetty begun by Joss’s fourth or fifth husband — who had also inaugurated a yacht basin, a hotel, and a new clubhouse, only to abandon the island and depart with a female guest from Barbados. He’d never come back, and Joss had never continued any of his projects.
Burt stepped off the jetty and looked around. Nothing ever changed here; it could have been five years ago. He saw a figure floating at the south end of the lagoon, where the palms arched down and dipped their fronds in the surf. It could have been a corpse, it floated so still, so bonelessly complaisant to each ripple of water. But Burt recognized the mistress of the island, Jocelyn Leeds.
“Joss!”
No response. After fourteen years on the island, Joss was capable of falling asleep in the water. Her boys had to watch that she didn’t drift out to sea.
Burt started down the beach. He saw smoke trailing up from a cigarette between her lips. A glass rested on the gentle mound of her stomach:
“Hey!” he called. “Hey, Joss!”
“I’m full up,” she called without removing the cigarette. “You should’ve had O’Ryan wait.”
“Don’t hand me that. Come and see what I brought you.”
“Now who in the world—!” She twisted to look, but a wave broke over her face. She spat out her soggy cigarette, rolled over, and started stroking toward shore. Burt opened his suitcase, took out the green beach coat he’d brought her, and walked down to the edge of the surf. Joss rose in thigh-deep water and waded ashore. Her homemade bathing costume (it was too individualistic to be called anything else, a loose-fitting playsuit made of a cotton print) wetly outlined a figure which had once been, obviously, arrestingly full. Now, though resigning itself here and there to the pull of gravity, her shape was still good enough to draw whistles at a distance. Once she’d shown Burt an old picture of herself in a net bra and panties, both of which concealed no more than the absolute legal minimum. She’d refused to say whether she’d been a runway queen, a nightclub stripper, or a freelance exhibitionist; she drew a curtain of phony coyness over her entire past and was even vague about the number of her husbands. Burt wasn’t sure whether the Englishman from whom she’d inherited the island had been her third or fourth. Her hair was the color of bleached straw except at the back of her neck and behind her ears, where traces of gray were visible among the auburn. Burt placed her age at forty-five, but wouldn’t have been surprised if she turned out to be five years on either side.
She walked out of the water, squinting in his direction. She was hopelessly nearsighted but scorned glasses, saying she’d seen too much already. Burt sidestepped and slid the beach coat around her shoulders. “Now you can greet your guests decently.”
“Burt March!” She gave him an impulsive hug which dampened his clothes for the second time. Then she backed off a step. “Burt, you look like hell!”
“Thanks,” said Burt dryly. “You haven’t changed either.”
“But really. You’re thin and pale, and carrying a cane...” Her mouth flew open. “You stopped a bullet!”
“Shhh. I’m supposed to be an insurance salesman.”
“Tell me, really. Did you shoot it out with a gang?”
“Crystal City’s too small to support a gang. It was just a little jewelry store robbery—”
“And you went in after them?”
“Look—” He sighed. There’d be no business transacted until Joss had the entire story. “Joss, there was only one. A kid tried to heist a ring for his sweetheart. He stole his old man’s gun and broke a window. He must’ve panicked when I came in, I don’t know. He didn’t live to talk about it. He was fourteen.”
“Oh—” Her eyes clouded with sympathy. “Poor Burt. Let’s go up to the club and get you a drink.”
She slid her arm around his waist, half-helping him through the loose sand. Burt drew no personal conclusion from this intimacy; Joss had a way of making guests feel that she’d been wistfully scanning the sea for their arrival. He suspected it was only half a pose.
When they reached his luggage, she swooped down and held up the purse. “Burt March! You’ve changed sides!”
“If you weren’t like a grandmother to me, I’d whop you. That belongs to your guest, Mrs. Keener. She left it on the schooner.”
“Oh?” Her expression froze into neutrality. “I’ll have Boris take it to her.”
“I’d rather take it myself.”
Joss frowned, then gave a shrug of indifference which somehow failed to come off. As they stepped beneath the thatched roof of the club, she gave him a sidelong look. “Whatever happened to Caroline, the girl you brought down here last year? She told me she was trying to get you to propose.”
“I almost did.” Burt sat down at a rough, hand-hewn table. He kept his eyes carefully on a grackle which was strutting along the railing. “We broke it off a couple of weeks ago. She wouldn’t have wanted to marry a cop.”
“Now Burt, she told me—” She stopped abruptly. “Oh, I get it now. Okay, we’ll forget it. Boris! Two rum punches.”