Remained to check out the other factors.
My title in the company is Assistant International Vice President for Finance. I was a financial officer when I worked at the government labs, and money is what I know. You don't really know about money unless you know how to put a dollar value on all the things your money buys, though, so I can't spend all my time with the financial reports and the computer. When I recommend an acquisition I have to know what comes with it.
So, besides checking out the hotel site and the facts that Kavilan had given me, I explored the whole island. I drove the road from the site to the airport three times—once in sunlight, once in rain and once late at night—counting up potholes and difficult turns to make sure it would serve for a courtesy van. Hotel guests don't want to spend all their time in their hotels. They want other things to go to, so I checked out each of the island's fourteen other beaches. They want entertainment at night, so I visited three discos and five other casinos—briefly—and observed, without visiting, the three-story verandahed building demurely set behind high walls and a wrought-iron gate that was the island's officially licensed house of prostitution. I even signed up for the all-island guided bus tour to check for historical curiosities and points of interest and I did not, even once, open the slim, flimsy telephone directory to see if there was a listing for Valdos E. Michaelis, Ph.D.
The young woman from the second morning's breakfast was on the same tour bus and once again she was alone. Or wanted to be alone. Halfway around the island we stopped for complimentary drinks, and when I got back on the bus she was right behind me. "Do you mind if I sit here?" she asked.
"Of course not," I said politely, and didn't ask why. I didn't have to. I'd seen the college kid in the tank top and cutoffs earnestly whispering in her ear for the last hour, and just before we stopped for drinks he gave up whispering and started bullying.
I had decided I didn't like the college kid either, so that was a bond. The fact that we were both loners and not predatory about trying to change that was another. Each time the bus stopped for a photo opportunity we two grabbed quick puffs on our cigarettes instead of snapping pictures—smokers are an endangered species, and that's a special bond these days—so it was pretty natural that when I saw her alone again at breakfast the next morning I asked to join her. And when she looked envious at what I told her I was going to do that day, I invited her along.
Among the many things that Marge's death has made me miss is someone to share adventures with—little adventures, the kind my job keeps requiring of me, like chartering a boat to check out the hotel site from the sea. If Marge had lived to take these trips with me I would be certain I had the very best job in the world. Well, it is the best job in the world, anyway; it's the world that isn't as good any more.
The Esmeralda was a sport-fishing boat that doubled as a way for tourists to get out on the wet part of the world for fun. It was a thirty-footer, with a 200-horsepower outboard motor and a cabin that contained a V-shaped double berth up forward, and a toilet and galley amidships. It also came with a captain named Ildo, who was in fact the whole crew. His name was Spanish, he said he was Dutch, his color was assorted and his accent was broad Islands. When I asked him how business was he said, "Aw, slow, mon, but when it comes January—" he said "Johner-ary"—"it'll be good." And he said it grinning to show he believed it, but the grin faded. I knew why. He was looking at my face, and wondering why his charter this day didn't seem to be enjoying himself.
I was trying, though. The Esmeralda was a lot too much like the other charter boat, the Princess Peta, for me to be at ease, but I really was doing my best to keep that other boat out of my mind. It occurred to me to wonder if, somewhere in my subconscious, I had decided to invite this Edna Buckner along so that I would have company to distract me on the Esmeralda. It then occurred to me that, if that was the reason, my subconscious was a pretty big idiot. Being alone on the boat would have been bad. Being with a rather nice-looking woman was worse.
The bay was glassy, but when we passed the headland light we were out in the swell of the ocean. I went back to see how my guest was managing. Even out past shelter the sea was gentle enough, but as we were traveling parallel to the waves there was some roll. It didn't seem to bother Edna Buckner at all. As she turned toward me she looked nineteen years again, and I suddenly realized why. She was enjoying herself. I didn't want to spoil that for her, and so I sat down beside her, as affable and charming as I knew how to be.
She wasn't nineteen. She was forty-one and, she let me know without exactly saying, unmarried, at least at the moment. She wasn't exactly traveling alone; she was the odd corner of a threesome with her sister and brother-in-law. They (she let me know, again without actually saying) had decided on the trip in the hope that it would ease some marital difficulties—and then damaged that project's chance of success by inviting a third party. "They were just sorry for me," said Edna, without explaining.
Going over the tour group in my mind, I realized I knew which couple she was traveling with. "The man with red hair," I guessed, and she nodded.
"And with the disposition to match. You should have heard him in the restaurant last night, complaining because Lucille's lobster was bigger than his." Actually, I had. "I will say," she added, "that he was in a better mood this morning. He even apologized, and he can be a charmer when he chooses. But I wish the trip were over. I've had enough fighting to last me the rest of my life."
She paused and looked at me speculatively for a moment. She was swaying slightly in the roll of the boat, rather nicely as a matter of fact. I started to open my mouth to change the subject but she shook her head. "Do you mind letting your shipmates tell you their troubles, Jerry?"
I happen to be a pretty closed-up person—more so since what happened to Marge. I didn't know whether I minded or not; there were not very many people who had offered to weep on my shoulder in the past eight years. She didn't wait for an answer, but went on with a rush: "I know it's no fun to listen to other people's problems, but I kind of need to say it out loud. Bert was an alcoholic—my husband. Ex-husband. He beat me up about once a week, for ten years. It took me all that time to make up my mind to leave him and so, when you think about it, I seem to be about ten years behind the rest of the world, trying to learn how to be a grown-up woman."
It obviously cost her something to say that. For a moment I thought she was going to cry, but she smiled instead. "So if I'm a little peculiar, that's why," she said, "and thank you for this trip. I can feel myself getting less peculiar every minute!"
Money's my game, not interpersonal relationships, and I didn't have the faintest idea of how to react to this unexpected intimacy. Fortunately, my arm did. I leaned forward and put it around her shoulder for a quick, firm hug. "Maybe we'll both get less peculiar," I said, and just then Ildo called from the wheeclass="underline"
"Mon? We're comin' up on you-ah bay!"
The hotel site looked even more beautiful from the water than it had from the land. There was a pale half-moon of beach that reached from one hill on the south to another at the northern end, and a white collar of breaking wavelets all its length. The water was crystal. When Ildo dropped anchor I could follow the line all twenty-odd feet to the rippled sand bottom. The only ugliness was the chain-link fence that marched around the building site itself.