«Good Lord, I completely forgot! I really must call the bank and reach his lawyer… Now you know what happens to me when I see you again.»
«I’d like to believe that—»
«You can, Tyrell,» interrupted Dominique softly, leaning forward, her wide brown eyes riveted on his. «You really can, my darling… Where’s the phone, I’m sure I saw one.»
«It’s in the lobby.»
«I’ll be back in a few minutes. Dear old Uncle is thinking of moving again; his neighbors have become too considerate.»
«Saba’s recluse of recluses, as I recall,» said Tyrell, smiling. «No phones, no mail, and, where possible, no visitors.»
«I insisted on a satellite dish.» Dominique moved back her chair and stood up. «He loves to watch international soccer; he thinks it’s black magic, but he watches it constantly… I’ll hurry.»
«I’ll be here.» Hawthorne gazed at the receding figure of the woman he had thought was gone from his life. The rush of contradictory information was not much different from being buffeted by strong winds. The marriage had nearly drowned him; the marriage that was not a marriage at all had restored his breath, the new buoyancy exhilarating… He could not lose her again; he would not lose her again.
He wondered if she would think to call her uncle on Saba and tell him she’d be late returning. There were interisland planes usually every hour until the early evening, an aerial network throughout the chain. Theirs could not be a brief hello and good-bye, it was unthinkable, and he knew her well enough to realize she understood that. He smiled to himself at the thought of the eccentric uncle he had never met, the Parisian attorney who had spent more than thirty years in the swirling, back-stabbing world of arbitrage, racing from boardrooms to courtrooms, millions in the balance with every decision he made, and even then wary of panicking clients who too frequently put money before principle, voiding his hours of concentration.
All of this for a quiet, gentle man who wanted only to get away from the energy-sapping insanity and paint flowers and sunsets, a self-proclaimed latter-day Gauguin. Upon his retirement, Dominique said, he had packed his elderly maid, left a cold, impervious wife with more than enough to continue her extravagant ways, not bothered to contact two insufferable daughters, both infected with their mother’s disease of greed, and flown off to the Caribbean «in search of my Tahiti.»
Saba had been an accident brought about by a conversation with a stranger at the airport bar in Martinique. The man was a runaway who had decided to run back and spend his final years in the lights of Paris, and he had a modest but well-built house to sell on an island called Saba. Intrigued, Dominique’s uncle had inquired further and was shown several billfold snapshots of the house in question. Sight unseen, except for the snapshots, the retired attorney bought it instantly, drawing up the papers himself on a nearby table while his maid looked on in astonishment and not a little trepidation. He then proceeded to place a call to his Paris firm, instructing his former vice president, now president, to pay the owner in full upon the man’s arrival in Paris. His former subordinate was to deduct the purchase price from his former superior’s generous pension. There was only one proviso—delivered to the owner in the airport’s bar. The man was to reach the local telephone company on Saba and have every phone in the house removed immediately. The perplexed returning expatriate, his good fortune beyond his dreams, got in touch with the island phone office on an airport pay phone, fairly screaming his instructions.
The Caribbean was filled with such stories, for the islands were a haven for the disaffected, the burnt out, and the progressively dissolute. It took someone with compassion to understand them, someone of substance to care. And Dominique, one of the world’s original do-gooders, cared enough for her runaway uncle to pay attention.
«Would you believe it?» Dominique interrupted Tyrell’s reverie as she approached her chair. «The lawyer left a message for me that he was tied up and could we make it tomorrow! He made it abundantly clear that he would have phoned me on the island if there were a telephone.»
«Logic’s on his side.»
«Then I made another call, Commander—it was Commander, wasn’t it?» Dominique sat down.
«Long ago,» replied Tyrell, shaking his head, «and I’ve since upgraded myself. I’m a captain now, because it’s my own ship—boat.»
«That’s upgrading?»
«Take my word for it, a full promotion. Whom did you call?»
«My uncle’s neighbors, the couple are so considerate, he wants to move again. They keep coming over with fresh vegetables from their garden, bypass the maid, and interrupt his painting—or his soccer.»
«They sound like nice people.»
«They are; he isn’t, bless his cantankerous heart. Nevertheless, I gave them a chance to legitimately break in on him. I asked them to go over and tell him that there were problems with off-island ownership of property, that his lawyer, the bank, and I were trying to resolve them. I’d be quite late getting back.»
«Wonder of wonders,» said Hawthorne, grinning, his full buoyancy returned. «I was hoping you’d manage to reach him.»
«Could I do anything else, my darling? I wasn’t being polite, Tye. I’ve missed you so.»
«I just checked out of a room down the street,» Tyrell said hesitantly. «I’m sure I can get it back.»
«Please. Do so, please. What’s the name of the hotel?»
«Hotel’s a little grand for what it is. It’s called the Flamboyant, also a touch out of its class.»
«Go there, my darling, and I’ll join you in ten or fifteen minutes. Tell the desk I’m expected and to give me the room number.»
«Why?»
«I want to bring you—us—a present. This is a celebration!» she said.
They held each other in the confines of the small hotel room, Dominique trembling in Hawthorne’s arms. The gift she had brought them was three bottles of chilled champagne, all carried upstairs in ice buckets by an overtipped desk clerk.
«At least it’s white wine,» said Tyrell, releasing her and going to the trays on the bureau, opening the first bottle. «Do you realize I haven’t had any whiskey since four days after you disappeared? Of course, I drank up the entire island’s supply in those four days and lost two charters, but that’s when the bourbon bottles went into the drink.»
«Then my leaving you had one positive result. Whiskey was only a crutch for you, not a necessity.» Dominique sat at the small round table that overlooked the harbor of St. Barts.
«Spare me, I’m not the same guy.» Hawthorne carried their glasses and the bottle to the table, then pulled back the chair opposite her. «What’s that corny phrase?» he said, sitting down. «‘Here’s looking at you, kid’?»
«Here’s to both of us, my darling.» They drank, and Hawthorne refilled their glasses.
«So you have a charter here?» asked Dominique.
«No,» Tyrell thought quickly, looking briefly out the window. «I’m checking out Barts for a Florida hotel syndicate; they’re counting on the fact that gambling will be here soon and want my input. It’s happening all over the islands, the economies are screaming for it.»
«Yes, I’ve heard that. It’s sad, in a way.»
«Very sad, and probably unavoidable. Casinos make for jobs… I don’t want to talk about the islands, I want to talk about us.»
«What’s there to talk about, Tye? Your life is here, mine is in Europe, or Africa, or the refugee camps in the besieged countries, where people need our help. Pour me another; you and the wine are intoxicating.»
«What about you, a life for you?» Hawthorne filled their glasses.