"Will the gentleman be dining with madam?" they asked.
"Fresh water and rice," Remo said.
"Nice and clumpy," the three chorused. "Just the way you like it."
They looked to Remo for approval and Remo nodded and smiled.
Chiun grumbled in Korean for Remo's ears. "Good. Get out of here and go watch that cow eat dead cow meat."
"Sure," said Remo. If Chiun wanted to be alone, let him be alone. Remo hadn't wanted this vacation in the first place and now that he was starting to enjoy it a little, he wasn't going to let Chiun spoil it. If only Remo could shake that crazy restless feeling that sat in him like an undigested meal. He thought he had lost it for a while, back there in the cave with Kim before the tide came in, but now it was back, clinging and unshakable as the smell of death itself.
"We'll show you to the senator's suite now," the room-service trio offered.
Kim followed them through the door, the oversized robe trailing behind her like a beachwear wedding gown. Remo paused in the doorway, turned and said, "Good night, Little Father."
"For some," Chiun muttered without looking up from the spread-out roll of parchment. "If you come back reeking of dead cow meat, you'll have to sleep on the beach."
Remo smiled. "I don't think I'll have any trouble finding a place to sleep."
Chapter Ten
Reginald Woburn III took a tentative sip of orange juice, gagged and spit it out. Fighting the queasy feeling in his stomach, he poked at the two crisp strips of bacon on his plate, but couldn't bring himself to lift them to his mouth. He knew they were fine, just the way he liked them, but right now they had no more appeal than terminal lung cancer.
And the eggs were worse. There were two of them, sunny-side-up, nestled in the center of the plate between the sliced fruit and bacon, but they stared up at him like two milky-yellow blind but accusatory eyes. He could almost hear them speaking to him: "Reginald, you failed again. What kind of Wo descendant are you? You are a failure."
Reggie pushed over the glass-and-wrought-iron table. It hit the carpeted floor of the gazebo with a crackling crash. The tabletop shattered. The glassware broke. Food bits were spattered everywhere.
Reggie shoved back his chair and ran into the shrubbery, retching, his throat constricted, flooded with the loathsome-tasting bile. He tried to throw up, but nothing came out because his stomach was as empty as a freshly dug grave.
He had not been able to eat anything, not since last evening when he heard the news that the sea had not killed the one called Remo.
This time it wasn't a couple of lazy Indians or three over-priced hit men. The sea was the goddamned sea. The sea, cold, relentless, powerful enough to swallow up fleets of ships.
But not Remo. No, the sea could suck up the Titanic like a cocktail hors d'oeuvre, but Remo just went right through it, from bottom to top, and swam back to shore again with no more challenge than if he had been paddling around the shallow end of a backyard pool. With the girl in tow; that made it even more incredible.
Reggie rose from his knees and brushed off his white flannel trousers. His hands were shaking as if he had just come off a three-day party at the polo club with plenteous liquor and pliable women.
He moved slowly, like an old man with aching legs and nowhere to go, back to the gazebo, and collapsed into the high-backed wicker chair. Deep down inside, where his heart was supposed to be, he knew what was wrong with him. It wasn't that his stomach hurt or his hands trembled. They were symptoms. What was wrong with him was fear, terror, older and darker than time itself. He could feel it eating away at him, consuming him in big hungry mouthfuls from the inside out, and he didn't know how much longer he would be able to stand it. Soon, nothing would be left but a dry empty husk, not enough Reggie Woburn left beneath the dry papery skin to even matter.
Could it be that the seventh stone was wrong? Were these two invincible? Or did he just not understand the stone's message yet?
He had been certain that the sea would kill the "plum" named Remo, so certain that he already considered it an accomplished fact. But the sea, so big that you couldn't even hire it to do your work, had failed him. And what else was left? There had to be something else, especially now that the two "plums" were together again. But as he sat and thought, no new ideas came to him, only the fear gnawing away at his insides, taking away a little more of his manhood with every passing minute.
He tried to get a grip on himself. He needed something, something big and important to prove that he was not only still a man, but also the first son of the first son in the direct line of Wo, and therefore a ruler.
His train of thought was broken by the sound of someone singing. It was a high strong lusty voice, female and thick with the island's lyrical accents. The sea breeze carried the song from the beach. It was a happy song, a celebration of love and life, and not at all the kind of song that Reggie was in the mood to hear.
Craning his neck, he peered over the thick wall of shrubbery that separated his gazebo from the beach. He saw an immense black figure waddle into view. Her brightly colored cotton dress stretched around her huge body like a sausage casing about to split. The woman's toenails were painted an improbable day-glo pink. A bright red kerchief was wrapped around her head and atop that was a towering stack of hand-woven baskets nearly as tall as herself.
She moved along the sunlit beach with her own easy, shuffling rhythm, singing. As she came abreast of the gazebo, she noticed Reggie and ended her song abruptly and favored him with a wide easy smile.
"Basket Mary at your service," she said. "Everybody know me. I make the best baskets in all the islands, maybe even the whole wide world. Big baskets, little baskets, all sizes in between, all different colors, all different shapes. You want something special, I make it up for you. Only one day wait. You ask anybody and they tell you that Basket Mary's baskets are the best. The best."
She paused at the end of her oft-practiced spiel and looked at Reginald Woburn III for encouragement.
"Let's have a look at them then," Reggie said with a smile. He leaned over and opened the little wrought-iron gate buried inside the shrubs and then stepped back while Basket Mary squeezed her bulk through it. Her grin faded a little as she caught sight of the overturned table, the shattered crockery, the little slumps of congealed egg and fruit with the bluebottle flies buzzing around them. Something was not so nice here was the expression that briefly crossed her face. Something was not right. But like the smallest cloud crossing in front of the sun, the feeling passed in just a moment. Basket Mary looked up. The sun was still there, right up in the middle of the sky as always, and she smiled as she looked again at Reginald Woburn and noticed his beautifully cut clothes, the luxurious furnishings of his gazebo and the private beach that led to the big fine mansion on the hill behind it.
Basket Mary decided there was nothing wrong here, at least nothing that a couple of her baskets couldn't cure.
"Let's see the green-and-white one there," Reggie suggested. "The one in the middle of the stack."
"You got the eye for real quality," Basket Mary congratulated him. With a swift and surprisingly graceful motion, she transferred the teetering stack of baskets from her head to her hands and then to the carpeted floor. She leaned over to separate the one he wanted from the stack. Reggie leaned over too. He was smiling as his fingers fumbled for and clasped the breakfast knife, lifting it out of the debris of his scattered food.
Suddenly Reggie was feeling good. The fear that had clawed at his inside was melting away as if it had never been there at all. In its place was a warm glow, the thrill of anticipation. What had he ever been afraid of?