Roy thanked the manager as someone yelled, “Boss! The bush doc reach again!”
“Oh God, man. Not Daniel in the Den of Lions.” The manager, looking back at Roy and Fiona, started in the direction of the big cats. A dark, barebacked figure was hastening away, silver glinting along his brown arms.
“Excuse,” the manager said. “Poor old fella, his mind not too good. Last week he enter the lion den and start telling them about Africa. Good thing we had feed them already.” He tapped his head, smiled at Fiona, and jogged off, shirt collar rising around his ears like little wings, his buttocks undulating in their tight trousers.
Still earlier that afternoon, in hills overlooking the western coast, Roy headed from his mother’s secluded home to Fiona’s apartment. He considered his mother. Two years into widowhood, abandoned by her husband’s friends, ostracized by island women who guarded their too-contented husbands with a furtive wickedness, she had emigrated to Miami where two of her sisters lived. She had sold half of her husband’s business interests and signed the rest over to Roy with the stipulation that he consult her before selling. Roy wanted to sell for a fair price to Norman De Souza, Minister of National Security, but the minister preferred the current arrangement he had with Roy, whose direct participation had been deemed “necessary for continued success.” It was a matter of security, he had said, until Roy would agree to sell at a significantly lower price. They are the ones you say no to, Roy’s father had written in his diary, which Roy discovered only after De Souza had intimidated him into laundering money through his businesses. Learn to see. Watch closely. Then learn to “play no,” not say it. Or better, misunderstand them. Act the fool. It’s your only chance.
Roy mulled over Fiona’s imminent departure, steeling himself for its inevitability, and pondered why she had come to the island. Six months earlier, the BBC had sent Fiona to Trinidad to research a documentary on the impact of drug trafficking on the island’s economy. She liaised with the British Consulate where she met Roy at a symposium on money laundering. De Souza had introduced them. Later, when De Souza realized he couldn’t sleep with Fiona, he became uneasy with her questions. He couldn’t understand her lack of fear. Don’t you read the newspapers, darling? One doesn’t pry into the drug trade. Do you know where you are? This isn’t jolly old England, you know. And even there now...
But at the symposium, an elegant sense of class and decorum had prevailed, an awareness of everyone’s importance, and especially of one’s own importance. New information was presented: thirty to forty percent of the island’s dollar was drug-based; some five to ten metric tons of cocaine were shipped through each month, with fifteen to twenty-five percent distributed on the island; drug-shipment interdiction hadn’t increased in five years; money laundering was now so lucrative that it had become impossible to arrest anyone notable; major crime connected with the drug trade, prostitution, and arms-trafficking had risen significantly in the last five years. Suggestions for solutions followed: combine police and army patrols; allow American/British armed forces to enter sovereign waters and airspace; secure hotlines for reporting suspicious activity — at this, Roy noticed some men in the audience smile.
Roy watched De Souza — two rows ahead in a pale gray Armani suit, jowls appropriately puffed over his collar, gold signet ring glinting — as he scribbled away in a notebook. His profile registered the concern of the powerful under the public gaze. A national television report following the symposium featured ten seconds of footage of politicians, businessmen, and De Souza and Fiona shaking hands. Fiona was to “produce a tourism documentary with a keen interest in safety.”
At the reception, Fiona meandered toward Roy and De Souza. Have you met Miss Hamilton, Roy? De Souza had asked softly, then grinned.
Not yet, Roy said, wanting to be far away from everyone there.
She’s with the BBC. He chuckled. I’m going to be showing her around, of course. Ah, Miss Hamilton.
Roy turned. She was tall and wore green slacks and a black blouse, low-cut. Her eyebrows were long, shapely. Eye contact was instant. Her hand reached toward him, so he had to look at her eyes immediately. She stared with intense, brief passion, like someone who’d fleetingly glimpsed horror — the expression concentrated in her gray-blue eyes, moist and unblinking. She might have been on cocaine, Roy mused. Then, with unmistakable poise, she glanced at De Souza, who had been staring at her prominent and flushed breasts. Delighted to meet you, Fiona said to Roy. The tight grip of her handshake made him curious.
And you, Roy managed to say.
The minister has told me all about you. Fiona lifted a glass of wine from a silver tray as an indifferent waiter strolled by. De Souza was not liked.
And have I been good? Roy asked, playing along.
That depends, De Souza said, on your plans. The minister winked at Fiona, his eyes unable to convey their boyish charm so overused of late.
And what are your plans? Fiona asked Roy.
Roy shrugged, trying to smile like a good-natured fool. Up to my partner here. Is there anything we can help you with?
Matters of safety, Fiona said.
The minister was scanning the room. I can’t seem to get a drink, he complained. He snapped his fingers at a waiter who appeared to be deliberately avoiding him.
Roy gave her a week. She called after four days.
Roy drove under towering roadside trees, dipped below the view of distant sea, and began to smell the village at the foot of the hills, wood smoke and the sweet stink of garbage. A natural stream ran alongside the road. A small reservoir that had once been the water source for the village lower down and the wealthy houses in the hills was now abandoned. The village depended on the stream which began high in the mountains, in mist-cool, fragrant forests he’d seen as a boy; an evergreen, seemingly pre-Columbian world existed there, though today it was higher in the mountains and further away. Fantastic flowers, variously spurred, lobed and pouched, abounded. Some were epiphytes, bulging with purple, red, and blue. As a teenager, he’d been reminded of their textures and colors when he first saw between the legs of a woman. In a somewhat intoxicated, trancelike state in the dimly lit room, he’d stroked her and whispered, Botany.
What? She’d lifted her dark, beautiful head.
So he’d breathed her name. Annalee.
Up here, silly, she’d replied.
The land, rising steeply on either side of the road, held bush and trees, but these trees were smaller than the old-forest ones Roy had passed higher up. Sections were planted with vegetables and fruit trees. Shacks rested on stones and bricks. Overhead, the treetops met and the entire area was shaded, and the stream, wider here with occasional glints, trickled and swished. Roy crossed a narrow bridge. Below, dark-skinned young women sitting on rocks were washing clothes. Others, scantily clad in bras and panties, were bathing. Two of the bathers waved and smiled. And shaking themselves, they asked if he wanted them.