Around these parts, there are usually only four entrées: mahi-mahi, grouper, conch and lobster. It’s how they’re prepared that makes all the difference, and Cassie was a genius. No lobster, alas, but that night the mahi-mahi came broiled with a Parmesan cream sauce, and Al must have made a visit to the grocery in Marsh Harbour because there was a special – prime rib – heading up the menu.
No need to specify sides. I knew everything would be accompanied by coleslaw and by a rice and bean combination Bahamians called ‘peas-and-rice.’ Fried plantains, too, if we were lucky.
While Paul made up his mind, I looked around, checking out the other diners and admiring the décor. Plantation shutters covered the windows, with valences made of Androsia, a colorful batik woven and hand dyed on the Bahamian island of Andros, many miles to the south. Matching fabric covered the tables, which were protected from stains and splatters by paper place mats printed with a fanciful, not-to-scale drawing of Hawksbill Cay and the neighboring islands. Numbers on the map were keyed to local businesses whose ads framed the place mat.
One of Andy Albury’s ship models hung on the wall over the salad bar, and paintings by other local artists decorated the remaining walls. One image in particular caught my eye, a huge satellite photo of Hurricane Floyd.
I excused myself for a moment to use the restroom, stopping on my way to take a closer look at the photo. At the moment it was taken, in September 1999, Floyd was a dense white donut almost six hundred miles in diameter, and the hole of the donut – the eye of the storm – was smack dab over Abaco. Floyd looked surprisingly benign from that altitude, yet underneath that snow-white swirl I knew that from the Abacos to Key West to Cape Fear, homes and lives were being devastated.
I found the restroom – a small room with two stalls – clean, as usual, and pleasantly pine-scented. Curtains made of patchwork Androsia covered the single window and hid the spare rolls of toilet paper, paper towels and cleaning supplies Cassie kept under the sink.
I did what I had to do and was washing my hands when the door to the other stall creaked open. In the mirror, I saw the reflection of a young woman wearing white shorts, a blue T-shirt, and a pair of oversized Jackie-O sunglasses. In spite of the sunglasses, I recognized her right away. I turned around. ‘Alice!’
The girl smiled when she recognized me. ‘Hi, Hannah.’
‘You eating here tonight? I didn’t see Jaime.’
Alice stepped up to the sink and twisted the hot-water tap. ‘Nah. I was out taking a walk. Just stopped in to use the bathroom.’ She put a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t tell.’
I laughed. ‘I’m sure nobody minds.’ Meanwhile, I wondered why Alice kept her sunglasses on indoors; the sun wasn’t exactly blinding inside the Cruise Inn and Conch Out ladies room at six fifteen in the evening. Then I noticed a stain on her fair face, a purple discoloration that began at the corner of her eye, mutating into shades of green and yellow as it merged into the hairline at her left temple.
‘Ooh,’ I gasped before I could stop myself. ‘What happened to your eye?’
‘It’s awful, isn’t it?’ Alice tipped the sunglasses up to her forehead so I could admire the damage. ‘Jaime’s got this sailboat and I didn’t duck in time.’ She waggled her fingers. ‘There’s this thingy that holds the sail.’ She demonstrated by holding her arm out stiffly in front of her.
‘The boom.’
‘Boom. Yeah. It clipped me one.’ She snatched a couple of paper towels out of the dispenser, dried her hands, chucked the used towels into the waste-paper basket and chirped, ‘Well, gotta go. Nice talking to you.’
Leaving me with my mouth hanging open. And wet hands.
When dinner arrived at our table, Cassie served it herself.
People used to seeing Cassie standing behind a counter were often surprised by how slim her legs were, how trim her ankles. The heavy thighs and ultra-wide hips those delicate limbs supported had nothing to do with calories and everything with genetics. The islanders had been intermarrying for two centuries. Until recently, hereditary blindness had not been uncommon. After a study by the Baltimore Geographic Society early in the last century (which still makes the locals froth at the mouth!), the islanders had been encouraged to marry off-island, or to adopt. Cassie and Al – who were quadruple cousins – had taken this on board. Their daughters who charged around the restaurant when Cassie’s mother wasn’t available to rein the little girls in, were Korean, about as far off-island as you can get.
I was halfway through my mahi-mahi and Paul was making headway on his steak when Al appeared at our table with a stranger in tow. ‘Here’s someone I’d like you to meet. Henry Allen, warden of the Out Island Land and Sea Park. You’ll be snorkeling over there soon, I hear.’
I grinned. ‘No secrets on Hawksbill, are there?’
Al grinned back. ‘Henry, this is Paul and Hannah Ives staying at Windswept over on Bonefish. Paul’s a professor at the Naval Academy in the States.’
I sighed. How about me? Did I have no identity? Not so long ago I was head of records management at a major Washington DC accounting firm. Considering the current financial climate, however, I had to confess my relief at being riffed before the company went belly up. So what was I now? Ex-records manager? Wife, mother, grandmother, sister, sister-in-law, friend? All these, yes, and survivor, too. But not exactly suitable abbreviations to follow my name on a business card.
‘Join us, please,’ said Paul while I was sitting there like a lump, feeling sorry for myself.
‘What will you have to eat, Henry?’ Al pointed to the chalkboard.
Henry didn’t even consult it. ‘The dolphin, if you’ve got it, Al. Broiled.’
When we first hit the Bahamas, seeing ‘dolphin’ on the menu had me worried. I quickly learned that ‘dolphin’ is dolphin fish. Mahi-mahi. Dorado. Weighs from ten to thirty pounds, with a flat, protruding forehead. A dazzling golden, blue and green when pulled from the water, not a gray, bottle-nosed mammal like its namesake. Not Flipper, thank heaven.
‘Broiled dolphin, coming up.’ Al disappeared into the kitchen to turn in Henry’s order.
Henry snatched off his ball cap to reveal a full head of densely curled auburn hair. He laid the cap on the chair next to him. ‘There’s a meeting over in Hope Town week from Wednesday,’ he announced without preamble. ‘A consortium of local citizens and second-home owners have banded together to try and stop Mueller’s development.’
Remembering my conversation with Rudy Mueller and his daughter, Gabriele, at the arts and crafts show, I said, ‘Mueller seems pretty sure of himself. He’s already hiring, you know. Someone told me he’s sending folks for training to one of his mega resorts in Cozamel.’
Henry moved a small bowl of butter pats aside and turned his place mat around so we could see the map on it. Using his fork, he drew a circle around Hawksbill, Bonefish, and several smaller, uninhabited cays to the east. ‘This is my territory, the Land and Sea Park.’ He dragged the tines down a long series of Xs that separated the islands from the Atlantic Ocean to the east. ‘And this is the barrier reef.’
‘I’ve heard it’s one of the finest left in the world.’
Henry’s gaze was firm, and steady. ‘And I plan to keep it that way.
‘And, here,’ Henry said, tapping a smaller cluster of Xs just to the north of Hawksbill Cay, ‘is Fowl Cay where you’ll be snorkeling next week.’ He looked up, his bottle-green eyes alive. ‘It is the finest reef in the world. Vertical drop offs, spectacular cuts, black coral forests, a couple of wrecks. And the sea life!’ He laid down his fork and folded his hands. ‘Octopus, giant grouper, lobsters as big and as tame as dogs. They’ve even got names.’