Swimming in the Volcano (45 page)

“Hold it, lady,” he said, for Adrian's sake, to tease her, because she had supposed Sally was a registered guest. “It's not my fault if your luggage is in Caracas, your husband's in a brothel, your mind is in Kansas City, and your love life is insufficient.”

“Everything is your fault,” Sally said, feeling fondness for Tillman, his at-your-service sense of humor. “You're the perfect person to blame.”

“Whoever this is, I like her,” said Adrian. Tea apparently was not one of her rituals. She puckered her mouth over a straw dipped in a Tom Collins glass. The ice in her drink chimed.

“Listen to this, Sally,” Tillman went on, refocusing on his book,
The Historie of the Black Caribes
. He read from a dog-eared page, a gruesome anecdote about the mutilation of a pregnant colonialist by eighteenth-century slave-Indian crossbreeds. The woman's womb had been opened with a captured saber, the fetus extracted and replaced with the head of her recently decapitated husband.

Sally sucked her teeth loudly, a habit she had picked up from the islanders. “Tillman! What are you doing reading her such awful things.”

“She likes it.” Tillman relished defending himself. “She wants to know all the horror stories about our poor St. Catherine.”

But Sally stopped him from making a joke out of it. “
Tillman
, I'm not going to let you ruin this island for her. Listen, you like to eat goat, don't you?”

“I like to eat anything I don't have to cook myself.” He winked at her over his cup, finishing off his tea, and spit a lemon rind over his shoulder.

“I'm sure what she means is, crow is too meager for a mouth like yours,” Adrian quipped, a bit too acerbic, Sally thought.

Tillman slumped in his chair. “Now what could that mean?” he said.

Sally, elaborating, was not happy to note that her invitation had ignited a dormant tension between the couple. Adrian looked at Tillman with expectation that didn't couch its challenge and Tillman looked off across the lawns, disassociating himself with a grimace.

“I can't get away, Sally,” he said, “but take Adrian with you. If she wants.”

Adrian dropped a willowy leg out of the hammock, scuffing the ground to make herself rock impatiently. Sally studied her and concluded, prima donna.

“I don't understand,” Adrian said. “You've got yourself a new cook now. Why can't you take time off? If not now, Tillman, then when?”

“Well, soon,” Tillman answered, but he sounded noncommittal. “I'll see if I can arrange something.”

Sally forced herself to smile; she was too conscious of the crescent shape her lips made, mimicked by the hammock. “His idea of a good time is to work himself to death.”

“That would be one thing, if it was just himself,” crabbed Adrian.

“It's not that simple. Rosehill hangs on by the thinnest of threads.” His tone changed, tried to be magnanimous, but resentment sat heavy in the words nonetheless. “But that shouldn't concern you. You came here to enjoy yourself and you should. Go to Cotton. Sally will take you.”

“Sure,” Sally chirped, concealing her disappointment. What was she getting herself into, with these spoiled women, their slippery moods? It was the bonhomie of the males she had sought, primarily, as though they could guarantee the quality of the weekend, keep her engaged and protected when Saconi was otherwise occupied, then recede like wise brothers at the proper moment. It was something that a woman had to think about beforehand, but even in this respect her common sense had not prevailed, since here she was, about to be saddled with two strangers, one beyond pleasing, the other one in need of a minder. Well, okay, this is all my doing, she told herself, and I'm not feeble, I have the capacity to deal with it and besides, it's only a party, a weekend, a jaunt across the channel. For the first time since she had walked
up, she felt Adrian paying her real attention, forming an appraisal of her personality, now that she might wish to invest in it.

“Come on along. We'll have more fun without this spoiler anyway. Just us girls. Maybe Johnnie and Mitchell too.”

“Johnnie's going?” Adrian said, perking up; she seemed to want no further inducement than this.

“Wait, wait.” Tillman jumped to his feet, as though he had heard something of great significance. “You've talked to Mitchell? Why didn't you say so? What's the news on Isaac? He's all right, isn't he?”

Sally registered a chill spreading across her shoulder blades. You learned to live with the lack of telephone and reliable media but when the grapevine failed or excluded you, you might as well be living in a cave on the moon. “What are you talking about? What's wrong with Isaac?” she said, firing off the questions. “Mitchell wasn't home and Johanna never mentioned Isaac's name.
What's happened?
”

“He smashed up his old Comet.”

Yes, she said, relaxing, she
had
heard that, had seen a crumpled
Miss Defy
too, out in the greening fields of Brandon Vale, and she had heard that Mitchell was with him when the brakes failed at the top of Mount Windsor, and that they were both fine except for a few bangs and bruises.

“But that's not all of it,” Tillman added. “No one's seen Isaac since. He's been swallowed up. Hasn't been home, and he's not in the bars, and his girlfriends don't seem to know anything about it.” He paused to consider. “There's something eerie about it, don't you think.”

“Damn, I don't know,” she said, inclined to believe there was some better explanation for Isaac's disappearance than whatever vague disaster Tillman was suggesting. Knowing Saconi as well as she did, she doubted it were possible to canvass
all
of any man's lovers, to have access to his complete list of sanctuaries, or to expect that whatever loss he incurred, he would react rationally. “I'm sure he's depressed,
bad. Miss Defy
was his baby.”

“The guy's probably holed up somewhere with a bottle,” said Adrian, emanating competence of opinion. “I know I would be.”

“No you wouldn't,” replied Tillman. He tried to make it sound like a compliment but instead seemed to accuse her of dishonesty. “You'd deal with it. You'd stampede. You'd overcome.”

“Maybe she's right, Tillman,” said Sally, simply agreeing with Adrian. Making peace between the couple seemed out of the question. “There's another possibility too. Did Isaac know Saconi was
going to Cotton?” Tillman thought that was likely. “Well, maybe he took the ferry down yesterday morning. To make it easier to forget.”

Tillman seemed to find this notion perfectly acceptable. He faced Adrian and solicited the answer she had yet to give. “Would you like to go?”

“Yes,” she said, the spite removed from her voice. “I would. If you don't mind. Then next week, we can do something together, a picnic or a hike.” She shoved her sunglasses up into her ginger hair as if this were the only gesture that would validate her sincerity. “I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for. Sometimes something bad happens and I think it's me that's the victim, not the other person.”

“I know what you mean,” said Adrian. “Any woman would.” She turned to Sally. “Tillman's hell-bent on reeducating me,” she reached up to tousle his hair, “and as I'm sure you've noticed, I'm failing the class so far.”

It was impossible to court her with one crisis after another breaking into the flow, but if she would just step away for a day or two, he promised, she would arrive back in a newly ordered universe where she would ascend to the throne of his attention.. Then, starting fresh on Monday, there'd be plenty of time for love.

“It's plain to see,” Adrian said with playful affection, “that I am being evacuated.”

Sally breathed a sigh of temporary relief—at least there was something more to Adrian than poutiness and vanity. After she had packed an overnight bag, Tillman, who had to go supervise the new cook who didn't yet know her way around the kitchen, offered to have one of Grampa Hell's helpers, Junior, drive them across to Mitchell's and then over Mount Windsor to the airport. Junior, all fantasy life or ego or just plain recklessness, revved the engine of Rosehill's station wagon and set down a patch of rubber exiting the circle turnaround, disinterested in impressing either his employer or his passengers with moderation.

Johnnie met them at the door wearing white jeans and a blouse, a straw bag strapped over her shoulder; she looked alarmingly restive and feverish, clear-eyed to a fault. “You're back,” she said with exaggerated relief, as though she had waited and waited and worried and doubted. She embraced one and then the other of her new friends, incongruently skittish, almost brittle with gratitude. With her face ducked briefly over Johnnie's shoulder—Johanna, whatever—Sally sniffed for signs of Mitchell's dinner but smelled nothing more appetizing than the woman's neck-splash of musky perfume. In horizontal
shafts, the sun beamed directly through the veranda windows at the rear of the house.

“And you're mad at me.”

Sally couldn't keep herself from scoffing; then she understood that this was still another form of Johnnie's random flirtation.

“Girl, snap out of it,” Adrian said, light with mirth. “What have you been taking? We have a plane to catch.”

Sally had to ask, “Why would I be mad at you?” although any more of the vacillations between coherence and riddling nonsense and she would gladly entertain the thought.

Johnnie tried to explain. “I don't know. I feel like such a mess sometimes. Mad, because I decided not to wait for Mitchell. Because I have no idea where he is or when he's coming home. I went to his office at noon but nobody had seen him. Because I don't know if I should be here. Because this might be an unforgivable mistake. What if he doesn't want to go? He'll be mad at me, won't he? Or maybe he'll be thrilled. I left him a note. Do you think I shouldn't go?” Both Sally and Adrian looked at her strangely, with traces of alarm and sympathy, as if she were a bird flapping hopelessly against a window-pane, and she caught herself, backed up, squeezed Sally's arm to allay her judgment. “Okay, Jesus, you must think I'm a total wreck.” They laughed nervously, all three of them.

“Sometimes my paranoia overwhelms me.” She bowed her head, shaking it self-deprecatingly and laughing.

Adrian looped her arm around Johnnie's waist and walked her inside. “We spell that cocaine,” she stage-whispered, mischievous, and they all giggled again to relieve the tension.

“Mitchell will come meet us, won't he, if that's what he really wants. What he probably wants is for me to leave.”

“He'll come meet us,” Sally assured her. She didn't know if that was true, but it didn't feel like a lie. “I'm sure there's nothing he'd rather do, if he can get away.”

“Let's not squander our opportunities, darling,” Adrian encouraged.

“Oh you're right,” Johnnie sang blithely, and suddenly it was like she had never panicked. Suddenly she was all resource and resilience. “Everything will work out. It always does.”

On the veranda, Sally gathered her clothes, still a little damp and likely they would probably remain that way. How can I trust her? Sally wondered, finding Johnnie's behavior too perplexing for words. She was beguiling, even as a woman in the process of coming apart—if that's indeed what was happening. Even the contradictions from
which she so artfully managed to twist free, like some emotional Houdini, seemed part of a conspiracy of inchoate passions, as if Johnnie were in a rush to invent herself, once and for all.

Sally heard the engines before she saw the plane—the STOL De Havilland gaining altitude over the channel. She scanned the glaring skies and there it was, a slip of light, spermatoid, arrowing toward the violent egg of afternoon sun.

“Fuck! There goes our flight. We've got to hurry before all the charter pilots head for the bars.”

Forty-five minutes later they were in the air themselves, breathless and trouble-free, the altitude affecting them like a stimulant. The pilot had a cooler of beer on ice, which he encouraged them to start in on.

“I told you,” Johnnie reminded them. It would all work out.

Cassius Collymore had a uniform. It was precious to him, he had paid dearly for it in ways no one could imagine, but even still he wasn't supposed to be seen in the uniform except on special occasions, in the presence of special people, and never out on the streets.

He had a new name too—Corporal Iman Ibrahim—but he didn't have a desk. Not everyone did, although Selwyn had let him sit at one, off in the corner of the small bullpen adjacent to the inner offices of the headquarters of the National Police, five days straight throughout the course of his first week in Queenstown. During the entire week the desk was home, the center of a homeless universe.

Whoever had lived there at the desk before him had carved into its top, gouging through the layers of ancient varnish into the yellow wood—
Me Fuck Owena
—which upset Cassius Collymore. He worried that others might suspect he was responsible for things that happened to this Owena, and he didn't even know a woman with that name, not that he could recall, but who could say for sure, because there were things he
was
responsible for, bad things, and maybe somehow Owena was on that list so you had to be careful. He was learning about lists, they were very important, and that was a very important plan—
being careful
—and he erased the words one by one during the five days that he sat there, near the door to Lieutenant Commander Selwyn Walker's office, methodically plowing the letters with the undipped nail of his index finger, rolling the scraped-up words into tiny gumballs and flicking them across the bullpen at the clock on the wall, but taking his time at this task because there was no hurry.