The Bungalow (25 page)

I rose to my feet and walked to the bungalow, unlocking its door with the familiar motions and then stowing the key back inside the book. The air inside felt thick and suffocating. I thought about the painting under the bed and knelt down to retrieve it.
Who are the subjects in it, and were they in this very bungalow? Did they meet misfortune in the way Tita spoke of? Or were they lucky enough to escape the “curse”?

I reached for a piece of paper and pen on the desk, and sat to write Westry a letter, my heart racing at what I was about to record:

I folded the page in half and tucked it under the floorboard, exhaling deeply as I reached for the doorknob.

Two days later, Kitty, seated on her bed, looked up from a magazine, startled. “Did you hear something hit the window?”

It was half past three, but instead of working in the infirmary, we’d all been ordered to the barracks after a Japanese warship was detected two miles off shore. Kitty clutched her rosary as she thumbed through the pages of
McCall’s
; I pulled out a novel I’d started the first month on the island, but I found myself unable to read. The fear in the air had a paralyzing effect.

I shook my head. “I didn’t hear anything.”

No one knew what was going to happen next. One of the nurses said the ship was en route to another destination. Another said that a soldier had confirmed by the ship’s coordinates that it was heading dead on to Bora-Bora. War here? On our island? Clinging to disbelief was a comforting defense, but we all knew an attack was a possibility. Our only option was to watch and wait.

“There’s a cellar,” I said, “below the barracks. Stella thinks we’ll be moved down there in the event of—”

Kitty flinched. “There,” she said, “that sound. I heard it again. Something keeps knocking at our window.”

I forced a smile. “I know you’re worried, Kitty, but the Japanese aren’t outside our window—yet.”

Kitty didn’t return my smile. Instead, she stood up and walked to the window. “See?” she said, grinning victoriously. “It’s Westry. He must have been trying to get our attention.”

Our attention?
I watched Kitty at the window, waving down at Westry. I didn’t like how her spirits lifted instantly in his presence.

“I’ll go see him,” I said possessively, walking out the door and briskly down the stairs to the entrance.

“Hi,” I whispered once outside.

Westry grinned. “Why the whisper?”

“Don’t you know? The island may be under attack.”

Westry put his hands in his pockets and tilted his head to the right, looking at me with an amused grin. “I love your spirit, you know that? Come here, let me see you.”

I lingered in his embrace for longer than was proper for the base, but somehow decorum seemed insignificant now.

“You seem overly confident,” I sparred back.

He shrugged. “After you’ve been through a fight like I’ve been through, a battleship on the horizon doesn’t ruffle your feathers, I guess.”

“But what if they’re coming?” I said. “What if they’re on their way to our island?”

“They may be,” he said. “It’s too early to tell, though.”

I sighed. “And to think we’ve been here for so many months, and with so little time before our departure, this happens. Some luck.”

Westry caressed my chin, tracing my profile with his finger until tingles ran down my back. “Let’s go to the bungalow,” he whispered into my neck.

“In the middle of all of this?”

“Why not?” he said, hypnotizing me with his caress.

“Because we’ve been given orders to stay in the barracks,” I protested weakly.

Westry looked at me with his big, hazel eyes. “But it may be our last time in the bungalow together before . . . before . . .”

Neither of us knew what would happen next, and in my heart, I knew what mattered was now. I squeezed his hand. “OK.”

“If we’re lucky,” he said, “we can slip through the jungle and not run into a soul.”

I nodded. “Do you think we’ll be safe out there?”

“We’ll be able to see the ship from the beach, and if it gets close enough, we’ll head back and I’ll join the ranks.”

I frowned, remembering the beating Colonel Donahue had unleashed on Westry in the barracks, then hesitated. “Will you get in trouble for this?”

“Probably,” he said, his eyes sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. “But I don’t care.”

He reached for my hand and I glanced up to the second floor, where Kitty lingered at the window. When our eyes met, I gestured toward the beach and then waved, hoping she’d understand. But she turned quickly to the bed without so much as a smile.

Westry unlocked the door to the bungalow, and we exhaled deeply once inside. “I feel like we’re fugitives,” I said.

“I suppose we are,” he replied, resting his hands on my waist.

“Westry?”

“What, dear?”

“I was here a few days ago, and, well, I’m frightened,” I said.

“About what?”

“Tita was here.”

“Tita?”

“The old woman who Atea lived with. She’s some kind of shaman or spiritual leader. I’m not entirely sure, but she seems to know about Atea.”

“How could she know?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But she warned me again about the bungalow’s curse. She said justice was the only way to break the cycle of the curse.”

Westry frowned. “Don’t believe it for a minute.”

“Why shouldn’t I believe her? She knows this place better than you or I.”

“What she, and you, don’t realize is that with justice comes something else, something far worse than the guilt we may carry with us.” Westry sat down on the old mahogany chair. For the first time, I detected the weight of the secret in his eyes. He didn’t want to keep it any more than I did; yet he was holding to his convictions. “How can I make you understand that we can’t seek justice? Not the kind you want, anyway. It’s the way it must be.”

I nodded, reaching for his hand. It felt wrong to argue on what could be our final night together. I poked my head out the front window and could make out the battleship in the distance. “It’s still there,” I said.

He pulled me closer, and I remembered the letter I’d left for him, with my heartfelt confessions about the future.
Has he read it? Does he want to spend a lifetime with me, too?
I sighed nervously.

“Westry,” I whispered.

“Yes, my love.”

“Did you get my letter?”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t been here in days.” He began walking to the floorboard to retrieve his mail, but I pulled his arm back.

“Not yet,” I said a little shyly. “Tuck it in your pocket when we leave. I want you to read it alone.”

“Is it bad news?”

“No, no,” I said. “Just wait. You’ll see.”

He nodded, pulling my body tight against his. He flipped on the little radio on the desk, and the French station came through again, crystal clear.

“Let’s not think about anything else but our love,” he said as we swayed to the music.

“OK,” I whispered. His suggestion worked like magic, blocking the war, worries of Kitty, and the lingering darkness from the murder on the beach. For a moment, the bungalow was ours again, ours alone.

Westry kissed my cheek shortly after the sun went down. “It’s probably time that we started back,” he said. I could sense his anxiety building, and it worried me. I didn’t know whether it was the enemy in our midst that gave him pause or what we both knew and dreaded—that our time together was coming to an end.

“We probably should,” I agreed, considering the prospect of just holding out in the bungalow when the Japanese appeared on the shore.
Would the bungalow’s “curse” protect us?

I smoothed my dress and refastened a pin in my hair. “Don’t forget your letter,” I said as Westry opened the door.

“Of course,” he replied, kneeling down to the floorboard and reaching inside. “Wait, what letter?” He shook his head. “There’s no letter here.”

“Silly,” I said, kneeling down next to him. “Of course there is. Maybe I pushed it back too far.” I wedged my hand deeper behind the joists, but was horrified to find the space empty.

“My God, Westry,” I said. “It’s gone.”

“What do you mean? No one knows about our hiding place. Unless you told someone.”

“Of course I didn’t,” I said, confused.

A light flashed in the ocean ahead, diverting Westry’s worries to a bigger concern. “We’ll have to figure this out later,” he said. “I need to get you back.”

The door creaked to a close, and Westry locked it ceremoniously. “We’ll head back through the trail in the jungle,” he said. “It’ll be safer.”

I nodded, taking his hand. As we walked through the thicket, I thought about the letter.
Who could have taken it, and why?
Now, with so little time left, I needed Westry to know my true feelings, about him, and about what I hoped for after the war.
Will I have the chance to tell him? Does he feel the same?

By the time we made it back to base, however, I wasn’t thinking about the letter anymore. Instead, something else haunted me.

“Westry,” I whispered, in a panic, as he walked me to the entrance of the women’s barracks. “We have to go back!”

He looked confused. “Why?”

“The painting,” I said. “We left the painting there.”

He shrugged. “We can get it later.”

“No, no,” I said. “Whoever took the letter I wrote could take the painting.”

Westry looked momentarily concerned, then shook his head. “No. Whoever may have taken the letter could have taken the painting already, but they didn’t.”

I shook my head. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I said. “I can’t bear to think that the painting could fall into thieves’ hands. It belongs in a museum somewhere, a gallery, where it can be admired and treasured.”

“And we’ll make sure it gets there,” Westry reassured me. “Just as soon as this ship passes. I promise. I’ll bring it back for you.”