Chapter Thirty
I pulled into the airport parking lot with no time to spare. I circled the lot three times before I saw a couple on the way to their car with twins pulling Minnie and Mickey Mouse suitcases. One was crying and the other kept dropping her suitcase, and their progress was agonizingly slow. When they were finally loaded into their car, I pulled into their spot, although I had to stare down a driver in a silver Lexus to get it. Apparently, she didn’t believe in waiting her turn.
The St. Marcos airport is small by stateside standards, but its runways are big enough to land some of the largest planes in the world, or so our captain had told us on my last flight in. Like most of the buildings on the island, it was stucco, and it was painted a festive salmon pink. There was a large private hangar on the far left, then a hangar for small Caribbean airlines. The ticket counters were in the middle of the airport, and customers queued up there under a porch-like roof. On the right side of the ticket counter was the door to Customs and Immigration, and beyond that was the hangar for the commercial flights to the states. The baggage claim area occupied the far right-hand side of the structure.
The smell of jet fuel lingered in the air and taxi drivers milled around the entrance to the bag carousels, offering their services and a rum punch to every traveler that passed. Piped in steelpan music played in the background, loud enough to hear over the rumble of the crowd deplaning to the left of baggage claim.
Oso and I met Emily at the deplaning passenger door. She had to be hot in her Wrangler jeans and white long-sleeved western shirt. And cowboy boots, of course, high-heeled cowboy boots, brown with turquoise inlays and stitching up the sides. Emily might dress for the Dallas legal scene at work, but when she didn’t have to play the part she reverted to her Amarillo roots. Her tall blonde hair was drooping and the strap of one of her cherry-red carry-on bags had pinned a large section of it down on her left shoulder, but she had a million-dollar smile on.
“Katie!” she hollered, which made me smile back.
“God bless you for packing in carry-ons,” I said. I hugged her, then picked up one of her bags. “You saved us an hour.” Plenty of people would be standing shoulder to shoulder in high humidity waiting for bags that only had to move thirty feet from the plane to the conveyor belt.
Emily hardly heard me. She was crouched down on the ground loving up Oso. In addition to the horses and cows on their small ranch, Emily’s family had raised some kind of hunting dogs. She kept pictures of them in her cubicle at work. Retrievers? Pointers? Spaniels? I didn’t know. Dogs for sure, though.
“I visit Rich’s family in Colombia every Christmas,” she said. “I figured quasi third world is the same everywhere.” She stood up. “Can I take your dog?”
I handed her the leash. “Be my guest. He hasn’t had any training yet, so you’ll get a shoulder workout. His name is Oso.”
I picked up her other bag. Now I was balanced.
“He’s perfect. I’ll have him trained before you know it. Won’t I, Oso? Because you’re a good, good boy, aren’t you?” she said.
Oso wagged his tail and fell in on her left as we walked to the car. I loaded her bags into the back of the truck, then pushed the clicker to unlock the doors.
“I hate to break it to you, Katie, but there’s not a thing wrong with Oso’s training.” Emily laughed and opened the door to my truck. “Up, Oso.” The dog jumped in obediently. “But don’t worry, I’ll have you trained by the time I leave instead.”
“Ha ha,” I said. But what was the saying about no bad dogs, only bad owners?
I exited the parking lot and decided to take the long way back to Ava’s. It was lunchtime, and I wanted to give Emily a taste of island culture. I turned right, toward the road that cut across the west side of the island. We’d swing near Annalise and cut back through the rainforest to drive along the beaches of the north shore.
Emily chatted as I drove. “You’re so damn tan, after only two days. Wait, no, your freckles have just gotten closer together,” she said.
“I can’t even disagree with you on that. I’m a freakin’ snow leopard. But it looks good from a distance. You, though, Ms. Rodeo Barbie, you will have a killer sunburn when you go home. Two words: sun screen.”
“Who, me?” She slung her hair over her shoulder with a dip of her head, then batted her eyes. Her personality was a positive force that was already pushing out most of the poison left over from my Walker encounter.
“Was Rich OK with you coming?” I asked.
“Rich Shmich,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I love the man, but this isn’t the trip for him. He needs testosterone around or he doesn’t know what to do with his machismo self.”
Just then, my heart leapt into my throat as a tree branch ripped the driver’s side mirror off my truck. Emily screamed.
Crap! In order to avoid head-on collisions, I tended to drive as close to the left—and the bush—as I could. Sometimes this worked out better than others, roughly in proportion to when I was paying attention to what I was doing. This time, I’d gotten close enough to do about $350 worth of damage.
“Nice driving,” Emily deadpanned.
“Woopsie,” I said.
“How did you get used to driving on the wrong side of the road?” She craned her neck to see around the next curve.
“I’m not yet,” I confessed.
Emily gripped the armrest like it was a life preserver as we whipped through the trees. “Are we there yet? I’m too young to die.”
“Almost, but let’s stop for lunch first.”
“Is there a Dairy Queen around or something?”
“Or something,” I replied.
I pulled to a stop at the Pig Bar.
“This place serves food, and you eat it?” Emily’s mouth hung open and her upper lip curled down tightly as she took in the ramshackle grass-roofed hut.
I led her in. Now wasn’t the time to tell her I’d never tried the food here before.
By the time we left, though, Emily had wrapped Nancy, the proprietress and head cook, in a big bear hug and proclaimed herself a devoted fan. This had been Emily’s first johnnycake and Caribbean fry chicken, so I understood her enthusiasm. She had ordered a second johnnycake, and then a third for the road.
“Really?” I asked her, laughing.
“I know. If I don’t work it off, I’ll be the size of Goldie before I leave.” Goldie was her favorite horse, and not a small one at that.
Oso sat inert by her side, hoping for a scrap of leftovers, but Emily didn’t leave a crumb.
We arrived at Ava’s twenty minutes later, and Ava and Emily hit it off, as I knew they would. Neither was the jealous friend type. They wouldn’t be besties without me, but I bridged the divide between vampy Ava and wholesome Emily.
Ava offered us a bowl of fresh mangoes. “From Jacoby,” she said.
“I’d love one,” Emily said.
Ava pounded a mango against the table with its skin on to soften the fruit inside. When she had it pulped to her liking, she tore a hole in one end and sucked out the liquefied fruit. Ava made mango sucking sexy, like soft porn. Ava pounded another and offered it to Emily.
Emily stared at it. “Lord have mercy,” she said.
“Here, Emily,” I said. I took the pulverized mango from Ava, went into the narrow yellow galley kitchen, and tossed it at the garbage can. It knocked the hinged chrome top inward and fell to the bottom with a thunk. Oso sat on the Saltillo kitchen tile with his head cocked, studying me. “Dogs don’t like mangoes, boy.” I grabbed another mango, washed it and my hands, peeled and cored the fruit, then sliced it into hunks. I pulled a plate decorated with a spray of peonies from a mismatched set in Ava’s whitewashed cabinets and slid the slippery pieces of fruit onto it, then brought it back to Emily.
“Thank God,” she said.
“What?” Ava asked, but the gleam in her eye was knocking her halo askew.
I unloaded Emily into the living room that I had stayed in the night before, then
went into the extra bedroom and saw the new futon with its black wooden frame. It was unfolded into its bed position, sans sheets. Details. I would put some on it later, if Ava had any more. Other than the futon and a wall of boxes, the room was empty. A orange and yellow metal sunburst three feet across adorned one wall, the sole decoration in the space.
Ava brought out a lighted tabletop mirror and her large bag of makeup. She started painting on her performance face at the round green Formica-topped dining room table.
“Hey, I want you up there with me tonight, so get your slut face on, too,” she instructed me.
“You’ll get used to her,” I said to Emily. “Either that or you’ll be scarred for life, but either way you’ll never forget her.”
Just then, Ava yelled at her fat black cat. “No, Elvis! Don’t eat the lizard.”
“Lizards make cats sick, but Elvis loves them,” I explained to Emily.
“They make him hack up white goo on my sofa cushions and go loopy, and I hate them,” Ava said.
Emily pointed at Ava. “I love her,” she said to me. “Capital L Love her.” She put her hands on her hips and cocked her right one. “I just can’t believe you’re singing for money, Katie, since you’ve given it away for free at every open mike in Dallas for years.”
“Hoo, that a good one,” Ava said. “But I ain’t paying her tonight. This here a tryout.”
“Har de har har, tryout,” I said.
But truly? I was nervous. I had barely glanced through the playbook Ava had given me when we got home from Toes in the Water the night before. Sure, I could read music like a pro, but I hadn’t done it in years. I had a newly ripped cuticle to show for my fears. I found a band-aid under the sink in Ava’s bathroom and hid the damage.
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