The Winters(7)

She started her car and rolled down the window to bark her final orders.

“I almost forgot! Max Winter’s coming for that boat this morning.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, laying a gentle hand on my clavicle.

“He’s accustomed to special touches. Make sure the bar is stocked. He likes plenty of ice in the coolers and lots of beach towels. Get the club to supply sparkling water, lemons and limes, and don’t forget a sharp knife. And make sure they charge his bungalow for all this shit, not me. Ask John-John to check if the backup radio’s working. He’s in charge while I’m away.”

“Yes, got it,” I replied. John-John was her longest, most loyal employee.

“And fix your goddamn hair.”

I propped my bun back in place on top of my head and she squealed away, black smoke spewing in her wake.

By then the sky was fully awake, a wide blue expanse, the light so bright it took a second for me to figure out from which direction the sun was coming. Under my hand visor, I saw early club members crowding grotesque piles of food set up al fresco for breakfast. Cracked red crab legs jutted out at all angles from two overflowing platters, and fruit cups lay in a vivid pattern waiting to be plucked by women watching their weight and children who never finished them. It was the smell of bacon mingling with the salty wind that did me in. I became faint with hunger, unable to remember my last meal. I walked defiantly over to the hotel tack shop, a place usually off-limits to staff, but Laureen was the only real hawk about it and she was gone. Gone! I was a prisoner let out of her cage, so ecstatic that a bottle of warm water, a granola bar, and a desiccated orange, the last in the basket, was all I wanted in life.

“Run along,” the cashier whispered, waving away my money. “You know you’re not supposed to be here.”

I blew her a kiss and dashed away. I’d finished the stale bar by the time I got back to the office, where Max Winter was already waiting for me, calmly reading a pamphlet.

“There you are,” he said, smiling, sitting next to a large basket covered with a white napkin.

“Good morning, Mr. Winter,” I said, the joy in my voice a little alarming. It had felt like an eternity since we’d said good night to each other not fifty feet from where he was now standing, looking tanned and relaxed, a completely different person than yesterday.

“Call me Max.”

“Max,” I said.

His eyes drifted to my hands.

“I hope you haven’t ruined your appetite,” he said, taking the plastic wrapping, the shriveled orange, and the bottle of water from me, carefully placing them on the desk. “I brought you breakfast. I figured room service didn’t come down here.”

He was standing close to me now, eyeing the large knot of hair on my head, which I could feel had tipped on its side again.

“Let me . . . there,” he said, gently centering my bun.

“Thank you,” I said, blushing. “I can get the radio signal out of Miami now.”

“Oh, good. What are they saying about the weather?”

“Clear morning, rain in the afternoon.”

“So it’s best if I not pilot the boat alone.”

He reached into his basket and handed me a soggy fried egg sandwich.

“Thank you . . . Max.”

It was the best soggy fried egg sandwich I had ever eaten, the right amount of salty, the toast pliant with butter, the lettuce wilted to perfection, a red tomato wedge giving it a tart bite. Same with the fruit cups, chilled but not to the point of hurting my teeth, and served with silverware. He poured hot coffee from a thermos into the fancy china cups the club only used for dinner service. There was no doubt Max Winter was flirting with me. I wasn’t the type to imagine such things. And yes, I was flirting, too, there was no use pretending otherwise. That thing in me that was let out of its cage had begun to stretch its legs.

As we ate he told me he’d been coming to the Caymans every year for about twenty years, except for last year—the reason, I assumed, having to do with the death of his wife. But he didn’t elaborate and I didn’t press. He asked me how I ended up here, his assumption being that I wasn’t born here. I told him I was American but that lots of folks who look and sound like me were born and raised here. The island was a cultural mishmash, its uniting industry international banking.

“Ah, capitalism. The great equalizer.”

“For some,” I added, feeling clever.

He handed me a linen napkin and removed my empty plate, and I felt tended to in a way that confused me, warmed me, made me want to cry. It would be a lie to say in the past twenty-four hours I hadn’t imagined what might be possible between someone like him and someone like me, that Max’s ministrations didn’t tug at that dark part of me that fantasized about being rescued from an uncertain future, perhaps in exchange for rescuing him from a sad past. Being plain and forgettable didn’t exempt me from his stupid, intractable fairy tale.

“How old are you?” he asked, placing the dirty breakfast dishes in the basket. My face flashed hot with the idea that our minds might have been fixating on the very same potential obstacle at the very same time.

I told him, quickly adding, “But I feel ten years older. Especially when I sleep on that cot.”

He laughed. “Even if you were ten years older, you’d still be quite young.”