What Happens in Paradise(21)

I said my year had been good, though nothing was further from the truth. But there was no way I could tell the New Moneys about my excruciating breakup with Oscar and how disappointing that had been because he’d promised me that once he got out of jail he would work in a legitimate business, maybe even get a job alongside me at Caneel, but instead he was back to selling drugs to people on the cruise ships. I didn’t complain that I was still living at home with my mother and Huck. The returning guests, the patronage, loved coming back and seeing a familiar face because it made Caneel feel like home; it made it feel like a private club where they were members. For me, it was primarily a business relationship. The tips were double what they would have been with complete strangers.

In most cases, anyway.

The guests at Caneel are 95 percent white. There are a few Japanese here and there, a couple of rich South American businessmen (rum, casinos), and the occasional black American couple or Indian family, so when Oscar came in for drinks with Borneo and Little Jay, they stuck out. They wore baseball hats on backward, heavy gold chains, those ridiculous jeans that drooped in the ass.

Estella saw Oscar first. She came over while I was at the bar getting cocktails for a trio of pasty-white gentlemen who had just anchored their enormous yacht out in front of the resort, and she said, “Oscar here, Rosie-girl, with his clownish friends.”

“Send him away,” I said.

“I wish I could, Rosie-girl, but they’re paying customers just like the rest.”

“Keep them out of my section.”

“Oscar asked for you.”

“All the more reason.”

“Okay, I’ll give them to Tessie.”

I loathed Tessie, so this was killing two birds.

I dropped the drinks off with the yacht gentlemen. Yacht Gentleman One was tall and bald with a posh English accent and what I knew to be a forty-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe (I’d picked up some useless knowledge on this job). Yacht Gentleman Two had dark, slicked-back hair and such distracting good looks that I nicknamed him “James Bond” in my mind. Yacht Gentleman Three was a doughy midwesterner with silvering hair. I knew he was midwestern because he stood up and introduced himself.

“Russell Steele,” he said. “Iowa City.”

His manners caught me off guard. Normally, men like the ones he was with either ignored me, made a pass at me, or snapped their fingers so I would move faster. They did not stand up and offer their names like they were crashing a party and I was the hostess. And thank goodness they didn’t—on an average holiday-weekend night, I had over a hundred customers. How could I possibly remember them all?

“Rosie Small,” I said. “Pleasure.” I had already forgotten his last name, but I did retain his first name, Russell, and Iowa City, because the place sounded so…American, or what I always thought of as American. Iowa City evoked cows in pastures, silos, corner drugstores where kids bought malted milkshakes, church socials, marching bands, and grown men wearing overalls. “Enjoy your drinks. Let me know if you’re interested in ordering food. The conch fritters are very good.”

“Conch fritters, then,” Russell from Iowa City said. “I’m not sure what they are but if you say they’re good, I’m up for trying them. In fact, bring two orders. That okay with you guys?”

The other two gentlemen were poring over a sheaf of papers printed with columns of figures. James Bond looked up. “Yeah, yeah, Russ, get whatever you want. Bring some sushi too, you pick. Enough for three, please.” James Bond handed me his AmEx Centurion Card and said, “Start us a tab, doll.”

I wanted to tell James Bond that I was not a doll, I was a person, but I figured I’d get back at him by ordering the most expensive sushi on the menu—sashimi, tuna tataki, hamachi, unagi. I could see poor Russell looking very uncomfortable, like he wanted to stick up for me but didn’t know how. He was, quite clearly, low man on the totem pole of this particular triumvirate as he had neither the flashy watch nor the movie-star good looks (nor the Centurion Card). He might have been the brother-in-law of one or the other, a sister’s husband whom they had brought along to the Caribbean as a favor or because they lost a bet.

He didn’t know what conch fritters were!

I went to the register to put in an order for the fritters and two hundred dollars’ worth of sushi—I could have doubled that; James Bond wasn’t the kind of man to complain about his bill or even check it—and studied the name on the Centurion Card.

Todd Croft. It was a solid, whitewashed name, symmetrical and masculine, like the real name of a secret superhero—Clark Kent, Peter Parker. I wondered if it was made up. I didn’t care as long as the card worked, which it did.

I kept tabs on Oscar out of my peripheral vision. He ordered a bottle of Dom Pérignon, which Tessie made a big production of carrying out in front of her, label displayed, like she was one of those chicks on a game show giving away the grand prize. The pop of the cork cut through all the chatter and the restaurant quieted so that I could clearly hear Harry Belafonte singing, “Yes, we have no bananas.” People whispered and sneaked glances at Oscar and I yearned to tell them to stop. Couldn’t they see that was what he was after?

I then watched the Big Deal Family’s daughter, Lucinda Caruso, who has made sure to tell me every year for the past three years that she “recently graduated from Harvard” (which I take to mean that she has yet to find a job, a theory reinforced by the fact that she signed every charge to her father’s room), approach Oscar’s table and proceed to take the fourth seat. Lucinda was wearing a very short, sequined cocktail dress that would have been better at an event where she remained standing. I overheard her say, “Are you guys rap stars?” I rolled my eyes, not only because Lucinda was feeding the beast but also because she probably couldn’t imagine a black man having the money to order Dom unless he was a rap star or a professional athlete. I could have shut her up by telling her the truth. He sells drugs, Lucinda! But it was none of my business.