Float Plan(55)

“I’m starting to think you’re too good to be true. No one is this perfect.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m missing a leg and I’m unemployed, so you could probably do better.”

“Probably.” The scruff on his jaw is soft beneath my palms when I take his face in my hands. “But for some reason, I want you too.”

My mouth is on his when Queenie squirms between us, reminding us that we are not entirely alone. I’m slightly disappointed, slightly relieved. “I think your other girl also needs some attention.”

Keane scratches her behind the ears as he looks at me. “Would you mind if we press pause on this moment?”

“We have all the time in the world,” I say. “Maybe we should go swimming instead.”

Our bathing suits are back at the house, so we peel down to our underwear and leap off the boat. The dog barks at us.

“Queenie, jump.” I gesture for her to come into the water and her feet dance with excitement. She walks back and forth along the deck, barking as if that will bring us back out of the water. Finally she leaps. She hits the surface with an ungainly pelican splash, but paddles to me and then to Keane.

We swim to shore, where he sits at the water’s edge while Queenie and I chase each other up and down the empty beach, displacing the seabirds who swoop and cry for us to go away. When I give up the game, Queenie brings Keane a bit of driftwood that he throws into the water for her to fetch.

“This trip has spoiled me for dry land.” I drop down onto the sand beside him. “I don’t want to go back to the real world.”

He laughs. “You’re in the real world, Anna.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” he says. “But people opt out of a nine-to-five existence all the time. If you want to keep sailing, you’ll find a way. Or you can return to Florida and live aboard the boat. Whatever works for you.”

“What about you?”

“Wherever you are is where I want to be.”

“And the wind gods?”

He flings the stick. “Can go fuck themselves.”

I lie back on the sand, smiling. Allowing myself to imagine Keane and me living aboard the Alberg together. “It’s a pretty small boat for two people and a dog.”

“It’ll do for now.”

Once the boat is secure, we call for a cab. My underwear is damp beneath my clothes and my face pink from the sun as Keane pays the taxi driver in front of Desmond’s house. Sharon tends to a small yellow frangipani tree in the front yard and Queenie races straight to Miles, who is kicking a soccer ball. Although I loved the outdoor shower in Jost Van Dyke, there is comfort in the way Miles’s toys are tucked into the corners of the bathtub as I’m showering off sand and salt.

Desmond returns from work and drives us all to the exclusion zone in the southern part of the island. On the way, he explains that travel in Zone V—the area around the volcano where the worst of the damage occurred—is limited to scientists from the Montserrat Volcano Observatory and law enforcement. Areas farther from the volcano are open for daytime access to tour groups, island visitors, and farmers whose livestock still roams in the exclusion zone.

We are waved through the police checkpoint and Desmond drives along the ash-filled bed of the Belham River. Soon we start seeing the abandoned houses. Some look as if they could still have people living inside, while others have broken windows and weeds creeping from the outside in. Deeper into the zone, we pass a house that was flooded with mud and ash, leaving only the second floor exposed. We drive along a golf course rendered unrecognizable by lava rock and ash.

“My parents’ house in Plymouth was completely destroyed,” Sharon says. “It’s one thing to move away from your childhood home, but another thing entirely for that home to no longer exist. Sometimes I’m sad that I cannot show Miles where I lived when I was a little girl, and he will never know a Granny and Gramps who haven’t lived in Saint John’s, but it does no good to dwell in the past.”

Plymouth is a ghost town trapped in a river of rock, and the neighboring towns of Richmond Hill and Kinsale are filled with crumbling homes like broken, abandoned seashells. Over it all looms the ash cloud, dark and sulfuric.

“The volcano has been quiet,” Desmond says. “But every day there is seismic activity, tiny earthquakes that tell scientists the island is alive.”

Plymouth is not a tomb, but we are solemn on the ride back to Lookout. Miles chatters softly to Queenie as if she understands him, but there is nothing meaningful Keane or I could say about the volcano that probably hasn’t already been said. By the time we reach the house, dinner—curried goat and potatoes stewed in Sharon’s Crock-Pot—is ready. Guinness, leftover from last night’s party, cuts through our quiet and Desmond asks how Keane and I met.

As we share the story, Keane brings up Chemineau and, to my horror, starts talking about Sara. I can’t imagine he would be so insensitive as to talk about having sex with her, but he’s also honest to a fault.

“That night ranks as one of the worst of my life,” he says. “I suffered from performance anxiety because I was utterly smitten with Anna, but the final straw was when I called Sara by Anna’s name. None of you will be surprised that Sara kicked me off the boat and I did not, in fact, sleep with her.”