Slightly Engaged (30 page)

No, his tone isn’t accusatory, but I find myself bristling anyway.

“I said there aren’t
hurricanes
in Anguilla.”

Or did I? Well, that’s what I meant. I read about it in my Caribbean travel guide.

Then again, maybe that wasn’t Anguilla. Maybe that was Aruba.

“But it isn’t hurricane season anyway,” Jack points out.

You could have fooled me,
I think, gazing at the storm.

Oh, well. I’m sure it’ll blow over by the time we reach our hotel and we’ll be lounging on the beach in no time with those dirty bananas I’ve been dreaming about.

The line for customs is endless. I can’t help but notice Jack doesn’t declare a diamond ring, but it’s not as if it’s foreign produce so I have to conclude it might very well be in his luggage.

At last, we find ourselves careening along winding island roads in a rattletrap open-air vehicle that seems to be a cross between a bus and a van.

Finally, in what doesn’t seem like the nicest neighborhood in town, we skid to a stop in front of a three-story purple stucco building. The driver grins broadly and makes what sounds like an important declaration.

“What did he say?” Jack asks me under his breath, inexplicably assuming I must be fluent in the native dialect.

“How should I know?” I murmur.

The driver says whatever he’s saying once again, with increased urgency. Then he gestures for us to get out of the cab.

Maybe he doubles as an EMT and just got an emergency call, so he can’t bring us to our destination.

The only problem with that theory is that I would have noticed him getting an emergency call since my eyes were vigilantly fastened to him the entire trip, making sure he didn’t drive us off the road.

To my surprise—and all right, dismay—I spot a sign on the purple building, one that reads: Sea Plantation.

“Oh,” I say, “I think we’re here.”

Reluctant to step out of the so-called shuttle into the deluge, I stare for a moment at the purple stucco building, wondering why it looks nothing like it did on the hotel’s Web site. Nor does it look like a plantation, and I can’t see—or hear, or smell—the sea.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” I ask the driver, who erupts in what may be an enthusiastic confirmation of my hypothesis, but could just as easily be a string of profanity.

Minutes later, Jack and I are straggling into the lobby with our waterlogged luggage.

I use the term “lobby” loosely. It’s really more of a desk—as in, a regular metal work desk, not one of those tall, elegant hotel-lobby desks—in a small rectangle of a room.

The woman who checks us in has dirt under her nails and a douchy attitude.

“I can put you in a ground-floor room with two doubles,” she informs us as she scans her computer screen, looking bored.

“We were supposed to have one king bed.”

“We don’t have any rooms with kings. They’re all two doubles.”

“But we only need one bed.”

She looks up at me. “Don’t use the other one.”

“We won’t.”

So there!

“And, uh, we’re supposed to have an ocean-view room.”

“They’re all ocean view,” she says in her island-accented English that might be charming coming from someone with a soul.

“Even the ground floor?” I find that hard to believe.

Not that it would likely be possible to see the ocean even from the beach, given the fact that the island is currently shrouded in clouds. But something tells me that our hostess here is full of crap.

“Here’s your key,” she says, and hands us…a key. The old-fashioned metal kind that any crazed serial killer can duplicate before turning it in at the end of his stay, and save for future murderous purposes.

I glance over at Jack, wondering if he saw the same
Dateline NBC
special I did.

“Ready?” he asks, picking up our bags, all set to march off to our doom.

“No! It isn’t really safe to stay in a room that has that kind of key,” I whisper as the woman behind the desk pretends to ignore me.

Or maybe she really
is
ignoring me.

Because when I say, “Um, excuse me, do you have any rooms that use electronic card keys?” she doesn’t even look up.

“Excuse me?” I say again, getting pissed.

Jack shakes his head, “Tracey, come on, it’s fine.”

“Is this the only kind of key you have here?” I persist, in part just because her attitude is getting on my nerves, and in part I’m holding out hope that she’s put us in the old wing when she could just as easily have put us in the new wing with king-size beds and those electronic card keys with the codes that are changed after every guest.

“What do you mean, only key?” she finally responds. “There’s only one door. That’s the key to open it.”

It seems that her work here is done, and she isn’t the least bit concerned about hotel security.

“I know, but—”

“Tracey, come
on.
”

Oh, I give up.

But I’m barricading the door to the room with that useless second bed before we go to sleep tonight.

We head back out into the downpour that blows beneath the covered walkway lined with tropical foliage. It’s semi-familiar from the online pictures, but there, the landscaping seemed more lush than overgrown and unkempt. Maybe that’s just because of the oppressive gloom.

“Do you think this will turn out to be a beach day?” I call to Jack, then wince as a wind-whipped overhanging palm frond slaps against my face.

“A beach day? I doubt it, but that’s okay.”

It is? I thought we were eager to sink our bare feet into sugary sand and loll about in tranquil tropical waters.

I was certainly eager to do that.

“This is it,” Jack says, putting the key into the lock.

I arrive just in time for him to open the door…and see something scurry out.

Naturally, I shriek, “Was that a cockroach?”

I thought this place was bug free, God help us.

“A cockroach? Tracey, it wasn’t a bug. It was the size of a squirrel.”

“Oh my God! It was a squirrel?”

“No!” He’s laughing at me. “It was an iguana.”

As if that’s better than a squirrel, or a squirrel-size bug.

“We’re in the islands now,” he reminds me. “Things are different here.”

Yeah, no kidding. We might have bugs in New York, but at least we keep our scary reptiles in the Bronx Zoo where they belong, not running wild in the streets.

You know, I’m beginning to think Jack and I aren’t on the same page.

Not for this vacation, anyway.

Maybe not for life in general.

How can I be in a relationship with somebody who thinks it’s fine to share our room not just with potential serial killers, but with a creature that looks like a miniature dinosaur?

He looks at me.

I can tell he thinks I’m overreacting, and maybe I am. But I can’t help it. This isn’t going the way it was supposed to. None of it. And I’m not just talking about the vacation.

“Are you okay?” he asks, softening. “You really look upset.”

“I
am
upset,” I say, on the verge of tears. “This is awful.”

“It’ll be fine, you’ll see. I mean, come on. We just got here.”

He’s talking about the vacation. Not the relationship. He thinks the relationship is fine.

I used to think that, too.

But now I think there’s something wrong with us. Or, at the very least, with me. Why are we not moving ahead, the way everybody else does? Why is he reluctant to commit to me?

I could understand if it were about not having a diamond, or the means to get one on his salary. But he already took that step. What’s keeping him from following through with the rest of it?

Jack holds the door wide open. “Come on, let’s go in and change into dry clothes. You’ll feel better.”

I doubt it, but what choice do I have?

Maybe this really is just about the vacation.

After the post-Christmas letdown of these past few weeks, I really wanted this trip to be perfect—whether or not Jack uses it to finally pop the question.

Mental note: be in the moment. Stop overanalyzing everything.

To my surprise, the room is typical hotel fare—slippery quilted floral bedspreads, generic art, tile bathroom, Mr. Coffee. Not that I was expecting the Ritz. To the contrary, I was expecting an unsanitary dump.

But this isn’t bad…as long as there are no iguanas lurking in the tub. I make Jack check, and he reassuringly gives the all clear. Then he turns the air-conditioning on full blast.

“What should we do now?” I ask him, after unpacking my bag into the small dresser, which takes all of sixty seconds.

All I brought is the few pairs of shorts and T-shirts that still fit me, and an old bathing suit that probably doesn’t—I couldn’t bring myself to try it on back home.

Jack told me to at least add a cute sundress in case we wanted to get dressed up for dinner, which I would have done, if I owned one. I substituted an ancient pair of linen pants and a cute sleeveless black top that makes my upper arms look fleshy, but it was my only option.

He also told me to bring a sweatshirt, because I’m always cold. Needing to prove him wrong—and prove to myself and to him that the weather in Anguilla is perfect at this time of year, as the guidebook claims—I declined.

Now I wish I at least had a jacket with a hood. No, not my mountain guide parka, though the splashy hue is some-what tropical. A tasteful slicker would be nice; too bad I don’t own one.

“Do you think there’s someplace where we can get a rum drink?” Jack asks, tossing his duffel bag on the floor of the surprisingly large walk-in closet, still packed.

“I don’t know…I doubt it,” I say dubiously. “I mean, this isn’t really a resort. More like just a beach hotel.”

“Beach hotels have lobby bars.”

“‘Lobby’ is the key word there, Jack. I think a tiki bar tucked into that reception area would have been hard to miss, don’t you?”

He laughs. “Then let’s go out and walk around. I’m sure we’ll find a place where we can get a couple of piña coladas and wait for the storm to pass.”

We do just that…except we have dirty bananas instead, and more than a couple—each—and the storm doesn’t seem to be passing.

A good few hours later, we’re still lounging on stools in a beachside dive bar called the Wet Dog. A burnt-out mainland transplant in a Hawaiian shirt is playing a guitar and singing Jimmy Buffett tunes. When we first got here, I remember thinking he was off-key, but now he’s sounding pretty good.

Maybe it’s the booze.

Whatever.

All I know is that I’m having a grand old time belting out “Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes” with my new best friends Gregory and Daniel, a matching-tank-top-wearing, mustachioed, platinum-blond middle-aged gay couple from New Jersey.

“I love you guys!” I tell them warmly as the guitarist takes a break to duck outside in the rain and smoke what doesn’t look like a regular cigarette.

Which I could definitely use right now.

I know, I know…and the cravings have pretty much subsided over the last few weeks, except when I have a drink. Or four.

Gazing out the window, watching the guitarist exhale smoke through his nostrils, I momentarily debate sneaking away to bum a smoke—from somebody other than him, as I just want good old-fashioned tobacco.

The only thing that stops me is that down here, you can’t be too careful. What looks like a regular cigarette might be laced with, I don’t know, whatever it is predatory crackheads lace innocent people’s cigarettes with.

What? It
could
happen. I think I saw it on
Dateline
once.

No, really.

“We love you, too! And honey, you are
such
the parrot-head!” Gregory exclaims to me, and I could be mistaken, but I think it’s a compliment, so I thank him.

“Oh! I know I know I know! We should request ‘Let’s Get Drunk and Screw’ when the guitar guy comes back!” That’s Daniel, bouncing around on his stool in excitement. Either he’s overcaffeinated, or he’s a little hyper by nature.

“Yeah, or we could just get drunk and screw,” Gregory says, and we all scream with laughter.

All of us except Jack, who visibly winces.

“Hey, you know what, guys?” I say—mostly to the Fab Two. “I have an idea! We should all get together in Manhattan after we get back home!”

Jack promptly kicks me under the bar.

I shoot him a dirty look. What’s his problem? Maybe Gregory and Daniel aren’t the most masculine guys we’ve ever met—all right, they make Raphael seem butch—but I like them.

“We’d love to get together! How does your February look?” Gregory lisps.

“Actually, we have a wedding in February,” Jack tells him.

“All month?” Daniel asks, and the three of us crack up.

Jack doesn’t seem to think it’s that funny.

I think it’s because he’s not drinking enough.

“Oh, barkeep!” I call good-naturedly. “Another round for the table, with an extra Kahlúa floater for my friend Jack here.”

No response from the surly male bartender, who might very well be related to the front-desk clerk at our hotel.

“It’s okay.” Jack gestures at our still half-full glasses. “I don’t need another drink yet, and neither do you.”

“But we’re on vacation, party pooper!” I tell him.

“But this isn’t a party,” he replies.

“All right then…dive-bar pooper,” I amend, and the boyfriends are convulsed with laughter.

Jack shakes his head. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate being called a pooper of any sort.

C’est la vie.

I’m not going to let him rain on my…uh, rainy day.

I turn back to Gregory and Daniel and pick up where we left off. “So anyway, it’s a gay wedding,” I say, because that makes all the difference to them, I’m sure.

“When is it?”

“It’s on Valentine’s Day.”

Gregory exclaims, “Oh-my-God-that-is-so-ro
man
tic!”

“You guys really should come.”

Why, I don’t know. It just seems like a great idea.

But not to Jack.

“Tracey,” he says in a warning voice, and kicks me again.