The Web (15 page)

I lay there and listened for sounds through the wall.

Nothing.

What did I expect to hear, the click of her keyboard?
Widow’s wails?

I shifted position and the mattress rocked, but Robin
didn’t budge.

Teachers’ voices from many years ago filtered through my
brain.

Alexander is a very bright little boy, but he does tend
to daydream.

Is something wrong at home, Mrs. Delaware? Alexander
has seemed rather distracted lately.

A soft, liquid line of light oozed through a part in the
curtains like golden paint freshly squeezed.

Playing on Robin’s face.

She smiled in her sleep, curls dangling over one eye.

Take her example and
adapt.

I relaxed my muscles consciously and deepened my
breathing. Soon my chest loosened and I felt better.

Able to smile at the image of Moreland with his
chocolate cake and schoolboy guilt.

My body felt heavy. Ready to sleep.

But it took a long time to fall under.

Chapter

20

The next morning, the clouds were darker and moving
closer, but still remote.

We were ready to dive at ten. Spike was acting restless,
so we decided to take him along. Needing something to shade
him, we went to the kitchen and asked Gladys. She called Carl
Sleet in from the rose garden, where he was pruning, and he
trotted over carrying his shears. His gray work clothes,
hair, and beard were specked with grass clippings, and his
nails were filthy. He went to the outbuildings and came back
with an old umbrella with a spiked post and a blue-and-white
canvas shade that was slightly soiled.

“Want me to load it for you?”

“No, thanks. I can do it.”

“Put new locks on the bug house last night. Strong
ones. Shouldn’t be having any more problems.”

“Thanks.”

“Welcome. Got any fudge left, Gladys?”

“Here you go.” She gave him some and he returned to his
work, eating.

Gladys walked us through the kitchen. “Dr. Bill feels
awful about last night.”

“I’ll let him know there are no hard feelings.”

“That would be .   .   . charitable—now you
two have a good time.”

I pitched the umbrella on South Beach and realized we’d
forgotten to bring drinks. Leaving Robin and Spike on the
sand, I drove over to Auntie Mae’s Trading Post. The same
faded clothes were in the windows, which were fly-specked and
cloudy. Inside, the place was barnlike, with wooden stalls
lining a sawdust aisle and walls of raw board.

Most of the booths were empty and even those that were
stocked weren’t staffed. More clothing, cheap, out of date.
Beach sandals, suntan lotion, and tourist kitsch—miniature
thatched huts of bamboo and AstroTurf, plastic dancing girls,
pouting tiki gods, coconuts carved into blowfish. The
building smelled of cornmeal and seawater and a bit of
backed-up
bilge.

The only other human being was a young, plainfaced woman
in a red tank top watching TV behind the counter of the third booth to the
right. Her cash register was a scarred, black antique. Next
to it were canisters of beef jerky and pickled eggs and a
half-full bottle of Windex and a rag. The front case was
filled with candy bars and chips—potato, corn, taro. On
the rear wall were a swinging door and shelves holding sealed
boxes of sweets. The television was mounted to the side wall
that separated the stall from its neighbor, sharing space
with a pay phone.

She noticed me but kept watching the screen. The
image was fuzzy, streaked intermittently with bladelike
flashes of white. A station from Guam. Long shot of a big
room with polished wood walls, corporate logo of a hotel
chain over a long banquet table.

Senator Nicholas Hoffman sat in the center behind a
glass of water and a microphone. He wore a white-and-brown
batik shirt and several brilliantly colored flower necklaces.
The two white men flanking him were dressed the same way.
One I recognized as a legislator from the Midwest; the other
was cut from the same hair-tonicked, hungry-smile mold. Four
other men, Asians, sat at the ends of the table.

Hoffman glanced at his notes, then looked up smiling.
“And so let me conclude by celebrating the fact that we all
share a vision of a more viable and prosperous Micronesia, a
multicultural Micronesia that moves swiftly and confidently
into the next century.”

He smiled again and gave a small bow. Applause. The
screen flickered, went gray, shut off. The young woman
turned it back on. Commercial for Island Fever Restaurant
#
6
: slack-key guitar theme song, pupu platters and flaming
desserts, “native beauties skilled in ancient dances for your
entertainment pleasure.” A caricature of a chubby little man
in a grass skirt rolling his hips and winking.

“C’mon, brudda!”

The woman flicked the remote control. More black
screen, then a ten-year-old sitcom. She watched as the
credits rolled, then said, “Can I help you?” Pleasant,
almost childish voice. Twenty or so, with acne and short,
wavy hair. No bra under the tank top. Not even close to
pretty, but her smile was open and lovely.

“Something to drink, if you’ve got it.”

“I’ve got Coke and Sprite and beer in the back.”

“Two Cokes, two Sprites.” I noticed a couple of
paperback books on the rear counter. “Maybe something to
read, too.”

She handed me the books. A Stephen King I’d read and a
compact world atlas, both with curled covers.

“Any magazines?”

“Um, maybe under here.” She bent and stood. “Nope.
I’ll check in back. You’re the doctor staying with Dr. Bill,
right?”

“Alex Delaware.” I held out my hand and we shook. I
noticed a diamond chip ring on the third finger.

“Bettina—Betty Aguilar.” She smiled shyly. “Just got
married.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks .   .   . he’s a great man—Dr. Bill. When I was a
kid I had a bad whooping cough and he cured me. Hold on, lemme get you
your drinks and see about magazines.”

She went through the swinging door.

So much for rampant island hostility to Moreland.

She came back with four cans and a stack of
periodicals. “This is all we’ve got. Pretty old. Sorry.”

“Is it hard to get current stuff?”

She shrugged. “We get whatever comes over on the supply
boats, usually it’s a couple of issues late.
People
and
Playboy
and stuff like that goes fast—any of this
interest you?”

Half-year-old issues of
Ladies’ Home Journal, Reader’s
Digest, Time, Newsweek, Fortune,
and at the bottom, several
copies of a large glossy quarterly entitled
Island World.
Gorgeous smiling black-haired girls and sun-blushed tropical
vistas.

The publications’ dates, three to five years old.

“Boy, those really
are
old,” said Betty. “Found ’em
under a box. They used to publish it but I don’t
think anymore.”

I flipped through tables of contents. Mostly
boosterism. Then a title caught my eye.

“I’ll take them,” I said.

“Really? Gee, they’re so old I wouldn’t know what to
charge you. Here, take ’em for free.”

“I’ll be happy to pay.”

“It’s okay,” she insisted. “You’re my best customer today
and they’re just taking up space. Want some munchies to
go with your drinks?”

I bought two bags of kettle-boiled Maui potato chips
and some jerky. As she took my money, her eyes drifted back
to the TV. Another blackout. She switched the set on
automatically, as if used to it.

“Bad reception?”

“The satellite keeps going in and out, depending on the
weather and stuff.” She counted out change. “I’m having a
baby. Dr. Bill’s gonna deliver it. In seven months.”

“Congratulations.”

“Yeah .   .   . we’re excited. My husband and me.
Here you go. .   .   . After the baby’s born we’ll probably be
moving away. My husband works construction and there’s no work.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Not really. This here is the biggest building in town.
A few years back Dr. Bill was thinking of redoing it, but no
one else really cared.”

“Dr. Bill owns the Trading Post?”

She seemed surprised that I didn’t know. “Sure. He’s
real good about it, doesn’t charge rent, just lets people
order their own stuff and sell it outta the booths. There
used to be more business here, when the Navy guys still came
in. Now most of the stallkeepers don’t come in unless
someone calls to order. It’s actually my mom’s stall, but
she’s sick—bad heart. I’ve got time, waiting for my baby,
so I take over for her and my husband delivers—most of our
stuff’s delivery.”

She touched her still-flat belly.

“My husband would like a boy, but I don’t care as long
as it’s healthy.”

Laugh-track noise from the TV. She turned her head and
smiled along with the electronic joy.

“Bye,” I said.

She waved absently.

When I got back to the beach, Robin’s snorkel was a tiny
white duck bobbing near the outer edge of the reef. Our
blankets were spread, and Spike was leashed to the umbrella
post, barking furiously.

The object of his wrath was Skip Amalfi, stark naked,
peeing a high, arcing stream into the sand, several yards
away. Anders Haygood stood next to him, in knee-length
baggies, watching. Skip’s bleached-bone buttocks said
skinny-dipping wasn’t a habit. His green trunks lay next to
him like a heap of wilted salad.

Spike barked louder. Skip laughed and aimed the stream
closer to the dog, shaking with glee as Spike growled and
spat drool. Then the arc dribbled and died. Spike shook
himself off theatrically, and moved closer to the two men.

I ran. Haygood saw me and said something to
Skip, who stopped and turned, offering a full frontal view.
I kept coming.

Grinning, Skip looked over his shoulder at Robin’s
snorkel. His urine trail was drying quickly, a brown snake
sinking into the sand. Spike was pawing the blanket, finally
moving enough of it to reach sand and scatter it.

Skip stretched and yawned and massaged his gut.

“Is that going to be the official welcome at your
resort?” I said, smiling.

His face darkened, but he forced himself to smile back.
“Yeah, living naturally.”

“Better watch the ultraviolet radiation. It can lead to
impotence.”

“Whu?”

“The sun.”

“Your hard-on,” said Haygood, amused. “What the man’s
trying to tell you is bruise it and lose it. Watch the UV on your tool or
you’ll be hauling limp wiener.”

“Fuck you,” Skip told him, but he looked at me edgily.

“It’s true,” I said. “Too much UV to the genitals
heats up the scrotal plexus and weakens the neurotestostinal
reflex.”

“Boil it and spoil it,” said Haygood.

“Fuck you in the
ass,
” said Skip. Looking for his
trunks.

Haygood lunged, grabbed them up, and began running down
the beach. Stocky but fast.

Skip went after him, potbelly quivering, holding his
crotch.

Spike was still drooling and breathing hard. I sat down
and tried to calm him. Robin had moved into shallower waters.
She stood, lifted her face mask, and waved. Then she saw the
two men running and came out of the water.

“What was that all about?”

I told her.

“How rude.”

“He was probably hoping you’d come out and see
him playing fireman.”

“Shucks, I missed it.” She squatted and petted Spike.
“Mama’s all right, sweetie. Don’t worry about those turkeys.
It’s gorgeous down there, Alex.
Come on in.”

“Maybe later.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Let me just stick around for a while in case they
return. Though I may have traumatized old Skip.”

I recounted my UV warning and she cracked up.

“You probably ruined what little sex
life he’s got.”

“Reverse therapy. My education is now fully validated.”

“Don’t worry about them, Alex—dive with me. If they
come back, we’ll give Spike a run at them.”

“Spike can be drop-kicked by a twelve-year-old.”

“They don’t know that. Tell them he’s a neurotestostinal
pit bull.”

We visited every crag in the reef side by side and
emerged an hour later to an undisturbed beach. Spike slept
noisily, under a cloud of sand flies. The drinks had warmed,
but we poured them down our throats. Then Robin stretched
out on a blanket and closed her eyes, and I picked up the
spring 1988 issue of
Island World.

The article that had caught my eye was on page 113,
after come-hither tourist pieces on Pacific Rim archaeological
sites, choice dive spots, restaurants and
nightclubs.

Bikini: A History of Shame

The author was a man named Micah Sanjay, formerly a
civilian official of the Marshall Islands’ U.S. military
government, now a retired high school principal living in
Chalan Kanoa, Saipan.

His story was identical to the one Moreland had told me:
failure to evacuate the residents of Bikini and Majuro and
the neighboring Marshall atolls. Clandestine nighttime boat
rides doling out compensation.

The
exact
same story, down to the amount of money
paid.

Sanjay wrote matter-of-factly but his anger came
through. A Majuro native, he’d lost relatives to leukemia
and lymphoma.

No greater anger than when recounting the payoff.

Sanjay and six other civil servants assigned the job.

Six names, none of them Moreland.

I reread the article, searching for any mention of the
doctor. Nothing.

If the old man had never been part of the payoff, why
had he lied about it?

Something else he said the first night resonated:

Guilt is a great motivator, Alex.

Feeling himself culpable for the blast? He’d been a
Navy officer. Had he known about the winds?

Was it
guilt
that had transformed him from a trust-fund
kid in dress whites to a would-be Schweitzer?

Coming to Aruk to
atone
?

Not that his lifestyle had suffered—living in a grand
estate, indulging his passions.

Aruk, his fiefdom .   .   . but his daughter
couldn’t be permitted to fraternize with the locals.

Did he
want
the villagers isolated? So he could enjoy
Aruk on his own terms—an idealized refuge for noble savages
with good hygiene and clean water?

Maybe I was judging him unfairly—residual anger about
the cockroaches.

But it did appear that he’d lied to me about the
Marshalls’ compensation program, and that bothered me.

I looked over at Robin’s beautiful, prone body, gleaming
in the sun. Spike slept too.

I was hunched, fingers tight on the magazine.

Maybe Moreland had
indeed been in those boats. Another payoff team, not
Sanjay’s.