Johnny sensed his discomfort (so did Claire, but she was hoping it would give him a hint) and he brought them back to Stan’s camera. “So what did you do?” Johnny laughed, “take it off some dead Nazi?”
“In case you didn’t know,” Stan caught him up short, “military law dictated that all cameras, guns, and binoculars be turned in, at risk of being shot. We were ordered to put all of these magnificent guns and cameras in piles on the street and run over them with a half-track. Oh, geez, it was heartbreaking.”
“So my father relieved the army of some of that diabolical task and sent a couple of them home,” Claire said.
“Well. You wouldn’t want to see them destroyed. So you see, this camera”—Stan was just getting warmed up—“can handle speeds up to twelve fiftieths of a second.”
The Mayor rolled over onto his back and let the cool wet seep into his bones.
“Or, in layman’s terms, one thousand two hundred fiftieths.”
“I’m glad you clarified that,” Johnny winked at Claire.
Claire smiled at him vaguely. She was far away, remembering another time and place. It was years ago. She’d taken a house on the island of Jamaica, in Negril. A magnificent little house, with a thatched roof and a small porch not twenty feet from the turquoise sea. Wolfgang had made a bevy of friends up at Rick’s (where they all used to run into each other and watch the big orange sun plop into the ocean without fail each evening). She’d gone swimming every day. Lots of people would drop by and Wolfgang (an excellent cook) would concoct enormous meals. A lovely round woman named Emily, very shiny and black, had come with the house and done all of the cleaning up. “All your friends,” she would marvel to Claire, “are so sophisticated and chic. My, my.”
And then one day a new couple had arrived. They stayed in the house beside Claire’s—alongside, not on the water. Their names, Claire remembered very well: Anthony and Theresa. They were on their honeymoon. Anthony, Emily had informed them while she swept the kitchen floor, drove a truck back at home where they came from. A small town, at that, on the south shore of Long Island. And he had a tattoo on his arm. “The south shore,” Wolfgang had said, stirring his meringue suspiciously. “Isn’t that the wrong shore?”
No one had bothered very much with the honeymooners. And, if truth be told, neither had they bothered much with anyone. They were neither sophisticated nor chic. Claire used to hear them laughing very late at night. She would turn in her bed and look at the beautiful iridescent green chameleon that lived on her wall and she would listen to them. They really were sort of vulgar. Claire would wake up later and later each day, somehow unrefreshed, and fall into the light blue water, where she would stay.
Finally the couple was leaving. Anthony, to everyone’s amusement, had rented a boat to come and pick them up and take them near the airport so that they wouldn’t have to drive halfway around the island in some dusty taxi. They had to wade out a good ways into the water to get into the boat. Claire had gone out with Emily to watch them go. They were very excited. There were gifts galore for family back on Long Island. Cheap, touristy gifts, but that was the idea, Theresa had defended them when one fell into the water and Anthony made fun of her distress. At last everything was on the boat. Out went Anthony with a last-moment-in-paradise dive. Theresa gathered her lavender dress around her (she was a big young girl) and out she walked, very slowly, erectly, forever holding this moment in her memory. Something caught in Claire’s sophisticated heart. “My, my, my,” Emily observed. “Now there goes a happy girl. A happy girl.”
Claire had never forgotten either of them. And all of those fancy friends they’d spent their time with there were gone, forgotten and invisible.
“Claire?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t mention this to anyone,” Johnny said, tapping his shirt pocket, referring to the cufflink.