I’d forgotten about my article. I’d forgotten that I’m a reporter. I’d forgotten about the fact that the FBI is looking closely into Ness and those shells. Right then, I’m not sure I could find my apartment if I were dropped a block away from it.
The rest of the day is just that sort of discombobulated blur. I try not to dwell on all the nagging doubts and fears, choosing instead to just enjoy where I am. Ness lets me pilot his center console around the back of the island. It’s a big thirty-foot Contender, nicer than the one at his other house, but sun-beaten and salt-worn. Well used. Amid the rocks on the Atlantic side of the island, we find fighting conchs, sozon’s cones, and a horse conch. My life feels complete when I turn up a scotch bonnet in a tidal pool, the shell in very good or excellent condition, and Ness has to assure me ten times that it wasn’t planted there. That it is a real find. I don’t even dare put it in the shelling bag I borrowed from the house. For the rest of our expedition, I carry it with me in my palm. I know even then that it will be the one shell I walk away from this experience treasuring. I have this, even if everything else is taken from me.
Back at the house, we take turns showering. With towels wrapped around us, there’s a feeling of familiar intimacy but danger as well. We haven’t yet been completely naked in front of each other. He must expect it as much as I do, the inevitability, but not knowing when it might come is like holding a grenade with the pin pulled. We both dance around it as we get dressed while the other isn’t looking.
Dinner is on the patio. A fire in a raised metal pit crackles. We watch the sun go down as dinner arrives. I meet Gladys, the chef, and her husband, Nick. Ness introduces them like they’re family. When he tells Gladys that my mother was from Antigua, she shrieks and cups my face in both her hands, like an island hundreds of miles away is somehow next door. For the rest of the night, any time I catch her looking at me she bursts into a wide smile.
“I wish I had my laptop,” I say after dinner, while enjoying a glass of wine.
“Party foul,” Ness proclaims.
“To write,” I say. “I feel inspired to write some fiction. Make something up. Something less impossible than this, so people would buy it.”
Ness sips his wine. “Ever written a novel before?”
“Started a few. Meandered. I vacillated between feeling silly and feeling pretentious. Like some parts weren’t serious enough and other parts I was trying too hard to be profound.”
“Sounds like me learning to play the guitar. I would go back and forth between teaching myself chords and trying to learn complex tunes one contorted note at a time. I think that, with a lot of art, you just have to be bad at it a long time before the magic happens. And I suck at being bad at things.”
I laugh at the play on words. “Me too,” I say. “I mean, I’m really good at being bad at things, but I hate it. So I avoid it.”
“Dangerous habit,” Ness says. “Life is too short. And you’re lucky you don’t have your laptop.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if you pulled it out, I’d toss it into the sea.”
I laugh at him.
“I’m not kidding,” Ness says, even though he laughs with me. “Speaking of the sea,” he continues, “it’s warm enough to go for a dip. You wanna?”
“I would, but someone told me a whole bunch of things not to pack, and one was my bathing suit.”
Ness lifts his hands in defense. “I didn’t know you were going to jump me in the sub and that I’d be bringing you here!”
“I totally didn’t jump you. You took advantage of me in a weakened state.”
“Whatever. I’m going for a swim. If you wanna come, it’s dark enough that I won’t see anything. Not that I’d be looking anyway. And not that I haven’t already seen your breasts.”
“The lights were out. You didn’t see anything.”
But Ness is already up and out of his chair. I refuse to move, electing to enjoy my wine, the stars, the sound of the gently lapping water before me, the crack and pop of the fire, and the distant hiss of waves crashing on the other side of the island.
Ness sheds his shirt before he gets to the sand. I study his silhouette as he drops his shorts and then heads out into the water. Gladys appears beside me, gathering the dessert dishes.
“You a mad woman,” she says.
“Oh, we were just playing,” I tell her.
“No, you crazy not being out there with that man. He insane for you.”
“He barely knows me,” I tell her.
“All right then, tell me why he never bring no woman here. I say you mad.”
She laughs on her way back to the house, and I hear her talking with Nick, realize the two of them are probably gossiping about this last-minute arrival and this mysterious woman with half an island in her.
“Fuck it,” I say. I leave my wine and head down the tiered patio. At the sand’s edge, I pull off my shirt, take off my bra, drop my shorts and then my underwear. “No regrets,” I say. And by the time I get to the water, I’m running and laughing. I’m remembering what it feels like to be free again.
35