“Guns and drugs,” the broker’s wife said. “And it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Two men, traveling together, and sharing a cabin.”
Her husband asked her what that was supposed to mean. She said it was just something to take into account.
In their own cabin, Julia said, “I’m still trying to figure it out. Was she suggesting they’re gay? And what would that have to do with them both getting sick at the same time?”
Keller shrugged. “Beats me. AIDS, maybe?”
“I suppose. ‘Two men sharing a cabin.’ I don’t know if you saw the look she got when she said that, but the schoolmarms didn’t appreciate the implication. Given that they’re two women sharing a cabin.”
“And they’re annoyed because they’re lesbians?”
“Or they’re not lesbians, and that’s why they’re annoyed. At the implication.”
“The world’s a complicated place,” Keller said.
Twenty-Six
The lounge chair Keller selected gave him a good view of the block of four staterooms, one of which housed Carmody and his strawberry blonde. He sat down, put his legs up, and set about the business of anointing himself with suntan lotion. It boasted a high SPF number, and he found himself wondering if there was any point to the whole process. Wouldn’t it be simpler to skip the lotion and stay in your cabin? Wouldn’t you come out about the same?
Earlier, Keller had checked the listings, and found that Mr. Aldredge Smith and Mr. John Westin had occupied a cabin one flight below. That was unfortunate, because if their removal to a hospital in Nassau had left a Sun Deck stateroom vacant, Keller might have used it as a base of operations.
Keller hadn’t thought to pack a bathing suit, but the shipboard shop had been happy to sell him one. It was black, and not too skimpily cut, but he still felt conspicuous in it, though less so than if he’d stretched out on the lounge chair in long pants and a shirt. And the sun felt good, and the ship had set sail shortly after lunch for Virgin Gorda, wherever that was, and Keller found its motion soothing. All he had to do was lie there and relax and keep his eyes open.
The third requirement turned out to be impossible. Your eyes are closed, he realized at one point, and told himself he’d have to do something about it, but by then it was too late. His mind had found a corridor to explore, and he drifted right off…
And came to abruptly. There was no sudden noise, and no one jostled his lounge chair or walked past it to block the sun. He wondered later if it might simply have been an unconscious awareness of her presence that did it, because when he opened his eyes there she was, not ten yards away from him, Ms. Va-va-voom herself, sitting sidesaddle on a lounge chair of her own, and applying coconut-scented suntan oil to those portions of her anatomy not covered by the scarlet bikini.
Which was to say almost all of her.
She took her time oiling her golden-brown skin, and it seemed to Keller that she was caressing herself as much as she was protecting it from the sun. He didn’t want to stare at her, but seemed incapable of averting his eyes, and the next thing he knew she was looking right back at him.
He looked away, but it was as if he could see her no matter where his eyes were turned. He looked her way again, and she was still gazing at him, with an expression on her face that was not quite a smile, although it was definitely headed in that direction.
Then she turned her eyes from him, and swung her legs up onto the lounge chair, and worked the controls to lower the back into a horizontal position. She was still sitting up, and Keller watched as she put her hands behind her back, uncoupled the bikini top, and removed it altogether.
She couldn’t have exposed her breasts to him for more than a couple of seconds, but they were longer seconds than most. Then she was lying facedown on the lounge chair.
Had anyone else seen what Keller had seen? He looked around and saw no one who gave any evidence of having witnessed the performance. Had it been for his benefit? Or had he merely chanced to be present when a free-spirited creature displayed her charms without thinking twice about it?
Her head was turned to one side, resting on her arm, and facing toward Keller. Her eyes were closed. And she was smiling.
Go back to his cabin? Go to the bar for a drink, or the lounge for a cup of coffee? Find his way to the library and pick out something to read?
Or wait for her to give up on the sun and return to her cabin, so that he could see which one it was?
Keller closed his eyes to give the matter some thought, and once again the combination of sun and waves carried him off. He didn’t doze for long, but when he opened his eyes he saw that the girl had changed position. She was lying on her back now, and was once again wearing the bikini top.
And she was no longer alone. On the lounge chair just beyond hers, wearing knee-length Bermuda shorts and a loose-fitting shirt with a palm tree on it, sat Carmody himself. His feet were bare—a pair of pink flip-flops rested at the foot of his chair—and from the knees down the man was fish-belly white, while from the knees up he was pretty much invisible, with the shirt and the shorts and his sunglasses and his pink cotton sun hat covering up most of him.
The contrast between the two of them, dramatic enough in the dining room, was far greater beneath the sun. Earlier he’d looked old enough to be her father, or perhaps her father’s older brother; now you’d be more apt to cast him as her dead grandfather.
She was lying down. Carmody’s chair was in what the airlines call the full upright position, and he sat there looking like a man waiting for his number to be called. Then, after a few moments, he reached out and rested a hand on his companion’s shoulder. Keller thought that was a tender gesture until the hand moved lower and slipped inside a cup of the bikini halter.
Keller looked away, willing the old goat to keep his hands to himself, and when he looked their way again it was as if his wish had been Carmody’s command. Both the man’s hands were now resting on the arms of his own lounge chair.