By the time Olivia returned to the table, our desserts had arrived. “Could I keep this and take a closer look at it?” she said, holding up the stone. “Just for tonight.”
“Promise not to steal it.”
She glared at me. “I’m kidding,” I said. And I was, mostly.
Standing up, I threw a wad of cash onto the table. Nickels and quarters rolled across the table with a satisfying plinking sound and came to rest around the vase in the center of the table. “That should cover dinner. Find me tomorrow in the small cave just north of where you were digging this morning.” When I left the tavern, she was still peering hard at the amulet.
Chapter 5—Olivia
The next morning I awoke after only a couple hours’ sleep. I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, threw on a stained t-shirt and was on my way out the door when someone placed herself in front of me, blocking my exit.
It was Carrie, her hair tied up in a loose bun, newly minted morning sunlight streaming in behind her and turning her into a glowering silhouette.
“We need to talk,” she said in an ominous voice.
Carrie was a great friend, but she was also a notorious meddler in other people’s affairs. At least once a week she would take me aside for a serious chat. I had come to dread them the way you dread going to the dentist or filing your taxes.
“Do we have to do it right here, in front of all these people?” I asked, motioning to the dining hall which I realized only too late was completely empty.
“Listen,” she said, waving a batter-caked spatula with one hand. “I realize it’s none of my business, but I couldn’t help noticing what’s going on between you and that man.”
I blushed to the roots of my dark hair. “Going on between us? Carrie, we just had dinner. It was one night. There is absolutely
nothing
going on between us.”
“Liv, don’t insult my intelligence. I’m smart enough to know when a man is flirting, and that man is smitten with you. His eyes never left you. He laughed at everything you said, you had him hanging
on your every word
. You may not realize it yet, and he may not realize it, but you’re falling for each other. You’re working together, you’ve been looking for ways to get out of work so you can see him, you’re infatuated.”
“And what if that’s true?” I asked, feeling red in the face. “I’m not saying you’re right, but if that happened, how is that a
bad thing?”
“He doesn’t deserve you, Liv.”
I smiled. “I think I’m the ultimate judge of that. Not you.”
Carrie’s voice rose; even if no one could hear her down here, she was likely attracting the attention of upstairs guests. “I know you can’t see it, God knows I’ve been there too, but the man is a hobo. He lives in the jungle.”
“Because you won’t give him a room!”
“Because he’s a tramp! We’re not talking about a man with a job here, a professional. This is—Liv, this is not a serious person you’re dealing with here. He’s a man-child, a pathetic loser stuck in permanent adolescence. Just because he has the money to travel halfway across the world in search of King Solomon’s gold doesn’t mean he has the financial stability or maturity to take care of you over the long haul.”
“Do you really want to go there, Carrie?” I asked, practically spitting with anger. “Last time I checked, you weren’t my mother.”
“No, but I care about you, and I know a bad man when I see one. He’s not good for you. He’s dangerous, probably more dangerous than either one of us realizes. I guarantee you he’s bedded many women. Some women like that kind of man, but I expected better of you. I just don’t want to see you throwing your life and your career away over a romantic summer fling with someone who is not even worth your time.”
“Your concerns have been noted,” I said in an icy voice.
“Like I said, it’s none of my business,” said Carrie. “But I hope you’ll at least listen and keep your head. Love can be awfully deceptive. It can blind us. And we don’t realize our mistake until it’s too late.”
“Good day, Carrie,” I said. With a low bow she graciously stepped out of the way and I proceeded outside, shielding my face from the intense sunlight.
I marched to the pier, fury in every step. I hated being lectured by another adult about my life choices, but what made it worse was a quiet fear that perhaps she was right after all. I had only known this man for a couple of days, and men who slept in caves weren’t known for being decent people. But there had been a tenderness in his eye last night when he spoke of his grandfather, and surely anyone who could love their own family that deeply could be trusted.
I scoffed at the notion that we were falling for each other, but I had never been in a relationship before, had been too busy building my career, and so it was hard for me to read the signs of interest in a man’s eyes. Carrie had more experience in this area, and I was inclined to trust her judgment over mine. But if she was right about that, then maybe she was right that he couldn’t be trusted. A man with a job would almost certainly be preferable to one who lived in a cave. If I couldn’t see that, then maybe I really was blinded by love, or lust.
I paused. Ahead of me the trail split into four paths. I couldn’t remember which of them was the correct one.
For a moment I stood there debating the risks of just striking out on a path and letting the road take me. After all, this was supposed to be a day of exploration, and perhaps Henry wouldn’t be upset if I was late because I had been scoping out the island. But then I pictured myself later in the day, stumbling through the woods without food or water. With a sigh I sat down on a large rock near the very center of the intersection and hoped that Henry would realize I was lost, and would come looking for me.
“Things would be so much easier if he had a phone,” I said to a blue jay that was hopping along on the ground beside me. Carrie was right: my parents would have been horrified if I had known I had put my job on the line to hook up with a homeless man who lived in a cave.
The blue jay was twittering pointedly, and it took me a few minutes to realize that it was actually trying to communicate with me. “What is it you want?” I asked, in the tone of voice we reserve for animals and babies. “Do you want food?”
The bird shook itself vigorously.
“Do you have a message from someone?” Negative again. “Do you know where I’m headed?” This time the bird bounced up and done, more merrily than before. “Could you take me there?” And the bird was off, up in the air, skimming over the tops of trees, soaring through the air like a cloud.
I was lucky I had the bird to guide me, as I might not have been able to find the cave even in daylight, even knowing the right path. The opening in the rock was so small that I might have missed it had the bird not flown directly above it and then vanished, as though sensing that it's task was complete.
Henry was standing in the door of the cave, partially concealed by a boulder. It was impossible to tell from this distance whether or not his lower half was as naked as his upper limbs and torso. He was brushing his teeth using a toothbrush and mirror he had presumably stolen from a hotel bathroom. The mirror was propped up on a ledge that jutted naturally out of the cave rock.
I paused and watched him performing his morning routine, sighing at the torments fate and circumstance were inflicting upon me. Why had they conspired to make this vagabond so handsome, so peerless and without fault? Every movement of his body was a sly taunt from the gods who had made any thought of relationship impossible. I felt like a child whose parents had shown him the most beautiful toy in a shop window, only to tell him he could never have it.
Henry himself seemed to be in on the joke. For a split-second he turned his head, and I felt sure he must have seen me. But he kept brushing his teeth, quietly flexing his arms as he did so. How long was he going to do this? I had heard stories of people who had destroyed their enamel from brushing too hard and too long. Yet the repetition of movement carried its own thrill; he seemed transported out of his human self and into some lower register of being, more beast than man. For a moment I forgot my despair and stood looking on in a lucid dream of perfect happiness.
Suddenly there came a loud groan from the forest, like a bear growling. It was close enough that I instinctively flinched. Henry, who was stooped over rinsing out his mouth into a porcelain basin, shot straight up, every sense taut. For a split-second I caught a glimpse of his perfect pecs, on which were imprinted a design I could swear I had seen before.
“Did you hear that?” he asked me, putting on a Van Halen t-shirt. “And how long have you been standing there?”
“I just got here,” I said, which was true in geologic time. “And yes, I heard the growling. Maybe a tree fell?”
He shook his head darkly. “That was no tree. You’d better come inside, at least for a few minutes.”
Inside the cave, I returned the stone to him and told him what I had learned in my online investigations the night before.
“I knew I recognized this thing from somewhere,” I told him. “I knew it the moment I saw it, I just didn’t know where. Turns out, it
was
dug up near the money pit by a small team of private explorers back in the 1950s. In fact, it’s one of the few items to have been originally found there.”
“So why did it disappear for so long?”
“Well, the island has been claimed by at least six different nations in the last 60 years. It’s been fought over by corporations and billionaires. The original owners of the stone placed it in a museum, but then the museum was snatched up by the Saltcross Mining Company when
they
were doing their excavating, and when they left, the museum was torn down and its treasures distributed to the four winds.”
“Yikes.”
“I know. So this wasn’t the only invaluable artifact to disappear. Dozens of others went missing at around the same time. It’s rumored that there was another stone linked to this one, known as the cipher stone. Where it wound up is anybody’s guess.”
“And the reason so many people have been fighting over the island?”
“Ostensibly because of the mango crop. But conspiracy theorists and treasure-seekers suspect otherwise. If the treasure that’s rumored to lie buried here is as big as claimed, then it’s no surprise that some of the wealthiest corporations in the world would want to get their hands on it.”
“Any clue as to what it is?”
I shook my head, stepping lightly over a protruding tree branch. “A lot of theories, some more plausible than others. Old maritime legend states that King Solomon’s fabulous wealth, which he used to finance the building of the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem, was mined on an island in the Pacific. But the exact location of his mines has never been found, and at least one wealthy investor believes they lie here.”
“Where does that story rank on the spectrum of plausibility?”
“Three, at best. There’s another story about the mysterious wealth of the Knights Templar, which was one of the richest organizations in Europe in the Middle Ages. Their wealth was so great that they attracted the attention of the king of France, who in a fit of jealousy had their leader burned at the stake. The king died within a year, and legends sprang up about a terrible curse that the leader of the Knights had spoken over him in his final agonizing moments. But to this day no one knows where or how they acquired their considerable fortune.”
“Likelihood of its being here?” he asked.
“Between a one and a two. Some people have put forward an argument, which I find slightly more persuasive, that there may be pirate treasure hidden on the island, or the wealth of a Spanish galleon on its way back from the Americas that ran aground here. One blogger even argued that Shakespeare’s first folio is buried here, which (a) everyone knows where that is, and (b) what would it be doing on an island?”
I was getting carried away with enthusiasm, but Henry merely smiled. “Well,” he said, “I’d say we have as good a chance of finding the treasure as anyone.”