Last Resort (19 page)

“Lonely,” I reply.

“But you have Bob and Dean to keep you company,” Curtis points out.

“I’d rather patrol alone.”

Bob, early fifties, as squat, heavy, and round as a cast iron chiminea, owns an Atlanta car dealership. Dean, late fifties, is similar in build to me—slim and not very tall—with coarse gray hair and a long roman nose. Dean is a systems analyst. I have no idea what that means.

“Come now,” Curtis chides. “They cannot be that bad.”

I roll my eyes. “Dean is an obsessive compulsive. He’ll fixate on something trivial that happened days ago, like why no one offered him salt with his noon meal, and talk about it incessantly. I suppose the stress of all that has happened to us causes him to find comfort by dwelling on little things. Whatever the cause, he’s a pain in the ass to be around. As for Bob, he’s annoying, too—constantly trying to suck up to Conner in the hopes that at his next feeding Conner will toss him an extra biscuit.”

“We have people like that on the day shift,” Nelson waves his hand before his face as though flicking away a fly. “So, during your lonely surveillance is there any sign of Action and his men?”

“Every once in a while I catch a glimpse of somebody on the other side of the lagoon. Island men, but once or twice, I think it was a woman. I can’t tell if they are one of Action’s gang or not. It’s hard to see unless it’s a full moon. It could be that they’re testing our defenses—seeing if we’re still on guard. Either way, after a while they wander off.”

The mood in the restaurant is as joyful as a child’s funeral. Men and women accustomed to a life of luxury hunch over their scrimpy meals or shuffle about with the enthusiasm of concentration camp prisoners. Robby doles out the first meal of my day: Less than half a cup of noodles, mixed with half a spoiled avocado and bits of some type of grilled sea creature. The noodles take the concept of al dente to a tooth-cracking extreme. In the kitchen, three sullen women prepare all the meals. Conner thrust the responsibility on them completely at random and it shows. Not all that long ago I would have dumped this food down the toilet; now I wolf it down.

Conner watches everything, seated on his rattan throne, making certain that no one gets more than the barest amount of food necessary for survival. Following Conner’s new rules, Nelson raps at the swinging door to the kitchen but does not enter. No one can enter the kitchen except the three cooks and Conner, who wears about his neck the only key to the storerooms.

One of the three women pops her head through the swinging door.

With misplaced pride, Nelson hands his skimpy catch of the day to the woman. “Dinner is served.”

Her expression is as sour as a bag of lemons. “I told you yesterday this type of fish is all bones. Considering what little meat we get, it is hardly worth the effort to clean and gut them.”

“A fisherman is only as good as what the sea provides,” Curtis wraps a supportive arm over Nelson’s shoulder.

The woman appears ready to say something else, but instead, shakes her head and takes the scrawny fish back to the kitchen. As Nelson and Curtis walk away, Curtis’s arm still affectionately upon Nelson’s shoulders, Conner watches with obvious distaste. Across the room, Gwen spoons some sort of broth into Alexandra’s mouth. Alexandra stares into space, her once long, sleek chestnut hair now a tangled mess.

I walk over. “Hey, Gwen.”

After seeing so little of her for the past three or more weeks due to our different schedules, it feels odd to strike up a nonchalant conversation with her.

Gwen smoothes her hair back from her face—a self-conscious gesture I find touching. “I must look like a mess.”

“You look like you always do. Beautiful,” I instinctively respond.

She touches the beard on my face and smiles. “I see you’re going for a rugged style.”

I blush. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to shave.”

“Don’t bother. I like the whiskers on you.”

I glance at Alexandra. Gwen reads my questioning glance and explains, “Alexandra’s not well. She has good days and bad ones. This is not one of the better ones. I’m helping look after her.”

I nod to Conner. “Shouldn’t that be her husband’s job?”

She nervously glances at Conner and back to me. What is she afraid of? “Yes, well, Conner has his hands full keeping things together here.”

“Yeah, I know. He’s got to be on constant guard in case we mutiny for an extra can of soda,” not bothering to mask the contempt I feel.

“Phil,” Conner points to the exit. “Your patrol is starting.”

With heavy sarcasm, I hold my hands before my face, turning them over, and feigning amazement that I can see them. “Night patrol starts at dusk. It is still daylight.”

Conner grips the arms on his chair and leans forward, eyes squinting hard at me. Everyone else in the restaurant stop whatever they are doing. A pang of fear blossoms in my gut, but I swallow hard and stand my ground.

Gwen touches my hand.

“Phillip, please,” she softly says.

I scowl at Conner and mutter, “This is bullshit.”

I march out of the restaurant and head straight for the bungalow Gwen shares with Pamela. The back door is half-open.

I peek in. “Pamela?”

“In here,” she calls from the bathroom.

The bathroom door is open. I walk in. “You decent?”

Leaning over the sink counter, she looks in the mirror and slowly applies lipstick. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been decent, but you can come in all the same.”

I plop down on the edge of the marble bath, and then bolt up and pace the room. “I’m beginning to think we’d be better off taking our chances outside the resort. Conner is turning this place into a prison.”

“You just noticed that?” She daintily fixes a smudge of lipstick at the corner of her mouth, squinting to see in the fading daylight.

“I can’t believe this is happening to us. Conner uses his control of the supply room to keep everyone in line.”

I tell Pamela of the altercation in the restaurant.

“He’s trying to keep me away from Gwen,” I conclude.

She dabs a spot of perfume on her wrists and rubs them together. “Of course. I suspected it right away when he assigned you nighttime patrols and Gwen to the day shift. Conner has been turning to Gwen more and more, especially since Alexandra’s breakdown.”

“Yeah, I saw Gwen spoon feeding her.”

“Alexandra has a chemical imbalance. She had pills to regulate it, but when she heard her family died she had a fit and threw them into the nature preserve. We tried to find the pills but never did. I imagine right now there are some very happy crabs creeping about in those bushes.”

Pamela returns to the mirror and dusts a shimmery powder over her décolletage.

I pause in the middle of my tirade and sit on the edge of the tub again. “Can I ask you a question? What the hell are you doing?”

Inspecting her handiwork, she replies, “Keeping up appearances, dear boy.”

“Have you seen the haggard faced zombies wandering around this place? I don’t think anyone will care if you wear eye shadow or not.”

She turns to me with a slight smile. “I would care, Phillip. Let me tell you something. My mother lived in London during the Blitz. She was just a child then. She saw her father go off to fight the Nazis—never to return. Living in London during that time, my mother told me how suddenly the stillness of the night could change to sheer panic. Wailing air raid sirens. The thunder of exploding bombs. People screaming, grabbing whatever they could carry, and rushing to the streets. Spotlights sweeping the sky. Fires turning the night sky a bloody red. My mother huddled in air raid tunnels, her face buried in my grandmother’s arms. During those dark, terror filled hours, my mother learned what it meant to have courage and dignity. It is a valuable lesson she passed on to me. She taught me to bend, but never break. In short, she taught me how to be British.”

“Damn, Pamela, another speech like that and you’ll have
me
slapping on the lipstick,” I say with a deferential bow.

She chuckles and says, “Come. Walk with me back to the restaurant. I want to get there before the last of the gruel is gone.”

As we walk along the winding path back to the restaurant, the sun sinks even lower.

“Does Gwen ever talk about me?” I ask.

A slight smile crosses her lips. “I wondered when you were going to ask me that. She’s talked about you, yes. Of course, I asked why she came to live in my bungalow instead of staying with you. At the time, numerous people asked the same question.”

“So then everyone knows Gwen and I are separated.”

“Separated? When a husband and wife separate, there’s always the possibility that they may get back together. Gwen gave me the impression that you told her the marriage was finished.”

Unintentionally, my pace slows to a crawl. “I never said the marriage was completely over. We came here to try to work out our problems—”

“Yes, she said.”

“And instead of working them out, somehow things just fell apart. How much did Gwen tell you about what happened to our marriage?”

“I know about her affair. Gwen takes all the blame for why your marriage failed.”

I am torn between relief that I have someone else to talk to about my failed marriage and embarrassment that someone else knows that my wife preferred to have sex with another man instead of me.

Pamela assuages my sense of embarrassment. “Infidelity is not an easy thing for any marriage to survive. I have been in your shoes, so I know how difficult it is. Bill was not my first husband, you know.”

“So your first husband cheated on you?”

She sadly nods.

“And you left him because of it?”

She nods again.

“Did you ever regret it?’

“Maybe at first. I might have had second thoughts, questioning if I made the right decision but years later when I heard that my first husband also cheated on the woman he married after me, any misgivings I had vanished.”

I ponder this a moment, and then add, “Well, Gwen is not like your first husband. Of that, I am sure. She’s no serial cheater, hopping from bed to bed. Our problem is something that Gwen cannot help: She is physically drawn to a certain type of man and that man is not me. I’ve thought about this a lot, Pamela. Since we lost all power on the island, I have nothing but time to think about it. You say Gwen told you that I ended the marriage—that it was my decision. I disagree that it ended that way, but let’s say I fought to preserve our marriage; I would not have succeeded. Look at how she revolves around Conner ever since the E.M.P. blast.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘revolve’.”

I arch a brow. “Oh, no? That’s how it looks to me. I hardly see Gwen anymore and when I do, she’s dutifully tending to Conner’s catatonic wife and he sticks closer to Gwen than a barnacle on the hull of a ship. I am surprised, but I shouldn’t be. Gwen is only reverting to her true nature. She is young, beautiful, and fertile; Conner is the strong, virile warrior. He can protect her and provide food for her. It sounds primitive, I know, like something out of the Stone Age, but it makes sense. I couldn’t even keep Gwen faithful to me when we lived a block from a supermarket packed with food. Now, under these circumstances, with someone like Conner around, I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Pamela gives an incredulous laugh and shakes her head. “Is that what you think life is all about? Who’s bigger? Stronger? The alpha male conquering the alpha females? I really thought you were smarter than this, Phillip.”

Flummoxed by her laughter, I stare back at her. She continues, “Granted, Conner is the strongest man in the resort, but for all his strength he is still afraid. The way he rules this place like some kind of police state is proof of just how afraid he is. The men who appear the toughest, the strongest, the quickest to fight are usually the most afraid. All their macho posturing is just an act to mask the fear that governs their lives. You should realize there are many ways to be strong, and many ways to be brave. If you realize this then I have no doubt that Gwen would be yours again.”

Stopping, I turn to her. “So then you are saying there is still a chance for me and Gwen?”

She purses her lips. “Not with your current mindset, there isn’t.”

We reach the restaurant. Before I can say anything else to Pamela, Bob trudges over to me, hands me a torch and I begin another lonesome patrol.

The trick to avoid becoming a feast for the mosquitoes is to keep moving. My patrol takes me deep into the nature preserve along the edge of the lagoon—prime mosquito breeding locations. A chorus of insects, frogs and the occasional warble of a nocturnal bird fill the night. At times, the cacophony is so loud that an elephant could sneak up on me and I would not hear it. I prefer to walk without a torch, slowly making my way along the packed dirt paths, relying on the dim light of the half moon to guide me. I find that while a torch illuminates everything directly around me, it blinds me to anything beyond the reach of the torch light. In addition, without a torch Bob and Dean do not know where I am and cannot meet up with me.

I make a sweep of the edge of the lagoon. Finding no sign of intruders, I head back to the row of bungalows along the shoreline. As I near the bungalows, I glimpse a long, lean figure moving like a wraith along the path. I quicken my pace to catch up to them, but they round the corner of a bungalow, heading towards the beach. Perhaps I should call out, but I hesitate, not wanting to awaken everyone for what probably is nothing more than one of the guests unable to sleep and taking a night stroll. I follow the slender figure to the beach, but there is no one there. Assuming whoever it was returned back to their bungalow, I return to the lagoon.

“Alexandra!”

Conner’s shout echoes across the resort. I return to the bungalows as swiftly as possible.

“Alexandra!”

Conner dashes between the bungalows, torch aloft, awakening everyone. Bleary-eyed guests step out of their homes, wondering why there is so much commotion. Pamela and Gwen leave their bungalow.

“What’s happening?” Gwen asks.

I answer by way of a confused shrug.

Conner runs towards us. “I can’t find Alexandra. She slipped out of our room when I dozed off. Has anyone seen her?”