Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

Isobel smiled at him, wondering if he ever really went home. It was too early for the dinner mob. The place was far from empty but hardly full. Billy stood behind the bar, at the far end, as usual, reading what looked like a menu from one of his competitors.

“Drinks and dinner,” Walter called to Billy, and then to Ike, “got room?”

“My treat, if you don’t go overboard.” Ike garnished the offer by raising his cap and showing off his teeth again.

Billy towered over them. “Diet Coke. Usual. And for the lady?”

“Vodka martini, plain as day.” She unleashed her smile at him.

“Don’t look at the menu,” Billy said to Isobel. “I’ll take care of dinner. Everything’s good, but I know what’s best. These two don’t know nothing.” He left with what looked like a wink of his own. That was just as well. She’d left her drug-store glasses at Walter’s; the menu would be useless.

Ike squinted intently, as though he were trying to see through her skin. It was not an unpleasant sensation. “Is something wrong?” she said.

“Where you from?”

“Fiji.”

“That’s an island too?”

She nodded, charmed.

“Out by Australia, in that direction?”

She gave him the coordinates. He nodded and sipped his usual, visibly satisfied. “Always like to learn new things. You sound like some kind of island, but…”

“I don’t look it?” she laughed a wondrously full, strong laugh, and looked at Ike as if they shared a secret-which they did: white girl and black man, both island people.

She asked if Ike knew the old man sleeping in the park. “The Poet,” Ike said. He told her everyone did. “You heard of Clarence Frogman Henry? Very good singer, sadly departed. He could sing in three different voices: high, low, and medium. One song goes like this [Ike threw his head back and tried out his partly mended falsetto]: ‘I’m a poor little frog and I ain’t got no home.’” His ancient feet kept time loudly beneath the table.

He sipped his usual, cleared his throat, and then told Isobel, “That was in the song. Difference is, the Poet don’t want no home. He’s what you call the outdoor type. He’s the only homeless person we got, to my knowledge. Also, he is a poet. He’ll say one for you if you ask, if you got a little money. Sometimes they rhyme. Sometimes they don’t. The Poet sell some stuff right here. Got a young boy lives on a boat down here. What’s his name, Walter? Kenny something? I don’t know. He’s got a really great big boat. Boy is a famous performer. Sings rock and roll songs all over the world. Got records and all the rest. And he lives on a boat right here. My boy Truman rebuilt his engine couple years back. That man’s got some boat. You can see it from Walter’s house most of the time. He bought poems from him and paid him some money too. But the Poet prefers to be homeless and everyone shows him consideration, looks after him very good.” Ike looked around to see where Billy was and then leaned forward toward Isobel and said in a low whisper, “Even Billy feeds him, and won’t admit to it neither.”

Isobel quickly came to admire Billy’s kitchen. Curried goat, jerk pork kabobs, coconut jasmine rice, sweet potato wedges. Ike warned her off the scotch bonnet peppers. Isobel took care not to stuff herself and noted with deep satisfaction that Walter was eating light. He took it very easy from first to last. At one point Ike said, “You feel okay?” then covered himself with a friendly chuckle. “No reason to get no fatter than you are.” He talked at some length about his family’s predisposition to leanness of body and limb, tactfully excepting from this description two cousins on his long-passed father’s side and several of their daughters. Very fine girls, but not thin.

“Dessert’s on the house,” Billy announced, Jenna trailing. Billy pulled up a chair. Jenna had brought four portions of Billy’s Island Pudding with the coffee. “The recipe dies with me,” he said. “I brought it down here from… all I can say is one word: ‘Bacardi.’ And that’s the only word I’ll ever say about Billy’s Island Pudding.”

He noticed Jenna standing behind him and shooed her away.

They talked a while about smuggling, and how American cops and Island cops, French and English cops, and mostly South American cops are basically the same, except for some being stupider and cheaper to bribe than others. Isobel rang the final bell by faking a generous yawn. As chairs began squeaking, she apologized, saying, “I’ve got to get an early plane.” She and Walter thanked Ike for the dinner, said their goodnights, and left.

“Then why don’t she take the ferry tonight?” Billy demanded of Ike.

“’Cause she ain’t going nowhere tonight. She’s going with Walter now.”

“That’s my point,” Billy persisted. “ Didn’t you say it wasn’t gonna be? Better chance I fucked a whatever, and all that?”

“That was then. Now is now. Everything is different now.”

“No it ain’t.”

“Boy, you thick?” Ike’s patience was not infinite, especially after paying for dinner. “They was not ready before. Now they had some drinks and dinner, they talked things over, and everything’s different now. You saw how he didn’t eat nothing. He need to be fit for what follows.”

“There ain’t no difference then or now.”

Ike studied Billy’s long face. “What are you talking about?”

Billy waved Jenna forward to clear the table. As she did, he leaned across so the girl had to scurry around him. His face was now barely six inches from Ike’s: “I don’t know who’s fucking who. But he don’t have a clue what’s going on. It’s been that way since she walked in.

It ain’t no different now or then. He’s gonna wind up with towels he never heard of.”

Billy did not have many theories, least of all about people. He did have one about Walter. Billy believed he knew why Walter had never had a girlfriend on St. John-or, as far as anybody knew, a date. He believed that Walter’s wife would show up one day, and that Walter had a religious nature where that was concerned. He was waiting for his wife. Billy respected him for that, the way he used to respect the Church before his mother lost her faith.

Billy also had a general sense that the worst was most likely to happen. Once in a while he got a more specific feeling-that something was coiling to strike like a snake. He had that accurate intuition to thank for his presence here, in relative safety and comfort, in a business of his own.

He had that feeling the minute he saw the straps on Isobel Gitlin’s little white blouse.

Clara brought Walter and Isobel ice in a bucket, and placed a pitcher of white sangria toward the edge of the black marble table. She made an interesting point of saying that she was feeling tired now and would go to bed if that was all right. In the cool repose of her room downstairs she opened the thriller she’d started the day before. Clara hoped Walter knew what he was doing. She understood quite well that the girl knew what she was doing.

Isobel had spent five years discussing great books, and she’d written “Sex and the Serious Scholar.” She had few illusions, and none about this kind of thing. The horny goddess had taken her now for good and sufficient reason. She was overstimulated. The dread, and relief, and intimacy; the sudden rush of ambition, and the unexpected knowledge of her seductive power… do things to a girl. And here was Walter, bursting for her, walking around inside her head; a perfect gentleman, with really good eyes, an eminently decent sort, with what looked like a perfectly…

Oh, who the fuck cared why?

She’d had enough of gratification delayed. She sipped her sangria delicately and said, “I’ll be back in a little while. I have to use the bathroom.”