Judith Arnold - Right Place, Wrong Time

Adding to his tension was a goat ambling along the asphalt no more than a hundred feet ahead.

“Oh, my God!” Kim shrieked from the back, where she and her mother had spent the entire time since they’d buckled their seat belts thumbing through guidebooks and plotting shopping expeditions. “It’s a goat!”

Ethan tapped on the brakes to slow down and prayed that the driver behind him wouldn’t rear-end them. A fender bender would not be an auspicious way to start this vacation.

“I’ve got to have a picture of the goat,” Kim declared. “Can you pull over, Ethan?”

“No.”

“Where’s the camera? Do you have it in front? I don’t have it back here.”

“It’s in the trunk,” he told her, slowing even more as he drew within a few yards of the animal.

“My first St. Thomas goat, and I don’t have a camera,” Kim wailed.

My first St. Thomas headache, and I don’t have an aspirin, Ethan thought. During a brief lull in the opposite lane’s traffic, he swerved around the goat, which glanced up from its grazing. Thin and brown, its jaw pumping and its black eyes piercing, it gave Ethan a contemptuous look, as if to say, This is paradise, pal. Mellow out.

Ethan wished he could. If only Ross Hamilton weren’t occupying the seat next to him and Delia Hamilton weren’t occupying the seat directly behind him, her unnaturally blond hair as flawlessly arranged as her husband’s, her skin as free of perspiration and her face lacking incipient jowls because Santa Claus had left some plastic surgery under the tree for her last winter. If only Kim Hamilton, the woman Ethan was contemplating marrying, weren’t squawking about her camera in the trunk…. Ethan would love to mellow out, but at the moment, the thought of leaping out of the car, slamming the door on the entire Hamilton family and joining the goat in a nice little snack of roadside grass held an odd appeal.

He promised himself he would mellow out as soon as they arrived at Palm Point, the beachfront complex where Paul’s time-share was located. Until they reached their destination, he was going to have to fight his natural inclination to steer onto the other side of the road, and he was going to grit his teeth at being cooped up inside a fat American sedan with Kim’s parents.

Vacations were for relaxing. He’d damn well better get to relax—and if everyone would just shut up, he might survive the half hour it took to drive to the place where relaxation would be possible.

If only he hadn’t agreed to let Kim’s parents come…. He and she could have escaped here by themselves for a week of exclusive togetherness. A week alone with her, when neither of them was distracted by the demands of their hectic lives, their careers and other obligations, would have given them the chance to make sure a lifetime commitment was right for them. He supposed having the chance to sample the Hamiltons as future in-laws would help him make up his mind, too. But he wouldn’t be marrying Ross and Delia Hamilton. If he and Kim got married, he wouldn’t have to see her parents more often than a few times a year, since the Hamiltons lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a good three hundred miles from Arlington, Connecticut.

He glanced at the screen of his PDA, into which he’d entered directions to the condo. Paul had provided a route that would allow Ethan to avoid Charlotte Amalie. He’d neglected to mention that avoiding the bustling capital city of St. Thomas required them to drive straight up the side of a mountain. If Ethan had thought the road leading away from the airport had been narrow, he’d been mistaken. The road up the mountain, a barely paved trail of twists and switchbacks and thirty-degree inclines, lacking shoulders, lacking railings but not lacking the occasional goat, would have been alarming if Ethan had been behind the wheel of his beloved Volvo—and driving on the right. In this alien environment, with lush, unfamiliar foliage—palms and ferns, shrubs with vivid puffball-shaped pink flowers and erotically red blossoms scattered across their branches, viny ground cover and ghostly moss dripping from branches—he felt totally out of his depth.

Ross Hamilton sat rigidly next to him, his scowl eloquently communicating that he, too, believed Ethan was out of his depth.

“Paul said there’s a golf course just up the road from Palm Point,” Ethan said, hoping this news might improve Ross’s opinion of him.

“I didn’t bring my clubs.”

“I’m sure they rent clubs.”

“Kimberly tells me you don’t golf.”

“I’ve never tried it,” Ethan said, “but there’s always a first time.” In truth, he thought golf sounded excruciating. Hit a ball, walk a little bit, hit a ball, walk a little bit more.

“Perhaps we’ll golf a round together,” Ross suggested, a dry smile whispering across his lips. “I could teach you a few pointers. Although God only knows what kind of equipment this golf course will be renting.”

Delia piped up. “Ross, it’ll be too hot to golf. You’ll have a heatstroke.”

“I will not,” he retorted, as if he and he alone determined whether he’d be afflicted.

“Where is Charlotte Emily?” Delia asked, peering out the window as the car strained up another precipitous incline.

“Charlotte Amalie,” Ethan gently corrected her.

“I just love that they named their city after a woman. Or is it two women?” Her smile reached Ethan via the rearview mirror. “Did we pass the city?”

“We’re circumventing it,” Ethan told her.

Her smile morphed into a delicate pout. “Well, if you boys want to golf and get sunstroke, that’s your business. Kim and I will be strolling the streets of Charlotte Emily. The guidebooks list all these wonderful shops….”

Ross shared a knowing grin with Ethan, who forced himself to grin back. “Something tells me your friend’s generous donation of his time-share is going to wind up being the most expensive gift you’ve ever received. Angels tremble when those two are set loose in a shopping center.”

“It’s not just shopping,” Delia informed her husband. “It’s duty-free shopping. Bottles of Absolut at prices you wouldn’t believe.”

Ross Hamilton glanced over his shoulder. “Really?” he asked, eagerness underlining his tone. “Absolut?”

“Absolut, Stolichnaya, all the big names, darling. You can restock the bar while we’re down here.”

“I can restock the bar at home.”

“Not at these prices.”

Ross gave Ethan another conspiratorial grin. “Women,” he muttered. “They think we can save a lot of money by spending a fortune on airfare to fly to some island with duty-free shops. We could have bought vodka at the duty-free shop at the airport and skipped the trip.”

Too bad you didn’t come up with that idea sooner, Ethan thought. A weary dog, part Lab and part a dozen other breeds, slouched across the road. Either Kim didn’t think dogs were as photogenic as goats, or she was too busy planning shopping excursions with her mother to have noticed the poor mongrel. Its tongue lolled to one side and its eyes looked sad. If Ethan weren’t in an air-conditioned car, his tongue might be hanging out of his mouth, too.

Around another hairpin turn, and they started down a decline. “Oh, my God!” Mrs. Hamilton shrieked. “There’s no railing! Slow down, Ethan!”

“I’m doing ten miles per hour,” he assured her. Yes, the road was steep, and no, there wasn’t a railing, but he wasn’t going to steer them over the edge. He’d had his driver’s license for thirteen years and had never been in an accident. Of course, he’d never driven on the left side of the road, either.

They’d get to Palm Point soon. According to Paul’s directions, it was only a couple of miles down Smith Bay Road, a scenic route skirting mountains that dropped sharply to the most tranquil, turquoise water Ethan had ever seen. Let Ross and Delia visit the duty-free shops in Charlotte Amalie by themselves, he thought. Let them stock up on enough liquor to keep them swilling martinis until they left this world for the next. While they were oohing and ahhing over the discounts on Stolichnaya and Absolut, Ethan and Kim would be lying on one of the pale, inviting beaches that fringed the sea. They’d be racing on the sand, and plunging into the water, and then sprinting back up to the condo for a quickie before her parents returned from their tour of duty-free liquor stores.