Don Lee - The Collective

We walked to an old Land Rover parked at the end of the dock. It was rusty and battered, and there was no top to it, no roof or windows, just a windshield. The steering wheel was on the right side, and the interior had been stripped bare, foam poking out of the seats. “What is this?” I asked. “A relic from World War II?”

“Could be,” Joshua said. “But it climbs like a motherfucker.”

Great Camanoe was a volcanic doublet joined by an isthmus. The island was small, two and a half miles long and one mile at its widest, and only the southern half was inhabited, with fewer than thirty houses, the northern half a national park. There were no commercial businesses on the island, which accounted, perhaps, for the poor condition of the roads.

We quickly reached the end of the two-track of gravel that had begun at the pier, and thereafter it was just ruts and dirt that humped in steep ascents and descents. The Land Rover had a complicated gearbox with a long black shifter, a red lever, and a yellow knob, and Joshua kept having to stop and manipulate the gears — no built-in shifting on the fly — occasionally grinding them. “Come on, you son of a bitch,” he said. Soon the dirt road narrowed even further and pitched precipitously up the hill, hanging sheerly off escarpments, twisting and hairpinning. Finally, near the top, at four hundred feet, was the house, in front of which was Lily, passed out on a chaise longue, topless.

“Hey, you big cow,” Joshua said, kicking the chair, “wake up.”

She opened her eyes and smiled. “Is it cocktail hour already?”

The property was cut into the side of the hill on two terraces and was made up of four small buildings — boxy little cottages — all of them built with white stucco, red galvanized roofs, and terra-cotta tile floors. There was one cottage for the kitchen and another for the living room, connected by a breezeway that served as an open-air dining area; a cottage for the master bedroom suite; and up a stone walkway from a stone courtyard lined with boulders, a cottage for the guest suite, which had, Mirielle and I discovered, a bathroom that was agape on one end to the rock face of the hill, into which a shower had been carved.

“How cool!” Mirielle said.

The views from the property were magnificent — the lush green slope of trees and the white beach below, the horizon of blue ocean beyond. All around the cottages were flowers: orchids, bougainvillea, huge vines of petrea with mauve-blue flowers, hibiscus, oleander. And the trees: palms, white cedars, loblollies, whistling pines, figs, organ pipe and prickly pear cacti, frangipanis with feral branch sculptures. I could hear songbirds, the plants and trees rustling and swaying with the trade winds. I could smell wild sage and jasmine and thyme.

“I love this place,” I told Mirielle.

On the veranda in front of the dining area, Joshua was making drinks. “Gin rickey?” he asked me.

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Oh, come on. You’re still not drinking? We’re on vacation, man.” He squeezed half a lime into a tall glass of ice, added gin, threw in the lime, and topped it off with club soda. “You sure?”

Despite the wind, it was hot, and I was sweating. We had left Harvard Square at six-thirty a.m., and it had taken us nine hours to travel to this spot. For the first time in three weeks, I really wanted a drink. I looked to Mirielle, who shrugged. “Go ahead,” she said.

“Gin rickeys were Fitzgerald’s drink,” Joshua told me.

“You know what I could really use?” I said. “A swim.”

We changed into bathing suits and walked down the hill on the dirt road, then hiked through the trees on a trail littered with rocks and roots. After a few minutes, the path opened to the curved beach of Cam Bay, surrounded by canopies of sea grape trees and patches of bay lavender. We all ran into the water.

Mirielle hugged her arms and legs around me, and we floated with the swells. “Heaven,” I said, and she kissed me.

Joshua was splashing Lily. “Stop it!” she screamed.

He had left his captain’s hat on the beach, and now that his hair was wet, I realized he was going bald at the temples.

We returned to the house, and, perspiring from the climb, Mirielle and I took an outdoor shower together. We soaped each other up, and I became erect. “Turn around,” I said.

“That’s so impersonal.”

Facing her while we stood in the shower, I tried to arrange our bodies into a feasible position.

“This is impossible,” she said. “I’d never get all that soap out of my vagina, anyway.”

I barbecued chicken for our dinner, throughout which Joshua and Lily, drunk on gin rickeys, jousted with each other.

Mirielle and I went to bed early. “It’s more rustic than I thought it’d be,” she said. “I was kind of expecting a villa on the water”—she kicked off the sheet—“and A/C in bedroom, at least.”

“I’m okay with the ceiling fan and the breeze. Are you hot?”

“They don’t have a Christmas tree or any decorations at all, not even some stockings.”

“Well, Joshua’s Jewish.”

“He always says that, but he never goes to temple. Lily’s Episcopalian. It doesn’t feel Christmasy without decorations.”

“We’ll get some in town tomorrow.” I kissed and stroked her.

“Aren’t you tired?” Mirielle said. “I’m wiped.”

“You don’t want to?” I said. I could hear Joshua and Lily gabbling on the veranda, the tinkling of ice cubes.

“Can you be quick?” Mirielle asked.

I complied.

She curled up against me. “It was a good day,” she said before falling asleep.

She woke up with big red welts on her face — five of them. “Are these zits?” she asked. “How could they appear out of nowhere?”

They were mosquito bites. I had a few on my arm as well.

“Here, my father showed me this once,” Lily said. She mixed baking soda and water in a bowl and told Mirielle to apply the paste with a finger to her face.

Mirielle used a mirror in the living room, and when she rejoined us at the dining table, we looked at her white-spotted face and burst out laughing.

“Don’t laugh at me!” she said. “They really hurt.”

She didn’t want to go into town with us. “I look like a total freak,” she said.

“No one will notice.”

“You’re not helping.”

“Don’t you want to shop for souvenirs?”

She washed off the spots of white paste and covered the welts with thick concealer, and we made the trek to Tortola, riding the Land Rover to the marina, then the Whaler to Trellis Bay, then a taxi across the bridge to Road Town, the capital city.

It was crowded — high season, a cruise ship in port. The streets and buildings were festooned with Christmas decorations: wreaths, tinsel, garlands, poinsettias. There was a large Christmas tree in the main plaza, and a band was playing reggae versions of “White Christmas” and “Jingle Bells.” Everyone wore Santa hats, along with their Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. It was eight-five degrees, blindingly sunny.

Joshua took photos of us in front of the tree, then we strolled through some shops. Mirielle and I bought T-shirts, and surreptitiously I purchased a pair of silver earrings for her. She found decorations for the house, especially captivated by ornaments made from seashells — a nautilus striped like a candy cane, turritellas glued together and hand-painted as Santa Clauses.

We went to a restaurant on the water for lunch, but had to wait an hour for a table. The lines were just as long at the grocery store, where we carted up a week’s worth of food and supplies, and then, outside the store with all our sacks, we couldn’t flag a taxi.