Don Lee - The Collective

“Did I ever tell you what she did with the oranges for my sack lunches?”

In a year, I would go home to Mission Viejo for Christmas, as promised. It’d be the last time I would see my mother. She would die a few months afterward, and Joshua, in the throes of his own grief and guilt, would fly out to California for the funeral. In the church, he would read aloud the eulogy I had written — I wouldn’t be able to do it myself. He would follow us to the wake, then would sit with me in the house as I clicked through the old slideshow of my parents’ honeymoon, telling me, “She was a beautiful woman,” and would console me as I wept. I’d never forget that he did that for me.

We walked down to Cam Bay for a swim. “You seem unhappy,” Mirielle said as we treaded water. “You seem like you’re sulking.”

“It’s just a long date, right?” I said. I didn’t know why I was being truculent instead of seeking rapprochement. I couldn’t help it. My pride was wounded, and I didn’t want to be accommodating.

“I guess I can’t give you what you want,” she said.

“I guess not.”

She swam farther out into the bay, then floated back to me. “It’s stupid,” she said, “not having sex when you want to have sex. Just like with David. It’s not unreasonable, what you’re asking.”

For the first time in days, there was clemency in her voice. Her hair was slicked back from the water, and she looked at me with a forbearance that suggested a submerged well of regret. Or pity. But then I did exactly the wrong thing.

“Let’s go to where it’s shallower,” I said.

“Why?”

“Put your legs around me.”

“I didn’t mean I want to have sex with you right now ,” she said.

We gathered our towels, and as we were leaving the beach, I glanced back and saw pink jellyfish, dozens of them, washed up on the sand. It was a miracle we hadn’t been stung.

Our bar of soap was gone from the shower, purloined by the rodent. The insects — centipedes, ants, termites, spiders — as well as the geckos, were proliferating. “I can’t wait to get the fuck out of here,” I said in our room. Stalking a mosquito, I rolled up a magazine and smacked the wall.

Mirielle was packing clothes into her suitcase. We were leaving early the next day. Holding one of her souvenir T-shirts, emblazoned with the slogan VIRGIN ISLANDER, she sat down on the bed. “I’ve always made a lousy girlfriend,” she said. “I’m always a bitch. I know I’m a drag to be around. There’s no reason you can’t have a drink. I want a gin rickey, too, you know.”

I put the magazine down. “Maybe we should get you to a meeting tonight. There have to be some on Tortola.”

“Don’t tell me to go to a meeting. I’m not a child.”

“All right, then. Don’t go.”

“I’m not what you’re looking for,” she said. “I just can’t deal with getting into another heavy-duty, exclusive relationship so soon after David. I don’t want to feel obligated or possessed, I don’t want to settle down into a routine again as a couple. I think maybe we should date other people.”

“What?”

“It might be healthy, not seeing each other so much.” She folded the T-shirt and tucked it into her suitcase.

“Have you met someone else?”

“No.”

“Did you sleep with David when you saw him?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but no.”

“Did someone ask you out?”

“Could you give the questions a rest for one fucking minute and let me pack?” she said. “God, I hate clingy men.”

I left the guest cottage. Joshua and Lily were making gin and tonics on the veranda. “Fix me one of those,” I told Joshua.

I wasn’t in the mood to cook dinner. We went back to Trellis Bay, and this time ate at De Loosey Goosey, the outdoor beach bar, which was decorated with the usual thatched roof, tiki torches, nautical flags, and picnic tables. It was quizo night there, and after some cajoling from the bar’s owner, we played the pub trivia game. Joshua named our team the Broom in the System of Cyclones.

“Which punk rocker was born in 1947 and originally named James Newell Osterberg, Jr.?” the owner asked.

“Too easy,” Joshua said, writing down Iggy Pop .

“How many keys are there on a standard piano?”

Lily scribbled eighty-eight .

“What condiment is served with sushi?”

A man at the bar — part of a French sailing crew — groaned. “They have unfair advantage,” he said, apparently referring to our team’s all-Asianness.

“What the fuck?” I said, jotting down pickled ginger .

We came in fourth, lagging on the sports questions. Yellow Polka Dot Bimini was first. Mary Poppins Was a Drug Dealer was second. The French sailor’s team, Bill Clinton Is President of the Wrong Country, was third. When the standings were announced, the Frenchman faced our table, palms upturned, smiled, then put his hands together and bowed Orientally to us.

“Did you see that?” I said.

“See what?” Joshua asked.

“That guy at the bar.”

“What about him?”

“He’s fucking mocking us.”

“I didn’t see.”

“What the fuck’s his problem?” I said, glaring at the Frenchman.

“I wish you guys could stay until New Year’s,” Joshua told me. He and Lily still had another four days to go on Great Camanoe.

“A shame,” I said drunkenly, and turned to Mirielle. “I’ve had such a grand time. Fabulous company.”

We’d started with painkillers, and now were ordering rounds of bushwackers, another potent BVI specialty.

“Enjoying those?” Mirielle said.

“Absolutely,” I said. “I don’t know why I’ve been denying myself, when I’ve been deprived of everything else.”

I knew I’d never see her again after we landed in Boston. For all intents and purposes, she had just broken up with me, and I felt murderous, thinking of everything I had done for Mirielle, all the time and money I’d spent. For what? I had been nothing but caring and solicitous and doting — indeed, worshipful. I had loved her.

I headed to the bathroom. The French sailor was roosting on a stool beside the door, leaning against the wall and calling out the nationalities of the men who entered, along with culinary associations about their endowments. “German bratwurst. Russian kupaty.” When he saw me, he shouted, “Ah, Chinese wonton!” and his chums guffawed. I kicked the stool out from underneath him, and as he was trying to get to his feet, I punched at his face, connecting with an ear. I was grabbed, a free-for-all, and Joshua flew into the throng to my aid. We started a near-riot.

“You are such an asshole,” Mirielle said to me as we climbed into the Whaler.

On the plane the next day, she wouldn’t talk to me. Every time I said something, she pretended not to hear. “What?” she’d ask, peeved.

She didn’t like our assigned seats, which faced a bulkhead. I didn’t care for the alternatives she chose, next to the lavatories. We switched to another pair of seats, but she thought they were too close to the movie screen. We moved back to the ones beside the toilets.

“You can sit somewhere else, you know,” she said.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I was hungover. After takeoff, I asked for a Heineken, and as the flight attendant handed me the can, she stared at me curiously. My cheek was bruised, my nose scratched, my bottom lip cracked and scabbing. “Does your wife want anything?”