Stuck in Paradise with You

Chapter 26

26

CARRIE

We’re onto the third home. Joe and Luke are finishing boarding the windows, while the rest of us pack sandbags around the entrances to the house. There’s an unspoken sense of pointlessness about this one. The colorfully painted yellow one-story is set so close to the beach – only a thin, uneven road between the sand and the house – that when the storm brings a water surge with it, the house will stand no chance.

Once the last of the sandbags are in place, hot, sweaty and dirty, I slump down onto the sack, knees bent up to my chest, and listen to my stomach grumble. We’ve been at it for a few hours already and there’s still a lot to do. More than we can get done, truth be told. Not because my watch is telling me it’s late morning but because the sea is showing that our time on Virgin Gorda is running out. The stunning blues of the ocean are currently shades of grey, much like the thick-set sky, and the waves are playing an angry song, crashing at the shoreline, each one looking like it’s capped with snow.

‘Hey.’ I glance up to see Luke rubbing his dirty hands on an old rag, his mouth twisted into a smile that’s directed at me but which doesn’t set my pulse racing like his true one. His voice is soft, calm, slightly husked – the kind of tone that in an instant thrusts me back to twenty-four-year-old me.

I’d forgotten, or scrubbed from my mind, maybe, the day Luke sent me home from the office.

Seven Years Ago

This isn’t just a cold; it’s a flu. Not the man kind of flu, but the actual limb-shaking, hot sweats, puffy face, streaming nose, excruciating throat, zero energy kind of flu. Woman flu.

It also came on from nowhere. I swear I was fine when I woke this morning – tired and sort of heavy feeling, but not riddled with germs.

By 3p.m., when Luke sent me home, ordering me to bed with a book, a hot water bottle and over-the-counter meds he picked up for me from the local pharmacy, I was feverish. The light of my computer felt like it was piercing my eyes.

Now, I’m lying on the fold-down bed of my studio apartment in Midtown, wearing my thickest pajamas, not knowing whether I’m too hot or too cold. The sun is falling behind the skyscrapers I can see from my window.

A knock on my apartment door drags me out of my self-pitying, helpless state. It can’t be for me; I don’t know anyone else in the building. I’m always working and, lately, when I’m not, I’m with Luke, at his place.

Not seeing him tonight, tomorrow, however long it takes for this stupid virus to disappear is contributing to why I feel so sorry for myself.

The knock comes again and I think, despite the fact this is clearly a mistake-of-door scenario, I’m going to have to answer.

Forcing myself up as slowly as I have only ever seen my grandmother rise – and she has two false hips – I slip my feet into my slippers and shuffle toward the door.

‘Carrie? It’s Luke.’

I stop midway between my bed and the door, surveying the used tissues scattered around the floor, the half-eaten bowl of soup on the kitchen counter and the dirty pan to accompany it, my work clothes thrown over the back of my two-seater sofa, rather than hung back up in the wardrobe.

Damn it, damn it.

And the apartment is nothing compared to how truly awful I look, I realize, when I catch my reflection in my lounge mirror.

Mustering strength I don’t feel, I quickly throw the soup and pan in the sink, collect the tissues and trash them, drag my hair into a hair-tie and cover it mostly with a wide, fabric hairband. I wipe smudged make-up from under my eyes but there’s no time to do anything about the baby-pink, button-down fleece pajamas.

My little exertion has whacked me and when I eventually open the door, I’m panting like I’ve run a half hour on the treadmill.

And there is Luke, still wearing the dark-blue suit and crisp pink shirt he had on in the office earlier – actually matchy-matchy with my bedwear, except he looks… divine. I like him later in the day, once his fresh-pressed-ness of the morning has turned into something more relaxed, a little more rugged, like the Luke I get to see in the evenings. Exactly how he looks now.

His arm is wrapped around a brown paper bag with a baguette poking out of the top – if it’s fresh, I can’t smell it because I can’t smell a thing with my bunged-up nose. His other hand is resting in the pocket of his tailored pants. He considers me, from my toes to my head, his focus eventually resting on my face, and he leans his head to the side, one half of his mouth teasing upward.

He says softly, calmly, with a slight husk to his voice, ‘Hey.’

I knew before he cooked for me that night, before he gave me drugs at the right time, before he ran me a warm bath full of bubbles and sponged my back as he talked to me, before he lay on my bed and read to me from my book as I drifted to sleep on his chest… I knew before any of that… I was in love with him.

Present Day

I shove those memories from my mind, knowing that even if I could forgive, I can never forget, and I say back, simply, ‘Hey.’

The problem is, I wish I could forget all of it, the good stuff too. Because he’s dirty and sweaty, his hair is rugged, and he’s driving me insane with this irrational need to have me in his sights at all times, like I’m a porcelain doll that’s going to break at just the sniff of a storm. Yet the only reason I know he’s been watching me is because I’ve been watching him too.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks.

I nod. ‘Fine.’

He shakes his head, eyes to the heavens. ‘Don’t be too expressive, will you?’

I’m about to raise my middle finger and tell him to express this but Joe walks into my field of vision and I remember I’m here in my capacity as a professional, not just someone Luke had a fling with once and ditched on her ass without warning.

I jump up to standing and Joe pats the air with a hand. ‘Sit, rest, you deserve a break.’

‘I’m good, I was just taking two.’ I gesture with my head toward what I can only assume from the extremely good smells coming from the place is a bakery, a few buildings along from where we are. ‘In fact, I was just about to grab us all some sustenance for the next place.’

‘Here, take my wallet; you know what I like,’ Luke says, holding it out for me, the way he has in the past, implicitly trusting me to make his decisions for him.

I stare at it. ‘I have money; I’m sure I can stretch to picking you something up.’

He scoffs. ‘It would pain you to do something nice for me, so here, take it.’

I have no intention of taking his money but I do accept the wallet, if only because to continue the discussion would make me appear even more obstinate in front of my client than Luke is trying to make me seem, and in the grand scheme of what is happening around us… better to take the wallet and not the bait!

As I get closer to the building, which looks similar to the homes we’ve been prepping this morning, the smell of sweet bread has my tummy not just rumbling but screaming at me to fill it.

I step inside what feels like a front lounge – floral upholstery hangs over the windows, rugs cover the otherwise concrete floor, a few tables and chairs and a two-seat sofa fill the open space opposite the counter – and the aromas from the baskets of baked goods have me instantly salivating.

A lady wearing a colorful apron that’s trimmed with decorative white cotton walks into the space carrying a crate of food. She wears a net over a mass of tightly curled and grey-flecked black hair and her lips are painted bright red. When she spots me, she beams.

‘Good mornin’ and good timin’. This is the last batch of fresh baked banana bread. My famous banana bread, you know?’

Her voice is so loud and full of happiness that I could forget the reason I’m on the island. ‘Well, if it’s famous, I’ll take two, please.’

She nods. ‘Still warm, too.’

‘Even better. Do you think you could slice it for me? Just I’m sharing.’ I loosely gesture out of the door, diagonally across the street to where the others are packing up the truck.

‘Sure t’ing,’ she says, setting about the task and leaving the remainder of the loaf breads on the countertop. ‘I’ve seen what you’ve all been doing over there. It’s good to see.’ Her smile is gentler now as she looks at me, rather than the bread she is slicing, making my nerves jitter. ‘We’ve got to help each other in these times. It’s all part of God’s message, see. He’s telling us we aren’t doing good enough at caring for each other and our islands. He’s teaching us a lesson.’ She holds the slices together and slides them into two brown paper bags, which she hands across the counter to me with a wad of napkins. ‘We’ll all come together, love each other, like he wants us to. He’ll forgive us.’

Her words steal mine from me. Her belief and hope are so strong it – she – makes me want to be a better person. Forgiveness , that’s what she thinks the whole storm is about. She isn’t angry or sad, she doesn’t even seem apprehensive, though she has every reason to be; she’s simply accepting. Ready to move on. To forgive and be forgiven.

The strength of her faith is almost palpable. All I can say in response is, ‘Thank you.’

Something tells me I’m thanking her for more than just banana bread but in this moment, I can’t put my finger on what.

I notice a large clock on the wall behind the woman and watch it tick the last few seconds until eleven thirty. We’ll be leaving the island in two and a half hours, our rendezvous time, before the sea gets too rough to get back to Charithonia, where we’ll be sheltered and safe, where there’s a chef and endless hurricane provisions.

I look at the entire counter full of food that might never be bought. ‘How much do I owe you?’

She waves a hand. ‘On the house for helping my neighbors. I didn’t know what else to do with myself today, so I did what I always do. I baked and baked in case people want it. You know, some people still don’t believe the hurricane will come and when they change their minds, they’ll have no supplies. They’ll need what I’ve made.’ She shrugs and sets about pouring a coffee from a ready-filtered pot into a polystyrene cup, which she hands to me. ‘Milk and sugar?’

‘Oh, ah, yes please to milk. A sweetener too, please, if you have one.’

She busies herself with turning my black coffee white. ‘You might as well choose somethin’ else to take with you. All this won’t keep much longer and at some point, I’ll have to lock up. But I’ll be here as long as I can be, as long as someone might need me.’

‘Can I at least pay for the coffee?’ I ask.

She just pffts. Despite everything going on around her, this woman is full of kindness. And that thought gives me an idea.

I set down my paper bags next to my takeout coffee and count the cash I have in my pocket, then I open Luke’s wallet and see he has a lot more than I do.

‘How much for everything else?’ I ask. ‘I’m willing to accept your gifts but I won’t take no for an answer on everything else.’