Lights Out

Eddie followed the road to its end at Galleon Beach. The beach itself was the same, if you ignored the ranks of glistening bodies flopped on chaises longues. But where the six waterfront cottages, thatch-roofed bar and central building with office, kitchen, dining room, and the Packers’ suite had been, there now stood a slab hotel eight stories high. Behind the hotel Eddie saw fairways, sand traps, greens, and in the distance clusters of white squared-off villas like a hard-shelled growth on the hillsides. Brad Packer’s blueprint had come to life.

“Take your bag, suh?”

A boy in a blue polo shirt with the words “Pleasure Island” on the chest was beside him.

“I’m not staying,” Eddie said.

“Land-crab race tonight, suh.” The boy looked up at him with unblinking eyes.

Eddie smiled. “Who owns this place?”

“Big, big company.” The boy spread his hands.

“What’s it called?”

The boy thought. “United States company,” he said.

“You from this island?” Eddie said.

The boy nodded.

“Know a man named JFK?”

The boy took a step back.

“He’s an old friend,” Eddie said. “I’d like to see him.”

“Ol’ frien’?” said the boy, backing away some more.

“What’s wrong?” Eddie said.

“He got AIDS.”

“I know.”

“You got it too?”

“No.”

The boy relaxed a little.

“Where is he?” Eddie said.

“Down to Cotton Town.” The boy pointed south.

“How far is that?”

“Far,” said the boy, “except when the jitney carry you.”

“Where do I get the jitney?”

The boy pointed his chin at the hotel.

Eddie went inside. There was a newsstand, a gift shop, a bar. A big-bellied man wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a straw hat sat on a stool with a drink in his hand. “I’m gettin’ smashed on Goombay smash,” he said to the bartender. “Is that funny or what?”

The bartender smiled, but her eyes were expressionless.

The big-bellied man leaned over the bar. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

Eddie, walking to the reception counter, missed her reply.

No one was at the counter. Eddie rang the bell. A door opened and a woman came out. She was a big woman, perhaps twenty pounds overweight, with short frosted hair, plucked eyebrows, and a face that had spent too long in the sun. She wore a name pin on her white blouse: “Amanda,” it said, “Assistant Manager.”

“Checking in?” she asked, noticing the backpack.

“No,” Eddie replied. “When’s the next jitney to Cotton Town?”

The woman didn’t answer. She was staring at his face. “You look like someone I used to know,” she said.

“Yeah?” Eddie said, feeling in his pocket for money to pay the fare.

“And sound like him too.” She tilted her head to one side, revealing a wrinkled line at the base of her neck. “I couldn’t forget those eyes. You’re Eddie Nye, aren’t you? Jack’s brother.”

“That’s right,” he said, looking at her face again, hardened and thickened by the sun, and not placing her.

“Have I changed that much?” the woman said.

His eyes went to her name pin: Amanda. “Mandy?”

“The one and only.” They looked at each other. “My God,” she said, “isn’t this something? I mean, what goes around comes around.”

“I’ve got a bad memory for faces,” Eddie said, thinking that a chivalrous phrase might be required but doubting that that was it. He searched her face for the features of the Mandy he had known, and found some; but smudged, blunted, coarsened. Like the others-Jack, Evelyn, Bobby Falardeau-she had aged more quickly than he, as though prison, with its bad food that kept him from eating too much, and its absence of sunlight, which had kept his skin unwrinkled, had slowed the life clock inside him. A nice thought; but it left out his hair, growing in gray.

“Of course I remember you-I never forget anyone I sleep with,” Mandy said, verifying Eddie’s doubt. “There haven’t been all that many, considering.”

The office door opened again and a little man came out, carrying a briefcase. “Not all that many what, dear?” he said.

“Requests for the Cotton Town jitney,” said Mandy. “Say hi to Eddie, an old acquaintance of mine. Eddie-my husband, Farouz.”

They shook hands. Farouz’s name pin read “Manager.”

“Gotta run,” he said, and went out.

Mandy’s eyes were on him again. “You’re lookin’ good,” she said. “Stayed in shape, unlike yours truly. I don’t have the discipline.” She raised her arms hopelessly. “That’s my sad story. What have you been up to?”

A routine question for most people, but not for him. Had he heard it right? “What have I been up to?”

His tone surprised her. “Since I wimped out on you that time up in Lauderdale,” she explained.

“Wimped out?”

She lowered her voice. “When the cops came. You don’t have much of a memory for anything, do you? I heard them come aboard and just grabbed some gear and jumped off. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging and all, but what could I do? Especially since I was hip to what was on board and you weren’t. I just knew you’d be okay.”

“Okay?”