three
For the first few days, Liz kept to her room, only venturing downstairs to eat at the little restaurant in the hotel. Having been used to waking before the markets opened, she rose early in the morning and went to bed early, too. She spent those first days sitting on the balcony, drinking the bar fridge dry and looking out over the sea, trying to see her way ahead. Where would she go? What would she become? The more she thought about it, the cloudier things became, as if there was a haze that covered everything in front and her way back was closed to her.
Within a week, desperately missing her old gym, she was taking long morning runs on the sand. When she ran, she felt better; if it didn't make the future any clearer, at least it helped her stop thinking about it. A stop at a coffee shop on the main road, and then she'd run back to her hotel, shower, and go back to sleep. But even with the running, even with the two ratty, second-hand paperbacks she'd purchased at a roadside stand, the walls of her small hotel room started to close in on her and, although she'd never been a terribly social person, she began to crave human contact. Suddenly the smile that the woman behind the counter at the drugstore in Georgetown gave her was precious. The exchange of pleasantries with the two older women who ran the front desk at her hotel - it mattered. She began to take each gesture, each carelessly given word of greeting as a gift, to be repeated in her head and treasured in private. She had always thought of herself as something of a loner, but this sense of exile had changed her mind.
By the second week, Liz had run out of clean clothes, and what she'd brought with her were the only casual things she owned. Most of them were for colder weather. After her customary run and a quick breakfast, she took a taxi into Georgetown and hunted through the tourist shops for some lighter things to wear. The prices were outrageous and, at first, Liz stared at the tags in disgust. It was all designer stuff - ridiculously expensive and branded with logos, which she despised - but there was little to choose from. It was only when she forcefully reminded herself that money was not her problem, that she knuckled down and bought a sarong, two tie-around skirts - all a little bright for her taste, but the sun did something to people's colour sense - and a few silk tank tops. She bought the least offensive bikini she could find and two pairs of sandals.
That afternoon, trying her new purchases on in her room, she made a decision. She wasn't going to eat at the hotel restaurant; she'd be brave and go somewhere nice. What did it matter, anyway, she reasoned. She was just another faceless tourist, working their way to a winter tan, in overly bright beachwear.
The Wharf, she was informed by the ladies at the hotel reception desk, was a nice place to see the sunset and have dinner. It was famous for its dockside bar, its rum punch and the schools of fish that came to be fed at dusk.
It was only when Liz walked through to the bar and ordered a drink that she wondered if perhaps she'd made a mistake. A corpulent middle-aged German with cigar-breath sat down beside her and hissed a greeting. She stared determinedly at her gussied up glass of punch and pushed peanuts in her mouth until, having made no impact with her lack of reaction, told him she was waiting for someone. When the restaurant staff announced it was time to feed the fish, she scrambled off her barstool with relief and rushed over to watch.
They came in silver streams, huge and swimming fast. The tarpon turned and wheeled in the shallow water, swallowing up the chunks of squid like machines. Their long, lethal looking metallic bodies cut through the water like missiles. She knelt on the wooden dock and gazed down into the feeding frenzy.
Liz noticed there was someone standing next to her. Fearing it was the persistent German, she didn't look up, but a quick glance to her left - canvas deck shoes and a pair of legs in beige chinos - made her smile with relief. The man crouched down beside her, also drawn by the brilliant, flashing metallic ballet taking place in the blue water. His tanned forearms rested on his knees and, sneaking another glimpse, Liz saw a pleasant face. He was older than she was, perhaps by five years or so, dark-haired and sun-browned, with the kind of lines around his eyes and mouth that suggested someone who might laugh a lot. She heard him do so, quietly, as the big fish bore down on a handful of food. He leaned over the edge of the dock a little to watch them swim beneath it. Before she could even think to reach out and catch them, the pair of sunglasses hanging from the V in his shirt, slid off and plopped into the water below.
"Shit!" he muttered quietly.
"Oh, my god!" Liz responded, watching the silvered lenses slowly sink down past the fish and settle onto the white sandy bottom. "I'm sorry - were they good ones?"
He shrugged noncommittally and smiled. "It doesn't matter."
Something in his face, his eyes perhaps, made her suddenly care. "It doesn't look very deep," she said, bunching up her skirt around her thighs. "I could try and grab them if you like. Do you think those things bite?"
The look he gave her was strange. There was still the superficial openness, casualness, but something deeper gave her an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach - attraction tinged with a fine edge of fear. "Everything bites, when it's feeding," he said lightly.
Liz smoothed her skirt back over her knees and nodded, returning her gaze to the frenzied antics in the water. His words echoed in her mind. It was a phrase one could have used easily to describe the world of finance she had so recently escaped. Everything bites when it's feeding.
A large, capable hand slid in front of her. "I'm Jack. Where are you from?"
She took his hand and shook it, her mind suddenly racing. "I'm..." she hesitated. "Ta... Tamara." Her mind curled around the name. Where the fuck to I come from? She thought frantically. Why hadn't she decided on this before? Could she possibly be more stupid? "From New York."
That was good, she decided. There's no point in lying when you don't have to; there were over eight million people in New York. But it chilled her to have to even think about it; she hated lying.
His grip was firm and warm, but dry, and he held her hand just long enough to make her look up at him again. The minute she did, he released it.
"On vacation?" he asked.
"Yeah. It's a break from the cold, you know?"
His smile this time was warmer, and she didn't perceive the distraction that had been there before. "It's snowing there today. Caught it on the news this morning."
"Is it?" Liz said distractedly. "I haven't really been watching it." The sunset feeding had ended. The big fish cut lazily through the water, thinning out. Liz got to her feet and offered shyly, "I could get those sunglasses for you now, if you'd like."
"No." He paused. "But thank you." He looked down at them briefly and then smiled and turned to her. "Can I repay you for your good intentions with a drink?"
There was something about him that made her feel shy. She told herself not to be an idiot. But there were the glasses, still glinting beneath the water. "Are you sure?"
He had a deep, rich laugh. "Absolutely. And the rum punch is excellent here. Ubiquitous, too."
She laughed then; she couldn't help herself. "It does seem to be deeply ingrained in their national psyche. They push it on you everywhere you go."
They walked back to the bar together and took a seat on the stools. The German, who was still at the end of the bar, glowered at her. "So zis iz your boyfriend? Ze one you were waiting for?" he said with a snort.
Jack gave her a quizzical look as their drinks arrived.
Liz shook her head. "Never mind. Just...could you pretend? Just for a couple of minutes? Maybe he'll get bored and leave, or fall off his stool."
He slid the fruit infested glass in front of her. "Are you here by yourself?" he asked quietly.
In that moment, a surge of panic flared in her chest. Liz looked at his earnest, open face, and then at the florid German. What the hell am I doing? She screamed inside. Suddenly her hands were shaking as she tried to pull some money out of her purse, and her throat had gone bone dry. She shoved a couple of crumpled bills onto the bar top.
"I'm...I'm sorry," she stuttered. "I've got to go."
Her heart didn't stop pounding until she'd gotten in the taxi and was on her way back to the hotel. Liz leaned back and closed her eyes, trying to fight down the fear and slow her breathing. All that she could think of was a scene from an old Vietnam War movie, where one of the characters, having been chased through the jungle by a tiger, kept repeating, "Never get out of the boat. Never get out of the boat."