Crosley

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This is a work of fiction. The characters have been created for the sake of this story and are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Art Copyright © 2011 by Alan M. Clark

eBook Design, Eric M. Witchey

Originally published in the collection The Alchemy of Love and in the Thirteenth Annual Year’s Best of Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

This eBook edition, Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Engstrom
Produced by IFD Publishing

eBook ISBN: 978-1-4524-2188-9

Originally Printed in the United States of America

Introduction

I wrote this short story while on Oahu, teaching an evening class on writing fiction. One morning I woke up to a tremendous tropical downpour, the kind that pounds the roof and the ground so loudly that it’s difficult to hear anything else. The air was hot and humid, the atmosphere sultry, all of which is conducive to a story of bare skin, cold drinks, hot sun, salt-sweaty lovemaking and broken hearts. I wrote this story with pencil on damp paper while watching the earth bathe. It was originally published in the collection The Alchemy of Love (illustrated by Alan M. Clark), and then in the Thirteenth Annual Year’s Best of Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

—Elizabeth Engstrom

Crosley

By Elizabeth Engstrom

Part One: Francine

I have always been fascinated by evil. I’ve flirted with it, been tempted by it, but only once have I fallen in love with it.

I live on an island in the South Seas. How I came to be here is a story of young love, foolishness and weakness—both his and mine—and therefore a tale for a different time.

I pour drinks in a poor man’s bar. In the tropics, no walls are necessary—just a good roof, bar stools, a couple of tables, an old sofa that had seen too many sunrises and a room at the back where Godfrey used to live. The liquor shelves have a lockable grate to keep out the monkeys and the thieves. Daily rain washes the island and the open air dance floor which, at the time of Godfrey’s ownership, hadn’t seen a dancer in years—not since the tour boats stopped docking here.

Godfrey was a harmless old drunk who began each day with an impressive head of optimism and a mug of thick black coffee, and ended it with a rant of some sort and sometimes a roundhouse punch at a hallucination.

Many times I hauled Godfrey to bed, locked up the booze and slept on the couch next to his bed, afraid he had finally taxed his liver to the maximum. Surely he couldn’t survive this level of toxicity much longer. But he had done so since long before I met him, and God seems to look after old drunks for some reason.

I worked for Godfrey. I poured drinks, mopped the floor, received shipments of liquor, collected overdue accounts from the locals, endured their hard luck stories, listened to their weary tales, parried amorous advances, and generally did whatever was called for, including tending Godfrey. I did all this, outwardly patient, while inside I seethed, waiting for the next adventurer to sail into the harbor and bring either news of something familiar, something of my old life perhaps, or an offer of something magnificent, a gateway to a new life.

They came, the adventurers, not frequently, but steadily. We had a protected anchorage and a stocked bar, the locals were skilled boat repairmen, and UPS knew our address.

But when they came, they mostly came in couples. They shared what adventure they had in their souls, but it was either not enough or of the wrong kind, or pointed in the wrong direction. And when they hoisted their main and caught a freshening breeze out of the bay, their names and faces faded immediately into obscurity and I would go back to fixing something that the jungle was trying to reclaim.

The morning that Crosley arrived, Godfrey and I sat at the bar drinking coffee and watching deluge rain soak the already sodden earth. It fell as a solid sheet from the gutterless roof all around, splashing mud from the rain-gouged trenches to mix with the water that splashed up from the dance floor, bits of grout and other evidence of its deterioration floating closer to our bare feet.

I felt the tropical depression in my soul and sipped coffee silently, feeling desperately claustrophobic, penned in by the humidity and the liquid walls, the vinyl of the stool sticking uncomfortably to the backs of my thighs.

Godfrey, on his second cup, was full of enthusiastic remodeling talk, but his enthusiasm was not infectious—I’d heard it all too many times before.

And then, characteristic of many tropical storms, the rain ceased abruptly, and Godfrey was caught mid-sentence. My thighs peeled off the stool without thought as we both stood at the sight of the long, sleek, black yacht at anchor in the center of the bay. It had appeared as if by magic.

An astonishing array of seaworthy and not-so-seaworthy craft came and went from this bay. Generally they came one at a time, but occasionally cruisers would arrive in tandem, and now and then, enough showed up at once to raft up together. Their drunken parties could even wake Godfrey.

But never had such a craft arrived with such little fanfare nor during such a storm. The entrance to the bay through the coral reefs was treacherous during the best of times. Who would chance it during such a blinding downpour?

Someone stupid. Someone stupidly lucky. Someone with supermortal navigating skills. Or perhaps someone who had been here before.

And the boat itself—sixty feet if it was an inch. Sails were neatly furled under black covers, and what lines we could see from this distance had been coiled at their ends. No gear was visible on deck. The boat looked not as if it had been sailed at all, but as if it had been freshly groomed and polished, ready for a show.

All hatches were tightly closed.

“Know that boat, Godfrey?” I asked, entranced.

“Nope, and not the type of thing I’d be likely to forget,” he said, and he was right, of course, even with his cheesecloth memory.

It floated, mysterious, anonymous, and somehow untouchable—not even the local islanders roared out to investigate—for two days with no visible signs of life.

I went about my normal daily duties, but with a difference. There was a spark of excitement in my soul. There would soon come an alteration to my mundane routine, brief though it was sure to be. My eyes drifted out to that floating yacht, dark like a hole in the brilliant blue of the bay, and my imagination, long dormant, came alive.

On the second night, when the regulars drifted in for their beer or tequila, to retell old jokes, reopen old wounds, and reignite old jealousies, the topic was exclusively The Black Yacht. Godfrey had come to believe it was the Reaper’s yacht come for him, and the idea that the Reaper had a yacht fueled the hilarity for most of the evening.

But when Godfrey’s head hit the bar and he began to snore, a man stepped out of the dark, thick tropical night and sat on the stool next to him.

Conversation faded as we all observed the outsider. That he belonged to the black boat was obvious. He looked like the yacht. Tall, swarthy, with black hair just beginning to silver, dressed in black linen shirt and black cotton pants, he smiled a charming, white-toothed smile at me and ordered a grappa.

As it happened, a bottle of grappa collected cobwebs under the cabinet and I opened it and poured him a shot.

“Grappa for all,” he said quietly, and he became an instant hero to these drunken fools as I set up a row of shot glasses and began to fill them.

Mingo was the first to thank him, patting his shoulder and trying to include him in the ring of camaraderie, but the stranger merely flicked his eyes in acknowledgement at the procession of gratitude and kept his attention focused on me.

I wished I had fixed myself up a little more, but the light was dim and he seemed to like whatever it was he saw in me, so I warmed to his attentions.

And why not? It had been two years since I had the attentions of a man, and my femininity suffered for it.

He savored his grappa, though the others drank theirs as fast as he bought and I poured, and soon they all stumbled home. Someone had seen to Godfrey, and we were alone. I could tell it was going to be a long night—I hoped it was—so I ran myself a shot of espresso and slugged it down. “Last call,” I said.

“A waltz,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“I call for a waltz,” he said, and held out his hand.

Damned if I couldn’t hear Stardust coming from somewhere. I took his hand, came around the bar and he twirled me into his arms.

“I am Crosley,” he said, and I had no response for him, my senses were completely overwhelmed. He smelled like a spice I couldn’t identify—something exotic. His hands held me firmly, competently, self-assuredly, and he directed our dance in a slow, comfortable rhythm, completely in time with the music in my head.

His broad chest, the hard muscles of his arms, his breath warm in my hair made me want to lose myself in him. Take me, my mind ordered my mouth to say. Take me away from here. Give me a new life, an easy life, a pampered life, a loved life. But I said nothing. I merely swayed with him.

When the music ended, Crosley held me steadily, then disengaged himself, his hands on my hips pushing me gently away. He kissed my fingertips with warm lips. “So lovely,” he said, then he turned and disappeared into the night.

I stood alone in the center of the dance floor and for one awful disorienting moment, wondered if I had imagined it all. Did I just dance by myself to music in my head? Were Godfrey’s drunken hallucinations contagious? Or was my own loneliness and dissatisfaction with life pushing me over the edge?

Then I heard a small splash in the bay, as if from an oar, and I heard his voice in my heart as clearly as I heard the music, and I didn’t care about the consequences of loving this man, this drifter, this unconventional sailor. I only knew that I must have him, some way, somehow, no matter how briefly.

~~~

Godfrey woke me the next morning, and I was surprised to find myself sleeping on the old sofa next to the bar. He handed me my coffee and he paced back and forth on the dance floor. “Bet that guy’s got money,” he said. “Bet he’d be smart enough to invest in an operation that could give him a good return on his investment.”

“What guy?” I asked, but I already knew.

“That black boat guy.”

“Crosley,” I said, and sipped my coffee.

“You met him?”

I ran my fingers through my tangled hair, damp with tropical moisture. “He came in last night and we fed the home team all the grappa.”

“Money, you think?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t about to get in the middle of one of Godfrey’s schemes. “Stay awake tonight and you can ask him yourself.”

“Think he’ll come?”

I did. I did indeed. “Where else?”

“Do we have any steaks? Let’s cook him a steak. Think he eats meat? Is there any grappa left?” Godfrey made another pot of coffee and stuck with it all day long. Perhaps Crosley would make a difference in everybody’s life.

~~~

I found it difficult to concentrate, and ended up wasting most of the day on daydreams of dark hair, dark eyes and an exciting life of sailing the seas with Crosley. When the sun went down, I walked the quarter mile to my home, showered, shaved, powdered, perfumed, and made up my face. There were a few whistles and knowing elbow jabs among the regulars when I got back. They knew who had captured my eye and my imagination and they couldn’t help but approve. After all, he had bought drinks for the house.

They all teased Godfrey about going on the wagon, too, and he took their ribbing good naturedly. They’d seen Godfrey sober before, always when he rode high on a fantasy. His sobriety ended when his dream—which was never based on reality—ended. This one was no exception, and we all knew it. I suspected Godfrey knew it as well.

Talk was of the usual nonsense, the locals sensing both Godfrey and me pegging a dream on Crosley and not wishing to interfere. But it was clear that a sense of excitement ran through their conversation. Many brought their spouses, hoping the free booze would run again.

The party was wild and rambunctious when he stepped out of the night and into the circle of warmth.

An involuntary cheer went out, and people moved aside so he could take his former barstool—an honor among this group of barflies.

Godfrey slid right over and placed a napkin on the bar. I urged everyone to quit gawking and get back to drinking. I poured a few more, opened a couple of sweaty beers, my heart pounding and my breath coming hard at the sight of him. And when I glanced at him, he was looking at me.

I had to hold on to the bar to keep myself from floating right over to him. I smiled, a smile I hope looked full of promise, then busied myself with Godfrey’s business while Godfrey talked with Crosley. He talked earnestly and passionately, with many gestures, and I tried not to look, although I stole a glance now and then. Crosley’s drink sat before him, untouched.

After a while, Godfrey came over to me, poured himself a double shot of whiskey and slugged it down. “Fully invested,” he muttered, and took over my end of the bar.

I was glad. I’d never throw my lot in with Godfrey on purpose, but the bar paid me enough to live simply in this simple place.

I wandered toward Crosley, although I’m sure it was more like a making a beeline to him.

He picked up his drink, held it up to me in a toast, then drank it.

A moment later, he was gone.

I was disappointed beyond reason, and blamed Godfrey. I was tempted to walk down to the water and borrow one of the islanders’ boats to go to him to explain—explain what? Godfrey?

I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be chasing after a man like Crosley.

Instead, I went home.

Disappointed and distressed with my choices in life, I crawled into my lonely bed and cried.

In the night, when the banana moon turned the jungle black and silver and the nightlife was at its noisiest, I heard a step on my porch. A human step.

I kept a small bat by my bed and a machete between mattresses for self defense. Although it had never happened, one of those drunken locals could get an idea—and then there were always the transients, the cruising sailors with no resume, no history, no real accountability.

I grabbed the bat, and the book of matches. In my heart-pounding haste to light a bedside candle—my little shack had no electricity—I kept crumbling the humidity-damp matches.

Then a lighter flicked open and a flame illuminated my bedside table. Crosley lit the candle and sat down next to me.

My hair was a mess, my eyes were swollen, I had a terrible taste in my mouth.

“I must leave in five days,” he said, and I moved over and held open the covers for him.

His skin was cool and smooth and felt good next to my sleep-warmed body.

His hand moved slowly from my knee, across my hip, waist, around my breast to my neck and lay quietly on my cheek, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. With studied slow, self-assured movements, he manipulated my passions and drove me to a frenzied wildness like I’d never known before. By the time our bodies merged, our mouths locked together as if transferring our souls, the orgasm that had threatened to overwhelm me burst forth in all its Technicolor glory.

We continued the dance as if we’d done it a thousand times before, until he slid from me with a sweat-slick sigh and entwined my fingers in his.

“From the first moment I saw you...” he whispered, then his breathing slowed and a soft snore took its place.

Likely a line used a thousand times on a thousand women, I thought, but that did not diminish its effectiveness.

For five days, I never set foot inside Godfrey’s bar, as Crosley and I lived, loved and spoiled each other. We explored my island, swam naked, gorged on native fruits and licked the juices from one another’s bodies. His boat was as dark, mysterious and as free of affectations on the inside as it was on the outside, and though I longed to learn more of Crosley—his history, his family, his aspirations—there was nothing to be gleaned from his possessions. Nor from him. He remained an enigma, revealing everything of his exterior, revealing little of his substance.

We slept together in my bed, on the beach, in his stateroom, in the jungle, on the hills under the stars. We made love and laughed, swam in the lagoon with the dolphins and whiled away rainy afternoons, making up silly poems. We wove garlands of flowers for our hair, and buried ourselves in the warm sand. We showered together and made soapy love in the flimsy, tin shower stall. We melded.

And every morning, when I watched the sky grow light with the fire of dawn, the fire of panic grew within my gut as it was another day closer to his departure. Desperate to not cling to him, I clung to his words, his gestures, his amusements, his kisses. I let his actions speak, and they eloquently spoke of love and desire and delight.

Surely he would never leave me.

We didn’t speak of the future, but it was not far from my tongue. Five days with Crosley was not going to be enough—perhaps a lifetime of him would not be enough—and my heart broke on an hourly basis for five days as I knew he would, eventually, leave.

And then he said it.

We lay together in the lee of a rock outcropping on the beach. We had picnicked and finished a bottle of wine, then thrown the leftover food to the crabs and engaged in what seemed to be the next event of our continual lovemaking on the chenille bedspread I laid out. We had discovered gourmet sex, funny sex, quickie sex, instant sex and slurpy, delicious sex, but this was emotional sex. We both cried when it was over, and he kissed the tears from my cheeks and told me he loved me.

We lay quietly together after that, watching the sun sink, his arm protectively around me, until the chill came over us, and with one thought, we got up and slowly made our way back to my cabin.

We showered, crawled into bed and held each other, neither of us speaking of the fact that this was our last night, if it was. There is always hope, I told myself. Always hope.

With hope in my heart and our arms and legs entwined, we slept.

In the morning, when I woke, I was alone. At first, sleepy-brained, I thought he was in the bathroom, or he had gone to fetch breakfast. But when I sat up and saw the fresh gardenia leaning next to the bedside candle, I knew.

“No,” I wailed. I jumped out of bed and threw on my clothes, desperate to make him stay, to remind him that he loved me, to convince him that I could sail with him, to beg him not to abandon what we had created.

By the time I was out the door and running for the bay, I was desperate only to say goodbye. I had to hold him one more time, to kiss him once more, to tell him how he had restored me, to wish him well on his journey.

But the bay was empty.

Far off on the horizon, I saw a black sliver with its mainsail illuminated in the dawn.

I felt gutshot. Numb. Dead.

I wandered to Godfrey’s bar, made myself some espresso and mixed in some Jack Daniels. After two drinks, I eliminated the coffee. After two more, I began to cry.

Part Two: Winston

My name is Winston. I came to the island on the run from the law when I was only twenty-four. Today I am twenty-nine and hopelessly in love with Francine, the bartender. I am short and dark like a chimpanzee, and a deep scar runs through my right eyebrow and down my cheek, pulling my nose out of alignment. It would be so romantic to tell of some knife fight over a noble cause, but the truth is, I stumbled off the path and fell into a ravine one night while drunk, and lay unconscious at the bottom with my face impaled on the sharp edge of a banana stump until morning. Infection raged, and this scar is the result. On my best days I tell myself that my look is unique, particularly among these beautiful Polynesian locals, and on my worst days I view myself as a deformed Quasimoto, barely fit to breathe this fragrant air.

I am short, I am ugly, I am unskilled, but I am also devoted. I work at the landfill, and every day after work I bathe and then go to Francine’s bar. She is always there, smiling and pouring drinks for the regulars, the home team she calls us, cracking jokes and buying rounds for the house.

Francine was here when I arrived. She is somewhat older than I am, but age on her makes her only more beautiful. Age is not the only difference between us; while my upbringing was dictated by the toughs in the streets, she led a white bread life of privilege. When I left North America, it was to escape the law, and no one has ever missed me. When she escaped North America, it was to escape from her parents, and toward Eternal Bliss, and mail arrives for her every week in the pouch without fail.

Everyone on the island has a crush on Francine, but they indulge themselves in fruitless, fanciful fantasy, for Francine beds no one.

No one, that is, but the boy who brought her here ten years or so ago, and the European devil who sent her into the depths of despair. This man came shortly after I discovered Francine’s bar, although at that time it was owned by a drunk named Godfrey. I had already lost my heart to her. I had lost that upon first sight.

My devotion is not a fanciful crush, because I love her, and have vowed to protect her regardless of the frivolous antics that bring her nothing but heartbreak. Some day she will see me for who I am, and until that happens, I can be patient.

It is because of this love I have for her, and my self-sworn duty to protect her, that I, and only I, know what happened that night. I know, and Francine knows. And we are the only two.

The story begins with Godfrey’s yellow death.

Francine, still heavy with grief over the European, came to work one morning to find the coffee pot cold and Godfrey even colder. He had been turning yellow the last few months, and when she came upon him in his bed, he was the color of urine. His face wore not the mask of peaceful repose, but a grimace of pain, and he was doubled over and frozen in that position.

Francine called Mingo, who gathered several of the home team together. We built a pyre on the outcropping that formed an arm of the bay, and it was there we set fire to Godfrey and sent his spirit to its reward. Mingo danced and spoke in his native tongue, while Francine sat numbly watching the flames, smelling the emotionally-ambiguous odors of roasting meat and roasting Godfrey. And when we had all had enough, I helped her up and walked her back to the bar.

She took her place behind the counter, and I put a bill on the bar and bought a round for the house, in Godfrey’s name.

She bought the next round, and it wasn’t long before everybody began patting her on the back and congratulating her on inheriting the bar.

She didn’t understand at first, but after a moment, she realized it was true. Godfrey had no family, no heirs, there was no paperwork, the bar just passed from him to her and that was that.

This is what brought her out of her grief for the devil.

I began coming by on weekends and doing repair work around the place. I regrouted the dance floor, and strung up tiny fairy lights as she began to plan her grand opening. Apparently, the bar brought in plenty of money, it was just that Godfrey drank up all the profits. Francine had a different business sense.

Every week UPS brought some other prize she’d ordered through a catalog, and she was selling raffle tickets, and getting the community organized. There is a poor mission not too far from here, and once a year doctors come and minister to the sick children. Francine was raising money for them—they need so much—and it was a nice thing for the community to rally behind. Soon the island women were coming around as well. When Godfrey owned the bar, the island women hated the place. Their men would come in, get drunk and go home and beat them and their kids. No wonder they hated it.

But now, Francine wouldn’t let the men get that drunk in her place. It was clean, the women were welcome, and she sat and chatted with them while their children played on the fresh dance floor with their toys. The women arranged flowers, so the bar always had a festive, tropical atmosphere.

The day of the grand opening dawned sunny and clear. Francine was up and about early, pouring coffee for all her workers, the same people who would later attend the party in their nicer clothes, but in the morning they were wearing work clothes and breaking their backs to launch her new enterprise right.

Women delivered elaborate flower arrangements, men set up tables to display the gifts, boys mixed juices for the refrigerator and stowed fresh kegs for chilling. Another crew put up a small stage in the corner of the dance floor for the band, even the priest from the mission came by for a cup of coffee and ended up sweeping the floor. A couple of cruising sailors who happened to wander into the bay joined in, and Francine put them to work preparing food.

I had appointed myself foreman for the whole remodeling project, and wandered around with a coffee cup, making suggestions and helping everywhere I could. Francine joined me periodically, wiping a sweaty lock of hair from her forehead, and consulting with me on a point or two. Whenever she did that, I felt as though we were doing it together. A joint project. A couple. It made me feel important.

Then, when everything looked ready and all the locals went home, it was just Francine and me taking a final look around before going to our respective places to get cleaned up.

“Francine,” I said, and she turned those lovely eyes on me. She was dirty and sweaty and never lovelier. She looked at me with familiarity born of long association and respect. “May I have the first dance tonight?”

Her face softened at the question, and she smiled. I know there was affection in her heart, but I also recognized that she didn’t want to foster any false hopes of romance between us. “Sure,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. “We’ve done a good job here, haven’t we, Winston?”

“You have,” I said. She gave my shoulder a squeeze and I went home to get ready for my dance with the love of my life.

~~~

It was every bit as wonderful as I had imagined.

The crowd was young, the band barely warmed up, but I knew that Francine would be frantically working after a few minutes, and if I was going to get my dance, it would have to indeed be the first.

The sun had gone beyond the horizon, but the clouds still blazed. The fairy lights seemed like a net of jewels over our heads. Those who had come early stood around the edges of the dance floor, watching the band hit its stride, and when they played “Stardust,” I held out my hand, and Francine accepted.

The crowd yelled and applauded, and she moved into my arms gracefully.

She is taller than I am, so I didn’t have the pleasure of her face against my chest, but our cheeks did touch and I rested my hands on her hips and she put her arms on my shoulders. I felt everybody watching us for the first part of the dance, and it felt wonderful. Soon, other couples swarmed the new floor, and I was proud that so far, Francine’s evening was perfect, and the new dance floor was having a fine inauguration.

Then a hand on my shoulder. I smiled. Someone wanting to cut in. Yeah, sure. No way. I held her tighter and turned to refute the friend, but it was no friend.

It was the European, and Francine froze in my arms, an expression of stunned pleasure on her face. An expression that struck terror into my heart.

I had no intention of giving her up, yet he moved right in and took her from me. My face heated and I had to walk away, out into the jungle to calm my rage. He had come back to hurt her one more time, and I couldn’t bear it. I wouldn’t bear it.

After an hour or so, I went back to the bar, and Francine was dancing around her guests like a young girl at her coming out party. She looked lithe and youthful, more beautiful even than she had when the party started, and my jealousy burned ever brighter at the thought that it was this wretched womanizer who made her feel thus, when my love only turned her gaze to one of pitiful tolerance.

She danced and she flitted, and she smiled and she laughed, and never far from her was the devil, smiling and acting the host, the role that I had intended to play.

The party wore. I watched from the sidelines, but before it was over, Francine got one of the boys to bartend, and she and the European slipped off the far end of the dance floor and escaped into the night. I followed them to the bay, and watched as he rowed her to his black yacht, almost invisible in the dark night.

I went home and tried not to think about her in his arms. Tried to think, instead, of the day she would be in my arms, but my dreams were flat and without substance. Francine would never be mine, not as long as she could still be tempted by such as him.

What did I want with such a woman? But she was not to blame for her weakness. She was a good girl, a clean girl, she just had a soft spot for the rogue. And he capitalized on it. I hated him with the all the hate that was in me and all the hate that should be in her. I cast about, trying to imagine what I could do to rescue her, but I could think of nothing. She was an adult. She was her own woman.

When the devil smashed her heart again, I would be there to hold her and kiss away her tears.

It was this thought that consoled me in the night, and toward morning, when I knew they slept exhausted in each others’ arms, I, too, eventually slept.

I didn’t mean to watch them. I didn’t mean to follow them. It was never my intention to spy on them. But they were so easy with one another. Francine laughed so easily, so gaily that I was attracted beyond my willpower. I watched the European effortlessly make a lei of flowers for her head with deft fingers, the type of romantic thing that I imagine all women love, but I would never have thought of it. That he did intrigued me as much as it pleased Francine. He was physically affectionate, always touching her. His white teeth flashed in the tropical sun often, and she put her face down in modest shyness just as often. What did he say to her to elicit that type of response?

I felt completely inadequate as a man.

I could not take my eyes off them, I could not keep from studying them. All hope for a romance, a relationship, a marriage with Francine vanished as I watched the magic he wove about her head and into her heart. I wanted to run and shake her and say, “Don’t you see? Can’t you see what he is, what he is doing?” But I couldn’t do that, because I was as entranced as she was. The European, Crosley his name, was busy teaching us both. He taught her what it meant to be a warm and wonderful, delightful woman, and he taught me what it meant to be an ugly scar-faced runt.

Still I could not stop watching them.

I followed within the cover of the jungle as they walked up the beach that first morning, to the party-ravaged bar. She fixed them each an espresso, and then arranged for Kenny, one of the home team, to take over the bar for the next five days. She said she was going to take some time off.

Five days.

That concept immobilized me with dread. I would have to watch them together for five days. On the other hand, Crosley was sure to leave after the five days were up, and so my agony, while intense, would be short-lived. And then I would hold her while she healed. Perhaps she would come to me then, tired of the razzle-dazzle which ends in heartache, preferring instead, the solid and steadfast.

Hope is a strange and wonderful thing.

Five days turned out to be an eternity—an eternity of waiting in the weeds. Waiting and watching as they made love, as they talked and laughed and spent endless idle hours together. I barely ate, barely slept, didn’t work, didn’t bathe. I was afraid to leave them, afraid I’d miss the moment where he revealed his nature to her, the moment when she saw the truth of him, the moment where what they had fell apart and I could swoop down and rescue my damsel from the evil one.

I waited and I watched, tirelessly, with undying devotion, and all I saw was more love and more affection and more touching and more kissing and more madness grew inside my head until I spent all my time hating myself for watching. “She would never look at the likes of you,” I said to myself in disgust. “Look at you!”

Still I followed and watched.

Now and then I thought of the home team’s opinions of Francine and her affair. They were crude about it all, and while I was tempted to go to the bar and defend her honor, I could not leave her. For five days I watched from the doorstep of the eroding shrine of love I had built for her in my soul.

On the fifth night, when they were back at her shack, I went home. I bathed and shaved and tried to ignore the wildness in my eyes. Then I went to the bar, ate a decent meal, and tried to ignore the prodding questions from the regulars. I tried even harder to ignore the things they said about Francine. They were not mean things, these were her friends, but they were hurtful to my ears.

And so, dressed for the occasion, I went back to her place to await the final hour, when the evil Crosley would drive a spike through my beloved’s heart and I would be the first one she would cling to upon its completion.

Part Three: Francine

One year later, he returned. Could not stop thinking of me, he said. Could not forget the silken feel of my skin, the amber scent of my hair. Could not escape the way the dimples in the small of my back fill with perspiration when we make love. Lies I lived to hear, lies that rolled off his tongue so smoothly and delicately and sounded so sweet when I listened only to his words and not to his duplicitous soul.

Godfrey failed to wake one morning, so I inherited the bar by default. I cleaned it up and changed the menu, instituted some policies and began making it the social center of our side of the island as it should have been all along, instead of a smelly drunk’s hangout. I had the dance floor fixed, and staged a gigantic grand opening party, including a dance band and a raffle. It was a great party, and it had barely kicked off when Crosley swept me into his arms for a dance.

I had been too busy to notice the arrival of his yacht, and my surprise was authentic and overwhelming.

I’d been expecting him. I’d expected his return since the moment he left me. I’d expected to see his smile at the end of my bar every night for a year, but when I actually saw him, smelled him, felt him, and then tasted him, it was a sight, a smell, a sensation totally beyond that of my meager imagination. He was dark and pungent and his hands strong and familiar and bold. When he tasted me, I felt as though I had never been tasted before. My spirit soared. He could not have chosen a better time than my grand opening ceremony.

I continued acting the hostess for the night, but as the party wound down, I set others to see to the wrapping up, paid the musicians, grabbed the dusty bottle of grappa I had stashed in the back of the cabinet for just exactly this anticipated event, and let myself be led to his boat, to his bed.

Again, I was stunned into silent submission by my own inadequate fantasies of what Crosley had been like. What Crosley had been to me.

After stormy, insistent, almost desperate lovemaking, we lay quietly in his bunk listening to the snapping and popping of little creatures as they fed on the boat’s bottom growth. The anchor rope squeaked as the yacht pulled on it, and somewhere high above, a halyard clanged.

My fingers toyed in the thick curly black hair that grew in a line downward from his navel. The cabin smelled like seafaring, like diesel, like weathered teak, like lovemaking.

“I must leave in five days,” he said softly.

I had expected that, but the sound of it sliced my heart. I took a steeling breath and vowed to make the most of these five days he allowed me.

Early the next morning, I delegated responsibilities around the bar, and told the home team that I was taking a few days off. Then Crosley and I set about recreating who we had been a year ago. We did many of the same things of sensual pleasure. He had a year’s worth of new seafaring stories to delight me, and his storytelling skills had sharpened.

I was like a young girl. I knew I could have Crosley for five days and survive. I had decided long ago that if ever given another chance, I wouldn’t ruin the poetry of the moment by superimposing the inevitability of the future. Whenever the sinking feeling would come into my belly at the thought of either his string of women, all in five-day increments, or at the thought of his leaving me yet again, I squashed that thought and put it right out of my mind. I had business at hand. I had to make these five days last a lifetime. I needed to experience the depth and breadth of all that he brought to me. I was experiencing myself for the first time, and it was through the catalyst of Crosley’s attentions.

I wondered continually if his other women whined about his leaving them and what he thought or did about that. Perhaps he came back to me simply because I never mentioned it. But while I was young and free this time, not whining internally or externally, Crosley was not. Perhaps it was exactly my lack of concern for the future that made him nervous. Perhaps he was falling in love with me. Perhaps the years were beginning to wear on him. Perhaps his cast aside litter of broken hearts was beginning to wear on him. Regardless, Crosley had become paranoid.

It began the very first night, as we lay in each others’ arms in his stateroom. “I feel as though someone is watching us,” he said, and twice during the night he took his binoculars topside and scanned the edge of the bay.

He has dealt with too many cuckolded husbands and jealous boyfriends, I thought to myself.

And the next day, as we swam in the ocean and made love in the sand, then, too, he felt as though we were being observed. But nobody was interested in two people having sex on the beach. If anyone saw us, they turned around. That is the way of islanders.

But Crosley was not convinced of that.

After a while, I began to feel it, too. Eyes. Desperate eyes fronting an unsettled mind. “Crosley,” I said, “please stop this. You’re making me afraid in my own home.”

“I’m sorry, darling,” he responded, “but there is something not right. There is a harmful energy here. Deeply bubbling. Your lover?”

“Of course not.”

“You’re sure?”

After repeating that same conversation in what must have been a hundred different ways, I stopped responding. I had no desire to be infected with his fear.

And a tiny voice of hope spoke through the tangled mess of my emotions that asked if Crosley was considering me for a lifetime mate and wanted to make certain that I was unencumbered.

But I knew that wasn’t the case.

On the fourth night, I sat straight up in bed out of a sound sleep and said, “Winston.” And then I knew. Winston was afraid for me. Shy, reclusive, scarred Winston. Lonely Winston. Winston had a little crush on me, and I knew it, I knew it when he started coming to the bar after Godfrey’s death, looking for work and then accepting no pay for what he did. I did nothing to encourage his ardor; perhaps he encouraged it himself, and needed no help from me.

Winston. Winston was keeping an eye on Crosley to make certain Crosley behaved in an honorable manner. Winston should not have wasted his time. Crosley had no honor.

That Winston was looking after me was a comfortable feeling, and I felt just a tiny twinge of shame to know that Crosley and I had made love so openly, so blatantly, so passionately in full view of poor Winston’s feelings. Yet I was not responsible for Winston’s clandestine activities, nor his uninvited attentions.

~~~

On the fifth day, Crosley and I spent the day tangled among each other in the hammock, reading. Plates of fresh fruit and bottles of wine kept us company, and we dozed and touched and dozed and read. My mind began to flirt with the bar, wondering what had transpired since I was last there a week ago. I wondered if Carola had had her baby; I wondered if Pico got his promotion. I wondered if the bar was being kept clean, swept and mopped daily. I wondered if anyone was stealing the receipts, or guzzling free booze. I didn’t worry; I had chased worry from my life when I moved to this slow-moving tropical place. I was more curious. I missed it. I was eager to get back to it in the morning.

And that said a lot about my relationship with Crosley. Maybe he was right to keep his affairs to five days. Five days was perhaps enough.

As evening drew near, he began to get restless, looking behind him all the time. That, too, was becoming tiresome. “Is there a lock on your door?” he asked.

“No,” I said, although I had a way of locking it when I felt unsafe. This was the fifth day. Crosley would be leaving me before dawn—without a word, without a goodbye—and I felt like tormenting him a little bit. “Put it out of your head, Crosley,” I said, “and come make love to me.”

He did, and it was the transcendental experience of souls merging that every woman longs to have. We spent half the night murmuring to each other, stroking softly, urgently, gently and then stopping to talk and laugh, only to begin again, slowly building. That peak, when finally attained, left me disoriented and fragmented. Words from different languages, partial thoughts from what certainly must be different minds shot through my head like stray bullets. I saw colors I’d never seen before, and could not follow a concept. I’d never had an experience like that before, and while at first afraid, I thought perhaps sleep would heal it. Crosley was already snoring.

Afraid I would sleep through his departure, I got up and moved a chair in front of the door. And when I next heard the scrape of that chair, Crosley was dressed and making his escape.

“Crosley,” I said softly.

“Yes, darling?”

“One last kiss?” He looked at me; I saw the reflection in his eyes from the indistinct starlight that shone through the large windows in my shack. “Please?”

He slipped off his shoes and got back into my bed, clothes and all. I held him to me, the emotion rising up from my belly to clog in my throat. I unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his chest, then rested my head against his breast.

“Francine...” he began.

“Shhh,” I said, and spent a long, concentrated moment memorizing him, for this would be the last time his heart would beat against my cheek.

Part Four: Winston

My plan was to confront him as he slipped away like a coward during the early morning hours. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to count to five, and I sat not far from her front door in those the pre-dawn hours, waiting for that door to open. I didn’t know what I would do with him, I just knew that if he wanted to cruise the world breaking hearts and wreaking emotional havoc, he could do as he pleased, but not on my island, and not with Francine.

But when the door opened it wasn’t Crosley standing there, it was Francine, dressed in that gauzy white fabric she was prone to wear. “Winston,” she said, and my astonishment could not have been more complete. More paralyzing was the shame that she had known. She had known that I watched, and yet she acted in that wanton way—it was too much to think about. I had to have time to ponder all the ramifications of that one word spoken clearly in the dark. Her summons. “Winston,” she said again, quietly.

I stood up and walked calmly to the door, as if entirely by prearrangement.

“I need your help,” she said, and it was then I saw the blood on her hand. She saw it, too, and rinsed her hand in a bucket by the front door that had captured rainwater, then threw the water on the banana trees.

Crosley was in her bed, dressed. His shirt was unbuttoned, and the stub of a bamboo shoot protruded from his chest. Blood leaked out around the wound and stained his shirt.

“There is a consequence for every action,” Francine said to me, her eyes calm but sad. “Crosley’s has come and gone. I will wait for mine.”

Together we carried him to his tender, and Francine drove it to his yacht, while I followed in my whaler. With difficulty, we loaded him aboard his boat, weighed anchor and motored out of the bay to the calm, deep green water. Not a word passed between us.

I secured Crosley in his stateroom, then opened the seacocks on both toilets, and together she and I sat in my boat and watched the black yacht settle ever lower in the water, until with great burbles and gasps, it sank beneath the surface.

I motored us back to the bay just as the rain began. We ran through the deluge for the bar, arriving soaking wet. Francine made us each a double espresso and threw in a shot of Jack Daniels.

We clicked coffee cups and made our private toasts silently.

Part Five: Francine

The morning that Crosley left, Winston and I sat at the bar drinking coffee and watching deluge rain soak the already sodden earth. It fell as a solid sheet from the gutterless roof all around, splashing mud from the rain-gouged trenches to mix with the water that splashed up from the dance floor, bits of confetti and other leftover party debris floating closer to our bare feet.

I felt the tropical depression in my soul and sipped coffee silently, feeling desperately claustrophobic, penned in by the humidity, the liquid walls, and my self-limiting choices in life, the vinyl of the stool sticking uncomfortably to the backs of my thighs.

~End~

About the Author

Elizabeth Engstrom is the author of thirteen books and well over two hundred fifty published short stories, articles and essays, including several well-researched articles for Time Warner’s Crime Library. Known as a writer of dark fantasy, her most recent novel is York’s Moon, a critically-acclaimed mystery, and her most recent nonfiction work, Something Happened to Grandma, documents a double murder in Oregon. An author, teacher, editor and former publisher, she is a sought-after panelist, keynote speaker and instructor at writing conferences and conventions around the world. She is on faculty at the University of Phoenix.

Connect with Elizabeth Engstrom

You can email the author or find out more about her through IFD or her website:

http://www.elizabethengstrom.com

http://www.ifdpublishing.com

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Other Stories from IFD Publishing

Novels:

Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Ripper Victim, by Alan M. Clark

Siren Promised, by Alan M. Clark and Jeremy Robert Johnson

Beyond the Serpent’s Heart, by Eric M. Witchey

Lizzie Borden, by Elizabeth Engstrom

To Kill a Common Loon, by Mitch Luckett

Novelettes:

The Tao of Flynn, by Eric M. Witchey

To Build a Boat, Listen to Trees, by Eric M. Witchey

Children’s Illustrated:

The Christmas Thingy, by F. Paul Wilson. Illustrated by Alan M. Clark

Short Stories:

“Apple Sniper,” by Eric M. Witchey

“Brittle Bones and Old Rope,” by Alan M. Clark

“Crosley,” by Elizabeth Engstrom