Taming a Sea Horse

23

I couldn't find anyone I knew who had the right combination of sleaze and kindness to get me into the St. Thomas Crown Prince, so I decided to wing it.

Susan and I flew on Pan Am via New York and got into St. Thomas early in the afternoon. The corrugated-iron air terminal on the island looked like an exhibition hall at the Minnesota State Fair, full of odd little booths.

We picked up a rental car and a map and drove the narrow road through Charlotte Amalie to Frenchman's Reef. The island looked as it ought to, a lot of greenery, a lot of flowers, cruise ships in the harbor, stuccoed tropical-looking buildings with red tile roofs rising along the island's central ridge. Frenchman's Reef was a big Holiday Inn with a good beach and ocean views and a balcony on each room big enough to dance on if you were a hamster.

In our room Susan said, "What first? A swim or a margarita?"

"I'm here to work," I said.

"But I'm not," Susan said. "I'm here as a paid companion."

"Paid," I said. "I hadn't heard about paid. What is it going to cost me?"

"A frozen margarita whenever I want it," she said.

"Okay, but for that you have to come across."

Susan put her hands on either side of my face and kissed me on the mouth lightly. "You jerk," she said, "you could have gotten it free." She spoke with her lips brushing mine.

"I never had a head for business," I said.

"Speaking of head," she said, and then started to giggle.

"Dr. Silverman," I said, holding her away from me at arm's length with my hands on her shoulders. "You are a highly educated Jewish psychotherapist approaching middle years. And here, in this sophisticated island hideaway, I find you talking dirty and giggling like an oversexed teenage shiksa."

"Talk to me, baby," Susan murmured, "whisper in my ear."

And we both began to laugh and I pulled her back in against me.

An hour and twenty minutes later we went down to the beach in our bathing suits and sat at the outdoor bar.

"You owe me five margaritas," Susan said.

"Cheap at ten," I said. We ordered two. Frozen for Susan, on the rocks for me. Frozen went in too slowly.

"People are looking at you," Susan said.

"My massive upper body?" I said. "My wasp waist? My Romanesque profile outlined against the azure sea?"

"The several bullet scars against the pale white skin? Don't you ever work on a tan?"

"My face and neck are tan," I said.

"And your forearms. The rest of you looks like Casper the burly ghost."

"We northern Europeans don't care to be made sport of by a swarthy Levantine."

"Well, you need to be careful," she said, "or you will burn badly."

"I'm too tough," I said.

"I'd smite the sun if it offended me," Susan murmured.

I grinned and held out my hand toward her and she took it and we sat in our beach chairs and looked at the water holding hands. My margarita had disappeared. Susan's glass was still half full. I gestured at the woman tending bar. She made me another one and brought it over and took my empty glass.

"Have you a plan?" Susan said.

"I've been executing it," I said, "for the last hour and a half."

"Besides that."

"After dinner," I said, "I'm going to wander over to the Crown Prince Club and see if I can mix and mingle and look like an upward mobile nitwit with severe sexual dysfunction."

"And blend in with the clientele."

"Yes," I said.

The sea was very blue and the sand in front of us was sugar-white and the waves came in steady but not aggressive. The beach was half full of people in brief bathing suits. The cellulite count was high.

"I assume my presence would be inappropriate."

I nodded and finished off my second margarita. "You have several disabilities," I said. "You are an adult, you appear intelligent, and there seems to be some force in you. I'm afraid that even if they didn't catch on that you weren't a hostess, you might scare all the customers. They're not used to intelligent adults. Probably give them the bends."

"You say I'm not a nymphet?"

"Afraid not."

Susan took a big gulp of her margarita. "Damn," she said, "you put your faith in aerobics and what does it get you."

"Hell," I said, "I'm not a nymphet either."

"That's true," she said. "It helps."

She finished the margarita and stood and walked into the water. I went after her, and for an hour we swam and rolled in the affable surf under the Caribbean sky near the bar.

Then we had another margarita and went back to the room and got ready for dinner. I've had tougher duty.

We went to dinner at Secret Harbor.

"I came here once when I was married," Susan said. "It was very nice."

The dining room was under a roof, but without walls, within feet of the water. The air was pleasant. The tables were well spaced. The waitress was a young woman from Quincy, Massachusetts. We began with a bottle of Iron Horse champagne and had duck with a lime and raspberry sauce and a salad of limestone lettuce and two slices of fruit tart. We had a second bottle of champagne with dinner and afterward we each had two Baileys on the rocks. It was nearly ten-thirty when we finished. We spoke hardly at all and looked at each other almost all the time. The ocean murmured very softly and somewhere people were dancing to swing music and the sound of it drifted in on the quiet air.

"I've revised my plan," I said.

"Really?"

"Yes. My plan now is to go back to the hotel with you and go to sleep and get up tomorrow, fresh as a sea trout, and go over to the Crown Prince Club and knock them dead."

"At eight in the morning?"

"Well, maybe we'll have breakfast and swim awhile and have lunch and swim awhile and I'll go at cocktail time."

"The man of steel is full and sleepy," Susan said.

"I think there was krypton in that drink," I said.

"You're kind of cute when you're human," she said.

"And when I'm not?"

She reached over and took my hand and there was no banter in her voice.

"You're lovely," she said.