The First Casualty

69

The Eden Rock is just that: a rock jutting out into the small bay forming the beach at Saint-Jean. The promontory offers a splendid view from hotel’s restaurant, an establishment that thinks nothing of charging the euro equivalent of thirty dollars for a hamburger of stringy, European-style beef. A side is, of course, extra, perhaps because here they are pommes frites rather than fries. That is just lunch.

Lobster, the clawless Caribbean variety, is priced by the gram so that a single tail can easily exceed a hundred dollars, which, as Jason had observed during his first visit, was chicken feed compared the price of rooms with a view of the beach. Those overlooking the parking lot or the very busy and noisy road for only slightly less.

Jason had a strong preference for the superior views and closer-to-reasonable prices at the nearby Village Saint-Jean and the quality of food served at Eddy’s in Gustavia. But his preference was not what had brought him, Maria, and their just-arrived guest to the Eden Rock. At Maria’s insistence, he had politely declined Viktor’s invitation to stay at the Russian compound at Gouverneur. She had taken an instant dislike to the man for any number of reasons she enunciated except the real one. He treated women, particularly his wife, rudely; he drank far too much; and was way too loud for her comfort. Jason suspected none of those things really mattered to her. What did was that, with that intuition peculiar to the female sex, she somehow detected the smell of violence and death on him, a stench she only occasionally noted on Jason.

She had deemed the hotel “more appropriate.” It was a phrase Jason had learned to simply accept since questioning it usually induced an argument he could neither understand nor win.

They sat at a table illuminated by candles, clothed in white linen, and set for three placed on a niche carved into the rock below the main dining room, watching luminescent waves fill and empty the crescent of the beach. Faint music floated from one of the many seaside bistros, a discordant rap beat as out of place on a French island as a polar bear in a jungle. Jason plucked the slice of lime from his Havana Club and tonic, squeezed it, and dropped it back into the tall glass.

Maria held up a pale glass of Pinot Grigio, sloshed it around, and took a tentative sip as she gazed around. “Simply lovely.”

“Very romantic,” Jason added, knowing this was small talk, a prelude to the interrogation that would follow.

He was never sure whether Maria’s total intolerance of violence of any kind blinded her to the truth or made her unable to accept it. Just as she had brushed off his explanation of the injury to his leg, she had dismissed Timbuktu as the site of his last adventure.

“Timbuktu?” she had sniffed. “Why do you choose such outrageous stories? First, you are attacked by a woman with a knife on a train. Now you expect me to believe you were looking for something in a place I am not sure even exists. Isn’t this Timbuktu, what is the word, the one that means the same thing?”

“Synonym?”

“Yes, a synonym for some place that does not exist?”

“I think that would be ‘Shangri-La.’ ”

“Anyway, if you do not want to discuss what you have done, just say so.”

He had, many times, uniformly resulting in being presented with her back in bed, if, in fact, she deigned to share the covers with him at all. A stony silence would rule their waking hours until one or the other found an excuse to be gone from the common residence for a few days.

And the same storm clouds were gathering again.

“Good evening, everyone.”

Jason looked up to see Margot, her café-au-lait skin golden in the candlelight. She wore a long, diaphanous dress, more illusion than fabric, that was the rage among young women that season, as defined by the displays in the windows of Chanel, Prada, Christian Dior, and the other mavens of fashion that lined Gustavia’s main street. Jason had noted that when it came to beach dress, the prices varied in inverse ration to the amount of fabric employed.

A white-jacketed waiter appeared just as Margot sat.

“I will have the same,” she said, nodding toward Maria.

Jason chose not to comment on the anomaly of a young French woman drinking a very un-French Italian wine. Instead, he asked, “Did you have a pleasant flight?”

She rewarded him with a dazzling smile. “Other than a being a little late leaving Boston, yes.” She knitted her eyebrows in a mock scowl. “But you should not have paid the extra for first class.”

“You’re worth it,” Jason said.

The smile returned “Perhaps, but all the college boys are in coach.”

A real sense of intrinsic versus extrinsic value.

“So, how do you like Harvard?” Maria asked.

“I love it. I cannot thank Monsieur Peters enough.”

“That’s Jason,” Jason said. “All I did was pull a string or two.”

Actually, a single string: Momma. He had not asked, nor did he dare speculate, what had persuaded the dean of admissions to accept a seventeen-year-old graduate of a French parochial school over the best and brightest the United States had to offer. Knowing Momma’s lack of subtlety, it had possibly involved innuendos questioning his (or her) personal safety as well as that of the family, including the dog. Ah well, if the woman had no qualms about tricking Jason into risking his life, a metaphoric arm twisting of an academic would hardly trouble whatever semblance of conscious she had.

After all, she owed Jason far beyond the money. Seeing the joy on Margot’s face every time she mentioned her school made him feel well compensated.

“And your mother is OK with you spending part of your holiday with us?” Maria wanted to know.

Her wine arrived and she waited for the waiter to depart before answering. “Mama is. With the money Papa left, she has purchased the restaurant building where we also live and the one next door. She is busy combining the two. It will be the grandest bistro on Marseille’s waterfront. She is happy to have me out of the way for a few days.”

The conversation turned to matters feminine: the best beaches as defined as to how many college-age boys might be there, when the shops downtown opened tomorrow.

Jason tuned it out. With a smidgen of luck, Maria would be so occupied with her new young friend, she would forget whatever he had been doing in Timbuktu, if, in fact, he had really been there.

Make that a couple of smidgens.