Page 67 of Troubles in Paradise
Ayers watches the blue Jeep drive up the ramp of the barge.
“And good riddance,” Ayers says.
The very next day, Ayers wakes up feeling like a new woman. She got a long luxurious night’s sleep, and for the first time in weeks, she feels hungry. She makes not only buttered rye toast but also cheesy scrambled eggs. She takes her prenatal vitamin, drinks a glass of juice, eats a banana.
She figures she needs two days to pack her things and one day to move them. Then she’ll be back in action.
She calls Whitney at theTreasure Islandoffice. “I can work again, starting on Wednesday,” she says.
It’s as though Ayers has crossed an invisible boundary. Her body was her enemy, but now it’s a friend. She has energy; she has vitality. The tiny life inside her might as well be a supercharged battery. Ayers moves into Pure Joy. While Ayers’s studio was funky and bohemian but gloomy, with a view only of the Happy Hibiscus, Pure Joy is bright and airy, filled with sunlight. She has actual rooms—a living/dining/kitchen area, a brand-new bath with gleaming white subway tile, a bedroom with a king-size bed, and a bona fide walk-in closet. The cottage has a gas grill and an enclosed outdoor shower and Ayers will spend every spare minute on one of the stools at the bar counter gazing at the dreamscape across her new front yard—the striated blue and green shades of the Caribbean.
Ayers sets her mugs and plates and wineglasses on the fresh white shelves in the kitchen; she puts new sheets on the bed; she hangs her photographs; she sets her houseplants in the sun. During her last check of her old studio, she discovers the hidden pack of cigarettes on top of the refrigerator and throws them away.
Her first night in the new place, she gets barbecue from Candi’s—ribs and chicken and pasta salad and coleslaw and plantains—and she sits at the bar counter on her front porch to watch the sun sink into the Caribbean.Hashtag sunset,she thinks. Mick is gone, she’s pregnant, and she has a new place to live—it all feels like a fresh start. She picks up her phone and nearly sends a text to Baker saying,Want to see my new place?But it’s only her first night. There’s plenty of time.
A leave of absence fromTreasure Islandwas exactly what she needed because she comes back rejuvenated. Virgin Gorda Baths, snorkeling at the Indians, White Bay on Jost Van Dyke, where Leon, the bartender at the Soggy Dollar, makes her a virgin painkiller.
“Congratulations, love,” Leon says. “When will I meet this child’s daddy?”
“Soon?” Ayers says. She wonders if she should invite Baker and Floyd out on the boat so they can experience the BVIs and see her in action. Yes, they would like it. When they get back to Cruz Bay, Ayers checks the schedule and sees there are plenty of spots on Saturday’s charter. She texts Baker.BVI trip Saturday, you and Floyd, my treat?
The response comes:Nice offer, thank you. Floyd doesn’t have a passport.
Ah, bummer,Ayers thinks. He’s only four, but yeah, he still needs a passport.How about just you, then? Leave Floyd with your mom?
I shouldn’t,he says.Weekends are my time with Floyd. Sorry about that.
He’s a good dad,she thinks.He’s a really good dad.
A few nights later, Ayers leaves La Tapa after service and she’s so tired that she drives to Fish Bay without thinking. It’s only when she pulls into her former driveway and sees Cash’s new-used truck that she realizes she’s on autopilot.
Ugh! She might need Tilda to close from now on so she can get out of the restaurant earlier. Tilda won’t like this. She has been the one slipping out early, rushing her tables, neglecting to offer dessert, coffee, or aperitifs, snapping at Skip for change—all because her new beau, Dunk, likes to linger across the street outside the Tap and Still, vaping and waiting for Tilda to emerge. Ayers has studied him. He’s always in jeans and a T-shirt and a baseball cap and Sambas, looking more like a guy with an online-poker habit than a multimillionaire with an estate out in the East End, but Ayers supposes that’s part of the appeal. Dunk looks shady, which Tilda has mistaken for mysterious; she finds his fasting intriguing rather than ridiculous. She’s young. She’ll learn.
As Ayers is backing out of her former driveway she sees, in her rearview mirror, two people coming out of the Happy Hibiscus. It’s Baker and…a woman. Tall, blond.
Wait a minute. Ayers pulls back into her former driveway, turns off her lights, cuts her engine. She squints into the mirror. Do they see her? No. Baker and the woman are standing by an ivory Land Cruiser that Ayers recognizes as belonging to Swan Seeley.
Baker is walking Swan Seeley out to her car at ten thirty at night. Are theyseeingeach other? Is this why he hasn’t responded to her texts?
No,Ayers thinks.No!She can’t let this happen. And yet this is all her fault. She told Baker she needed space; she told Baker she wanted to be friends. Friends! After he moved his entire life down here, after he handled the news of the pregnancy like a hero. Has he complained? No. Has he been even a little bit of a jerk like literally any other guy in America would have been? No. He stopped by with a smoothie and chips. She had seen him another time, with Floyd in tow, bearing coffee and a bakery bag, and she’d burrowed into her bed, not even answering the door. She’d skipped the impromptu visit by her parents. She had been so certain that Baker would be there when she was ready that she had never considered another woman might step in, a woman such as Swan Seeley, a Gifft Hill mother who is going through a divorce and whotoldAyers the afternoon that Mick proposed that she thought Baker was hot. And now here they are, Baker and Swan, standing by the driver’s side of Swan’s car, about to have a moment.
They’re talking, but not touching. Swan tosses her hair, leans her head back, raises her face to his. She lays her palm on Baker’s strong chest, and Ayers feels a pang of longing. The first time she saw Baker was at Chester’s Getaway, when he crashed Rosie’s funeral reception. He had seemed such a stunning, fresh presence in that sea of all-too-familiar faces, some of which were also all too unpleasant (Mick had had the gall to bring Brigid).
At first, Ayers thought Baker was a tourist. Learning he was the Invisible Man’s son had been shocking, but on later reflection, she’d known there wassomething about him.She sensed that meeting him wasn’t random luck. Rosie, in a way, had sent him to her.
Then he went back to Houston.
Then he returned. They’d slept together. It had felt…right. They clicked. There was light, heat, chemistry.
Then he left again. For only a few days—but a few days was a few days too many. Mick proposed.
Then Baker came back. He’s here now. He has a job, a Jeep, a villa. Floyd is in school. Baker is a tourist no longer.
Swan takes hold of Baker’s arms and stands on her tiptoes.
No,Ayers thinks. She gets out of the truck, slams the door. Both Baker and Swan turn toward the noise. Swan’s heels hit the ground.
“Hey,” Ayers calls out. She crosses the street and strides up the driveway to the two of them. They’re standing farther apart now.
