Bad Monkey

Rosa Campesino seldom thought about Daniel, her ex-husband. What brought him to mind now, while she sipped wine with Eve Stripling on the porch of an Andros Island beach house, was a whiff of syrupy men’s cologne.

Beast Down it was called, Daniel’s favorite. She’d never met another man who wore the stuff. However, Rosa knew it wasn’t Daniel talking on the phone in the next room because Daniel was dead, having witlessly steered his two-thousand-dollar mountain bike over a cliff. The autopsy had been performed with competence in Bozeman, Montana. As a professional courtesy the report had been faxed to Rosa, who’d made copies for the paddleboard instructor and each of the three other women Daniel had been fucking during the marrriage, the lubricious details unearthed by Rosa’s divorce attorney.

“I really like those shoes,” Eve Stripling said.

“Thank you. They’re seriously comfy.”

“What happens when all that shiny red color comes off the bottoms? Do you have to, like, get ’em spray-painted?” Rosa said, “That’s a darn good question.”

This was when light chatter filled the air, before things fell apart. Eve was holding a tiny cinnamon-colored dog, probably the same runny-eyed furball that Andrew had saved from drowning.

“How much longer will Mr. Grunion be on the phone?” Rosa asked.

“He’s tied up on a business call,” said Eve. “How about some more wine?”

Rosa said sure. She looked at her watch—still plenty of time.

“Maybe you could tell me how the units at Curly Tail Lane are priced, pre-construction. My husband and I are interested in a couple of two-bedrooms facing the water. We’d pay cash at closing.”

“No financing?” Eve looked more amused than excited.

“We’ll have to do the deal back in Florida,” Rosa continued, “at the office of Andrew’s trust managers. They’re the ones who move the money around.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh, we can Skype your people in from Nassau.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Eve. “I don’t think we’re interested.”

Rosa held steady. “Not interested in an all-cash deal? Seriously?”

“Honey, there’s nothing serious about any of this, and we both know it.”

The dog jumped down and curled up in a corner. Eve opened another bottle of merlot. Waves rumbled out across the reef line, the wind thrashed the palms and Rosa tapped the toe of one of her French sandals.

She said, “My mistake, Eve. I thought you and your husband were in the business of selling condos.”

“Thing about this place, it’s easy to make friends if you treat the right people right. I’ll give you a for-instance. We made a good Bahamian friend at the Immigration office, and guess what? She says nobody named Rosa Gates cleared through Nassau the last few days. Not Fresh Creek or Congo Town either. There was a Rosa Campesino—”

“I kept my maiden name,” Rosa interjected, although she knew it was over.

“Did your ‘husband’ keep his maiden name, too? Because there’s no Andrew Gates on the entry list, either.” Eve with her stretched white jeans and tanned feet was rocking on a wooden swing, not in a lazing tempo.

She said, “Guy named Andrew Yancy came through Nassau on his way here to Lizard Cay. He used to be a cop down in the Keys. I’ve met the man, so just cut the bullshit.”

Rosa set down her wine glass. “Tell Mr. Grunion I’m sorry to have wasted your evening. Clearly there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Oh, give it up.”

Calmly Rosa reached for her handbag and rose. “Too bad,” she said.

Eve Stripling cocked her head. “Honey, you’re not goin’ anywhere.”

At that moment a door to the house flung open, uncorking a fresh gust of Beast Down mixed with sweat. The smell was so strong that Rosa feared she might gag.

Against the wind he ran; uphill, downhill. Yancy was no athlete, not anymore. His lungs heaved, his legs cramped. The pocked pavement was strewn with sharp pebbles that gouged his feet.

Simple pain he could take; blood, too. It was the fucking up that was unbearable to contemplate, his own potentially disastrous failure to see the obvious.

An approaching vehicle turned out to be Philip’s taxi heading back toward town, reggae thumping from the open windows. The van was dark except for the glow of a joint that Claspers the pilot was smoking in the front next to Philip. Yancy waved both arms but he was too gassed to shout. As the taxi sped past, Yancy noticed a hunched dark shape on the roof—Mr. Stafford’s monkey, clinging grimly to the luggage rack.

Yancy ran on until he spotted a kid’s bicycle lying beside a chicken pen in front of a cinder-block house. The windows of the place had been boarded for the storm, and through a crack Yancy saw light and heard voices. Uprighting the bike, he pedaled away on half-flat tires, his knees bumping the handlebars.