“Oh, one keeps one’s ears open. And Nassau is terrible for gossip. It’s the favorite pastime. Everybody seems to be knee-deep in each other’s dirty business.”
“So my wife tells me. And what else have you heard about me?”
“Oh, this and that.” I shrugged. “I can’t remember most of it. But tell me more about Mexico. I’ve always wanted to go.”
He took a long, slow drag from his cigarette, examined the diminished end, and said softly, “Perhaps you might join us on our next voyage. We intend to make an archaeological expedition to South America, and then travel up to Mexico in time for Christmas.”
“How kind of you. When do you cast off?”
Wenner-Gren opened his mouth, but it wasn’t his voice that answered me.
“Any day now, isn’t that right? I’d go myself, if I wasn’t already occupied.”
The words came from somewhere near my right shoulder, causing us both to startle and turn to the doorway, where Mr. Thorpe stood in his white dinner jacket, long and wide-shouldered and lean as a wooden cross. His head was bare and the spectacles perched at the very end of his nose. He pushed them up and smiled.
“My dear Thorpe,” said Wenner-Gren. “I thought you had disappeared, as usual.”
“Merely counting my profits in the back office.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve finished raiding all the pockets already,” I said.
“Every shilling accounted for.” Thorpe held out his elbow. “Might I have a private word with you, Mrs. Randolph?”
I suppose I gaped. He hadn’t shown the slightest sign of recognition earlier, and though I’d caught glimpse after glimpse of him during the course of the party, we had never come face to face, as if some contract had been drawn up between us, some agreement not to acknowledge each other. I thought he had probably forgotten me, forgotten the episode on the airplane, or at least my face in the middle of it. And now he held out his elbow to me.
“Thorpe, old chap,” said Wenner-Gren, in the funny way that men of all nations will ape certain expressions of the English upper classes. “I didn’t know you were a friend of Mrs. Randolph’s.”
“We met on an airplane,” said Thorpe, pronouncing the word in three syllables, air-o-plane, “and formed an instant connection. Didn’t we, Mrs. Randolph?”
His face was grave, his fair skin pink beneath the freckles. I considered his eyes, which were blue and slightly hooded behind his spectacles, giving you an impression of great depth. I glanced back at Wenner-Gren’s face and discovered a cool, pale stare like a reptile’s.
I set down my half-finished bourbon on the edge of the Duke of Windsor’s desk. “That’s a wonderful question, Mr. Thorpe. I guess we might as well find out.”
WE DIDN’T SAY A WORD until we reached the center of the main hallway, right between the staircase and the front entrance, where the panic hit my stomach once more. I snatched my hand from Thorpe’s elbow. “Thanks very much for rescuing me in there. I won’t trouble you further.”
“Now, wait just a moment, Mrs.—”
But I was already pushing open the door, already hurrying across the portico. He caught up with me a few steps later and touched my elbow. I stopped and whirled to face him.
“Did I say I wanted company, Mr. Thorpe?”
“Look here. You can’t just fly off alone like that.”
“You can’t possibly think I’d go off with you.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? I don’t even know you. For all I know, you’re a homicidal maniac. Or worse.”
“Worse? What could be worse than that?”
I lifted my chin and fixed him with a certain stare of mine. He gave my displeasure his full attention, while some bird trilled out a mighty evening song from the portico above. It takes a certain amount of strength, you know, to gaze without blinking into the eyes of a man you hardly know, a man as tall and dazzling as Thorpe, and to this day I don’t quite understand how I held firm, or why. From the windows of Government House floated the mist of some jiggly, dancing tune I didn’t recognize, the shadow of somebody’s braying laugh. The dark air lay against Thorpe’s skin. His eyes were narrowed and gray, the way the night drains color from everything. At last he sighed, glanced heavenward, and made a half turn toward the Government House entrance. “Taylor!” he called out.
For the first time, I noticed the footman there, or rather the doorman, straight-shouldered and tidy in his white uniform against the pink facade, lit by the windows behind him. “Yes, sir?” he said, staring straight ahead.
“You’ve seen me leave the premises in the company of Mrs. Randolph, correct?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“If something untoward occurs, you’re prepared to swear to that effect in a court of law?”
“Without hesitation, sir.”
Thorpe turned back to me. “You see? Nothing to fear. Intentions entirely honorable.”
I resumed walking toward the stairs. The air had cooled no more than a few degrees with the coming of night, but at least the brutal sun had sunk away. The atmosphere was hazy, the stars blurred in the sky above the nearby ocean. I didn’t need to look over my shoulder; I knew Thorpe had joined me. “That doesn’t prove a thing,” I said. “For all I know, you’re in collusion.”
“You’re a damned suspicious woman, Mrs. Randolph.”
“Women need to be suspicious, Thorpe, suspicious of everyone and everything. A woman on her own, especially. It’s a matter of survival.”
“Not all men are beasts, you know.”
“Enough of them are. Even one’s enough. Once you encounter your first wolf, why, you start to notice them everywhere.”
“I see,” he said. “Are we speaking of Mr. Randolph, perhaps?”
We were tripping down the endless flight of stairs, had already passed the statue of Columbus. Below us, the street was dark and quiet. I stopped midstep and waited for Thorpe to halt, to turn, two stairs below, so that his face sat at last on the same level as mine.
“There was a girl back at college,” I said. “Went off with a boy after a party, just like a little lamb. It didn’t end well.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t have the smallest idea. You’ve never been anybody’s prey.”
“Not true.”
I lifted my eyebrows and stared at his large, earnest face, his eyes behind the spectacles. I thought he was going to say more, tell me some story, even if it wasn’t real. But the lips didn’t move. Just those two words, Not true, a pair of words that covered a vast territory.
“All right,” I said. “But I’ll bet you were evenly matched, weren’t you? A big cat like you. You could fight back.”
“Fair point. But I might say the same of you.”
“Me?”
“You might not be so big, of course. But you seem to me like the sort of woman who fights back.”
The streetlamps cast a soft yellow heat on his face. He stood with one foot braced on the step above; his hand rested on his thigh. I was conscious of my daring neckline, my exposed skin, my scarcity of sleeves, my breath trapped in my lungs, my thundering heart. The goose bumps prickling my arms, which could not possibly have sprung from the tropical air.
“That man on the airplane,” I said. “What did you do to