My name is Winston. I came to the island on the run from the law when I was only twenty-four. Today I am twenty-nine and hopelessly in love with Francine, the bartender. I am short and dark like a chimpanzee, and a deep scar runs through my right eyebrow and down my cheek, pulling my nose out of alignment. It would be so romantic to tell of some knife fight over a noble cause, but the truth is, I stumbled off the path and fell into a ravine one night while drunk, and lay unconscious at the bottom with my face impaled on the sharp edge of a banana stump until morning. Infection raged, and this scar is the result. On my best days I tell myself that my look is unique, particularly among these beautiful Polynesian locals, and on my worst days I view myself as a deformed Quasimoto, barely fit to breathe this fragrant air.
I am short, I am ugly, I am unskilled, but I am also devoted. I work at the landfill, and every day after work I bathe and then go to Francine’s bar. She is always there, smiling and pouring drinks for the regulars, the home team she calls us, cracking jokes and buying rounds for the house.
Francine was here when I arrived. She is somewhat older than I am, but age on her makes her only more beautiful. Age is not the only difference between us; while my upbringing was dictated by the toughs in the streets, she led a white bread life of privilege. When I left North America, it was to escape the law, and no one has ever missed me. When she escaped North America, it was to escape from her parents, and toward Eternal Bliss, and mail arrives for her every week in the pouch without fail.
Everyone on the island has a crush on Francine, but they indulge themselves in fruitless, fanciful fantasy, for Francine beds no one.
No one, that is, but the boy who brought her here ten years or so ago, and the European devil who sent her into the depths of despair. This man came shortly after I discovered Francine’s bar, although at that time it was owned by a drunk named Godfrey. I had already lost my heart to her. I had lost that upon first sight.
My devotion is not a fanciful crush, because I love her, and have vowed to protect her regardless of the frivolous antics that bring her nothing but heartbreak. Some day she will see me for who I am, and until that happens, I can be patient.
It is because of this love I have for her, and my self-sworn duty to protect her, that I, and only I, know what happened that night. I know, and Francine knows. And we are the only two.
The story begins with Godfrey’s yellow death.
Francine, still heavy with grief over the European, came to work one morning to find the coffee pot cold and Godfrey even colder. He had been turning yellow the last few months, and when she came upon him in his bed, he was the color of urine. His face wore not the mask of peaceful repose, but a grimace of pain, and he was doubled over and frozen in that position.
Francine called Mingo, who gathered several of the home team together. We built a pyre on the outcropping that formed an arm of the bay, and it was there we set fire to Godfrey and sent his spirit to its reward. Mingo danced and spoke in his native tongue, while Francine sat numbly watching the flames, smelling the emotionally-ambiguous odors of roasting meat and roasting Godfrey. And when we had all had enough, I helped her up and walked her back to the bar.
She took her place behind the counter, and I put a bill on the bar and bought a round for the house, in Godfrey’s name.
She bought the next round, and it wasn’t long before everybody began patting her on the back and congratulating her on inheriting the bar.
She didn’t understand at first, but after a moment, she realized it was true. Godfrey had no family, no heirs, there was no paperwork, the bar just passed from him to her and that was that.
This is what brought her out of her grief for the devil.
I began coming by on weekends and doing repair work around the place. I regrouted the dance floor, and strung up tiny fairy lights as she began to plan her grand opening. Apparently, the bar brought in plenty of money, it was just that Godfrey drank up all the profits. Francine had a different business sense.
Every week UPS brought some other prize she’d ordered through a catalog, and she was selling raffle tickets, and getting the community organized. There is a poor mission not too far from here, and once a year doctors come and minister to the sick children. Francine was raising money for them—they need so much—and it was a nice thing for the community to rally behind. Soon the island women were coming around as well. When Godfrey owned the bar, the island women hated the place. Their men would come in, get drunk and go home and beat them and their kids. No wonder they hated it.
But now, Francine wouldn’t let the men get that drunk in her place. It was clean, the women were welcome, and she sat and chatted with them while their children played on the fresh dance floor with their toys. The women arranged flowers, so the bar always had a festive, tropical atmosphere.
The day of the grand opening dawned sunny and clear. Francine was up and about early, pouring coffee for all her workers, the same people who would later attend the party in their nicer clothes, but in the morning they were wearing work clothes and breaking their backs to launch her new enterprise right.
Women delivered elaborate flower arrangements, men set up tables to display the gifts, boys mixed juices for the refrigerator and stowed fresh kegs for chilling. Another crew put up a small stage in the corner of the dance floor for the band, even the priest from the mission came by for a cup of coffee and ended up sweeping the floor. A couple of cruising sailors who happened to wander into the bay joined in, and Francine put them to work preparing food.
I had appointed myself foreman for the whole remodeling project, and wandered around with a coffee cup, making suggestions and helping everywhere I could. Francine joined me periodically, wiping a sweaty lock of hair from her forehead, and consulting with me on a point or two. Whenever she did that, I felt as though we were doing it together. A joint project. A couple. It made me feel important.
Then, when everything looked ready and all the locals went home, it was just Francine and me taking a final look around before going to our respective places to get cleaned up.
“Francine,” I said, and she turned those lovely eyes on me. She was dirty and sweaty and never lovelier. She looked at me with familiarity born of long association and respect. “May I have the first dance tonight?”
Her face softened at the question, and she smiled. I know there was affection in her heart, but I also recognized that she didn’t want to foster any false hopes of romance between us. “Sure,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. “We’ve done a good job here, haven’t we, Winston?”
“You have,” I said. She gave my shoulder a squeeze and I went home to get ready for my dance with the love of my life.
~~~
It was every bit as wonderful as I had imagined.
The crowd was young, the band barely warmed up, but I knew that Francine would be frantically working after a few minutes, and if I was going to get my dance, it would have to indeed be the first.
The sun had gone beyond the horizon, but the clouds still blazed. The fairy lights seemed like a net of jewels over our heads. Those who had come early stood around the edges of the dance floor, watching the band hit its stride, and when they played “Stardust,” I held out my hand, and Francine accepted.
The crowd yelled and applauded, and she moved into my arms gracefully.
She is taller than I am, so I didn’t have the pleasure of her face against my chest, but our cheeks did touch and I rested my hands on her hips and she put her arms on my shoulders. I felt everybody watching us for the first part of the dance, and it felt wonderful. Soon, other couples swarmed the new floor, and I was proud that so far, Francine’s evening was perfect, and the new dance floor was having a fine inauguration.
Then a hand on my shoulder. I smiled. Someone wanting to cut in. Yeah, sure. No way. I held her tighter and turned to refute the friend, but it was no friend.
It was the European, and Francine froze in my arms, an expression of stunned pleasure on her face. An expression that struck terror into my heart.
I had no intention of giving her up, yet he moved right in and took her from me. My face heated and I had to walk away, out into the jungle to calm my rage. He had come back to hurt her one more time, and I couldn’t bear it. I wouldn’t bear it.
After an hour or so, I went back to the bar, and Francine was dancing around her guests like a young girl at her coming out party. She looked lithe and youthful, more beautiful even than she had when the party started, and my jealousy burned ever brighter at the thought that it was this wretched womanizer who made her feel thus, when my love only turned her gaze to one of pitiful tolerance.
She danced and she flitted, and she smiled and she laughed, and never far from her was the devil, smiling and acting the host, the role that I had intended to play.
The party wore. I watched from the sidelines, but before it was over, Francine got one of the boys to bartend, and she and the European slipped off the far end of the dance floor and escaped into the night. I followed them to the bay, and watched as he rowed her to his black yacht, almost invisible in the dark night.
I went home and tried not to think about her in his arms. Tried to think, instead, of the day she would be in my arms, but my dreams were flat and without substance. Francine would never be mine, not as long as she could still be tempted by such as him.
What did I want with such a woman? But she was not to blame for her weakness. She was a good girl, a clean girl, she just had a soft spot for the rogue. And he capitalized on it. I hated him with the all the hate that was in me and all the hate that should be in her. I cast about, trying to imagine what I could do to rescue her, but I could think of nothing. She was an adult. She was her own woman.
When the devil smashed her heart again, I would be there to hold her and kiss away her tears.
It was this thought that consoled me in the night, and toward morning, when I knew they slept exhausted in each others’ arms, I, too, eventually slept.
I didn’t mean to watch them. I didn’t mean to follow them. It was never my intention to spy on them. But they were so easy with one another. Francine laughed so easily, so gaily that I was attracted beyond my willpower. I watched the European effortlessly make a lei of flowers for her head with deft fingers, the type of romantic thing that I imagine all women love, but I would never have thought of it. That he did intrigued me as much as it pleased Francine. He was physically affectionate, always touching her. His white teeth flashed in the tropical sun often, and she put her face down in modest shyness just as often. What did he say to her to elicit that type of response?
I felt completely inadequate as a man.
I could not take my eyes off them, I could not keep from studying them. All hope for a romance, a relationship, a marriage with Francine vanished as I watched the magic he wove about her head and into her heart. I wanted to run and shake her and say, “Don’t you see? Can’t you see what he is, what he is doing?” But I couldn’t do that, because I was as entranced as she was. The European, Crosley his name, was busy teaching us both. He taught her what it meant to be a warm and wonderful, delightful woman, and he taught me what it meant to be an ugly scar-faced runt.
Still I could not stop watching them.
I followed within the cover of the jungle as they walked up the beach that first morning, to the party-ravaged bar. She fixed them each an espresso, and then arranged for Kenny, one of the home team, to take over the bar for the next five days. She said she was going to take some time off.
Five days.
That concept immobilized me with dread. I would have to watch them together for five days. On the other hand, Crosley was sure to leave after the five days were up, and so my agony, while intense, would be short-lived. And then I would hold her while she healed. Perhaps she would come to me then, tired of the razzle-dazzle which ends in heartache, preferring instead, the solid and steadfast.
Hope is a strange and wonderful thing.
Five days turned out to be an eternity—an eternity of waiting in the weeds. Waiting and watching as they made love, as they talked and laughed and spent endless idle hours together. I barely ate, barely slept, didn’t work, didn’t bathe. I was afraid to leave them, afraid I’d miss the moment where he revealed his nature to her, the moment when she saw the truth of him, the moment where what they had fell apart and I could swoop down and rescue my damsel from the evil one.
I waited and I watched, tirelessly, with undying devotion, and all I saw was more love and more affection and more touching and more kissing and more madness grew inside my head until I spent all my time hating myself for watching. “She would never look at the likes of you,” I said to myself in disgust. “Look at you!”
Still I followed and watched.
Now and then I thought of the home team’s opinions of Francine and her affair. They were crude about it all, and while I was tempted to go to the bar and defend her honor, I could not leave her. For five days I watched from the doorstep of the eroding shrine of love I had built for her in my soul.
On the fifth night, when they were back at her shack, I went home. I bathed and shaved and tried to ignore the wildness in my eyes. Then I went to the bar, ate a decent meal, and tried to ignore the prodding questions from the regulars. I tried even harder to ignore the things they said about Francine. They were not mean things, these were her friends, but they were hurtful to my ears.
And so, dressed for the occasion, I went back to her place to await the final hour, when the evil Crosley would drive a spike through my beloved’s heart and I would be the first one she would cling to upon its completion.