When she woke, the sun was blazing down through the bamboo slats of the cottage porch. She had slept through breakfast and lunch. Her throat felt raspy and there was the sensation of recent lovemaking between her legs, so that she automatically looked around for Michael and was surprised to find herself alone in the big bed; and then she remembered, first that she and Michael were all finished, then that she was here by herself, then that she had spent the night with Nicholas Holt.
Who can see the future. She laughed at her own silliness.
She didn’t feel ready to face the outside world, and called room service to bring her tea and a tray of fruit. They sent her mango, jackfruit, three tiny reddish bananas, and a slab of papaya. Later she suited up and went down to the beach. She didn’t see Holt anywhere around, neither out by the reef as he usually was in the afternoon, nor on the soft pink sand. A familiar stocky form was churning up the water with cannonball force, doing his laps, down to the cape and back, again, again, again. Thompkins. After a time he came stumping ashore. Not at all coy now, playing no strategic games, he went straight over to her.
“I see that your friend Mr. Holt’s in trouble with the hotel,” he said, sounding happy about it.
“He is? How so?”
“You weren’t at the turtle races after lunch, were you?”
“I never go to the afternoon ones.”
“That’s right, you don’t. Well, I was there. Holt won the first two races, the way he always does. Everybody bet the way he did. The odds were microscopic, naturally. But everybody won. And then two of the hotel managers—you know, Eubanks, the night man who has that enormous grin all the time, and the other one with the big yellow birthmark on his forehead?— came over to him and said, ‘Mr. Holt, sah, we would prefer dat you forego the pleasure of the turtle racing from this point onward.’ ” The Chevrolet dealer’s imitation of the Jamaican accent was surprisingly accurate. “ ‘We recognize dat you must be an authority on turtle habits, sah,’ they said. ‘Your insight we find to be exceedingly uncanny. And derefore it strikes us dat it is quite unsporting for you to compete. Quite, sah!’ ”
“And what did he say?”
“That he doesn’t know a goddamned thing about turtles, that he’s simply on a roll, that it’s not his fault if the other guests are betting the same way he is. They asked him again not to play the turtles—‘We implore you, sah, you are causing great losses for dis establishment’—and he kept saying he was a registered guest and entitled to all the privileges of a guest. So they canceled the races.”
“Canceled them?”
“They must have been losing a fucking fortune this week on those races, if you’ll excuse the French. You can’t run pari-mutuels where everybody bets the same nag and that nag always wins, you know? Wipes you out after a while. So they didn’t have races this afternoon and there won’t be any tonight unless he agrees not to play.” Thompkins smirked. “The guests are pretty pissed off, I got to tell you. The management is trying to talk him into changing hotels, that’s what someone just said. But he won’t do it. So no turtles. You ask me, I still think he’s been fixing it somehow with the hotel boys, and the hotel must think so too, but they don’t dare say it. Man with a winning streak like that, there’s just no accounting for it any other way, is there?”
“No,” Denise said. “No accounting for it at all.”
It was cocktail time before she found him: the hour when the guests gathered on the garden patio where the turtle races were held to have a daiquiri or two before the tote counter opened for business. Denise drifted down there automatically, despite what Thompkins had told her about the cancellation of the races. Most of the other guests had done the same. She saw Holt’s lanky figure looming up out of a group of them. They had surrounded him; they were gesturing and waving their daiquiris around as they talked. It was easy enough to guess that they were trying to talk him into refraining from playing the turtles so that they could have their daily amusement back.
When she came closer she saw the message chalked across the tote board in an ornate Jamaican hand, all curlicues and flourishes:
TECHNICAL PROBLEM
NO RACES TODAY
YOUR KIND INDULGENCE IS ASKED
“Nicholas?” she called, as though they had a prearranged date.
He smiled at her gratefully. “Excuse me,” he said in his genteel way to the cluster of people around him, and moved smoothly through them to her side. “How lovely you look tonight, Denise.”
“I’ve heard that the hotel’s putting pressure on you about the races.”
“Yes. Yes.” He seemed to be speaking to her from another galaxy. “So they are. They’re quite upset, matter of fact. But if there’s going to be racing, I have a right to play. If they choose to cancel, that’s their business.”
In a low voice she said, “You aren’t involved in any sort of collusion with the hotel boys, are you?”
“You asked me that before. You know that isn’t possible.”
“Then how are you always able to tell which turtle’s going to win?”
“I know,” he said sadly. “I simply do.”
“You always know what’s about to happen, don’t you? Always.”
“Would you like a daiquiri, Denise?”
“Answer me. Please.”
“I have a knack, yes.”
“It’s more than a knack.”
“A gift, then. A special… something.”
“A something, yes.” They were walking as they talked; already they were past the bougainvillea hedge, heading down the steps toward the beachfront promenade, leaving the angry guests and the racing pool and the turtle tank behind.
“A very reliable something,” she said.
“Yes. I suppose it is.”
“You said that you knew, the first night when you offered me that tip, that I wasn’t going to take you up on it. Why did you offer it to me, then?”
“I told you. It seemed like a friendly gesture.”
“We weren’t friends then. We’d hardly spoken. Why’d you bother?”
“Just because.”
“Because you wanted to test your special something?” she asked him. “Because you wanted to see whether it was working right?”
He stared at her intently. He looked almost frightened, she thought. She had broken through.
“Perhaps I did,” he said.
“Yes. You check up on it now and then, don’t you? You try something that you know won’t pan out, like tipping a strange woman to the outcome of the turtle race even though your gift tells you that she won’t bet your tip. Just to see whether your guess was on the mark. But what would you have done if I had put a bet down that night, Nicholas?”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“You were certain of that.”
“Virtually certain, yes. But you’re right: I test it now and then, just to see.”
“And it always turns out the way you expect?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“You’re scary, Nicholas. How long have you been able to do stuff like this?”