Nassau, broke as a stick. Lucky I knew a fellow who tended bar in those days. Took me under his wing, taught me the trade. Now here I am.” Jack spread his arms. “Got my domain. Nothing happens here without my say-so, Mrs. Randolph, and don’t you forget that. You got a problem with any fellow here, you come to me.”
He was a large man, Jack, maybe more wide than tall, but still. I found myself wanting to wrap my arms around that comfortable girth and kiss his rib cage. At the thought of this act, the image it evoked in my imagination, I directed a tiny smile at the remnants of my drink and asked, “Why do you like me so much, Jack?”
“Because you’re an honest dame, Mrs. Randolph. Honest and kindhearted.”
“This fellow of yours. Is he good enough for me?”
“Nobody’s good enough for you, Mrs. Randolph, not in my book.” He leaned forward an inch or two. “Between you and me, there’s been a lot of fellows asking. Pretty lady, drinking alone, kind of sad and don’t-touch-me. But this fellow is the first fellow I said could buy you a drink.”
“A fine endorsement.”
“Now it’s up to you, Mrs. Randolph. You’re a real good judge, I’ll bet. You just watch yourself around here, that’s all.”
“I thought you said he met your approval.”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about him.” Jack pulled back and set the glass back on its shelf. “Talking about everything else, everything and everyone else on this island, but especially that duchess and her husband, them two sleek blue jays in a nest, looking out for nobody but themselves. You watch yourself.”
“Watch myself? What for? When I can’t seem to buy myself even a peep inside that nest. I spent all morning at their damned headquarters, the Red Cross, stuffing packages and sitting through the dullest committee meeting in the world, going out of my mind, just to wrangle myself an invitation to the party at Government House on Saturday, and then the duchess finally turns up, and do you know what she says?”
Jack makes a slice along his throat. “Off with your head?”
“Worse. Enchanted to meet you, Mrs. Randolph.”
“That’s all? Sounds all right to me.”
“You don’t know how it is with these people. She locks eyes with you, see, like you’re the only person in the room, the only person in the world, pixie dust glitters in the air around you, and she takes your hand and says, Enchanted to meet you, and you think to yourself, She likes me! She’s enchanted, she said it herself! We’re going to be the best of friends! Then she drops your hand and turns to the next woman and locks eyes with her, and you feel like a sucker. No, you are a sucker. Sucked in by the oldest trick in the book.” There was a stir to my right, somebody approaching the bar. I glanced out the side of my eye and recognized, or thought I recognized, a certain man sliding into position a few stools down, tall, polished, Spanish or French or something, air of importance. Jack, on the other hand, made not the slightest sign of having noticed him. I leaned my elbow on the counter and said, “Maybe I ought to just read the stars and give up.”
“Give up?” said Jack. “Now what kind of talk is that?”
“The smart kind, brother. The realist kind.”
He glanced at last to the newcomer. “Excuse me one minute, Mrs. Randolph.”
The drink was finished. I stubbed out the cigarette. Jack had taken the newcomer’s order and turned to the row of bottles behind him. I stood up, a little more unsteady than I ought to have been after a single martini, and fished a shilling from my pocketbook.
“I beg your pardon,” said the gentleman to my right. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“Of course you couldn’t.”
“You are not leaving, surely?”
“I’m afraid I am.”
“But you haven’t eaten yet.”
“Maybe I’m having dinner elsewhere.”
“Now, Mrs. Randolph,” the man said slowly, “we both know that isn’t true.”
Up until this point, I’d been speaking into air. I wasn’t in the habit of addressing bold men, it was a stubbornness of mine. But you can’t ignore a fellow who calls you by name, can you? I turned my head. As I said, I had taken notice of him before. He was one of the regulars at the Prince George, and besides, you couldn’t help but notice him. He was tall and lustrous and strapping, dressed in a pressed suit