visitors so far had been Finney, Tony, Lauretta, the workmen, and that mysterious black man who worked in the garden. While she explored the island methodically by day, she became reclusive at night, taking her first drink at sunset, picking at whatever food was about, and reading her way through Jack’s papers and eclectic library. Time and again, she’d found herself ruminating about the exile she and Jack had chosen, both of them blustering through life, both nursing corrosive anger and guilt. The salve he found in the embrace of women. Her retreat into the embrace of memory. Even though she never passed the harbor at Oualie or Charlestown without looking for Iguana, she’d burrowed so far into herself that the prospect of company, Liz most of all, felt like an invasion. Her chest began to constrict, tiny stitches threatening to bind her as tight as a pearl on silk. She took a deep breath, forcing her ribs outward, giving her heart space.
“Okay,” she said. “Only if you promise not to blow up the place.”
“Hot damn,” Boney said, and ran down to the court.
The struggle to remove the cannon from the alcove under the steps and reposition it on the pedestal left him red-faced. The sun appeared to gain speed in its dive toward the horizon. He hurried back to her. “Is the powder where Jack always kept it?”
“No clue,” she said.
He went into the house; his flip-flops slapped on the kitchen steps. He returned breathless, holding yellowed newspaper and two Mason jars with rusted lids, one containing about two centimeters of black powder, the other kitchen matches.
He blew into the breach, poured in some powder, balled up a wad of newspaper, rammed it into the barrel, and stuck in a fuse. Waving her back, he arranged a small bundle of matches and, glancing at the sea, struck them, cupped the flame, and touched off the fuse. “Here you go, mates,” he said. “Three, two, one.” The cannon boomed, belched smoke, and recoiled almost off the pedestal.
Els cried out and fanned away the smoke.
Boney’s eyes were full of merriment and anticipation. “Bet Jack left some Cavalier around. Let’s crack it open while we wait for them,” he said. “You live here long enough, you’ll drink it like all the locals. A little ice and lime would be just the thing.”
Rum would be just the thing to combat her rising jitters. She hurried upstairs and changed into a tank dress, slinkier than the linen shift but not too revealing, its dusky blue a good pairing with her eyes and the bead necklace, which she now wore most of the time. When she returned to the gallery, Boney had gathered glasses, rum, ice, and some of the limes she’d collected that morning and was sitting in one of two chairs he’d pulled close to the railing with his bare feet propped up on it.
“Make yourself right at home,” she said, but her irony was lost on him.
He dropped two cubes into his glass, poured rum until they floated, then a little more, squeezed lime into it, and tossed the rind over the railing.
He raised his glass and waited while she splashed rum into hers. “To Jack,” he said, “ecstasy in small things, and excess whenever possible.” He sipped his drink. “This was his favorite part of the day,” he said. “A big rum at sunset and a package of pork rinds was his idea of heaven.”
She grimaced.
“Don’t knock it,” he said. “Those little morsels sustained Jack—many of us, actually—on more than one occasion. Got any around?”
“Nor much of anything else,” she said. She sipped, the ice cold against her lip, the rum warm in her throat.
“If you wanted to eat well in this house, you brought the grub yourself,” he said.
“Jack wasn’t much of a host, then.”
“None finer,” he said. He poked his ice cubes and watched them bob. “Near the end, he drank his meals unless someone put decent food under his nose, and sometimes even then . . . .” He squinted at the sea, took a long swig of his rum, and wiped his mustache with the back of his hand.
Boney started to tell her the history of the house, but she put up a hand. “I’ve read all about that planter from the dry side, building this house for his mistress. Jack wrote pages about fiery Sophia, the lover of sunsets.”
“He had a serious crush on her,” Boney said. “That she died a hundred fifty years before he