Ayers lifts her gaze from Donna to the cabin of the boat. The past two days, Cash has circulated around the boat and introduced himself to the guests, but there he is, behind the bar, making that chick Max another drink.
In the seven years that Ayers has been working on Treasure Island, she has seen a spectrum of eye-popping outfits, which she and Wade have put into three categories. Category one, the most popular, was the Siren. This included teensy bikinis and wet T-shirts. Category two was the Riviera Gigolo, a gentle way of describing men who wore, instead of trunks, European-cut briefs—nut-huggers, grape-smugglers, banana hammocks. Category three was the Vampire. These folks showed up in head-to-toe Lycra—usually black, for some reason—because they couldn’t risk exposure to the sun. (The Lycra suits were always accompanied by wide-brimmed floppy hats.) Ayers was all about SPF but in her opinion, if exposure to sunlight was that verboten, then a day trip on Treasure Island—hell, a vacation on a Caribbean island in general—probably wasn’t for you.
Once Max takes the paisley peasant blouse off and slides out of her jean shorts, Ayers sees that the green bikini consists of only three tiny triangles of iridescent material (possibly meant to reference fish scales) and some string. It’s a dental-floss thong, leaving the pale orbs of Max’s buttocks exposed. Ayers notices a tattoo on the right cheek—a pair of lips.
Kiss my ass, Ayers thinks. Got it. Max’s body is a living rebus.
Ayers is dismayed that Max chose to wear such a revealing suit on a family-oriented boat trip. What must the six boys think? At least half of them will be ogling her all day; it’s impossible not to ogle her.
Donna gives Ayers a sympathetic smile. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.”
That’s a generous perspective, Ayers thinks. She will bet anyone the keys to her truck that Max is going to lose her bikini when she jumps off the boat to swim into the Baths.
Ayers puts on her headset and runs through the drill: Jump in, swim to shore, here are the life vests, and does anyone need a noodle?
Everyone does just fine—including six-year-old Dougie—and then Max climbs up to the edge of the bow and turns around in a panic. “Where’s Cash?” she says. “I want Cash to go with me.”
“He’s onshore already, Max,” Ayers says. “See him there?” Cash is standing on the small golden beach herding everyone toward the entrance of the Baths. He’s going to lead the tour today and Ayers is bringing up the rear. “Just jump in and swim right for him, okay?”
“Oh, okay,” Max says. She waves both arms overhead. “Cash! Cash!” She loses her footing and falls in. Ayers peers over the edge, checking to see whether Max can swim or if Ayers will have to save her.
To be safe, Ayers jumps in a few feet away. “You okay?”
Max is busy doing the doggie paddle, eyes squeezed shut, and because she is, actually, making forward progress, Ayers lets her be, swimming behind her just in case.
She can’t believe this chick isn’t a friend of Brigid.
“Looks like you have a barnacle on your boat,” Ayers says to Cash once they’re all back aboard Treasure Island. Max had trailed Cash through the Baths so closely that whenever he stopped, she bumped into him. At Cathedral, she jumped off the ledge into his arms and clung to him far longer than was necessary.
“Huh?” Cash says. “Oh, yeah. She’s harmless.” They both turn to see Max standing at the bar, waiting for Cash so he can make her another drink and she can show him her chest.
James anchors off the coast of Norman Island for snorkeling because there are already three boats parked over at the Indians. Cash helps everyone with equipment, and Ayers goes to see how the Dressler boys are faring.
“They’re all set,” Donna says. “But thank you.”
Ayers finds herself with a free minute and she’s in a spot that has reliable cell service. Should she check her phone? See if Mick responded?
No, she decides. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll ditch Brigid and be waiting at the dock for Ayers, smoothie in hand.
Is that what she wants?
She checks her phone despite herself. There are two texts from Mick, but Cash has started sending people into the water. She has to go.
Ayers snorkels with the Dressler boys and encourages two of the middle ones to follow her over to a rocky outcrop of Norman where the spotted eagle rays like to hang out. She can hear the boys oohing and aahing through their snorkels, and as always, this makes her happy. Some things are more important than her romantic trials and tribulations. Things like wonder.
Ayers raises her head and sees everyone heading back to the boat. She lets the boys swim ahead and she brings up the rear, scanning the water for the fluorescent orange tape on the tips of their snorkels.
When she climbs up to the deck, she says, “Everyone accounted for?”
“Yes,” Cash says.
Ayers signals James, who starts the engine, and Cash goes to pull the anchor, which makes his muscles pop in a way that is undeniably attractive. Ayers can’t believe Max isn’t right beside him, taking pictures for her Instagram account: #coldhardcash.
When the anchor is up and they’re moving, Ayers says, “Where’s the barnacle?”
“Wait,” Cash says. “What?”
Panic in the form of absolute stillness seizes Ayers. “Stop the boat!” she yells.
Max is not dead and Max is not lost. Ayers repeats this like a mantra, though for the first thirty seconds after Ayers realizes Max isn’t on the boat (how can she not be on the boat? And why did Cash say everyone was present? Did he not do a head count?), these are Ayers’s prevailing thoughts, that Max is dead or Max is missing and will turn up dead.
James cuts the engines and Ayers races up to the top deck with the binoculars, trying not to exude any sign of the sheer terror she is feeling. But the rest of the guests realize something is wrong. Ayers overhears Cash say, “We’re missing someone, the woman in the green bikini.” Then everyone starts looking. They spread out around the port side and starboard side and the bow. Ayers’s main concern is that Max is under the boat, that they unwittingly ran over her when they lifted anchor and started toward Jost Van Dyke.
Max is not dead and Max is not lost, Ayers tells herself.
Cash appears next to her. “I’m so sorry, I thought—”
“There’s no time for sorry!” Ayers says. She mentally breaks the water into a grid and starts scanning it square foot by square foot. In seven years, she has never lost a swimmer. She has had to do only five rescues—five, in seven years. Today will be her sixth rescue, she tells herself. Today, she will rescue Max.
Someone calls out, “Over there!”
Ayers follows the pointing arm of Mr. Dressler. Yes, she sees a piece of fluorescent tape about two hundred yards away. Before Ayers knows what’s happening, someone dives off the lower deck of the boat and starts swimming toward the snorkeler. It’s the oldest Dressler kid, DJ, Ayers realizes. She strips off her shorts, and, although it’s forbidden, she dives off the top deck, hits the water with so much force that her nose and ears flood with water, and swims after him. A second later, she feels the concussion of someone else plunging in nearby and she envisions everyone on the boat trying to be a hero.
She raises her head in order to get her bearings. Cash goes thrashing past her. He’s moving so fast he nearly catches DJ. Ayers sees DJ and then Cash reach the snorkeler and Ayers hears shouts. She swims closer, and only then does she realize that the snorkeler isn’t a she. The snorkeler isn’t Max. It’s some guy from another boat who has also gone rogue.
“Go back to your boat!” Ayers yells to the other snorkeler. She casts about helplessly. Where is Max?
She hears the air horn and swivels her head to see Captain James on the top deck windmilling his arm to beckon her back.
What? Ayers thinks. We can’t just leave her here. Or…has Max turned up? DJ and Cash are already swimming back to the boat and Ayers puts her head down and powers forward with everything she’s got left, thinking, Please let her be okay, please let her be alive. If she’s injured, they can get her to Schneider Hospital on St. Thomas in half an hour.
When Ayers is only a few yards from the boat, James calls out, “She’s aboard.”
“She is?”
“She was in the head,” James says. “Why didn’t you guys check?”
In the head. Max was using the bathroom. Why didn’t Ayers check?
Sure enough, Max is sitting on the stairs to the upper deck (which isn’t allowed) drinking what’s left of a painkiller when Ayers hauls herself up the ladder.
Ayers can’t bring herself to say anything to the girl. What would she say? We thought we’d lost you. We thought you drowned. At which point, Max would say, I went to the bathroom. Sorry, I didn’t know I needed to report in. I wanted to change my swimsuit. Because, yup, Max is wearing a new bikini, white, which Ayers will (again) bet the key to her truck becomes completely see-through when wet.
Ayers climbs past Max without a word and goes into the wheelhouse to apologize to James.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have checked the head. I…” Ayers tries to explain what made her jump to the conclusion that Max was still in the water. All Cash had said was Wait. What? Ayers was the one who had panicked. “She’d been drinking. More than everyone else combined. I guess my mind supplied the worst-case scenario, that she went out snorkeling while drunk and she drowned.”
James gives her the eyebrows. He’s a man of few words, though he’s been blessed with wisdom beyond his years—he’s thirty-five; he went to high school with Rosie—and a dry sense of humor. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were jealous.”
“Jealous of Max?” Ayers says. “Please give me some credit.”
“She’s been hanging on your boy,” James says. “And we both know it’s not like you to fly off like that.”
“First of all, he’s not my boy,” Ayers says. “Is that what you think?”
James starts the engine.
“I’d like permission to cut her off,” Ayers says. “She’s had enough to drink.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” James says. He leaves it unspoken that this whole event was Ayers’s fault. Ayers can only imagine what kind of dramatic retelling the fourteen adults will provide on TripAdvisor.
“I’m sorry,” Ayers says again. “I’m having a bad day.”
James nods. “You’re allowed,” he says. He laughs. “Tell you what, though—your boy sure can swim.”
Ayers puts on the headset. “Sorry about that, folks,” she says. She notices that the Dressler kids are all lined up at the railing seeing who can spit the farthest and there’s now a queue at the bar three-deep.
Right, she thinks. Crisis averted, people are getting bored, time to drink. “We’re on our way over to Jost Van Dyke, named for the man who discovered it in the early seventeenth century. It became a center of custom shipbuilding, but now, however, Jost is most famous for its world-class beach bars, including Foxy’s, One Love, and…the Soggy Dollar!”
Everyone claps. She’s forgiven.
There’s no happier place on earth than White Bay on a sunny day. The stunning crescent of powder-fine sand is lined with palm trees and funky, bare-bones beach bars. Treasure Island slips in among a flotilla of boats. There are people splashing in the shallows, tossing a football; there’s reggae music and the smell of jerk chicken and the low buzz of blenders making Bushwackers and piña coladas.
“Please get yourself some lunch,” Ayers says. “And try not to wander off. We’d like you back on the boat at two thirty sharp.”
Ayers counts the Dressler kids as they jump off the boat in succession. There’s a bit of a wade required, which the boys don’t seem to mind. To DJ, Ayers says, “Thank you for your help. You’re a fast swimmer.”
DJ shrugs and Donna Dressler puts a hand on Ayers’s shoulder and says, “That was some unexpected drama, huh?”
Ayers spies Max walking down the beach—with Cash, of course—toward the Soggy Dollar. “I don’t know if I should feel angry or relieved.”
“Sounds like being a parent,” Donna says. “You’re not sure whether to ground them or hug them.”
Grounding sounds good, Ayers thinks.
Lunch isn’t a bad idea, and Ayers is a big fan of the Soggy Dollar lobster roll, so she walks down the beach and into the bar. Her favorite bartender, Leon, is pouring something pink and fruity out of the blender and into two cups, which he delivers to Max and Cash, who are sitting together at the end of the bar.
Cash says, “I’m on the clock,” and passes his drink to Max.
“Awwww,” she says. “Thanks.” She leans her head on Cash’s shoulder and closes her eyes.
Did Ayers give Cash “the talk” about not fraternizing with the guests? She knows she didn’t. It never occurred to her that it would be a problem. Cash had been so earnest, so eager to please—please her, Ayers—that she hadn’t realized that many if not all of the available women (and maybe even those who weren’t necessarily available) would find Cash sexy and attractive and throw themselves at him as inelegantly as moths beating themselves against a screen.
Cash nudges Max’s head off his shoulder and orders a Coke and a blackened mahi sandwich with coleslaw. He says, “So what do you do for work?”
“I sell drugs,” Max says. She waits a beat, then honks out a laugh. “Not what you’re thinking! I’m a pharmaceutical rep.”
“Did you grow up in the Midwest?” Cash asks.
“Peoria,” she says, diving nose-first into her pink drink.
“I’m from Iowa City!” Cash says.
Ayers isn’t eavesdropping; she’s just waiting to get Leon’s attention. It’s like she’s invisible today. She debates interrupting the happy couple to remind Max to eat something, but she’s not the girl’s mother and she’s afraid of sounding like a schoolmarm or a scold.
Max says something under her breath and Cash laughs. Is Ayers jealous? Maybe she is. She had thought Cash was in love with her. She thought Cash had taken the job on Treasure Island because he wanted to work with her. And yet he hasn’t looked over at her even once. He’s completely entranced with Max!
Ayers can’t believe she’s having these thoughts. She doesn’t like Cash in that way—does she? She didn’t think so, but right now, there’s no denying she’s jealous.
No, Ayers thinks. She enjoys being the object of Cash’s affection. It’s flattering, a boost to her ego. What’s really going on is that she’s upset about Mick and Brigid and confused about her feelings for Baker. Baker, who is maybe staying on St. John but also maybe not staying. Ayers would bet the keys to her truck and her apartment that Baker will go back to Houston for the school fund-raiser and never return. He’ll find relocating too complicated. He’ll spend two weeks on St. John and become bored; without a job to do, it’s just sun, sand, and water. There are no museums or movie theaters, there are no professional sports teams or shopping malls. There isn’t even any golf.
He won’t stay. The schools won’t be good enough for Floyd. Baker won’t be able to find a fulfilling job; St. John isn’t Wall Street. There will be some solid reason why he has to go back to the States. St. John is paradise when you visit, but when you live here, it becomes very real very quickly.
Ayers can’t risk getting involved with Baker.
“Ayers,” Cash says suddenly, yanking her out of her mental quicksand. “Would you like to join us?”
Ayers assesses her options. Cash’s sandwich has now arrived and he offers some to Max, who slowly, slowly, shakes her head. She’s slipping down her stool, melting like a candle.
Leon finally gives Ayers a wave. “I see you, darling. Just gonna be a minute.”
“That’s okay, Leon,” Ayers says. “I’m not staying.” She steps back out onto the sand. She’ll head down to One Love, she decides, and get some jerk pork.
At a quarter after two, Ayers is feeling a little better. She has eaten and taken a ten-minute chair nap, and now she combs the beach for her guests, urging everyone to head back to the boat. If they get out of here at two thirty, there will be less of a line at customs.
Ayers has never so badly wanted a charter to end.
Coming toward her down the beach are Cash and Max. Max is stumbling and bent over; she’s so drunk she can barely walk. Cash has to take her by the hand once they’re wading back to the boat. If she fell over, she would drown in only two feet of water. Ayers wants to say something to Cash, something like Why did you let her get so drunk? She wants to point to Max and say to James, We should have cut her off after snorkeling! But instead, Ayers helps Cash get Max up the three-step ladder and onto the boat. Max heads toward starboard and Ayers thinks maybe she’s going to the bar for another drink, but she bypasses the cabin, pushes little Dougie Dressler out of the way, and starts puking over the side of the boat.
Ayers bows her head. It would be very unprofessional to let the others see her smirking.