Irene felt her face go slack. “A-a Nun? I mean…” Her voice staggered, shamelessly, as she studied the girl more closely.
Sissy flipped hair off a freckled face and Irene noticed the blush rise in the girl’s cheeks. “Not a Nun, a Novice.”
“A Novice.” Irene confirmed, trying to rein in her look of surprise.
Sissy stared at Irene a moment then started to giggle. “Yes. I came to Haiti after the earthquake. I was with the Sisters of St. Mary’s and we arrived on the island to work with the locals; relief work.
“And now you work the Bikini-Bus? That’s a leap-and-a-half. What am I missing?”
“Guess I was disillusioned,” Sissy explained. “You wouldn’t have believed what I saw when we first arrived in Port au Prince. The City was in ruins, smashed, unrecognizable as a place people used to live and raise children. The destruction was indescribable: No food, no water, nothing in the way of medical services. We did what we could but babies were dying in my arms.” Sissy’s eyes turned glassy at the memory. “So I guess God and I had a falling out.”
Irene felt respect for the girl rise in her chest. “So now you’re here.”
“I traveled south; needed the ocean. I was walking the beach one morning when I was surprised to meet a half-dozen American girls. They had come over from Île-à-Vashe by boat, told me they worked at a resort there and could find me a job.” Sissy turned to Tracy. “This is all your fault.”
Tracy was sorting the oysters and shrugged. “So you keep telling me.”
Sissy turned her attention back to Irene. “So I arrived here on Cracker-Jax thinking I’d get work as a maid, or waiting on tables or something. But one of the managers said I had a good figure and couldn’t help notice that I was tall. She assigned me to the gaming floor where I collected bets at a roulette table but before long, I had my own table and was spinning the wheel and calling out the numbers. It was fun. Then I heard they were hiring for the Bikini-Bus.”
“And the rest is history,” Tracy broke in, taking on the airs of a dramatic radio announcer. “C’mon you two. The oysters are ready and I’m half-starved.”
“Right– right.” Irene turned her attention back to the grill. She held the hot metal tray and Tracy piled on a couple of dozen of the bivalves.
“That’s it,” Tracy said and covered the tray over with tinfoil. “I’m for one of Ditz’s rum drinks. Let’s go.”
Inside, the flight-attendants had arranged themselves on the love seats or were hovering around Ditz at the breakfast bar where the blender whirled happily. There were raw oysters on ice, thin slices of toasted garlic bread, deviled eggs, a vegetable tray and a creamy clam chowder was steaming on the stove. A tub of ice held bottles of Rolling Rock and a dry Chardonnay. And above their heads, the blades of the paddle fan moved the cool sea air that wafted delightfully through the louvered windows.
Tracy made a beeline toward Ditz’s blender. “Can I get you something?” Irene asked Sissy.
“Gosh. I’m not much of a drinker,” Sissy answered apologetically, “maybe a little white wine, if that’s okay.”
Irene led the way to the large metal tub in the corner which was overflowing with ice-water. She filled a glass for Sissy and pried the top off a Rolling Rock for herself. “How long have you known Tracy?” she asked.
“It’s been almost two years since we met on the beach,” Sissy replied. “It’s funny, really. I mean we hit it off from the first day. Odd because our backgrounds are so different.”
Irene passed Sissy a napkin. “Different? Different how?” she wanted to know.
Sissy slurped back a raw oyster and patted her lips. “I was brought up in a loving Christian home,” she replied and sipped her wine. “Tracy got the other kind of family loving.”
Irene felt a twinge in the pit of her stomach. “You can’t mean…”
“Well look at her. She’s gorgeous.” Sissy glanced across the room at her friend. “What man could resist? Her father was a hopeless alcoholic and her mother worked two jobs trying to keep the household together. There was lots of alone time, if you understand my meaning. He started messing with Tracy when she was still in primary school. It must have been hell; having sexual intercourse forced on you by your own father.”
“Oh Lord– so it was more than inappropriate touching.”
“Much more. He was her first. And maybe her last. Understandably, she has a great distrust of men. All men.”
“So what happened?” Irene wanted to know.
“Tracy put up with it for two whole years because she had little choice, but she finally ran away when her dad insisted she take her clothes off for his buddies. She knocked around the streets a bit and ended up in one of those massage places, jerking guys off for twenty bucks a pop. It had to be hard. I mean, I can’t imagine what she went through. She’s a tough little soldier.”
“But she’s okay now? No scars?”
“Nothing visible. But I lose her from time to time. Something will set it off: A comment or a gesture. The way a guy looks at her is all it takes. And she’ll close in on herself. She suddenly goes sullen and introspective; travels somewhere far off in her own head where no one can reach her. It can last a few minutes or a whole day. No way of telling.”
Irene was thinking about the way Tracy had abruptly closed down when Melissa commented on her relationship with Alex. She remember Tracy staring out the window of the Cadillac, caught in the middle distance.
“Look,” Sissy pointed with her wine glass,” here comes den mother.”
As if on cue, Irene watched Alex slip in beside Tracy. Alex encircled the girl’s shoulders with an arm and whispered something. Their heads came together.
“They seem close,” Irene commented.
“Mmm,” Sissy picked another oyster from the ice, “very close. Alex looks out for her and Tracy looks up to Alex as a sort of mentor; the mother she never had, I guess. Makes me wonder if they don’t share some history.”
Irene shuddered. “You mean Alex was abused?”
“I can’t say for sure. It’s just a feeling I get sometimes. You meet Linda yet? She’s like you, she flies.”
“Really. She’s the student, right?”
“Yeah. And they don’t come any smarter. C’mon, I’ll introduce you. Then I have to pee.”
Linda was a very bright girl. You couldn’t miss the fact, even from across the room. Irene could sense the intensity that crackled every time the girl spoke or gestured with her hands. It was there in her face and in the way in which she held her body.
She wore flat-heeled suede boots, leggy jeans and a casual jacket over a deeply scalped tee-shirt that emphasized the long column of her neck. She wore a loose scarf that hung between pesky little breasts and ended down past her waist. She sucked Rolling Rock straight from the bottle.
“I hear you’ve got your wings.” Irene tilted her chin to meet the girl’s eyes.
Linda’s face lit up with a devilish lopsided grin. “I’m after your job. Didn’t you know?” Her eyebrows arched in the center and she laughed, eyes sparkling.
Irene regarded the captivating smile, the pretty dimples and the high prominent cheekbones below crescent-shaped eyes. Linda wasn’t a classic beauty but she was very, very pretty. “You don’t look much older than twenty. I don’t imagine you have enough hours.”
“You’re right, sure. Only got a couple of hundred. School takes all my time back home.”
“Sissy mentioned you were a student.”
“Mmm. Second year MIT. Aeronautical Engineering.”
Irene was taken by surprise. “My God. Aeronautics? You really are into flying. What do you fly?”
“Oh yeah. Our flying club up in Michigan has two Tomahawks and I get up as much as I can. I’d love my own plane but the budget is a little tight right now. But hopefully after I graduate I’ll find a two-seater on the secondhand market.”
“So you’re down here to make money.”
“I receive an engineering scholarship from General Dynamics but it doesn’t cover everything and I was running up my student loans so,” she shrugged, “I took a year off to catch up. The Casino pays well.”
“So I hear.”
“And I have my computers with me. With the help of a couple of video gamers, I’ve developed software for analyzing structural damage sustained in a crash-landing. You’ll have to come around to my room and play with it. I’ve designed an aircraft in the computer and using a joystick, you can actually simulate a crash; fly the thing into the ground in slow motion and watch it crumple. It’s fascinating. All kinds of design faults show up. And you can determine which passengers will suffer the most trauma.”
The girl had the strange ability to take Irene’s breath away. “Damn. I’d love to have a look at that. Let’s plan to get together after the next flight.”
“We could stand some more oysters over here…”
Irene turned at the sound of Ditz’s voice. “Oops,” Irene apologized to Linda, “asleep at the switch.” And turning to Ditz: “On my way.”
Irene picked up the empty tray and slipped out into the garden and was surprised to find Melissa standing by the grill, a cigarette in her hand.
Melissa flicked blond strands from her cheeks and looked disdainfully at the glowing Craven A. “I know it’s a disgusting habit,” she said with resignation. “But it’s the only way I can control my appetite.”
“Well it sure works,” Irene was admiring the girl’s trim waistline. “How did you end up working the Bikini-Bus?”
Melissa studied the end of her cigarette. “Christ. You don’t wanna know. Trust me.” She tossed her smoke and lit another one.
Irene sensed the girl was hurting. “Yeah I do, really,” she said softly.
Melissa turned her back and pulled a tissue from her bag. “I thought I’d finally made it, you know? Finally. After scuffing around in California all those years. That fuckin’ Scirocco.”
Irene was quick to put two and two together: Melissa’s looks, her concerns about her weight combined with living in California: “You were an actress?”
Melissa laughed bitterly. “I was a gullible dolt. Scirocco owns the fuckin’ production studio.”
“I’m sorry?” Irene tried to make sense of the girl. “I don’t understand.”
Melissa turned and studied Irene a moment, maybe assessing if she should trust her new Captain. She exhaled smoke and tossed the second cigarette into the bushes.
“Well?” Irene prodded gently.
Melissa’s shoulders drooped. “I’d been trying to break into acting.” She bite her lower lip. “I was going to be the next Cameron Diaz; at least that’s what I had talked myself into believing. In three years I got one commercial where you only saw my legs strolling in a supermarket, a local TV ad for some used car dealership where I stood in the background with my shirt unbuttoned, holding a sign with $5, 999 written on it, and a couple of crowd scenes in sitcoms.”
Irene chewed her lip. “You must have been disappointed.”
“I was suicidal, is what I was. Anyway our agent called us, my girlfriend and me. Someone had seen our head shots and wanted the two of us to do a screen test. The two of us, together. That should have been warning enough but we wanted to believe this was our big break. Especially when we learned they were going to fly us to a resort island in the Caribbean.”
“Oh no. You said Scirocco owns the production studio.”
“Oh yes. So we fly down here and there are two other girls, a so-called director and two cameramen. And they told us they’d start shooting on the beach the following morning and to wear swimsuits.” Melissa hesitated. “It wasn’t pretty.”
“God. It was porn. They were shooting porn.”