Lights Out by Peter Abrahams Page A

bother to say good night to the dinner guests; as soon as Jack returned to the bar, he just backed out of the fire’s glow into the darkness and started down the beach, shoes in hand.
    The moon was higher and smaller now, but still a massive ball circling close by. It shone on the surf, breaking in orderly lines along the shore like waves of white-horsed cavalry in one of his history textbooks. Eddie came to the fish camp, went by his cabin, paused outside Mandy’s. It was dark and silent. He walked on, taking the path to the road, following it to the tennis court.
    The backboard loomed in the silvery light, making Eddie think for a moment of JFK’s imprisoned brothers, jailed for losing their trials. Dime and Franco. Eddie crossed the court, damp with dew under his bare feet. He found the beginning of the short path, kept going to the shed.
    He looked in. Moonlight flowed through the cobweb window, gleaming on the steel roller. Eddie sniffed the air, smelled red clay. All the other smells were gone.
    Eddie stood there for a moment, thinking about what had happened in that shed, confirming the details to himself. Under the influence of champagne, cognac, the night, its importance grew.
    Eddie went back to the road. He could have turned left; that was the way to the fish camp, to bed. But he wasn’t sleepy. He turned right instead and walked all the way to the flamboyant tree. For some reason—maybe it was simply the brightness ofthe moon—Eddie felt no unease at all about the night, as though he were in a place he knew well. He started up the path to JFK’s herb garden.
    The walk was easier this time, partly because it was cooler, partly because the path seemed wider: no plants brushed his skin, nothing made him itch. Eddie mounted the long rise, came down toward the clearing, singing to himself:
Gonna get some goombay goombay lovin’
Gonna find a goombay goombay girl.
    He couldn’t remember feeling like this, so elevated, so full of his own possibilities. Champagne, cognac, moonlight, banana-shaped tropic isle, Mandy. It was perfect. Then he saw that JFK’s herb garden was gone. Not a stalk remained.
    Something rustled in the bushes. The first pulse of adrenaline went through Eddie. A little form darted from the bushes, scuttled across his bare feet. Not a pig this time—just a crab, but the realization didn’t come in time to block the second pulse. It washed the restlessness out of him. He wondered what crimes had sent Dime and Franco to jail.
    Eddie returned to the fish camp, no longer singing. Both cabins were dark. He entered his. Jack’s bed was empty. Eddie undressed, lay down. A breeze curled through the screen window above his head, soft and smelling of the sea, sleep-inducing as the strongest potion.
    Eddie dreamed of wild pigs swimming on a coral reef. Red bubbles streamed from their mouths. Something unpleasant was about to happen, but it never did. Instead there was a scraping sound, insistent. Eddie awoke, heard fingernails on the screen. He raised his head, saw Mandy’s face, obscure on the other side of the screen. She didn’t say a word. Eddie looked across the room, saw Jack’s still form in the other bed, got up. He went outside, closed the door without making a sound, felt Mandy’s hand in his.
    Then her lips were at his ear. He heard her say, “I couldn’t sleep without you.” So quietly, she might have just mouthed the words.
    Mandy led him into her cabin. He smelled ripe pineapple. Her body was a white glow in the darkness. She pushed him gently on the bed. The sheets were sandy. “So many things I want to do to you,” she said. “I don’t know where to start.”
    She found a place. Soon Eddie stopped having clear thoughts. He entered a sensory world, where surfaces were liquid and the atmosphere was full of breathing. She entered it too. He was sure she did; he could feel her doing it.
    The moon sank behind the trees. In the darkness, almost complete, that followed, the bed