Out Island fantasy
Chapter 55: Fourth intermezzo —
From my Nassau notebook:Yesterday we flew with Hollis and his wife aboard an old Bahamas Airways DC-3 to Andros Island, largest of the Out Islands. We took turkey sandwiches and Cokes in a soft-sided cooler. I took my shotgun in its factory carton and leaned it against the dogged-back door on the firewall behind the flight deck. Unthinkable in the United States these hijack-crazed days…
We went between Boxing Day of the last Christmas of the ’60s and the new year ushering in a new decade. We had been in Nassau since October when my Bahamian work permit finally was approved. It was a happy Christmas facing a bright new decade full of promise. I was writing again, for real. Had an actual literary agent in Manhattan. Already had short stories in the mail.
There was an English stewardess on the flight, trim and curvy with sleek brown hair in a bun. I thought she was wasted for the short hop. Maybe she had been demoted for sitting on a BOAC pilot’s lap; there had been news stories about something like that.
The Andros airport was smaller than the Waycross, Ga. Greyhound depot. No tower, just a short-wave radiotelephone. An islander drove out from the harbor town to receive the flight and used a lone baggage trolley to move luggage to waiting resort vehicles. Hollis went to see about arranging a hire car. The wives talked. I sat to write in my log.
What flowed out of the ballpoint was completely unexpected, my first attempt at sexual fantasy.
The fire was flickering through the trees, and her face was very close to mine now. We lay together in the back of her old VW bus — she called it a lorry — with hay all over the floor like somebody had a stable. Hay makes me itch, I said. Her face had that look, that open, slack-lipped look. Bastard, don’t lose my panties in the hay she said, and kissed me hard, holding on around my neck and squirming her hips up to give me access. I got them down and off her ankles.
What are you doing with them, she said.
I put ’em in my pocket.
In my mind’s eye it was the svelte stewardess. The words flowed as if dictated. It was a singular composition in my checkered writing career. Her hands returned to my opened fly, pushing impatiently until there was room. I felt, dimly, the harshness of strands of straw pressed in her palms. Then I hitched the uniform skirt over her hips and moved over her and into her in one smooth gesture, like sheathing a machete. Cutlass I remembered; in the Bahamas we call them cutlasses.
Steel band music tinkled in the night off near the bonfire, and people were laughing and chattering happily. Her arms went back around my neck and her breath was hot and wet in my ear.
Oh God you feel good, she said, in that plummy English accent, and did something that squeezed me deep inside, her knees coming up into my short ribs. I moved a little and my knees slipped on the straw in the bed of the truck. I lost some ground and had to hunch forward in small little jerks to re-establish full contact. She chuckled and caught her breath at the same time and moved both hands to my rump to hold me in her and just like that we were into it, slow and deep and strong and tight.
I have read that entry from time to time over the half-century since with a certain bemusement the stewardess inspired such a full-blown fantasy. The constant undertone of island sexuality must have been getting to me. The damn story just flowed.
She threw her head back and I could see her in the reflected firelight and she was breathing as hard as I was and my heart was trying to kick out of my ribs, and she started saying now, now, now, over and over again. I didn’t think so. But she was moving under me, clamped to me and bucking, we were sliding sideways on the straw, and just like that I realized she was right and went off so fast it startled me and I almost yelled.
Then I hung on while the aftershocks piled through me into her and were magnified by hers back into me until I didn’t see how she could hold me in, but she did.
When I finally decided to commit the notes to type, I sternly resisted the urge to edit, to smooth, to improve. That long-ago spasm of creativity was too pure to adulterate.
Then the long slow glide and I could hear the music again over my heartbeat as I eased down on her and she dug her fingers deep in my rump and murmured M’m, M’m, M’m in my ear, like a Honda motorbike at idle. Sweat dripped off my face into her eyes and she blinked, then smiled and reached up left-handed to stroke my forehead. Wow, I said.
Uh-huhhh, she said, still smiling. Then we both tensed. I could hear someone crunching along the crushed shells in the parking lot. I rolled to one hip, so she could straighten her legs, and tugged her skirt down. By the time whoever it was walked by, I had her head cradled in my shoulder and her stewardess jacket spread over her legs and my butt. Whoever it was didn’t even look in. He paused further on and we heard a steady stream as he made water in the shrubbery and then crunched back to the fire. For some reason she found that funny…
The detail was precise as if I lived it. I saw the stewardess. I saw an abandoned VW bus in the parking lot. Everything else was pure imagination.
She stifled her giggles against my shoulder until he was gone. Then I put a cupped hand under her chin and kissed her.
I’m Muriel, she said. Fly me.
Yes ma’am, I said. Clear around the world.
She pushed at me. Don’t be vulgar!
Me?
Yes you, you big lug. Not so soon anyway. She patted me on the cheek. Let’s get ourselves sorted and go find something to drink, h’mm?
Okay, I said. You want your panties then.
Silly! I’d just gum them up now. You can give them back at the hotel. She must have seen the crestfallen look on my face, because she laughed softly and said don’t worry, Hon, I’m not through with you yet…
End of the entry. Hollis showed up with a local citizen willing to drive us down the island in his big yellow American pickup. He already had one passenger, a Peoples Liberation Party candidate standing for office in a by-election. My notebook filled with conversations with the politician. I never had occasion to snap my Spanish double-barrel together. I was supposed to write about shooting and fishing for the publishing company, but our guide didn’t know much about where good wild-pigeon shooting was. My warm little Out Island fantasy story just — stopped. The stewardess who inspired it was not on the return flight to Nassau.
