I read the articles I had downloaded on Turks and Caicos Island during the flight. I opted for the audio-version of the articles. Throughout the flight I intermittently dozed off to the automatic android voice reading out the articles.
The territory is geographically contiguous to the Bahamas, both comprising the Lacayan Archipelago but is politically a separate entity... the eight main islands and more than 22 smaller islands... I dozed off steadily between the words.
I was awoken by the booming voice of the pilot over the announcement system. I woke up too late to catch what he said. I looked around me, the other passengers seemed to be at ease so I guessed everything was fine. The elderly woman next to me was sleeping soundly.
The first article had run out. I played the next one, nodding off again.
Providenciales is the most tourist oriented and developed of the Turks and Caicos Islands, boasting many resort hotels and an 18-hole golf course. The Island has recently become popular with retirees from around the world, kindling a boom of residential development. Grace Bay has seen many luxury condos built on its shores...
A woke up again as we were about landing. The elderly woman next to me had also woken up. We had exchanged a friendly greeting as we boarded the plane but she had slept off almost as soon as we were in the air, so we hadn't talked much. We had a little chat now.
"Are you visiting for tourism?" she asked me.
I wasn't sure what to answer. Could I count the wedding as a tourist activity? "I'm here for a friend's wedding," I said. "What about you?"
"I'm here on assignment. I'm a professor of Ecology, I am here to study the habits of the whistling duck. It's an almost extinct species. They're very popular in the waters here," she said enthusiastically.
It felt like listening to another article. "Really? That's very impressive," I said. I was genuinely impressed.
"It's the last work I'll do before I retire," she added.
We said our goodbyes after we landed. We didn't bother to ask for our names. I read another article as I headed to the checkout area.
Tourism in the Turks and Caicos Islands is an industry that generates more than one million tourist arrivals per year and it is the main source of revenue for the country.
Veronica was waiting for me at the gate.
"Ken!" her voice called out to me.
I saw her and rolled my box along the ground as I rushed towards her.
She made a high-pitched excited squeal as we met. "Ken!" she said again, hugging me.
It felt warm hugging Veronica again. I was already convinced that I made the right decision to come.
She wore a white cotton top and jean shorts. Her thick dark hair fell over her back in waves, and in the front it gave a sharp outline to the boundaries of her face. Her facial features stood out; the trimmed eyebrows, her brown eyes, the pointed nose, and the curvy lips. We used to tease her in school that nature had given her a perfect plastic surgery. She was beautiful. I thought her fiancé was lucky.
She offered to take my bag.
"No, don't worry, I got it," I protested.
We argued over it for a while until I yielded and she rolled the box by her side as she led the way to her car.
"We can stop for something to eat on the way," she said as we got into the car.
"No, it's fine, I ate on the plane."
"Airplane food? Urgh..." she said but she took my word for it.
She briefed me about the accommodation arrangements along the way.
"I'm sorry you won't be able to stay with us in the hotel, the place is overcrowded as it is, but I got you something better – my Auntie's cottage on the island. She's currently sick and won't be able to attend the wedding. It's a cozy place. You'll be staying alone, you're the only one I can trust with the place. It's near the beach. It's also near the hall where we'll be having the rehearsal dinner and the wedding."
Just as Veronica said, the cottage was a cozy one. It was built of mahogany in the old colonial style. If it was an old building, it was impossible to tell, the wood had been freshly lacquered. The living room had a shelf of books. It also had a bedroom, a small kitchen, and a bathroom with intact hot water.
"Veronica this place is wonderful, it's more than any hotel room," I said with glee.
"I know right? Frankly I'm jealous," Veronica said. "I have a few errands to run in town. Why don't you get settled in? There's a phone in the living room, you can call to have food delivered, all on me. The numbers are there."
I went through the place after Veronica left. The kitchen had a few utensils; kettles and pans. It even had some intact coffee, tea and honey. I was pleased.
The books on the shelf were mostly on history and self-help. I opened a book on the history of the Turks and Caicos Islands. I closed it almost immediately. I had read enough on the plane.
Veronica picked me up to have dinner with two of her other friends, Christine and Sally. I recognized both of them from Veronica's Instagram posts.
Sally was even taller in person. She was as thin as she was tall. So thin I wondered if she was malnourished, her body mass index couldn't have been up to eighteen. She nevertheless had a beautiful face to go with her body.
Christine was closer to my height, which made it natural for me to relate more easily with her.
"So you're the reason why I'm not the chief bride's maid," Christine teased as Veronica introduced us.
"You better watch out," Sally added drily.
I had marinated lamb at the restaurant. Veronica and Sally had stir-fried rice. Sally didn't eat with us. She smoked with her champagne. I thought she was unusual.
"Sally spent some time in France. She picked all of their bad habits and since then she thinks she's French," Veronica said as a way of explanation.
This seemed to be a running joke in their circle. Sally scoffed it off while Christine smiled genially.
"So what do you do?" Christine asked me.
"I'm a nurse," I said. I wondered about how much Veronica had told them about me.
"So you clean after sick people?" Sally said disgustedly.
"Sally!" Veronica said.
I took Sally's comment in good humor. "It's okay, it's pretty much what I do. What about you?" I asked Christine.
"I'm an editor at my father's publishing company," she said modestly.
I turned to Sally. Before I could ask my question, she answered me, "oh I don't work." She took a deep drag of her cigarette and seemed to swallow the smoke.
Veronica mentioned that we had gone to school together and the rest of the discussion for the night revolved around our college days and the brief moment when Veronica had worked at the hospital.
"Don't you feel like all that was a waste since you're not a nurse now?" Sally asked in her characteristic manner.
"Not if you keep smoking like that and I have to take care of you," Veronica said.
Sally laughed for the first time that night.
Veronica dropped me off after dinner. Sally and Christine went together.
"Don't mind her if she was a bit... uhm... Much. She's been having a hard time lately," Veronica told me, as a way of explaining Sally's behavior.
"It's okay, I enjoyed her company."
"I'll come pick you up tomorrow."
What for? I wanted to ask but she drove off before I could.
Veronica picked me again the next morning. We first went straight to the shopping mall where Sally and Christine were already waiting for us. They wanted to go clothes shopping. As far as I was concerned, I had bought enough new clothes for the New Year. I tagged along with them as they went through lines of clothes.
The shopping was primarily for Sally and Christine who both wanted to get their dresses for dinner that evening. Veronica seemed in a hurry, she wanted to spend some time at the beach before the rehearsal dinner that evening.
"Common guys, just pick something. You've had weeks to pick a dress," Veronica tried to hurry them on.
Finally they found something they liked and we were able to move on to the beach.
The beach was slightly populated, mostly by young people like us who wanted to lie in the sun, swim, or go kiteboarding in the open water. Veronica rented us some shades and benches. We changed to beach wear and stretched out in the sun after helping each other apply sunscreen. We got ourselves a couple of mojitos and lay there in the shade sipping slowly.
We talked about the upcoming wedding. I expected more enthusiasm from Veronica but she seemed to have quite the cynical view about the whole thing.
"You know, Jackson's family wanted me to sign a prenup. I told them there was not a chance in hell. What kind of marriage did they think this was? My family has money too, who cares about how much Jackson has? His family have such a high idea of themselves, they think everyone's out for their money," Veronica said.
"I think you should have signed it, to protect yourself. The way Jackson blows money about, who knows how long that'll last, even if his father shits gold," Sally said in her frank fashion.
Her many radical ideas didn't seem to have the same scandalizing effect it had on me on the others.
"No, I can't do it. It's like planning for my marriage to fail before it even began, I'm not going in with the idea that it will fail so badly that Jackson and I would fight for property."
"Well good for you," Sally said sarcastically.
"I still can't believe you and Jackson are getting married. I remember when you started seeing each other, I didn't think you'd last three months, you've proved me wrong. Look at you now. It kind of gives me hope with Kevin," Christine said emotionally. Kevin was Christine's boyfriend.
Veronica smiled at her gratefully. Then she asked me, "Are you seeing anybody?"
I thought of the doctor I had dated briefly last year. I had thought our relationship had potential but he had suddenly transferred to another state and that ended it. "Not currently," I said.
"I can introduce you to some of Jackson's friends if you're interested," Veronica offered.
"Urghh, I hate most of them, they remind me of college frat boys," Sally said. It did not take much to incite her disgust.
"Don't listen to her, she hates everything," Veronica said.
"How do you feel though, your wedding is tomorrow, do you have any of the wedding jitters?" Christine asked.
"Not really, I'm looking forward to it. Jackson makes me really happy and I think we could have a nice life together." After a short pause she added, "as long as his family stays out of it."
Around this time, a group of four young handsome men approached us. They had the classic tourist looks; beach shorts and an exposed chest. They were in shape and they obviously knew it. They invited us to join them in the water.
"It'd be awfully lonely swimming out there by ourselves," the one who seemed to be their leader said, trying to sound like a seductive actor.
He spoke primarily to Veronica who was nearest to him and who probably gave off the aura of being our leader.
"No, I don't feel like swimming today, thanks for inviting me though," Veronica said gracefully. Then turning to us, she said, "you can join them if you want to, I can just stay here under the shade."
"I don't feel like swimming either," Sally said, she looked nauseated all of a sudden.
Christine and I agreed after them.
"Alright ladies," the young man said and they moved on to the next group of girls.
"You did that because of Jackson didn't you?" Sally said after the guys were out of earshot.
"Yeah, kind of," Veronica said. "You guys could have gone if you wanted, I hope you didn't say no because of me."
"Not at all," Christine said.
I wasn't particularly interested in swimming that day, or ever. I had probably been in water less than five times my entire life, a secret I kept close.
"I wonder why you do that when God knows what the guys will be up to in the bachelor's party tonight. I still don't understand why there's no bachelorette party," Sally said.
"I'm just no up for a party. Besides I have all my friends here, aren't we having a nice enough time?"
"You know, once you get married, we won't be able to stay friends anymore."
"Why not?" Veronica said belligerently.
"That's just how it is," Sally said. "Take what just happened as an example. What if we wanted to go with those guys? And what if we were together and the rest of us wanted to suddenly run wild? You'd slow us down, kill our vibes. Married women can't party all night or elope with strangers."
I wondered why Sally was saying those things now and why no one tried to stop her. Perhaps this was how she always talked and the others were simply used to it.
"Hey, so do you remember that time when…" Christine said and that took our discussion in another direction. And so they exchanged stories of their most salacious drunken sexual adventures. But it was Veronica, the bride to be, who told the most unbelievable story.
"It was around the early start of my relationship with Jackson, we had broken up for the first time and I was trying to show him what he was missing. So I went to this party where I knew he'd be. I was so drunk. I took the first guy that came to me and started grinding him like I had never done with anyone before. I don't think I could repeat it again if I tried. At the end of the night, I go home with this stranger. And we're in his apartment and he's touching me all over. I'm planning to do some very nasty things with him. Then all of a sudden Jackson bursts in and starts swinging punches at the poor guy. I'm stunned, I don't know what to do. My pants are halfway down, my hair is a mess. When I eventually get it together, I just keep begging Jackson: stop, don't hit him. Eventually the neighbors called the police and they broke off the whole thing. Jackson spent the night in jail but by the time he came out, his father had settled the whole thing with money. Jackson was so sober when he came out and we started seeing each other again. We broke up a number of times after then but I was always sure he'd come back and I never had the mind to do anything like that again."
Veronica's story had taken a sinister turn at the end and of course it was Sally who had something to say. "Weren't you scared seeing him like that? Didn't you fear that he'll turn on you like that one day?"
Veronica smiled confidently. "That's the thing, I wasn't scared. If anything, at that moment I was sure that Jackson would never do anything that hurt me physically."
"You're a very strange person," Sally said.
Christine turned the conversation to me. "What about you Keni? Tell us about your own adventures."
I listened to them quietly. My only experience that compared to their wild stories was the one time I had made out with a doctor at the hospital while I was still an intern nurse. Suddenly I felt like the virgin nerd at a high school party.
"My work doesn't really give me time for all that," I said coolly.
"You should quit that job of yours you know," Sally said in characteristic fashion.
It was easy for her to say, I thought. She probably didn't have to work the rest of her life and no matter how rotten she became, she could always find someone to settle for. And besides, I was very passionate about my job.
Sally decided that she wanted to swim after all. Veronica and Christine thought it was a good idea and agreed to join her. I wanted to remain lying on the beach. While they were out swimming, my mind somehow went back to the old professor I had met on the plane and her study of the endangered whistling duck. I wondered how she was faring with her studies. And then I thought back to Baltimore, the hospital, the head nurse, and some of my patients. I didn't think it was possible to miss them here, on the beach of one of the most luxurious islands on the planet. I smiled at the irony of it as I closed my eyes for a short nap.