They say be careful what you wish for, but they don’t know beef from bull foot. I jump out of the helicopter, which I rode over from Virgin Gorda for the sole purpose of making an entrance. Collin, my man, hustles forward. I clutch my floppy hat with one hand and take Collin’s fingers with the other as I concentrate on how to look graceful in a forty-mile-per-hour wind that creates a pelletized sand spout. On one side of us is crystal blue Caribbean Sea. On the other coconut palms bend nearly double behind a tiki hut with twinkling red and green Christmas lights. My eyes continue down the beach across the roofline of an enormous house and land on a thatched-roof pavilion with what looks like heavily loaded buffet tables.
All of this for the wrap party for my first album. Bombshell—that’s the name of the album—is memorialized on a giant banner across the top of the tiki hut: AVA BUTLER’S EXPLOSIVE DEBUT ALBUM, BOMBSHELL, FROM VENUS RECORDS. DECEMBER 15, EVERYWHERE. There’s a picture from the album artwork incorporated into the banner. In it, I’m a road-weary skank with eye makeup streaked down my cheeks and a ripped green lace top, but I’d do me.
I escape the rotor wash across the little landing pad that looks like a golf green, without falling face-first, and join the waiting crowd. Hugs from Drake Henson, the owner of Venus Records and the helicopter, his staff, and my family and friends, whom Drake chartered early to Virgin Gorda and ferried to Dekker Cay, his private island. There needs to be an audience to cheer my arrival, he says.
A Venus underling presses a hollowed coconut into my palm. I sip from the straw. Orange juice, Coco Lopez, pineapple juice, rum, and nutmeg. Painkiller, my favorite.
“I’m Greg, and I’ll be taking care of you,” the very young man says. His accent is British, and his nose is slathered in zinc oxide. A long-sleeved sun shirt protects his upper body, his swimming trunks end at his knobby knees, and above his sweaty hairline a Santa cap perches askew. It’s barely past Thanksgiving, but it’s all about the People.com optics at this soiree.
“Thank you, meh son,” I say. “No ice, please.” Normally, I speak in a calypso accent and dialect naturally around other locals, and I “Yank” in a continental accent with nonlocals. But Venus is banking heavily on the fact that I’m from the US Virgin Island of St. Marcos. I’m under strict instructions from Venus to emphasize a C-word, my Caribbean roots—instead of my years in the States to attend NYU, where I studied theater and the classics and later pursued a musical theater career—and downplay another C-word, my Caucasian father. So calypso it is, even though in my head I’m always the girl my Bahamian mother and Canadian father raised me to be: primed for success spouting the Queen’s English, so to speak.
“Over here, Ava,” a photographer calls out.
I take a step in the direction she points. Collin starts to follow, but she waves him off.
“Just Ava,” she says.
Collin pulls out his new phone and snaps a picture of the photographer, then disappears into the crowd before I can protest. I’m also under strict instructions to downplay the C-word boyfriend in favor of my Goddess of the Morning After image, which Collin, who’s a native of Texas, refers to sweetly as “rode hard and put up wet.” I can’t argue with his description. I suck in my gut and hold up my best assets, straining out of the green string-bikini top with gold metallic threads that my stylist, Chen, picked out for me this morning. I fight an urge to cover my left breast with my hand, as if the camera can see what the eye cannot: an afterimage from the radiation treatments that ended only a few months ago and that have me in remission from breast cancer. Oh, and that’s the fourth C-word in my instructions. I’m supposed to keep the cancer treatment under wraps.
Flashes shock my eyes, and I’m glad for my oversized sunglasses. The onslaught is intense but over quickly, and I escape back to my awaiting entourage of island friends and family and New York music industry colleagues. Farther up the beach toward Drake’s mansion, his other guests congregate. Venus recording artists and studio musicians. Artists Drake is recruiting. Drake’s famous industry buddies. Journalists and reviewers. Financiers. Publicists, promotors, and executives.
“Girl, you a rock star, for real.” McKenna slurps her cranberry juice and lime noisily through a tiny cocktail straw, leaving only ice behind. The noise stops. Thanks be to Jah, I think, hoping my devoutly Catholic mommy can’t read my mind.
“Please.” I slide my sunglasses down just enough to give her the slant-eye. Then I down my drink. Another appears in my hand, sans ice, as if by magic, so fast I can’t say thank you to the deliverer, who I assume is Greg, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
A large strong hand squeezes my bana. I hope it’s Collin and not Kenny, my lecherous producer who doesn’t let long odds or Collin’s biceps keep him from copping a feel. But as I inhale, I know the hand belongs to Collin. His scent is unmistakable to me, and I imagine for the rest of my life I’ll smell sun, sex, and musk when I climax, whether Collin’s there or not.
I look around me at my family and friends mixing with the Who’s Who of the New York music scene. My tunes jam out of giant speakers on either end of the white sand beach, outdoor surround sound competing with the wind and water. It’s idyllic out here, notwithstanding the ten-foot security chain-link fences topped with a cyclone of barbed wire separating paradise from the rest of the island.
The breeze lifts my silk sarong, and I swat it down. The hand on my bana catches mine, and I lace my fingers through Collin’s. He’s in tropical board shorts circa 2000 that ride below his six-pack, and I swivel into him, savoring my Painkiller buzz, his warm skin, and giddy, heady success. I splay the dark chocolate fingers of my other hand on his toasted-coconut pec, and the result is delicious. The industry’s beautiful people with their pasty skin and toss-after-wearing designer swimwear are almost comical next to him, a police officer with an annual paycheck less than their monthly burns. I glance to my right and catch a perky ponytailed pop princess eyeing him. I let go of Collin’s chest long enough to slide a finger across my throat. She puts both hands up in front of her and takes a step back. Damn straight. I return my hand to its happy place. My hip bumps something enticingly hard, but I realize it’s only his fancy new phone.
The sound of a man clearing his throat pulls me back from the brink of violence. In his cultured voice, Drake says, “How about a tour of the property, Ava?”
I turn to the Brit with the scraggly grayish-blond hair. I’m not going to lie. I may be Drake’s protégé, but it’s gone further than that. He hit on me at first, which was the cause of Shari—the soon-to-be fourth ex-Mrs. Henson—leaving him, notwithstanding that I rejected his advances. Word is she is furious that she hadn’t been pregnant yet and wants to renew her attempts before they formalize a divorce. I guess she thinks she needs child support on top of what will be a sizeable alimony. Drake famously has no children despite the parade of women through his life. Makes one think there’s little chance Shari will succeed. But to me, Drake is just a friend, although I know he doesn’t do launch parties on Dekker Cay for just anyone. It’s caused some tension between Collin and me. Between the other Venus artists and employees and me. “Obsessed” is a word I hear tossed about, but he combats that by telling people I’m like a daughter to him. Which reminds me of the scene in Vacation where Clark Griswold’s niece Vicki brags that her daddy says she French-kisses best. Urp.
“We love one. Give us a minute?” I’m not one hundred percent sure he intends for me to bring Collin, but I don’t care, and I don’t let go of my boyfriend’s hand. I turn to my friends and family and say, “You okay without us?”
“We irie,” Rashidi assures me, using the island word for “all good,” and flashing his toothpaste-commercial smile. He’s my ex-lover and a woman magnet with his ebony skin, lean body, and long dreadlocks, who’s soon to move to Texas. I’ll miss him.
“One Love,” I reply.
“As long as he takes his damn camera phone with him,” Kenny growls.
Collin grins. “I’m documenting my woman for posterity.”
Everyone else urges Collin and me on with good humor. Moments like this would be awkward without my people understanding I’m doing my best to navigate my old world and my new one. I kiss my daughter Ginger’s sweaty cheek.
“I just go for a water,” McKenna says, pronouncing it “WAH-tuh” and adding under her breath, “When what I really want a piña colada.” Diabetes runs rampant in her family, and our mutual doctor and friend, Easy, is on her case about sugar and bad carbs.
“I reach back soon,” I say, waving. Then I follow Drake, pulling Collin along behind me. I bump smack into the solid chest of Erick Smythe, head of security for Venus Enterprises.
“I believe Mr. Henson planned on just you.” Erick quirks an eyebrow at his boss, his face expressionless and his eyes masked by reflective wraparound sunglasses. Erick played goalie for Manchester United back in the day, before, as he tells it, he blew out his knee, lost his millions in a “dodgy” investment scheme, and graduated from university with a first in criminology and a master’s in sports science.
Drake lifts his straw hat, pushing back curly forelocks. He readjusts the hat firmly on his head, and seems to notice Collin for the first time. He trains his eyes on him, then looks at Erick.
The three men are a contrast. Pasty Drake in his khaki skinny jean shorts and a woven hemp shirt unbuttoned down the front to the toned but meager chest of an endurance eventer, ebony Erick a foot taller with navy shorts, a gun bulge at his hip, and a collared white golf shirt featuring the Venus Enterprises logo on the breast pocket, and sunbaked, blond, buff, and nearly naked Collin (hey, he’s at a beach party, not working) splitting the height difference.
“Well now, hmm . . . I was thinking just you, Ava darling.”
No way am I going in that house with Drake without a chaperone now. “No Collin, no Ava,” I say, smiling.
“Uh, um . . .” Drake stutters like a chainsaw.
I jump into the gap before Collin gets his dander up. “Collin won’t make no trouble, will you, baby?”
“No promises.” His face is a rock.
I punch his arm. “He just playing.”
“Quite. Well, Collin, you’ll enjoy seeing how the other half lives, then.” Drake regains his composure and says, “Let’s get on with it, shall we?”
I take a moment to smirk at Erick. He leads Collin and me off, stoic. We all follow Drake. Collin pulls out his phone and starts snapping shots again. The grounds, me, the exterior of the house, me. I make a lewd gesture for his camera, and the tips of his lips curve up behind the rectangle in front of his face.
“I hope you make yourself at home in my little Rat and Mouse. You’re welcome anytime,” Drake says.
He likes to think he’s Cockney—akin to an American adopting street slang, I guess—and his terminology throws me occasionally, but this one I know: house.
He’s walking in huarache-type sandals that scoop up sand with every step. He appears oblivious. The man is a serial adventurer who has scaled the Seven Summits, including a well-publicized ascent of Mount Everest where he rescued a fellow trekker who had fallen into a crevasse and broken an ankle. Drake towed the man down the mountain on a climbing line. But you’d never imagine such physical prowess by watching him in his everyday life. Bumbling is the word that comes to mind.
“It beautiful. Thank you.” I bump Collin with my hip.
Collin whispers in my ear. “Uh-uh. Yours is the only ass I’ll kiss around here.”
In front of us Erick coughs.
Drake shortcuts across the back patio. Guests crowd under umbrellaed tables around an elevated swimming pool. Its endless horizon splashes water down a waterfall backed with the local black volcanic rock. Drake leads us to an exterior hallway partially obscured by bougainvillea bushes. The hallway takes us to a recessed glass door with a security panel. Erick scans the area behind us, I guess making sure no one is following, as Drake punches a code and turns his ear toward a camera mounted above the door. I realize Collin, beside me, with minimal movement, is videoing or photographing Drake.
He mouths “Shh” at me.
“Ear scan?” I whisper to Collin. “I never hear of such a thing. Eyes, yes. Ear, no.”
“Probably means Drake has cataracts or something. Eye disease can affect retinal scans.”
“What happen to fingerprints?”
“I guess he’s afraid someone will cut his finger off to get in.” Collin winks.
“Same thing can happen to an ear.”
He tweaks mine.
There’s a click and the door pops open a few inches. Drake pulls it open the rest of the way and we enter silently.
After we cluster in the wide hallway, Drake clears his throat again. “The private residence is completely separate from the social and guest areas. The design is a remodel based on Erick’s suggestions. There are a lot of psychos out there, unfortunately.”
Heels click, coming toward us from somewhere unseen. Drake’s secretary, Pammie Hollins, appears from a doorway, and Collin captures her in his lens. I glare at him and he grins. Long, stylish dreads swing, kissing the tops of her spaghetti-strapped shoulders. She has lush red lips and almond-shaped eyes with enough lashes for her, me, and a women’s basketball team.
Her voice lilts, unmistakably British Virgin Islands to my experienced ear. “Sir, Mrs. Henson on the phone for you.”
“Which Mrs. Henson?”
“Number four, sir.” Somehow she keeps a straight face.
I feel my own screw up in an effort not to laugh. Collin doesn’t try as hard as me.
“I’ll have to call her back.”
“Shari not gonna like that.” Pammie shakes her head.
“While you’re here, can I get an iced green tea?” It’s a drink he’s rarely without, sometimes with, sometimes without gin.
“Special?”
“Of course.”
She disappears back through the doorway without confirming his order or either of them offering the rest of us anything.
Drake’s eyes follow her. “I’d be utterly lost without that woman. Been with me since I bought this place.”
I can’t stop myself. “The fourth Mrs. Henson?”
“God, no. Pammie.”
Erick’s voice rumbles. “The fourth Mrs. Henson is the reason for twenty-five percent of our security procedures. The first Mrs. Henson is the reason for the other seventy-five.”
“Come now, Erick. Surely my other enemies deserve some credit.”
“True. At any given time, someone is intent upon stealing the Venus fortune, inside the courts of law or out.”
Drake beams at me. “You’ll meet one of them later. Donovan Fagan, fancies himself as a model. His father and I are sideways in a property development deal, and we’re trying to placate him with some good photos of his son with you, our rising star.”
Real estate. I ponder that for a moment, putting aside for now what Drake said about a model and photos. It’s easy to forget that Venus is a multinational business conglomerate, and not just a record company.
We proceed into the interior of the residence, first passing an open doorway to Pammie’s office, a square space with one small window looking out onto the woody backside of a tall stand of bougainvillea. She’s working the phone and her laptop, and I look away quickly.
The residence, we soon see, is like a contemporary Caribbean museum: sculptures, paintings, masks, baskets, sea artifacts, mounted trophy fish, pottery, derringers, a cutlass, a bayonet, and miniatures of ships. Henson could charge admission. I want to slow down to soak it all in, but Drake keeps moving. Besides, Collin’s capturing it all, although I can’t believe Erick hasn’t confiscated his phone yet.
Drake takes us past some kind of boardroom and through his sumptuous, enormous office, and I can’t help but notice a picture of him with Shari. Happier times?
Drake gestures at his mahogany desk. “All the furniture in the compound was custom-built on-island. That was cheaper than having it shipped in, and more authentic. We let a lot of the locals stay on after I bought Dekker, and hired them to work for us here, and abroad at Venus, too. You’d think with all that, I’d get a little more love from them. Instead they call this place Dekker Colony and me Lord Henson, like they’re some kind of feudal serfs.”
This doesn’t surprise me, as a native of the US Virgin Islands. “Bahn-hyah” (born-here) status is all-important. Outsiders are met with suspicion, if not outright hostility, and throwing business at us feels a lot like patronization and servitude at best. On St. Marcos, they call arrangements like Drake’s the “new plantation.”
Erick guffaws. “You’re guilty of disruption of local commerce.”
“Local commerce?” Collin asks. “I haven’t seen much besides people working here.”
“Liming. Goat herding. Drug running. And Drake didn’t endear himself when he called the Feds after seeing the delivery boats coming and going at night.”
Collin grunts.
I make a noncommittal noise—surely the Dekker locals aren’t as bad as Drake and Erick make them out to be—and trail my hand across an onyx and ivory chess board.
“You break it, you buy it,” Collin whispers.
Another cough from Erick.
I’m examining a yellowed map of the British Virgin Islands, complete with hand-drawn symbols and scribbled notes, when Drake stops at a bookshelf. He holds a finger to his lips. “Shh. I’m going to show you something special.”
Erick steps forward and crosses his arms. “Sir?”
Drake claps him on the shoulder. “Erick, my good man, Ava is like family to me.”
“And him?”
Collin’s abs tighten visibly as he bristles.
Drake shrugs. “A fellow officer of the law, Erick.”
I decide it is impolitic to point out to Drake that Erick is not one.
Erick sighs and backs away, shaking his head. His phone rings, and he answers it, turning away to muffle his voice. Drake puts his hand on the spine of a book and peels it out of the lineup. The shelf swings sideways to the left, revealing a steel-reinforced door and another security panel. Drake repeats the passcode and ear scan, and is then prompted through a voice-recognition sequence. Again, I notice Collin messing with his phone, and I see this time he’s videoing Drake. When Drake steps back from the panel, Collin presses stop. He notices me noticing him and winks at me.
Erick’s call ends and he turns back to us.
“Overkill much?” Collin whispers.
This time, Erick doesn’t cough, but with the heat emanating from his gaze, there’s no mistaking he’s pissed.
The door unlatches and Drake ushers us in. “Welcome to my sanctum sanctorum.”
“Otherwise known as a panic room,” Collin says.
Erick shoots him a look like a shiv. “No more pictures.” He adds something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like “Wanker.”
Collin salutes with a limp wrist.
“Wow,” I breathe.
“Wow” doesn’t do it justice, though. We’ve stepped into Drake’s truly private residence, complete with the custom furniture, priceless artwork, and thick concrete-and-steel walls, but minus any windows. It’s bigger than my duplex back on St. Marcos, both sides put together. Drake leads us through two bedrooms and two baths. The master suite has a killer bathroom with a sauna, steam room, and hot tub. There’s a full kitchen. I walk through it and open a pantry stocked with smoked oysters, caviar, and tins of crab and lobster.
“I’m no doomsdayer, but I am something of a survivalist,” Drake says, his shoulders high and back.
Collin makes a noise like a drowning cat, then clears his throat. I can’t disagree with his reaction. Not your everyday working man’s idea of survival staples.
Drake doesn’t register our reactions, though. He’s busy rolling up the corner of an exquisite Persian rug in the living room. Erick groans. Drake presses a piece of wooden flooring. It pops out, revealing a latch, which he pries up. A trapdoor rises hydraulically, revealing a staircase. Drake claps his hands twice, and a light comes on in the subterranean room.
“The Clapper.” Collin nods at Erick. “Nice touch.”
“Fucking prick,” Erick whispers, but not loud enough for Drake to hear.
Loudly, I say, “A basement in the islands? I ain’t never hear such a thing.” My island patois is thick and genuine in my surprise, and the t drops off the end of my pronunciation of ain’t.
“Yet authentic.” Drake tromps downstairs.
I’m not sure what he means, but we cluster in the center of the cavernous room. Erick draws himself as far to the opposite side from Collin as he can get. Drake pulls a string and the room floods with light. I gasp. Gold bricks are stacked floor to ceiling in row after row along the walls. It’s dizzifying.
“Those Irish bastards in New York can’t get their hands on it down here,” Drake mutters.
The man is eccentric, but I’ve never imagined anything to this extent. We’re surrounded by millions of dollars in gold. Maybe billions.
“Where you stash the uncut diamonds and Ark of the Covenant?” I say it like a joke, but I’m serious.
“Holy shit,” Collin says. He scratches at a gold brick. “These are real. Can I get a picture?”
Drake preens, holding out an arm for me. Collin snaps a photo with his phone.
“Can I get you in profile?” Collin asks.
I lift a brick, and it’s so heavy I nearly fall over. “Lord, how much they weigh?”
“About twelve and a half kilograms,” Drake replies.
Collin’s lips move as he calculates. “More than twenty-seven pounds. A kilogram—that’s supposed to be the weight of the king’s balls, isn’t it?”
“Used to be the French president’s balls, but in World War Two they discovered he didn’t have any, so they reverted to the weight of a bottle of red wine, as French people have one on their person at all times,” Drake says, his voice droll.
We all laugh, and I position myself beside Drake for the picture. Collin paces, getting the best angles.
“Got it.”
“No social media,” Erick says, his voice a warning.
Collin salutes. “Oh, yes, sir.”
Drake clears his throat. “Legend has it that back in the days when pirates ruled the West Indies, a certain Captain Bonnewell of the Vengeance went to shore with his first mate, Charlie Reed, to bury an enormous treasure in an underground cave near Norman Island. Not too far from here, actually.”
His tale rings a bell from stories I’ve heard throughout my life. Norman Island is famous for its caves, and it’s a huge attraction for treasure hunters because of the pirate lore.
Drake continues as if onstage, his face expressive and his arms sweeping and gesturing. “Not trusting anyone and with the knowledge that Reed had impregnated the captain’s woman, Bonnewell sailed to Dead Chest, an uninhabitable spit nearby, after they were done burying the treasure. There he left Reed to starve and rejoined his crew in Soper’s Hole for a party before they set sail again. Karma being what it is, a British Navy vessel bore down on the Vengeance soon after, and everyone aboard perished, including the captain. But meanwhile, Reed had managed to swim to nearby Peter Island, into Deadman’s Bay. From there, the story varies. Some say Reed lived out his days an independently wealthy man. Others claim he died a bitter man because when he returned for the treasure, the chest was empty. Still others insist he never found the treasure because the captain moved it after marooning him on the spit, and that it’s out there waiting for someone to find it.”
“Treasure Island,” I say.
“Ah, but that was fiction. This just might be true. Who knows?” Drake’s eyes twinkle.
“So, this is like your buried treasure?” Collin asks.
Drake picks up a brick. He curls it a few times like it’s a barbell. “More like an homage. My real treasure is my own top-secret location. The key is in the lee.”
“You mean here?” I say, as I mull over his rhyme. Drake is obtuse, bordering on nonsensical at times.
He sets the gold brick back on its stack. “No. My own lair. Ava will know the name when—”
Erick steps in front of him. “Enough, boss man. Nobody gets that information, or you’ll make it impossible for me to do my job.”
Drake pouts like a child reprimanded in front of older friends. A knock sounds at the top of the stairs. I look up.
Pammie crouches with her knuckles poised above the wood floor, peering down into the vault. “Sir? The Dalai Lama holding for you. And I have your special iced green tea.”
Drake rubs his chin. “I better take this one. Erick, can you come with me, please?”
Erick crosses his arms, balking.
“What, do you think they’re going to walk out with a stack of gold bars under their arms?” Drake says.
Erick shakes his head, but the mogul and his security guard leave the basement. Over his shoulder, Drake says, “Show yourself around the rest of the sanctum. Close up when you leave.”
Collin and I stand alone with gold bars equivalent to the contents of a vault of the US Mint. The door exiting the “sanctum sanctorum” into the main house shuts with a clang, leaving twitchy silence behind.
Collin looks at me, and I look at him. We grin like teenagers. I fist a hand on a cocked hip and unhook my bikini top. It pops open and drops, puddling on the floor. I step out of the bottoms, and they join the top. Collin meets me halfway across the room. He hoists me up, and I wrap my legs around his waist. Three giant steps later, my back crashes into cold, hard gold. Collin pushes me higher until I’m balanced with my thighs on his shoulders, arms spread over the top row of gold, his hands under my bana. He knows how to take me where I want to go, and in seconds I climax, screaming, my voice echoing inside the vault.
“Time for your bidness, baby.” My breath hitches as I sing a few lines of old Soulja Boy’s “Gold Bricks.”
Collin slides me down, down, down. I encircle him with my legs again, and he releases his barely-on bathing suit with a one-handed rip of Velcro and a shimmy of his hips.
“Fuck me,” he says, his voice a growl.
He grasps my buttocks and pulls me down until I slide over him, taking all of him inside of me. Then he thrusts into me, hard, fast, wild, over and over. I cling to him as the stack behind me sways and bricks scrape and grind. Crash. One gold brick topples to the floor.
“Everyone okay in there?” Pammie’s voice calls from upstairs.
I hadn’t heard the door reopen, and I giggle. My voice raspy and a little breathless, I call out to her, “Like a million dollars.”
The door closes again.
Collin bites my shoulder, shuddering and covering my naked breasts with his bare chest. Long seconds pass with nothing but our heavy breathing until he snorts. “Damn brick landed on my toe.”
We collapse half-naked on the floor, our laughter echoing against real buried treasure.
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