Chapter Eight. Cody rolled on her stomach and opened her paperback to page twenty-one which she had already read several times

Cody rolled on her stomach and opened her paperback to page twenty-one which she had already read several times. The words ran together and she pulled off her Ray Bans, wiping tiny beads of perspiration off the lenses with her T-shirt.

The alleyway was empty save for a mangy cat trying its luck in the garbage outside a cheap pasta joint. Amanda pressed her back flat against the grimy stone wall and inched her way along, one hand straying to the reassuring bulge of her Smith & Wesson.

Cody lifted the book up, shook out the sand, and tried to remember how Amanda came to be stroking a pistol in that dark alley. She backtracked to the beginning of the chapter and skimmed a couple of pages, then dropped the book in disgust. She’d been trying to read it for days. Ever since that evening at Annabel’s, in fact. So much for escapism, she thought miserably and rolled over to stare up at the coconut palms.

The sky was a cloudless big-screen blue, and the ocean pounded the reef with all the involuntary passion of a heartbeat. A slight breeze stirred the drooping palm fronds but fell short of cooling the afternoon air.

A week, she’d been on the island for a week, and she was homesick already. Cody conjured up a vision of her office, terminals banked up around the walls, printers spooling frantically, Suzie Wentworth concealing a cigarette behind the latest BYTE magazine. While she was there she’d hated it, but now that she couldn’t return she missed the security and predictability of it all.

Marooned on a desert island, no ticket home. Why had she burnt her own boats? If she hadn’t kept the money, she could still have paid for her holiday. Then she could just fly home when it was all over, get a nice well-paid job, go to the movies with her friends, cruise the women’s dances. There were worse ways to spend the last years of her twenties. So what if she didn’t have a lover for a while?

She hadn’t spoken to Margaret before she left, Cody remembered with a sharp pang. Maybe she would never speak to her again. And she’d given Janet explicit instructions to tell no one where she was, especially Margaret.

“But what if she wants to talk? ” Janet had dutifully protested. “Sometimes couples make it up and get back together.” Janet was addicted to happy endings and was even willing to overlook Margaret’s shortcomings if it meant Cody would have one.

“She won’t be back, ” Cody had said with grim confidence. This was real life, not the movies.

What was Margaret doing now? she wondered. Jumping out of bed the second her alarm rang, pulling on her tracksuit and heading off for her morning run? Was she living with what’s-his-name already, cooking his dinners, washing his shirts? Cody pushed the sordid fragments of a memory out of her consciousness: Margaret sitting in the car with him after moving her furniture out, reaching across, kissing him…

Rage crowded her, forcing her up off the sand and chasing her along the beach. “Bitch! ” Cody shouted into the breakers. “Lousy, rotten bitch! ” Loud sobs forced their way out and she collapsed onto her knees weeping into the water’s edge.

Cody had no idea how long she stayed there, tears of fury merging with the salt water until there was no distinguishing between them. It was the noise that first penetrated, a dull drumming as regular as the waves, only a different tempo. She looked up, saw nothing, listened again.

It wasn’t the Mercy Mission, as Annabel jokingly referred to her regular flights in Bevan Mitchell’s Dominie. There was no whine, no screaming of displaced gulls as the little plane evicted the local birdlife from its landing strip on the island’s western promontory.

Cody wiped her face and got to her feet. It might have been a boat she had heard. Maybe one of the other guests on the island was out fishing. She hadn’t met anyone else since she’d arrived, but Annabel had mentioned that there were three women staying in another bay south of here. Guests were invited to Villa Luna for evening drinks twice a week, but Cody hadn’t attended the gathering last night.

Forcing herself not to think about the evening she had spent at Annabel’s earlier that week, she returned to her beach towel and page twenty-one of her thriller. She found the mangy cat then stopped reading. There it was again, that soft rapid thrum. She sat up and scanned the beach to either side.

It was a horse, a black horse. Cody lowered her book. Annabel. She could vaguely remember her mentioning the animal, and she wondered how it had got to the island in the first place. Horse and rider were approaching at a canter. With a frown, Cody gathered her belongings.

She didn’t want to see Annabel today. Recalling their last encounter made her cringe. She remembered apologizing over and over, staggering along the jungle track with Annabel’s stoic assistance, then rudely pushing her away when she offered to help her undress for bed. The next morning she had heard a knock at her door and, knowing it was Annabel, had ignored it.

She was behaving badly, Cody realized. There was no need for her to avoid Annabel. They were both adults. They could talk this through like mature women. Besides, there was nothing to talk about. After all, nothing had happened. Cody could apologize for getting drunk and spoiling the evening, and Annabel…

Cody’s gaze returned to the rider. If Cody hadn’t stopped them, they would have made love. A one-night stand. Was that what Annabel wanted? A good time—sun, surf and sex?

What was wrong with that? Cody reasoned. Since when had she joined the Moral Majority anyway? With a defiant shrug she stuffed her towel and paperback into her bag and dusted the sand off her arms and legs. She would talk to Annabel, but not right now. Dragging her feet a little, she retreated into the jungle beyond the palm trees.

Annabel dug her heels into Kahlo and felt the mare respond instantly. In the distance she caught a glimpse of a dark head and something colorful, a towel perhaps. Cody. Part of her wanted to rush after her, part of her wanted to pretend she wasn’t there. Pulling back on the reins, she slowed the mare to a trot and watched Cody disappear.

She hadn’t stopped kicking herself since that night. What on earth had gotten into her, plying the woman with champagne, assuming they would go to bed, as though having sex was no more significant than coffee after dinner. Not content with that, she had squeezed her for the details of her breakup when she had barely processed them herself. No wonder Cody was avoiding her like the plague.

Annabel felt butterflies invade her stomach as visions of her dark-haired neighbor flooded her mind. There was an unconscious sensuality about her Annabel found profoundly alluring. She seemed very straightforward and natural, devoid of the weary cynicism Annabel encountered in most women she met. It was a cultural difference, she supposed. Cody possessed a coltish charm and independent spirit Annabel associated with farm girls and small town high schoolers. She was frank, funny, and perceptive. Then there was her body.

Annabel could not remember the last time she had wanted a woman so badly. It seemed like years. She had almost forgotten what plain, old-fashioned lust felt like. Since she had started in commodities trading it was as though nothing could compete with the adrenalin highs of her job. She had moved to the trading floor after her split with Clare, and she had sworn then that it was the last time she would get ‘involved.’

In retrospect, their relationship had been doomed from the start. Clare, the out lesbian, the political activist; Annabel, the privileged only child. They fought as passionately as they loved and made love. They had talked around their differences for three years until what was unsaid became louder than words.

Annabel could never forget the leaving, holding each other and crying for what they would both be losing. Neither of them had been capable of articulating their feelings. Words had become traps, weapons, and could be trusted no longer. They had tried couples counseling, but Clare considered therapy a middle-class soft option and Annabel blamed their subsequent breakup on her unwillingness to participate.

They still wrote. Three times a year—on each other’s birthdays and at Christmas. Since Clare, there had been other women, of course, but over the past year Annabel had found herself less and less interested. Not long before Aunt Annie died it had even reached the stage where she began to wonder if she was going straight.

It was on the island that she had started to have some understanding of how soul-destroying her job was, how empty her life. She could finally admit she was suffering physical withdrawal from the adrenalin highs her body had grown accustomed to—the impossible hours, the alcohol, the caffeine.

Up ’til now Annabel hadn’t put the pieces together. She hadn’t wanted to, she supposed. But here, listening to the sea and breathing in fresh untainted air, she had started to think about her gradual weight loss, the periods missed, her six-cups-a-day coffee habit, her increasing social isolation, and the exhaustion that knocked her sideways an hour after she finished work every night.

Why hadn’t she seen it before? Some of her friends had, and Annabel recalled her hostile reactions with embarrassed remorse. She hadn’t been ready to hear about it back then.

Guiding Kahlo into the jungle, she located the route to Hibiscus Villa, paused, then reined the mare in the opposite direction. She wanted to see Cody. But it could wait.