Chapter 14

WE HAD ALMOSTfinished our makeshift dinner of curling sandwiches, cheese, and charcuterie from the fast-warming fridge, the shadows were lengthening, the mosquitos were whining, and the sun was beginning to set, flaming, into the peach-colored sea, when Conor brought the subject up again.

“Guys, I think it’s time.”

“Time for what?” It was Santana who spoke. With Dan’s help she had limped down the path from the villa to the cabana, and was looking surprisingly okay, though I kept glancing nervously at her thigh. I don’t know what I was looking for exactly—signs of infection, perhaps, though what that looked like, I couldn’t have said. Now I remembered that she hadn’t been at the discussion earlier.

“Time to… to bury them,” I said, with a glance at Joel, who had his head in his hands. He had barely touched his food.

“But… surely we can’t?” Santana looked puzzled. “Should we leave the bodies for… I don’t know. The police or something?”

“This ain’t a crime scene, woman,” Bayer said angrily. The pain in his shoulder was evidently nagging at his nerves, and he had been snapping and growling at everyone. Even terrified, Bambi-eyed little Zana had been called a stupid cunt when she knocked his bad shoulder accidentally, handing him a sandwich. Conor had said nothing, but I had seen the muscles in his jaw move as he gritted his teeth to stop himself from replying. Now Bayer had been drinking—beer was one of the few liquids we had other than water—and I could see he was spoiling for a fight.

“It’s not a crime scene,” Santana said spiritedly, “but they’re both unnatural deaths and I’m assuming that means they’ll have to be autopsied.”

“For Christ’s sake!” Joel broke out, as if he couldn’t bear to hear it anymore. I thought that for a brief moment this afternoon he had managed almost to forget about what had happened to Romi, kid himself that she was on the boat back with Nico and the others. Now it was coming horribly back to him.

“I’m sorry,” Conor said. There was sympathy in his voice, but also firmness. “And you’re right, Santana, but we can’t just leave the bodies there. That’s not dignified, and more to the point, it’s not safe.”

“What do you mean, it is not safe?” It was Angel who asked, looking up from where she was lying, stretched out on the cabana banquette. In the setting sun, she looked unbelievably and incongruously beautiful, her long bronzed limbs glinting in the deepening red-gold rays, and if you looked away from Santana’s leg and Bayer’s arm, you could almost believe this scene was a still from a holiday brochure. Tropical Paradise. Happy ever after.

“I mean, we don’t want to attract predators or disease.”

Joel got up and left the table. I could see him pacing about at the far end of the cabana. Conor lowered his voice and spoke to the rest of us, trying to keep quiet enough that Joel wouldn’t hear what he was saying.

“Between the insects, the birds, and the heat, if the boat doesn’t come soon, there won’t be much left of either of them to autopsy, and this island isn’t big enough for us to ignore a rotting corpse.” Angel made a grossed-out face, but Conor ignored her and carried on. “They’ll both be in a better state if we bury them somewhere now, with dignity. We can show the authorities where they are when they find us, if it comes to that point.”

“I think Conor’s right,” I spoke up reluctantly, trying to keep my voice quiet enough that Joel wouldn’t hear it. “We can’t just leave them. And I kind of think…” I swallowed, looked up the terrace at where Joel was standing, his silhouette dark against the evening sky. “I think maybe it would help Joel come to terms with it.”

WE BURIED THEMon the edge of the beach at sunset, the producer first, and then Romi after, pulling her shrouded body gently out of Joel’s hands, as if he couldn’t bear to let her go, and lowering her into the hole with as much dignity as we could manage.

The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon, and the bats were beginning to swoop low across the peach-colored sky, as Joel threw the first handfuls of sand onto her body. Zana, Santana, and I had done our best with both women, wrapping them in all the bed sheets we could spare, rolling them around and around to try to protect them from the elements as much as possible. The sand on the island was soft, and even without proper shovels, it had not taken Joel, Dan, and Conor long to dig two shafts deep enough for graves.

Now we all stood around in the dying light, as Joel wept, and each of us tried to think what to say. Somehow with the producer it had been easier; she was a complete stranger to all of us, and though we all felt a terrible compassion for her lonely death, without a name, it was hard to make what had happened to her seem real.

But with Joel standing there, his face streaked with dirt and tears, it was impossible to forget that a flesh-and-blood person lay at the bottom of Romi’s grave—someone who had been vibrant and alive and loved only twelve hours ago.

In the end it was Santana who spoke, clearing her throat and stepping forward, looking down unflinchingly at the body.

“I didn’t know you well, Romi, but I wish I’d known you better. I could tell you were a person who loved life, and I am so sorry that your time here was cut short so cruelly.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Dan stepped forward.

“Romi, you lit up the room in the short time I had to know you, and I’ll always remember your smile. Rest in peace.”

Angel said a short poem in French, at least I assumed it was a poem, and then took a shell she had picked up from the beach and tossed it into the grave.

Bayer and Zana both said a few words. Then it was my turn.

“I’m so sorry, Romi.” The words seemed to stick in my throat. I was trying to keep my mind on Romi, but the pictures in my head were all of Nico—of the Over Easy, drifting down through deep water, Nico sobbing as he clawed at the little porthole window in his cabin as it filled with water. “What happened… it was so unfair. I wish this hadn’t happened to any of us. I wish you’d had longer. I wish I’d known you better. I wish none of this was happening.”

My throat was closing up, and I knew I was on the verge of tears that had nothing really to do with Romi, and everything to do with Nico, and our own plight here on this fucking island. Why had we come? For fame? For some dream of unearned stardom? What a price we were all paying for that.

I was just wondering what to do, what else to say, when Conor stepped forward. He squeezed my hand briefly, then let go.

“Rest in peace, Romi,” he said, his voice low. “You’ll never be forgotten by any of us.”

“Goodbye, Romi,” Joel said. His voice was thick with tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all of this. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better boyfriend, I’m sorry I couldn’t stop this. I love you—”

His voice cracked, and then he pushed an armful of the piled-up sand onto her body and fell to his knees, weeping bitterly.

It was Santana who led him away, while Bayer, Dan, and Conor filled in the grave. Zana had made two little crosses out of driftwood and scratched Romi’s name onto one. Now she laid them over the gently rounded graves, and I saw a single tear slide down her face.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said, very low, not to me so much as to herself. “I hardly knew them.”

But I knew why she was crying. It was the same reason I was. She was crying for Romi, yes, and for the nameless woman lying beside her in the sand. But she was crying for the rest of us too.