Haunts of the Very Rich

The six of them were the only passengers in a North American Sabreliner high over the unseen continent, running swiftly southward from New York. None of them knew where they would come to earth again. Purposely, they had not been told.

Far from being disturbed by that, they were delighted with something new to laugh about and to get acquainted over. The headlines of their discarded copies of the Times--a development in the Common Market talks, the death of that famous what's-his-name rock singer, a tax proposal in Congress that might pinch those in their high bracket just a little more--these stale things were nice to forget. For the moment, they were charmed with their little novelty. The chairs were very soft and they were all getting slightly drunk.

"Good style! Good style!" said Peter Wood-rough as if he were approving something he'd seen at Wimbledon or Forest Hills. Indeed, with his 50ish pink face and his smooth gray hair, he seemed to have just come off a country-club court somewhere. "I like the uniforms of the ground personnel. I like the way the limo brought us right onto the runway and put us aboard without any passport nonsense. I even like those opaque windows--superb touch of mystery, don't you think?"

"Only unmysterious thing is the price of it all, wowie! Cost-account everything and you'd probably find that martini in your hand is fifty bucks," Albert Hunsicker said. He laughed a stout man's laugh. But Mary, his pinched-faced wife, didn't laugh. Why was he always making jokes about something that was almost sacred? she thought.

"Don't complain, old boy," Woodrough said. "While you're on vacation, your blue chips will go up a point. I predict it. So you'll be evensteven as far as money goes when you get back. And you want things nice, don't you? You don't want just any old shabby jet, do you? This one costs just over a million bucks. My firm's got three of them and I would've flown one down myself except (continued on page 144)The Very Rich(continued from page 119) for my bum ticker and the fact that I'm supposed to be on sick leave."

"Nuh-uh," said a young man named Martin Dugan, "the resort management would never let you. The place is as secret as the grave--no location ever given out." He stopped to smile. "I know because I tried to bribe one Pan-Am captain, two travel agents, a professor of Latin-American geography and an ex-CIA man. Nobody could tell me where it might be." Dugan and the girl he was with--Laurie--were the real people that all those fashion models are trying so hard to look like. He was relaxed and handsome without any effort. She was delicious-looking, doe-eyed, big-breasted without any props. "Still," said Dugan, "I'd sooner be in my little Piper Cherokee, just setting down on some lake in the Adirondacks. Wouldn't you, baby?"

"The Adirondacks stink," said Laurie. "I want to find the lost world of El Dorado and the pleasure dome of Kubla Khan." She smiled and took his hand.

Mrs. Désirée Brooks looked at them through a misty glass of purest Lamplighter with just a breath of Noilly Prat around it. "One day," she said. "I calculate one day, right?" Mrs. Brooks looked to be in her mid-30s and she was very pretty, but nobody noticed that--or not first off, at any rate. What you felt immediately was a certain air that seemed to whisper something about great trust funds, vast safe-deposit vaults full of tax-free municipals and big corporate money pumps that had the name Brooks somewhere on the board of directors. "Married just one day?"

Dugan smiled and admitted it.

"But how did you pin it down to the exact time?" Laurie asked. "You're uncanny."

Mrs. Brooks took a long sip, then lowered the glass. "I should know. In fact, I should change my name to Hope because I've triumphed over experience so many times. My dear, there is always a first time when one of the bridal couple shall remark that the other's favorite thing in life actually stinks. This opinion has never been revealed before and boy and girl convulsively hold hands, shocked. After the first day, they begin to get hardened to that kind of revelation. God, these martinis are beautiful."

The pretty stewardess in a Pucci knew a signal when she heard it, so she came at once with a new pitcher of icy martinis. Woodrough took advantage of this little refueling ceremony and slipped into the empty chair next to Désirée. "From your learned observations, I judge that you are a marriage counselor by profession, and I want to ask your expert advice. I have a problem that's so intimate I'll have to whisper it--I am unmarried. I am all, all alone."

Mrs. Brooks seemed to be amused by this approach. "My advice to you, then, is: Don't blow it. If you're lucky, you can stay that way till you die."

They clinked glasses solemnly. "To the next three weeks, then," Woodrough said, looking into her eyes.

"It's got to be something really special," Dugan was saying, "to have the nerve to charge three thousand bucks a week. Even Frenchman's Cove charges only $1300 per couple." He poked at the shrouded window at Laurie's shoulder. "It's got to be the Caribbean--not one of the big vulgar places but some little jewel of an island they can keep top secret."

Al Hunsicker slowly withdrew from his pocket a small compass and placed it on the table. "I like to know where I'm at," he stated flatly. All craned forward to see, a conspiratorial gleam in every eye. "We've been airborne for three hours, forty minutes. We're headed south-southwest from New York City. The Caribbean is due south of New York. No, my friend. We're over Central America right now. I say we land in Guatemala or Honduras, probably on the Pacific coast and probably in the next half hour."

"I know that country," Dugan said, with a little drunken edge. "There's not a spot on either coast where you could put what they advertise. In fact, I've got a thousand stalwart men and true who say it won't be anywhere in Central America."

"You've got your bet," Al said, holding out his hand, which Martin took. "We'll know in a few minutes."

"How will you know?" Laurie Dugan asked. "Maybe I'm dumb, but will they tell us where we are?"

"They won't tell us," Al declared importantly, "but I'll know soon enough."

The plane tilted toward the earth and its speed diminished; in a few moments, they heard the flaps go down and then the wheels. Expectancy was on every face except Martin's, which was dark, and Laurie's, which was taking its cue from his. There was a slight screech as the wheels touched and they were rolling.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Paradise Plage"--and there was, indeed, a beach of white sand, within sight of the landing strip. But they were not on the sea, as all had expected. They were on a lake, in a valley under towering mountains, some of which glowed at their peaks and cast forth smoke. The man who had greeted them was an elegant little Latin with a tiny mustache and peaked eyebrows.

He said, as they were walking to the limousine, "I am Claudio Montenegro, your host. Please don't trouble to introduce yourselves--you see, I know who all of you are and have been expecting you."

"Who am I?" young Dugan asked.

"You, sir, are Mr. Dugan, with your charming bride of one day."

"How do you know that?"

"Sir, Paradise Plage makes a point of knowing as much as it can about each of its guests, to be able to give them its personalized and superb service. Thus, we have been able to reserve for you the bridal suite."

They stowed themselves in the car. The plane that had brought them took off and flew away. "I am afraid you will find Paradise Plage rather empty this evening," Montenegro said. "The fact is, you are the first guests of the new season. But we expect twenty-four tomorrow and another forty or so within the next week. All of them precisely such charming and discriminating persons as yourselves."

They drew up before the main building, a gleaming, gently curving façade facing the lake, and were shown to their four rooms by respectful Indian servants in livery. There they found champagne on ice and caviar nested in an ice Beluga. The rooms were richly appointed and in each of them, certain events and thoughts now took place.

Désirée Brooks stripped and took a long, leisurely bath. Later, in a robe, she sat at her window, smoked several cigarettes and contemplated the spectacular prospect of volcanoes and setting sun. Dinner was not for another hour, but she touched neither the caviar nor the champagne. She was 40 years old now, though she looked 35. She was here because she was on the prowl for another husband. With all the money she could want and with all the world to use it in, she found herself obsessed with a single interest--she genuinely liked a honeymoon marriage. The charm wore off, always, in a year or two and she would again find herself divorced, depressed, lonely. She wondered if Woodrough could have been telling the truth about being single. Probably not, even though he hadn't brought a wife along. She liked that fresh, florid-faced, ex-tennis-champion, moneyed look about him. He seemed charming enough.

Pete Woodrough knew that it was the thing to do to take a bath, but he did not. Instead, he cast himself on the caviar and made almost a meal of it: He was going to get his money's worth. The deal was $3000 a week and that included absolutely anything you could dream (continued on page 195)The Very Rich (continued from page 144) up: There were no extras, no tax, no tips. That included girls, too, and he would look into that in due time. As a matter of fact, he did have a wife and was expecting her to join him in a week. So make hay before the rains came. And make it with Désirée, too--she was acting very much like a lady on the make.

Albert Hunsicker, as soon as they were alone in their room, took his wife clumsily in his arms and kissed her. "We should have been given the bridal suite," he said. They were both over 50 and had been married for 27 years; yet, there was a brave and pathetic gallantry in his statement. Their marriage was finally on the rocks, after all those years of bitterness and recrimination--Albert had never ceased to marvel at the fire and viciousness in little Mary. They had had a grand confrontation, right down to the bare nerve and hatred; and there had been a voiding of poisons. They would give it one more chance and both would honestly try to gain back what they had once had. This vacation was where they would do it.

"You're sweet to say that, Al," Mary said; and suddenly, she buried her gray head in his shoulder and he could feel her trembling. "Oh, Al," she whispered, "oh, God, let's get to be in love again!"

"We will, Mary, we will! We'll forget the past, all that's ever happened. We'll start all over."

She searched his face. There were tears in her eyes. "We can do it, can't we, Al, if we really try?" she asked. "We can get it back?"

"Oh, we can," he said.

As for Martin and Laurie Dugan: There is really no need to describe what went on in their room.

• • •

That night, right after dinner, a tropical downpour engulfed the resort, with great sizzling bolts of lightning, stupefying thunder, huge dangerous winds and improbable quantities of water. At nine o'clock, the lights went out and candles were produced.

"Candles?" Woodrough cried. "You mean this place hasn't got an auxiliary power plant?"

"It was hit even before the main plant," Montenegro explained. "We have never had such a storm."

Actually, it worked out very well. Dancing to the excellent combo by candlelight, while the elements raged, was uniquely romantic and intimate, and there were no further complaints. Martin and Laurie, of course, were in their own world, and the Hunsickers could not have hoped for anything more auspicious. Pete and Désirée discovered great merit in each other.

It was only the next morning--bright, hot and steaming--that the extent of the disaster was revealed to them. They were driven from their rooms by the sticky heat and Montenegro joined them at the breakfast table.

"I do not know how to apologize," he said. "It is a calamity. I am up all night. The entire electrical system is knocked out. You will have noticed that the air conditioning is gone."

"You're goddamn right we noticed," Dugan said.

"Also the refrigeration, of course. The food will not keep. Oh, I am so embarrassed."

"Well, send for the parts," Woodrough said.

"The radio is utterly destroyed," Montenegro said, almost cringing. "There is no phone. Anyway, it would be useless. Have you seen the landing strip? A hundred trenches six feet deep."

"Then send a car over," Hunsicker said.

"Mr. Hunsicker, there is no road. That was how we could keep this place so secret--it was all built by air. An engineering marvel!" Then he collapsed. "But now, no road. Not even somewhere for a road to go to. We are nowhere."

"Where are we, anyway?" Woodrough asked. "Tell us where we are. Maybe I can do something."

"There is nothing you can do," Montenegro said mournfully. "There is nothing anyone can do. We are cut off from the world."

"Boy, oh, boy," Dugan said, slamming down his coffee cup. "This is just what I was hoping to find for my eight hundred and sixty bucks a day on my honeymoon." He leaned over menacingly to Montenegro. "You tell me just how soon you can get us out of here."

"Of course, your money will be refunded," Montenegro said. Then he seemed to take on a little more dignity, even a little authority. "But there is no way for you to get out of here, Mr. Dugan. No way whatsoever."

Later, they were seated under a beach umbrella on the terrace, in 100-degree heat and 96 percent humidity; the air was motionless; all were drenched in sweat. There was mud over everything; the beach had been washed into the lake. Most of the palm trees were down; the hangar had lost its roof; many windows were broken and debris littered the lawn. Hunsicker was trying to collect his bet from Dugan.

"You say you know this area--well, take a good look. Where in this hemisphere do you find live volcanoes in a jungle? Nicaragua and nowhere else. We're in Central America and you owe me a thousand dollars."

Dugan said doggedly: "I want to hear it from somebody who really knows. Then you'll have your lousy grand."

"But nobody is going to tell you, darling," Laurie suggested sweetly. "It's their gimmick to keep the location secret."

They looked toward the lake; they saw the ruined beach and they saw something else: The surface was white with the corpses of thousands of fish, bellies up.

"My God, all the fish are dying!"

"They must have been electrocuted by the lightning."

"Well, anyone for a swim?" Dugan asked.

Black humor was still possible at this stage.

• • •

A couple of days later, it was no longer possible.

When the roof tanks ran out, there was no longer any running water, hot or cold, since it was pumped by electricity. The staff toted pails of lake water to the rooms and they used it to bathe and to flush the toilets. They did not drink it: It tasted of dead fish and sulphur.

The heat and humidity were driving them frantic, ruining their sleep and wearing their nerves raw.

Bread was the first food to go. "We bake our own daily," Montenegro explained at the fourth breakfast. "In electric ovens. And, alas, this will be the last eggs and the last cream or milk." He spoke almost cheerfully and was apparently going light in the head from worry and overwork.

At lunch, he announced the last of the meat, the butter and the vegetables. "Everything is thawed and rotting; it must be thrown out. It is already pretty stinking."

"I have a question," Martin Dugan broke in. "You said you were expecting so many guests this week--well, why aren't the planes coming in or trying to come in?"

"Perhaps the plane has developed engine trouble," Montenegro said vaguely.

"You have only one plane?" Woodrough asked in disbelief.

"They were late on the delivery," Montenegro said. "Maybe now the three others are delivered."

"Then why aren't they trying to come in?" Martin demanded. "There's something goddamn funny here. You can rent planes. Why aren't those other guests being flown down here and finding out they can't land and getting the word back to New York that we're in trouble, so they can send down an amphibian and bail us out? Why isn't anybody trying to get us out of this mess?"

"Yes, it is very strange," Montenegro admitted, as vaguely as before. "I do not understand it myself. If only we had the radio...." And he wandered off.

"That man is ready for the funny farm," Pete declared.

Later that afternoon, determined to get some enjoyment out of this vacation, the Dugans made an effort to avail themselves of the facilities offered: They booked a fishing trip, having been assured that the dead fish were along only the shore, not out where the big ones were.

"Tell me about these big ones," Martin said to the captain as they were pulling out. "Fresh-water fish don't get very big."

"Oh, these are beeg, señor," the captain said. "An' fight! In this lake only in whole worl'. Are call puaxtlotl. Two hunnert, five hunnert poun'. Taste good, too."

"Well, we sure can use some fresh food," Laurie said.

The charter boat got them well out of sight of the hotel and then quit. The captain took up floor boards, cursed and muttered; after an hour, he reported that he could do nothing.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Martin said. "Is there going to be any one single goddamn thing that is right about this place? Well, get them on the ship-to-shore, tell 'em to send another boat out."

"I can send, they can no hear," the captain announced.

"You mean we're stuck out here?" Laurie demanded. "Why, it must be a hundred and ten when we're not moving."

The captain could only look apologetic.

"We're supposed to be back by dinner," Martin said. "Is there any food aboard, by any chance?"

"No, señor, no food."

And so they sat there through the hot afternoon, prickling with the heat. They could not even fish, since one trolls for the puaxtlotl. Martin severely damaged his young marriage by going swimming in his shorts: Laurie could not do the same. At dusk, a swarm of sand flies attacked them; all night, they battled the mosquitoes. Nerves were lacerated; tempers rose and were lost; cruel words were exchanged. By morning, the Dugan marriage had suffered fatal injuries.

During this time, Woodrough, too, attempted to use a facility that was hinted at in the Paradise Plage literature. He approached Montenegro privately and inquired whether that tall hostess in the cocktail bar, the one with the big tits, would be interested in having a little drink in his room after things closed down.

"But certainly, sir," Montenegro said. "I can assure you that she will. You could not have made a better choice."

"Have her come up to my room about midnight," Woodrough said. "And have all the usual stuff there--champagne, canapés, tape recorder with the right music, you know. Might as well try to salvage something out of this ungodly disaster."

"You are quite right, sir," Montenegro said. "Of course, there is no ice."

"Well, send up cognac."

"And canapés--perhaps some saltines and peanut butter?"

"Oh, my God."

"And our tape recorders run only on house current, alas."

"Well, damn it, send up the girl, anyway." Woodrough had never even spoken with this girl, but he was certain she had the class that he demanded: tall, graceful, with the sullen, smoldering quality that always inflamed him. Probably half-Spanish, half-Indian.

Midnight came and went, but the girl came not. At 12:45, there was a rap on his door and he let her in. She was not elegantly dressed, as he had had every right to expect, but wore a skirt and blouse.

"It ain't my fault I'm late," she said. "I hadda stay in the bar till that old couple got too drunk to keep on fightin'." It was a voice from darkest Brooklyn--a rude shock.

"Please come in," Woodrough said. "May I pour you a snifter of this excellent Rémy Martin?"

"You gotta be kiddin'," she said, "I spend all day inhalin' that slop. Well, let's get it over with. That'll be eighty bucks."

Woodrough was outraged. The amount did not bother him--it was the principle: Everything was supposed to be on the house. More important, the girl was simply impossible. He knew how these things should be managed and it wasn't like this.

"As a matter of fact, I've changed my mind," he said. "I shan't be needing you tonight. You can run along."

"Whatsa matter, sport?" she asked. "The price take all the starch outa ya? You ain't jewin' me down, if that's what you're hopin'." She watched him keenly for a few seconds, then opened the door. "Boy, even an expensive joint like this gets its quota of cheap bastards, don't it?" And she was gone. Woodrough drank cognac alone and paced the room a lot.

The Hunsickers, the first guests down to breakfast on the fifth morning, were also the first to learn of the new calamity that had struck during the night. They found an almost hysterical Montenegro trying to set the table.

"The entire staff has quit," he said, his voice near breaking. "Everybody--I alone am left. There was no presentation of grievances or other formality. They just disappeared into the jungle, all of them, in their uniforms. Maybe they think, the uniforms will make them chiefs and queens in their villages."

"I can't believe it," Mary said faintly.

"It took months to train them--you cannot imagine how filthy and irresponsible these Indians are. Now they have run away when things got tough. Even the American hooker in the bar. Even my assistant. The charter-boat captain has stolen the boat."

Mary began to cry noisily and Al said to her, "Oh, leave off, will you? Can't you ever rise to an occasion?" And to Montenegro: "The Dugans are on that boat--they didn't come back last night. It must be broken down out there."

"Then there is no way to get them," Montenegro wailed.

"No other boat on the place?" Hunsicker asked.

"Yes, one more that did not sink, but I cannot drive."

"Well, I can drive," said Woodrough, who had come in while this was going on. "Show me the boat."

It was a fast outboard, luckily, and Woodrough rescued the Dugans just in time for lunch. At the table, the newly-weds continued a quarrel they had apparently started on the fishing trip: How had they ever got to Hellhole Plage in the first place?

"It was your idea," Laurie said. "I know it wasn't my idea, because I never heard of the place."

"It was your goddamn father," Martin declared. "Gave us the honeymoon for our wedding present. We were supposed to open the envelope on the way to the airport. 'Course, when I opened it and saw the name, I knew what it was all about. Boy, what a price he was willing to pay to unload you."

"Oh," Mary Hunsicker said, "a wedding present? Not your own eight hundred and sixty bucks a day? No wonder you're reluctant to pay my husband what you owe him."

"How the hell could you have opened the envelope, Mr. Know-It-All?" said his bride. "You were driving."

"I was driving?"

"Well, who else, stupid?"

"Boy, I must've been really drunk," Martin said. "I thought you were driving."

"Do you remember getting on the plane?" Désirée asked in a peculiarly intense, throbbing voice.

"No, not me," Laurie said. "I had to drug myself to get through the ceremony."

"Me neither," Martin said. "Me neither. Boy, that must've been some wedding reception. Was there a reception?" This gave him a big yak; no one else saw much humor in it and Désirée's expression was grave and abstracted.

After the meager and sweaty lunch, Woodrough took Désirée Brooks aside. "I've seen faces peering in at us from the jungle," he said. "Already they know that this place is in trouble. If I were one of those savages, I'd start figuring how I could get a piece of it, too. Listen: I'm going to try to get through to Montenegro. He's holed up in his room and I think he's gone off his rocker. I'd appreciate it if you'd sort of stand by and be ready to help out."

Désirée felt a great upwelling of pride and affection. "Oh, Pete," she said. There was that quality of melting and surrender in her manner that commanded Pete to take her in his arms and kiss her. "Oh, Pete," she whispered.

"Oh, baby," he whispered. "Oh, I do want you."

He went to Montenegro's room and found him crouched on his bed with his back in the corner of the room, his knees drawn up to his chin, his hands braced against each wall.

Woodrough sat on a chair and said gently, "Mr. Montenegro, I am your friend. Please believe me. Now, we need certain things that are locked up, so I want you to give me the keys."

Montenegro's eyes went wide with terror and he drew back. Anyone who wanted his keys was clearly an enemy. Apparently, he was in the grip of a full-blown psychosis.

"Ok," Woodrough said. "Don't be worried, Mr. Montenegro, I am your friend. Take it easy."

He went back to Désirée. "He's been taught to guard his keys," he reported, "and now he's insane. The guns are locked up somewhere--we'll never get them. We'll have to arm ourselves with whatever we can find--hatchets, knives, hammers." A wondering look came over his face and he said, "I am dumfounded that an elaborate establishment like this could simply disintegrate in a few days into nothing." Then he saw that a change had come over Désirée: She had become serene and somehow clarified.

"It doesn't matter," she said, in a strange tone.

"Have you gone loco, too?" he cried. "Those Indians out there mean business. "They'll probably attack tonight."

"They won't kill us," she said calmly. "They can't kill us."

"The hell they can't!"

"Pete, don't you understand? We're already dead."

She saw the look on his face and she said, "No, I'm not crazy. It's true. Think about it. Everything that's happened here--even the manager going conveniently insane. Pete, this is all planned."

"Darling," he murmured, "what are you trying to say?"

"It was the Dugans who gave me the final clue, when they couldn't remember getting on the plane. All of us have a blank space in our lives, just before this trip. Pete, tell me what happened after your heart attack. All the details. From then until now."

"After the heart attack, they kept me on heavy sedation for a month," Pete said, "so, of course, I don't remember that period. But then my first vice-president came out to the house and told me about this vacation they'd cooked up for me and, in fact, he drove me to the airport. I can remember getting on the plane."

"A month on sedation for a 'nothing serious' heart attack?" Désirée asked. "Does that sound likely to you? And then this expensive sick leave--does that make sense? Pete, darling, that was a fatal heart attack." She took him in her arms and said compassionately, "Darling, it's not so bad, once you know it and accept it; I've found that out already. After the Dugans said what they said and I realized that there was a big empty space in my life, too, I accepted it and began to live with it." A laugh that was not quite a laugh--perhaps a sob. "That's good, 'live with it.'"

She looked up now into his face and found what seemed to be a strong, stoical acceptance of her terrible insight. In point of fact, Woodrough was masking the exasperation he felt at the prospect that this luscious piece, so nearly within his grasp, was about to slip away into some nutty obsession. He stared across her shoulder, across the empty and darkening room, out the window and across the lake toward the fuming, hellish volcanoes on the horizon, with their coronas of red. He did not for one instant believe that he was dead. He was alive and he knew it. His immediate problem, however, was to gain this woman's sympathy and confidence.

"I don't feel dead," he said, with feigned uncertainty.

And she replied, "How could we know, until now, how the dead feel?"

"If what you believe is true," he said, feeling foolish, dishonest and ashamed, "then the Hunsickers will have had the same experience."

"Let's look for them," Désirée said gravely. "They'll have had it."

They kissed; then, their arms around each other, they went in search of the Hunsickers. Things were going so well that Woodrough could permit himself the indelicate reflection: If this really is an afterlife, this is a hell of a lot better way to be spending it than in the company of my wife.

They passed into the dining room and saw the Hunsickers and the Dugans seated at a table in the twilight, amid a clutter of tin cans and liquor bottles. The evening inshore breeze carried to them an overpowering stench of rotting fish but no relief from the heat.

They sat down at the table and discovered at once that all four were drunk.

"Where you been, you two?" Martin asked, leering. "Don' answer. Jus' have a drink."

"Listen," Woodrough said, playing his role, "I'm trying to put together how we ever got into this mess. Tell me, Mary, did you and Al decide on this vacation together?"

"Well, in our family," Mary said, "it's the commodore who decides what he wants to do and then we do it."

Woodrough turned to Al. "You picked out this place?"

"I'll have to take the blame. It sounded great. I forget where I heard about it and the travel agents couldn't help me--they really keep it exclusive. I had to deal direct with the New York office."

"And what did you do the day before the flight?"

"We went boating," Mary said promptly. "Old Commodore Hunsicker here massages his ego by getting into a speedboat and scaring the sailboats in Long Island Sound. They should be scared, too, because the old idiot is dead-drunk the whole time. And I'm dead-drunk, because that's the only way I can put up with him."

"You were along on the boat trip?" Désirée asked.

"I'm always along," Mary answered. "He has to have me along to show off to."

Désirée asked very gently, "And do you remember coming back from that boat trip?"

"Not me," Mary stated.

"But you remember," Woodrough said to Al. Al looked embarrassed and said nothing.

"When he gets stoned," his wife said, "he hasn't the vaguest idea where he's been or what he's done. Which is usually something utterly obnoxious."

Pete turned to Désirée. "You're right," he said. "It's the same with them."

"What's the same with us?" Hunsicker demanded.

Woodrough told them, skillfully playacting, citing all the "evidence."

And was met with disbelief and derision, of course.

"It doesn't matter," Désirée said to Pete. "Let them find out in their own time."

The hooting and scoffing continued, and then it ceased and all of them jumped to their feet and ran out to the terrace. They had all heard the noise of a plane motor. A small amphibian was circling and about to land. The Hunsickers and the Dugans skipped about, shouted, waved their arms, hugged each other. The plane taxied through the rim of dead fish to the dock. A man stepped out and came up the lawn toward them.

"Why, that's Johnny Delmonico, the rock singer!" Laurie cried. "I'd know him anywhere!"

And then they looked at each other with terror and despair. It was Désirée who put it calmly into words: "Johnny Delmonico is dead. We all read it in the paper the day we left--we were talking about it on the plane. An automobile accident in Mexico City."

White-faced, Martin Dugan turned to his bride. "It's true," he whispered. "It must have happened on the way to the airport."

Mary Hunsicker began to sob quietly; Al turned away and stared stonily at the mountains. Pete and Désirée put their arms about each other.

Johnny Delmonico came up to them. He did not bother to introduce himself. "Boy, have they been worried about you!" he exclaimed. "Is everybody OK? Just look at that landing strip! Where's the manager?"

No one answered. Finally, Al Hunsicker said, "Make yourself at home, Delmonico. Welcome to the land of the dead."

"No, I can't stay," said Delmonico. "Gotta get right back or it'll be too dark to land. But you all seem to be OK." He looked around. "Boy, is this place a mess! Been dynamitin' the fish, huh? Where's all the staff?" He turned to go. "Don't worry, they'll send a rescue plane in the morning. Sorry, I can't take you now, but my plane won't hold but one person. I'll let 'em know you're all right." He strode back down the slope, got into his plane, revved up and flew off down a valley. The whole visit had lasted less than ten minutes. They watched until he was gone.

"That was to make sure we know," Désirée said. "And to give us false hope. There won't be a plane tomorrow. Johnny Delmonico is flying back to his particular hell."

For long moments, even Pete Woodrough's private conviction was shaken. Then he came back to a firm belief that Delmonico was alive. He knew there had to be a natural, rational answer to this. Exactly what that answer might be, he couldn't begin to guess--maybe the newspapers had been wrong-- but he knew in every fiber that he himself was alive. He also knew that if he was ever to possess Désirée, he would have to keep up his game of make-believe.

They all went back inside and, by tacit consent, did not sit down again at the table. They went to their rooms and got their pails and felt their way down to the lake shore two by two and, carefully avoiding the putrefying fish, scooped up buckets of water, foreseeing the needs of the morning.

And Pete and Désirée slept together that night.

• • •

Désirée was right: No plane came the next day.

"Things will go from bad to worse," she said.

For lunch on this sixth day, they went to the pantry. There were canned goods and nothing much else. Beans, carrots, peas, tomatoes, corn, more beans, spaghetti and noodles; fortunately, also goulash, hot dogs, Spam, sardines. They made their selection and hunched around their table, in the ghastly emptiness and silence of the dining room, mopping the sweat from their faces with paper napkins.

That afternoon, Désirée moved in with Pete and they celebrated the event appropriately. Afterward, she said, with real fear in her voice, "Oh, I'm scared, Pete. I'm scared because I'm too happy. Somehow, this will be taken away from us--it has to be." For the first time, she cried.

To Pete, the happiness they had found with each other was proof positive they were alive and well and living in anywhere but hell. But he said nothing about this and continued to humor her. And why not? he asked himself: That tactic was paying off handsomely.

During dinner (Spam and canned macaroni), the candles ran out. Each had brought down the only one he had; all burned out within a minute of each other.

Woodrough felt his way to Montenegro's room. It was dark and stifling; there was the stench of feces in the air, so strong that Woodrough chose not to enter.

"Mr. Montenegro," he said through the door, "please tell me where there are some candles." There was no answer. Woodrough spoke again; again no answer. Finally, he entered the room, and then he went back to the others. "Montenegro is dead," he reported.

"How can he be dead?" Martin asked. "You can't die around here."

"If you're part of the staff, you can die," Désirée said. "Just to be a problem for us."

There was nothing to do. They stumbled up to their rooms, sat in the darkness for a while, complaining, weeping, cursing and drinking, and went to bed early.

Before breakfast on the seventh morning, they discovered the new complication of their lives: The savages had struck. The larder was almost empty. They had crept in during the night and had carried off nearly all the food, including all the canned meat and fish. The guests were now virtually without protein.

"You see?" Désirée said to Pete. "Their function is not to kill us but to make us miserable."

"But this is serious," Pete said. "They'll come back and we're hopelessly outnumbered. We'll have to take all the remaining food to our rooms."

They did so.

At lunch that day (vegetable stew), the Hunsickers and the Dugans drunk, they discussed their predicament. "Every day, something else will go wrong," Désirée said. "First the electric lights went, then the air conditioning, then the running water, then the fresh food, then the service, then Montenegro. Very soon, the canned food will run out, then the liquor and you can no longer blunt the edge of it. Then the insect repellent, the toilet paper, the soap. Night after night, the Indians will pick this place clean and we can do nothing to stop it. Our clothes will rot and the bed linen. Always, at the last minute, when things have become unbearable, rescue of some sort will come." She repeated the word, with a bitter chuckle: "Rescue!"

Martin Dugan burst suddenly into high laughter and it was half a minute before he could say what was on his mind. "That bet. Central America. Hunsicker, we aren't in Central America. You owe me a thousand bucks. Come on, pay up, you cheap welsher."

Al had been drinking more than eating and saying nothing. Now he raised his eyes and one saw in them the despair and the rot. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a check. "This is a cashier's check for twenty thousand." He endorsed it and tossed it across the table. "There's your lousy thousand," he said thickly, "and another nineteen thousand. It's all yours. You got your money, OK? And now, what ya gonna do with it, you silly bastard?" And he, too, burst into laughter, dirty and prolonged. It was Woodrough's worst moment: watching this idiocy take place while he said nothing.

Always the most enterprising, that afternoon Woodrough sought a solution to the problem of illumination. He found neither candles, flashlights nor lanterns; but he did find a drum of kerosene and made up lamps of wicks floating in a pan, which he distributed to each couple, to the dining room and to the kitchen. He noticed a progressive demoralization. The men had not shaved; the rooms were in complete disorder; all except Désirée were drunk.

No one went down to the dining room for dinner that night. Two by two, they crouched over their feeble, foul smelling lamps and ate from their cans and drank their bourbon or gin.

On the eighth morning, they learned that the Indians had, of course, raided them again. No one had thought to save the liquor supply: Now it appeared to be gone, every last bottle that was not upstairs.

"They'll get themselves into a drunken frenzy," Mary wailed. "They'll murder us all."

"Can't you get it through your stupid head," her husband snarled, "that we can't be murdered?"

"There's something I don't understand," Laurie said. "What would happen if I stabbed myself in the heart?"

They were in the kitchen; Martin held out to her a large knife. "Try it," he said.

"Boy, are you funny," she said with contempt.

"You'd 'live' on," Désirée told her, "in hideous pain."

At dinnertime, it became apparent that the Hunsickers regarded the food that they had carried upstairs as their personal property and refused to share it. Harsh words were exchanged and very nearly blows.

Once again by themselves, the Hunsickers took up their private quarrel. "I backed you up on the food there," Mary said, "because I don't like those others any more than you do. But actually, of course, you are completely in the wrong, as usual."

And Al: "By God, I'm daunted, I'm truly daunted, when I think of an eternity of what I've already had to endure for twenty-seven years."

Only Pete and Désirée were at peace. They lay in each other's arms, happy and unmindful of the heat.

"Darling, do you think we will get older?" she asked.

"I don't see how that could be possible," he answered.

"Anything is possible," she answered somberly. "We could get just enough older for you to stop loving me and then stop."

"Baby, I'll never stop loving you, no matter what happens," Pete whispered. "Never."

And the evening and the morning were the eighth day of eternity.

• • •

On the ninth day, early, the big old PBY23A squashed down on the lake and taxied up to the dock and about 20 people climbed out. All of the dead souls were still asleep, but they woke up when they heard the engines and rushed out to their balconies. Thus, Mrs. Peter Woodrough's first sight of her husband was in pajama bottoms and in the company of a woman whose nightdress you could see right through.

The other arrivals were a repair crew and an American in charge, who introduced himself as Harris to the guests who assembled, hastily clad, in the lobby.

"Thank God, you're all right," he said. "You can't imagine how concerned we've been--you're in all the papers. It's blown our cover completely--now the whole world knows we're down here in Nicaragua."

"It's part of the false hopes!" Désirée cried. But, seeing Mrs. Woodrough bearing down on her husband, and the look on his face, she knew that they were back in the real world after all.

The doctor who had come along, sent to find Montenegro, found his corpse and reported to Harris. "About three days dead, I'd estimate," he said, looking at the guests with indignation; and Woodrough, at least, felt shame enough to blush.

"How terrible for you," Harris said. "There's no way we can apologize for what you've been through. That storm you had--that was Hurricane Clea, my friends--that was a real dilly. For four days, there was nothing in the air, but nothing, on the whole Atlantic Seaboard."

"You didn't wonder about the lack of radio contact?" Hunsicker demanded.

"Of course we wondered," Harris said. "We were frantic. We saw the maps of the hurricane; we knew you'd been hit. But for the first four days, we couldn't do a thing. Of course, we don't own an amphibian and it's not so easy to rent one, let me tell you--it took this long. Thank goodness we found out Delmonico was in Tegucigalpa and could talk him into flying in here to reassure you."

None of the six wanted to look at another. Mary spoke up. "We'd read that he was dead."

"That's how we could get him," said Harris. "That was a publicity stunt that backfired. Get his name in the papers. But the newsboys found out right away that it was a phony and he got a very bad press, indeed. Well, his agent thought maybe this rescue operation would help patch things up. So he flew in. It's been a hideous week for you, I know, but we'll get you out of here just as soon as you have your stuff together."

Al Hunsicker intercepted Martin Dugan just as he reached his room. "About that bet," he said, red in the face. "It seems we're in Central America, after all. But I'm willing to call the whole thing off. So, if you'll just--"

"Oh, no-no-no-no-no," Martin broke in. "I wouldn't think of it. I lost fair and square and I'm gonna pay. You just wait here a second."

He went into his room and came out after a short while. "Here's my check for two grand, the thousand you paid me and mine for the lost bet." He put it into Hunsicker's limp hand. "I'll just keep that cashier's check," he said, "that you were so generous as to endorse over to me, in front of witnesses."

He stepped back inside his room. "You silly bastard," he said, and closed the door.

Désirée was about to enter Pete's room to collect her belongings when she heard the jay-voiced Mrs. Woodrough on the other side of the door, giving her husband hell. Reference was made to a naked whore, whom Désirée recognized as herself. She was about to retreat from the door when it was flung open and Pete erupted into the corridor, his wife screaming after him, "Come back here, Peter Woodrough!"

To Désirée, he quickly said, "I know where there's a bottle of Jack Daniel's stowed away in the cocktail lounge. Come on--I think we both need it."

They walked toward the lobby, desolated by the latest turn of events. "Oh, Pete," she said, "what I was convinced of half an hour ago would be preferable to what we've got now."

He nodded grimly but said nothing.

Even before they reached the lobby, their noses told them a ghastly experience awaited them there. The lobby, where a few minutes before there had been such a bustle, was completely empty. No Harris, no doctor, no rescue crew. Only Montenegro's body on a stretcher, urgently calling for burial.

Pete and Désirée looked at each other with horrid surmise. Of one accord, they ran to the window. There was no seaplane at the dock. There were no crates of supplies on the lawn. There were no people.

"But it couldn't," Pete wailed, "it couldn't have taken off without our hearing it!"

Désirée burst out laughing; it was a sound in which triumph and despair were compounded. "Of course it couldn't," she cried, "if it were real! Oh, marvelous! It's just like you said on the plane, Pete--this outfit does its thing with good style! This is another one of those superb touches!"

Pete's face went slack. She had been right all along. "It was just to torture us," he said in a whisper. "They've left us exactly the way we were."

"Not quite," said Désirée.

For behind them, they could hear an approaching torment: the strident, petulant, vulgar voice of the late Mrs. Peter Woodrough, deathlong addition to their group.

Pete spoke hollowly: "The latest superb touch."

"The latest," said Désirée, "but far from the last."