Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Darkness lingered outside when I opened my eyes.
The steady flame of the kerosene lantern on the nightstand gave off enough light to illuminate the desk.
Turning the light’s knob to its highest setting, I rose off the bed.
My head wasn’t dizzy, and my energy level seemed to have returned to normal.
Sticky sweat covered my skin, and my scalp itched.
I’d give anything for a long, hot shower.
A bird crooned, and waves calmly lullabied the island and beckoned me to the beach to wash off my filth.
With the lantern in one hand, I walked to the open front door. The encroaching jungle had a mysterious absence of movement with an ocean soundtrack.
A furry body shot between my legs, sending my heart to my throat. I yelped, jumping to the side, as a cat dashed down the stairs and vanished into the inky shadows.
“Stupid ass,” I mumbled, peeking around the door to see whether I woke up Hunter.
The full moon’s silver light outlined Hunter’s tall frame in the ragged hammock, his arms crossed on his chest and his face turned to the forest. A tremor passed over his shoulders, and his hands jerked while his eyebrows pinched together.
He shifted his head to the opposite side, the suspended bed swaying ever so slightly.
It didn’t look very comfortable to sleep like that and for not the first time I was grateful for his kindness and generosity in allowing me to occupy his bed.
I took a step. A wood plank creaked, and an animal—probably the same cat—yowled somewhere in the woods, making my pulse thunder in my ears.
I could wait for the morning. Scratching my head, I retreated into the hut and lay back in bed.
After several minutes of staring into nothingness, trying to go back to sleep was out of the question.
Placing the lantern in the center of the table, I looked around the dimmed room. I could snoop, but with Hunter sleeping just outside the door, I was doomed to be caught red-handed and that would be embarrassing. My eyes scanned over the bookshelf, stopping at the spy magazines.
Every Sunday morning, for as long as I could remember, my father worked on magazines, crosswords and logic puzzles with a cup of coffee.
His love for logic problems and anagrams had developed as a child when my grandfather had subscribed him to Scientific American.
Until age ten, I had often sat on my father’s lap and pretended to work on them with him.
When I turned a teenager, he dragged an extra armchair for me into his office, and we worked across from each other at his desk: he on a magazine, me on my Sudoku book.
My father’s ghost settled beside me, readying to look inside the magazines.
My throat burned as the old ache flared.
I urged it back into my chest, but it brawled its way out, and I choked on a sob.
Pressing my face into my hands, I took slow, controlled breaths through pursed lips, willing myself to calm down.
“It’s just fatigue and exhaustion,” I whispered and rubbed my nose on my shoulder.
Snatching a magazine from the top and getting a pencil off the journal, I took a seat at the table.
I flipped it to the page with a puzzle of squares and incomplete triangles, some with and some without dots.
The hint under the message suggested using a pigpen cipher from the previous issue.
I turned the page. Among ads for spy and deductive classes, I found a cryptographic puzzle with a hint of “movie quote.” Since it was a spy magazine, perhaps it was from a James Bond movie.
A martini. Shaken, not stirred. The phrase didn’t match the encoded pattern.
I bit the end of the pencil, then pulled it out of my mouth.
Yuck. Someone else had already chewed on it.
Back in college, one of my computer science professors spent a great deal of time on cryptography instead of teaching Java language to the class, which was annoying because it was a complete waste of students’ money.
He taught us that to solve a cipher was a matter of looking for high-frequency letters and making educated guesses—like anything else in life.
I smiled as I wrote my first probable variation in the space next to the puzzle.
The money spent on that class was finally about to pay off.
Soon, the lantern flame sputtered, and my scribbled ideas left no room on the page. I needed paper to organize my decoding chaos in an orderly fashion. I tore a few pages from Hunter’s journal—I’d ask for forgiveness tomorrow—and started a complex chart of letter combinations.
Sometime later, the sound of Hunter rattling pots in the kitchen reached my ears.
I sat up straight, a magazine page peeling off my face, leaving a wet spot of drool on my cheek.
Rubbing my eyes, I glanced around the room, my mind in a haze.
Empty of oil, the lantern’s flame had died, and bright light seeped through the cracks of the shutters.
Wiping the drool off my chin, I went outside.
Hunter had pinned a torn notebook sheet on the porch post near the steps. In pencil, inside a cartoonish-shaped speech bubble with a tail pointing down, was a handwritten note.
I snatched the paper off and carried it with me.
Hunter stood next to a stone stove that resembled something I’d seen during tours of historic buildings in Savannah, GA.
One side had an open area for roasting, and the other had a firebox with a door and a flat cooktop.
He moved a skillet aside, picked up a well-used saucepan, and poured brown liquid into two tin cups.
Fire pit smoke mingled with the warm tropical air, but I also recognized the distinct aroma of—
“Coffee?” I stopped at the wooden picnic table under the kitchen tent and inhaled deeper.
“Morning.” He glanced at me. “I fixed the bean grinder. It’s not Starbucks, but it isn’t terrible.”
My fingers clutched the page I found on the porch, my lips curling up. “Is this a text message?”
“Yes.” Hunter rubbed his brow, appearing a bit shy.
“I left it in case you woke up before I returned and couldn’t find me.
I didn’t want you to get scared. I drew a speech bubble around it to make it fun.
” He ran his palm over the beard stubble.
And I wondered—for not more than a microsecond—if it would feel soft under the tips of my fingers.
His. Not mine. I meant to think his. Hunter sheepishly smiled and said, “I know, it looks stupid.”
I’d known this man only a matter of hours, but after a much-needed sleep, my gut feeling was that it was a good thing I’d stuck with him.
Hunter knew how to fix things, had a sense of humor, and maintained a positive mood in this shitty situation.
If I were here with Phill, he would have no doubt sulked for days, blaming me for the sailing trip’s misfortune, for hiring the insufficient captain (as if he would’ve done a better job choosing one), and most likely, somehow, the dreadful storm would have been my fault too.
“It’s a cute idea. I like it.” I smiled, then ran my fingers through my greasy, tangled hair. If I waited any longer to take a proper shower, a family of lice could soon become my pets. Just the thought of the wingless parasite worsened the prickling of my skin.
He offered me the mug. “I might have some sugar. Would you like some?”
“Yes, please.”
Hunter disappeared into the hut and soon returned. He retrieved a teaspoon from an aluminum jar on the shelf and presented me with an Organic Brown Coconut sugar paper bag.
I wrinkled my nose. “Coconut flavor is my least favorite.”
“Take it or leave it, Wonder Woman.” He left everything on the table and moved around me.
Wonder Woman? My mouth twitched at its corners.
Phill always called me a Silly Ducky, which he usually followed up with, “You’re book smart, but you aren’t clever.
” I hated when he said that to me. Where did that nickname come from?
And a better question was, why had I allowed him to use it?
Hunter’s nickname for me was much better.
I wished I were Wonder Woman. I could have saved Bambi.
“Why did you call me that?” I asked, trying to hide my reaction that I liked it.
“Because I wonder where you came from.” He turned away but not before I caught a kind smile on his face that gave away that it wasn’t the only reason. Many people have commented over the years that I resemble Gal Gadot. I felt an unexpected curiosity about whether he found her attractive.
I added some sugar to my coffee and then took a sip. It was flavorful—a bit weak—but had no trace of coconut grossness. All things considered, it was superb.
Hunter placed plates with scrambled eggs and cut-up mangoes on each side of the table and gestured for me to take a seat. “How is your leg?”
“It hurts if I press on it, but overall, I feel great.”
After long minutes of us eating in silence, stealing curious glances at each other, he asked, “You made a hell of a mess on the table back there.” He peered at me over his mug, then nodded at the hut. “What were you doing?”
“Decoding messages in the magazines. I’m not sure how long I was up. I fell asleep while working on a phrase from a movie from 1995.”
“What movie?”
“It doesn’t say.”
“What words do you have so far?”
If he wasn’t interested, he wouldn’t be asking. Or maybe he was just trying to be polite. Either way, this was an excellent opportunity for us to bond, get to know each other, and make this castaway situation less tormenting.