Chapter Nine #3
Another hour passed and then two, and each of them found the rhythm of paradise.
Gwendy and Bill floated around, smooching like a pair of honeymooners.
Tyler practiced his surf moves. Lulu got some sun on her pale-as-eleven-months-in-Seattle skin.
Ariana flung herself onto a batik towel beside Lulu and dinked around on her phone.
Lulu caught a flash of movement in her peripheral vision.
A white-faced monkey hopped along a tree. It scrambled down a branch, onto the sand, and right up to her backpack, which she’d left higher up on the beach.
“Hey!” Lulu called to the monkey. It was tugging at the zippers of her pack. “Get away. Git!” She scampered up the sand toward her bag but halted when she saw what the mischievous monkey had in its all-too-grippy fingers.
Her airplane almonds!
Dang. She forgot about that snack bag she had buried in the front compartment. Clearly, the smell had permeated the pouch, because as she neared, the monkey bared his teeth at her and ripped into the pouch.
“Hey!” Lulu yelled again uselessly. Not only would that wrapper end up on the jungle floor, but smoked almonds were her favorite. Darned monkey!
Not thinking, she lunged for the packet. The monkey was having none of it. His furry face grinned as he taunted Lulu, tossing a handful of her nuts in his mouth.
Then, without warning, the monkey bounded onto her shoulder.
Lulu shrieked and tried to throw him off.
She felt the grippy fingers in her hair before she realized the little beast was perched on her head.
She shrieked again, this time a yelp so high-pitched she did not know her voice box was capable of such a sound.
She heard the crinkle of the wrapper, smelled those smoky almonds, and felt the reverberations of those monkey crunches.
Tyler appeared suddenly by her side. He reached for the monkey, but the capuchin deftly leapt off Lulu’s shoulder and up onto a broad-leafed tree.
The mischievous creature hopped up to the lowest branch, just out of reach, still clutching the silver peanut pouch in its grip.
Without another thought, Tyler flicked off his flip-flops and mounted the slanting trunk, gripping with his fingers and toes and inching his way up the textured bark.
The monkey hopped a branch higher.
Tyler scooted up a notch, pulling himself up by a giant knot in the tree. The growth on the tree suddenly crumbled beneath his fingers and sprouted with hundreds of termites. They poured from their decimated home and streamed out, looking for the source of the destruction and bent on revenge.
With a crafty squint, the monkey clutched the baggie in its nimble fingers and raced away into the shadowy jungle, disappearing with its treasure.
Noticing the termites on the rampage, Tyler braced. He was too high up on the tree to jump down comfortably, and he began wriggling his way down the trunk.
“Ah!” Tyler squealed. “Ack!” he screamed again and let go of the tree. He fell inelegantly onto the sand. Jumping up, he wriggled and smacked at the back of his swim trunks while Karina shook her head disapprovingly.
“Something’s biting me!” Tyler yelped, his hands traveling down the back of his shorts. He ran for the sparse cover of the palm trees, pulled the waistband from his stomach, and pinched at his skin.
“And that,” Karina said, her cool demeanor unchanged, “is why we don’t touch anything in the jungle. And why we don’t bring outside food into the park.”
Lulu shouted, “Pull off your shorts.” Just helping out.
“Yes!” Gwendy yelled supportively. “Take them off.”
Tyler quick-stepped on the hot sand, his fingers scratching his thighs.
“Ack,” he cried, racing toward the ocean at full tilt.
The instant he submerged he ripped off his swim trunks and swished them beneath the calm water.
Then, his whole body jolted. “Agh!” he screeched.
“Ack! Drown, you lousy bloodsuckers. Drown,” he screamed, throwing his trunks out to the sand to free up his hands and better attack the insectoid trespassers. He hopped wildly, dancing underwater.
On the shoreline, Lulu crossed her arms over her chest. “Wow,” she said to Gwendy. “That water is super clear.”
“Crystal,” Gwendy noted.
Tyler, with a sudden understanding of the water’s transparency, shouted, “Hey! Can someone toss me back my shorts?”
Nobody moved for his trunks.
Tyler lowered himself to his shoulders in the crystalline waters Not that it made much difference.
“Nothing wrong with looking,” Gwendy said to Lulu. Loudly, she added, “I mean, I give you all permission to look at me if you want. I may be fifty, but I’ve got the body of a thirty-year-old.”
Tyler waited a beat before calling, “Where are you hiding it?”
Later, after Lulu recovered from the giggles and Bill waded out to toss Tyler his swim trunks.
After Ariana snapped the lens cap back on her camera, promising to blur out any of the naughty bits.
After Gwendy had a momentary panic when she thought a monkey had made off with her progesterone pills but then found them in her backpack.
And after Karina finished scolding the group about scaring off every scrap of wildlife in the eastern regions of Costa Rica, the group headed back along the sandy trail.
They strolled the hour back uninterrupted, absorbed in the quiet dreamscape of the thick greenery, and Lulu caught Tyler glancing sidelong at her.
She slit her eyes, playfully mocking him.
But the second time she looked, Tyler’s smirk was infectious, and try as she might to keep the grin off her face, she felt it creeping upward.
Before she knew it, he had jogged a few steps to walk pace for pace beside her. His voice, torturously husky, said, “Did you see how I saved you from that monkey? Lucky I was there.”
“You were lucky those termites didn’t go for your wood.”
He looked at her for a beat, then barked out a genuinely surprised laugh. “Good one, Gardner.”
And she couldn’t help but laugh, too. The sound reverberated off the coconut palms and tangled up in the beach grape. It was a noise she enjoyed making.
Overhead, a crinkling sound grabbed her attention.
Lulu looked up, surprised to see its source.
An intense-eyed capuchin dangled by one arm from a banak tree.
It could have been any white-faced monkey, except it wasn’t.
She knew the creature from the quirk of his brow, the accusatory twinkle in its eye, and mainly, from the empty snack package folded in its hand.
Without a sound, it lunged from the branch, dropped the wrapper at Lulu’s feet, and hopped back up the tree. From its perch, the monkey gave Lulu a lingering look.
Tyler’s eyes remained pegged on the creature as he whispered, “What do you think he’s thinking?”
Lulu didn’t speak monkey, but she knew what that look meant. She translated, inexplicably employing a posh British accent. “Please be so kind as to dispose of your rubbish in the proper receptacle.”
She matched eyes with Tyler and the two of them snorted with laughter until Karina marched up beside them and her schoolmarm glare stifled their fun.
Lulu tamped down the rising sensation in her chest. Was this friendship going to be possible?
A guy who could make her laugh could catch her with her defenses down.
And then what would happen to her unprotected heart?