Chapter 14

Eve's departure left Brandon alone with his thoughts and although the sad look on her face as she left served as a reminder that the real world was looming over him, being alone again (save Ramon still busily fiddling with his coffee maker) would do the trick anyway. He grabbed a newspaper off the neat stack on one of the tables and set up shop in his usual seat instead of returning to the one he'd been sitting in with Eve. He scanned the headlines of the paper; nothing of particular interest, but that didn't save him from having to read it all. He took the last sip of his coffee and leaned back in his chair to read.

After the excitement of the past few days, returning to his normal day to day activities was painfully boring, but somehow comforting. He didn't particularly enjoy reading the paper every day, but it had become such a habit that the act was oddly therapeutic. Sure, he was doing it despite the searing pain in his ribs and he found it was much easier to lay the paper down on the table to read than it was to hold it up with only one fully functioning hand, but it still could have been a pleasant return to normalcy... if only he could stop picturing Eve's sad face as she left. Brandon assumed it was for her as much as it had been for him, a whirlwind of excitement that didn't involve a whole lot of forward thinking, but that didn't bode well for the relationship he was beginning to realize he so desperately wanted. Loneliness is a funny thing; once it becomes normal, you can forget how much it hurts until a beautiful brunette comes along to remind you. Suddenly, continuing to live life as he had for the past two years seemed an utter impossibility. Now that he had tasted happiness, returning to the dull grey of his solitary lifestyle sounded like a fate worse than death... but there was the rub.

Pursuing a relationship with Eve would invariably mean the end of his career. It would mean leaving the agency and returning to the United States with a redacted resume and a skill set that would doom him back to a cubicle. He doubted his experiences in the intelligence world would make his a valuable asset to anyone not looking for a cultural analyst (a job he'd be precluded from pursuing for the same reason he couldn't keep his current position) nor did he think he'd been doing the job long (or well) enough to work his way into a position training future analysts. To his recollection, all of his instructors were older, well-seasoned men who hadn't spent their entire careers in his particular sect of intelligence work, but rather at higher levels of the espionage game. Training cultural analysts to them was the equivalent of him training brand new Privates on how to load a weapon - it was child's play. No, leaving his position at this point would mean the death of his career, which upon further consideration, might not really be that bad a thing. Living alone in a place that saw you as a perpetual outsider, having to be paranoid of everything around you, not being able to tell the people you care about the truth... in fact, purposely avoiding caring about anyone… It all felt like reasons to leave, which Brandon found a bit amusing in an ironic way, as those were the very reasons he took the job. Brandon paused at the bottom of the page. His eyes had gone over each word, but his mind was elsewhere. He realized he hadn't retained a bit of it, before directing his attention to the top of the page again. He needed to focus. To start, he'd get another cup of coffee.

"Hey Ramon, is that thing working well enough to make me another cup?" It seemed that he was playing with the coffee maker more than usual.

"Of course, I'm merely perfecting the blend!" Ramon announced with pride. Brandon looked back into the remnants of the crude oil in his cup and considered mentioning that the coffee Ramon served was at best mediocre and on average awful, but didn't know how well the joke would go over. Instead, he simply stood and carried the cup to the tinkering man.

"Coming right up," Ramon took the cup and filled it first with cream and sugar (Ramon always did so) followed by the coffee and then a light stir. He passed the cup back to Brandon and he hobbled back to his seat. His knee wasn't doing nearly as well as he'd hoped on his way there. In fact, most of the progress he'd felt had begun to fade and everything was starting to ache with the rhythm of his heartbeat. Pain, Brandon postulated, was really meant as a reminder not to do things that caused injury. His knee hurt because it was hurt and it was reminding him to stop walking on it. Funny then that he spent so much of his life ignoring his body's pleas; like a weird form of physical detachment where he was in charge but was constantly abusing his work force. In the military that could lead to mutiny; he wondered if that was what he was experiencing now.

When Brandon had read the paper in its entirety (a few portions multiple times amidst his wandering thoughts) he asked Ramon if he still had any from the day prior, as he had been in dispose throughout the day. Ramon obliged and only then, finally addressed Brandon's injuries.

"So you gonna tell me who worked you over like that?" Ramon's face actually seemed concerned.

"Nobody. Just a scuffle," Brandon took the paper and began to turn back toward the table.

"Well I don't think those boys will be getting into any more scuffles like that any time soon," Ramon chuckled. Word traveled fast on Roatan Island.

"Neither will I." Brandon winced as he sat back down.

"Trouble's funny like that, mi amigo, you can't always help when it finds you." Ramon's face was serious enough to let Brandon know he was speaking from a wealth of experience. Brandon didn't often notice the scars littering Ramon's face, but occasionally, when saying things like that, he couldn't help but see them. Brandon nodded in agreement and took a sip of his coffee. It was terrible, but he smiled his approval.

Once Brandon had sufficiently committed both papers to memory, he decided to head down the pier to check on the preparations for the arrival of the Allure of the Seas. He hadn’t been lying when he told Tony that it was the largest cruise ship in the world. It was nearly twelve hundred feet long and would carry more than six thousand passengers. Brandon had read in one of the cruise oriented books in the Carnival office at the pier that that Titanic had been nearly nine hundred feet long and held less than half the standard operating capacity of the Allure. In short, it was a behemoth. The Roatan Island chain really contained seven different islands with more than fifty thousand total residents, but as far as the tourists were concerned, the main island that Brandon lived and worked on was all there was, and the addition of their six thousand people would nearly double the population of it for the ten or so hours they were docked. The men and women that worked at the pier were professionals and he doubted he had any reason for concern, but like his inability to be late to anything, an overwhelming need to supervise and inspect such things was always present as a left-over from his time in uniform.

He strolled through the docks without any real intent or purpose beyond seeing and being seen. He wanted the people working to know that he was around in case they had concerns (but primarily so they would do what they were supposed to do). He didn’t necessarily have anything riding on this particular trip going well, but the inaugural cruise of the world’s biggest cruise ship was something of import to Brandon’s bosses (and even the media if it was a slow enough news day) and therefore, it had to be important to him. After a few scant conversations with dock workers whose names Brandon did his best to pretend he hadn’t forgotten, he decided that everything was more or less as it should be. He crossed through the gate onto the street and waited for a minute, hoping a taxi would come by. He usually made a point not to use them, walking was a good bit of exercise and helped fill his day, but he was hurting and the walk back seemed incredibly daunting. No taxis appeared, which should have come as no surprise to him. They knew the cruise ship schedules better than he did and they’d know better than to waste the time or money to have any coming to this part of the island when it was populated solely by local workers. Reluctantly, he strolled down the road at a meager pace, still holding out hope that a yellow SUV would appear on the horizon as he walked.

Brandon reached the center of town without coming across a single cab and decided a break in his stroll to pick up some groceries would do him some good. He paused and leaned on the wooden wall of a vegetable stand as he eyed the produce, gibing him both a chance to recuperate and some time to think of anything he was capable of cooking. A long two minutes passed without a single idea. An older woman sat in a chair beside the stand who hadn’t seemed to notice (or care) that Brandon had stopped to rest in her workspace was beginning to seem annoyed by his presence. After another minute or so, he finally decided inspiration wasn’t going to come in the form of homegrown potatoes. He took the hint when she began to glare and hoisted his weight off the drying, grey wood. He didn’t want to rely on Eve to bring food to cook again, though she might, so he decided instead to visit one of the small restaurants along his route to pick up some takeout. The sun was beginning to set and if he timed it properly he could get back to his place with some warm dinner just in time for Eve’s arrival. A few burgers in a doggy bag sounded a lot better than anything he knew how to cook, but more importantly, he could grab a drink while they prepared it.

The idea of sitting down and numbing the pain with whatever the strongest thing they’d serve him was enough to convince him that it was the best idea he’d come up with, so he took a left through a pair of swinging doors that would look right at home in the Old West. He knew the restaurant, though it wasn’t one on the approved list by the tourism board. The owner had never shown much interest in being added to it, which was just fine by Brandon. It wasn’t much work checking up on the places he needed to, but he saw no reason to pursue extra work if it wasn’t necessary. The hard wood floor inside hadn’t been treated properly, leaving the boards uneven and cracked. Brandon hadn’t been picking his foot up very high as he walked due to the pain in his knee, but he had been unaware of it until he nearly tripped over a plank that only stood out against its peers by about a half inch. The few patrons sitting at the bar looked at him as he corrected himself, but didn’t laugh. Brandon assumed seeing a man in his condition trip was sadder than it was anything else. Just as well, he’d take a stranger’s pity over overt mockery if he got to choose anyway.

He left an open seat between him and the two men who were each silently sipping at glasses of brown swill that could have been beer, but probably wouldn’t have made the cut in the States. Through Brandon’s dry pallet though, he’d even take one of their mud-beers over the pain and sobriety he’d been experiencing all afternoon. He hadn’t eaten yet today, so he knew it wouldn’t take much to reel the pain in a bit, so he perused the collection of unlabeled bottles and mysterious brands he’d never heard of as the bartender made her way to him.

“What’ll it be?” She was a black woman with an accent he couldn’t place. Tiny bits of grey hair poked out of a bandana she had wrapped around her head but only some light crow’s feet around her eyes would indicate that she was a day over twenty otherwise. She didn’t smile, not that he’d expected her to, and seemed to feel as though a third customer to wait on was overtaxing at best.

“I’ll have a glass of whatever your strongest whiskey is with a couple of ice cubes.” Brandon had given up on picking a bottle.

“You got something you wanna forget?” She raised an eyebrow and looked Brandon up and down.

“Something like that,” Brandon wouldn’t know how to explain his day if she seemed like she’d care… not that she did. She picked up a glass bottle with a squared bottom and no label and poured it into what Brandon hoped was a clean glass. Then she slid an ice box open and grabbed a few cubes with her bare hand that she tossed into the murky brown liquid and slid it to him. So much for a clean glass, he thought as he raised it to her in thanks. The smell hit his nose six inches from his face; it was a smoky odor, like something you’d use on wood chips you were going to barbecue with and his sinuses burned with disapproval. This oughta do the trick, he thought to himself as he took a hearty sip. The two men stopped to watch him drink and Brandon realized he may have been mistaken in asking for their strongest whiskey. It went down like razor blades made out of fire and didn’t stop burning once it reached his stomach. He could feel it pooling in his gut, trying to eat its way to freedom through his stomach lining. A twinge of intoxication hit his head that he recognized less as an effect of the alcohol making him drunk and more as the familiar calling card of addiction appeased.

“Not bad,” Brandon coughed. One of the two men smiled approvingly with all the teeth he had left and they both returned to looking down their beers. The bartender couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge his comment, she was too busy leaning on the back counter and muttering to herself in a language Brandon thought could be Portuguese. If it was, he considered, she could easily be from western Africa. What on Earth would have brought her to Roatan was beyond him, but then, he could say the same for everyone not born on the island that he ran into. It wasn’t the sort of destination one pines for, regardless of what the cruise lines might suggest. Brandon had been to a number of different parts of Africa during his time in the Marines, and seeing her reminded him of a deployment he’d once made to the southern part of the continent.

Brandon met a local man at the beginning of his post in Africa that laughed when he told him his country was beautiful. Honestly, it was a hallow comment meant to express his gratitude for the people’s hospitality, not an observation about the knee-high dead grass and spine-tree laden scenery. He asked if Brandon liked spending time in his homeland, and he sincerely responded that he did; then he shook his head and explained that he couldn’t wait to leave Mozambique. It was easy to understand why; the country was wrought with civil war for a good portion of his lifetime, education is as rare as disease and poverty are common and to his semi-conscious observation, every plant he saw has some kind of barb or thorn sticking out of it… but that wasn’t what he meant. As Brandon conversed with a guy who joined his nation’s military for much the same reason Brandon had joined his, he didn’t see a man who was tired of running field operations in the third world, he saw a man with the same fever to get out of his hometown that almost every young American has at one point or another. He didn’t want to escape his home, he wanted to get out there and see what the rest of the world had to offer. Sure, Brandon grew up with video games and laptops, this man grew up tending his fields by hand, but ultimately they both wanted the same thing: to see how different the world looks just beyond the horizon. Maybe that same longing had brought this woman to Roatan Island. It didn’t seem to matter anymore though. Whatever it was that she was looking for, she didn’t seem to have found it. He finished the glass of whiskey in a few more sips, but it was clear that this wasn’t where he’d be getting any takeout. He took a few bills from his wallet and left them next to the glass before standing up and slowly walking out. No one said goodbye as he did.

Brandon returned to the street with a little more vigor than he had possessed before his awful drink. The ache in his knee has dulled a bit, allowing him to walk with more of a stride than a limp, but he knew the effects would be short lived. He decided to head for Jose’s. It was just down the street and he knew it wouldn’t be difficult to get some food to go. Sometimes familiarity is reason enough; Brandon was exhausted and not in the mood to try new things. The sun had all but set and he still wasn’t enthusiastic about a long walk home in the dark, especially in his current state. He made a note to himself to start carrying his pistol, at least until he felt like he could defend himself again. He didn’t want to use it, but knew simply brandishing it could have stopped the scuffle the other night from ever occurring. That, or gotten someone killed, but Brandon was confident the body count wouldn’t have included him or Eve, so it was something he was all right with. Of course, getting beaten up for her seemed to do me some good, he considered. Maybe he should have tried that tactic with his ex-wife.

His leg was already beginning to hurt like it was before by the time he walked into Jose Mcyntire’s. The place was dead, just as he expected it to be, and his appearance was enough to stop the few employees from what they were doing to leer at him. He couldn’t wait until his face had healed up so he could go back to being ignored. He took a seat at the bar and waited for the bartender to come over.

“Hola, como esta usted?” The bartender asked him how he was. Brandon smiled and leaned his bruised and swollen head onto his casted hand as his response, “Lo siento, what’ll you have?”

“Can I get two burgers with fries to go and a vodka-ginger ale while I wait,” Brandon requested. The bartender nodded and set about making the drink before heading back to the kitchen to place his order. The drink was good, Absolut Vodka was Brandon’s guess, though it had been poured from an unmarked plastic bottle with a spout. He savored the taste of it, letting it roll around his tongue in an effort to eliminate the last remaining smoky aftertaste from his whiskey. He didn’t look up from his glass, hoping it would convey his aversion to conversation and it seemed to do the trick. No one approached him until the bartender returned with a brown paper bag containing his order. Brandon paid him for it and stood up to leave, keeping his eyes on the door. The pain had become almost too much for him to bare and maintain any level of normal civility. When he got back to his apartment, he planned to lay on the floor until Eve arrived. Eve. Just thinking her name made him feel a bit better and the realization made him chuckle to himself. He was quite taken with her and to recognize the childish way it affected him was the sort of funny he couldn’t really put his finger on. In part, he assumed, it was nice just to know he was still capable of feeling much at all.

The walk back to his apartment felt like it took days. Each step hurt and his occasional grunts of exasperation served only to make his ribs hurt even worse. He didn’t remember the last time he cried, but a few times as he walked, he considered it. He promised himself he’d go back to the hospital for some pain killers the following day, the bill be damned. He passed Ramon’s coffee shop, still open for business but empty as it tended to be in the evenings and had to convince himself not to go in and sit down. He was low on time, it was already close to eight and he didn’t want to leave Eve sitting alone outside for the second night in a row. He did his best to keep a good pace, also not wanting her to catch up to him from behind and see him in such rough shape. Of course, she’d already seen it, but a man has to work hard to maintain at least some self-respect in these situations.

He switched the bag over to his right side, pinning it to his hip with his broken hand, which pressed his arm into his ribs ever so lightly, but still hard enough to make breathing a labor. He used his left hand to fish for his keys in his pocket as he staggered the last few steps to the door. His hand shook as he extended the key to the knob and it took three tries to get it into the keyhole. He could have cried again, this time tears of joy, as he turned the knob and the door swung open. The welcoming darkness inside begged him to crawl into his bed and cease to exist, at least until the pain subsided, and although it was only a few steps through the door to the light and a few more to his bed, each one was like trudging through molasses. When he reached the bed, his legs gave way and he collapsed onto himself, twisting at the waist and hurting his ribs, but the relief of being off his feet made it feel worth it. After a minute of laying in pain, he corrected his body’s alignment and laid flat on his back, his front door still wide open, the bag of burgers and French fries on the bed beside him. He nearly fell asleep, until the faint light from the streetlight outside was interrupted by the shadow of Eve standing in his door.

“Brandon?” She asked through the open door. He raised his broken hand.

“Yeah… I’m here,” he was barely able to speak. She stepped inside and closed the door behind here before crossing the apartment and leaning over him. Her eyes were red and swollen; she’d been crying. Brandon tried desperately to gather the energy to ask her what was wrong, but he was already fading. The pain has overwhelmed him and he wasn’t sure if he was losing consciousness or just falling asleep. He wasn’t sure if there was a difference at this point. The last thing he remembered was a single tear making its way down to Eve’s chin and falling onto his swollen cheek. It felt cool on his overheating skin. Then darkness.