Chapter 1
Throughout most of the Caribbean, life is very distinctly divided into separate and unrelated halves. On the one hand, the tourists come and go gibbering, giggling, hoping and despairing. And the money they shed like dandruff supports an entire tinsel world of hotels, clubs, gambling complexes and diversionary outlets. On the other hand, beneath all the gaiety, music and untaxable income statements stashed in foreign banks, the Caribbean suffers. And its people those who have not become headwaiters, blackjack dealers, maids and pimps shamble through their compressed life-cycle, taking time only to beg, recover from diseases, and starve.
The island of San Dozes was no exception to this rule. What was once an undeveloped but perfectly happy little kingdom, had been converted to an "island paradise." The age of development had come to San Dozes in the form of Time-of-Your-Life Vacations, Incorporated.
Time-of-Your-Life, or 'los tiempos," as its personnel were referred to, owned the people, the beaches, the buildings, and, of course, the air and water rights on San Dozes. Time-of-Your-Life, in turn, ranked twentieth, at the bottom of a list of holding companies at the top of which sat the several men who controlled a large part of the Caribbean world.
No one who cared had any trouble identifying who these several men were. But it was something else again to speculate on how the nickels and dimes spent by the tourists on postcards or by the native for fishing-hooks wound up in the bank accounts of these men. For in this world of halves, the relationship between the foreign haves and indigenous have-nots was rigidly maintained. The complexity of control which the labyrinthine ladder of holding companies represented, proved that nothing was left to chance least of all, exposure. There were those who had estimated that a hundred men, working with all the benefits of computerized investigation and accounting, would have to spend a decade to prove that San Dozes, for example, was part of someone's game of Monopoly. Better just to accept the contrast between appearance and reality, and perhaps daydream about ridding the Caribbean of its kingpins. It was far more easy, and depending on how the kingpins used you, far more profitable or fun.
To Mr. Boulo, for instance, accepting the contrast meant sheer profit. Boulo had always been a hotel manager. In the past that had meant one thing managing a hotel. And Boulo had always been a good man on the job. Now, having come to the Caribbean, Boulo had learned to be two things a hotel manager, and an operative for the system.
The first half of Boulo's day was spent on the former role on appearances. It meant gliding into his office early in the morning and checking guest lists, expenditures, contingencies and emergencies. Then there was the tour of the dining room, wishing everyone good morning, and perhaps presenting a selected guest with an island flower, for the hair or buttonhole. Then into the kitchen, tasting the food, checking the menus, joking in a slightly aloof manner with the chefs and their staff. And from there, a winding course through the hotel complex, its suites, lounges, bars, pools, and recreational facilities. And, finally, a long stroll on the beach wearing a slightly harassed and tired look behind sunglasses and muted silk ascot nodding to the guests, patting the heads of small wretched dogs, and possibly with a great show of world-weariness, plucking a beer can or Kleenex from the shining white sand.
So much for appearances. In anybody's book, Mr. Boulo was the hotel manager par excellence. But it was dull work petty work, and more than that, as Boulo frequently smiled to himself, completely unnecessary. For the Sandozes, in fact, ran itself. The guests arrived and departed in scheduled groups, filling every room. His assistants saw to it that the hotel functioned without missing a beat. There was no one to hire, no one to fire, no changes, additions, or crises to contemplate. The Sandozes, like every other unit in the vast, sea-straddling island empire, ran according to the master-plan.
The master-plan provided that island X would cater to high-spending bachelor junior executives who wanted to gamble; that island Y would satisfy the brochure-conditions of being a haven for middle-aged dowagers and widowers looking for surreptitious and discreetly-handled stud service; that island Z would be a paradise for young married couples from sophisticated backgrounds who wanted a vacation-full of hiking, scooter-riding and really "getting to know the fascinating peoples of the island."
The master-plan for the islands made this particular area of the Caribbean not unlike a hospital, in which hundreds of different, specific services are provided; like a smooth-running hospital, each service was tailored to an isolated unit and no cross-over, no interference, no confusion of function was tolerated.
No gigolo-seeking dowagers, happy-go-lucky playboys, or buoyant young marrieds were permitted on San Dozes, for example. The master plan's tour and vacation agencies supplied a different clientele to Boulo's little empire package tours of young schoolteachers from the Midwest, unmarried clerks from big city department stores, lonely bachelors of modest means only the cream of the unsophisticated, unassuming, un-affluent and unmarried American crop were referred to Boulo's "vacation dreamland," where "Life forgets time and the world you left behind."
San Dozes gave the appearance of being a bustling community populated by an indifferent group of natives and several thousand rather shy American pleasure-seekers. The guidebooks and tour material described it as "completely and pleasantly" different from the other islands in that there was a minimum of honky-tonk, no movie-stars or jet-setters, and, most surprising of all, no gambling. All these elements were incorporated in other units. But all the units, including San Dozes, paid, and paid handsomely.
Gambling pays, but it requires a certain breed of vacationer. And San Dozes paid, according to the profit-making system that determined its own unique clientele. This was the reality behind the appearance. It was the reality that occupied the other half of Boulo's day.
It would be after lunch and Boulo the competent and tactful hotel manager who had been so bored all morning strides briskly into his office. He slides behind his desk like a jet rolling into its hangar and confronts the material laid before him in three piles.
First, the research pile a folder for each guest. The agency back home in the guest's area which to all appearances is a travel service has filled each folder with the information Boulo needs. Through a masterful system of perfunctory investigation and research techniques, it has filled out a form which tells Boulo the guest's history, how much he or she makes, who his or her closest friends and family are, and what the future conceivably holds in short, a complete and concise blueprint which could resemble anything from a credit application to a blueprint for blackmail.
Then the pile of hotel records in which the activities, attitudes and general behavior of each guest are recorded by the diligent and omnipresent staff. At the bottom of each guest's form are remarks which the guest has made in the presence of a maid, bartender or bellhop remarks which tell Boulo exactly why the guest came to San Dozes and what he or she really wanted from the vacation.
The third pile contains each guest's tour-contract. No one who comes to San Dozes pays in advance for the vacation package. The travel agency back home computes the cost of travel and estimated expenditure for the length of time the guest wishes to stay at San Dozes. Down to food, drink, souvenirs and tips, the total package estimate is fairly accurate and reflects almost exactly the schedule of time payments that the guest will pay off upon his or her return to the States. But in large print, at the bottom of the contract, is a blank space for "Other expenses incurred at the guest's pleasure." It is this unknown which will determine the exact amount of indebtedness the vacation-goer will face when he or she returns to teaching school, or selling shoes, or running a computer.
The three piles represent, for the most part, guests who will be leaving the next day. Boulo flicks through the piles, matching the folders and forms in sets of threes, and jotting down a single notation for each guest on a schedule-sheet dated for that evening. When he is almost through scanning the material, the door to his office opens and some twenty people file in. They represent part of the hotel's Special Activities Staff. Each of them has labored to make a particular guest comfortable. Each of them is responsible for the guest's last evening on the island an evening which in nearly every case comes as a real surprise to everyone, except Boulo and his staff.
Boulo briefs the staff on their particular guests, and together they fill in the time-slots on the evening schedule. One by one the staff file out of Boulo's office to deliver to each guest the invitation which is responsible for San Dozes' secret but unique reputation. The last one left is a strikingly handsome dark-skinned girl, dressed in a variation of the hotel's non-uniform a simple smock, cut very low in the back and slit high up the legs. She casually crosses the office, as Boulo studies the last file, and locks his door. Then, throwing her hair back, she glides to the side of his desk.
"Don't tell me we have a tough nut on our hands," she smiles, getting no response from Boulo, who is staring fixedly at the dossier in front of him, "C'mon, Boo don't work so hard, you'll get a headache, or go blind, and baby! where will I be then?" she says, coming around in back of his chair. She slides her bare arms forward along the sides of his neck and presses her body down against his back.
But Boulo doesn't acknowledge her. His eyes are vacantly studying the name on the folder a young schoolteacher named Robin Wead, one of those on the group-tour that will be leaving tomorrow. This girl Robin is anything but a tough nut, Boulo thinks. She's the kind of person San Dozes was created for. A pushover. Boulo knows he's seen her himself. Saw her the first day she came, down on the beach. She obviously had never worn a bikini before. And Boulo had stopped his morning walk to observe her self-consciousness. He remembered how she kept studying herself, fidgeting with the brief two-piece costume, trying to pull it down to cover more of her bottom and up to conceal more of her young, lush breasts. He remembered how stiffly she had walked, trying to keep her breasts from jiggling probably scared stiff, he had thought, that they would pop right out of their little cloth hammocks; and how, like a little girl, she had pulled the triangular patch away when it rode up between her legs and threatened her there. Probably not a virgin though, he had thought after all, the agency attempted to steer clear of virgins.
But all the same there had been something about her, something that had made Boulo linger each morning to watch this one of his thousands of guests who represented flat sums of dollars and cents. Maybe it was the way she had smiled at him the next day when he had come walking by quite close to her. By then, he had noticed, she had gained enough nerve to untie the straps of her halter while lying down to suntan. But the sound of his footsteps swooshing in the sand had startled her. And, arching up to look at him, she had nearly forgotten her vulnerable condition. So that her breasts had almost swung forward into Boulo's direct view before she recovered the halter with a desperate hand and pressed it to her. And when Boulo looked back at her, having averted his eyes, the way she smiled at him not giggling, not blushing, and certainly not inviting just smiling, had really grabbed him. For a split second the man of appearances had almost thought of a distant, ideal reality. But he recovered himself, and had smiled his manager's smile back and kept walking. And nearly forgotten the whole incident by the next day when this girl Robin had passed him and turned to thank him innocently for running such a nice hotel.
"Mustn't get attached to the guests, darling ... simply won't do," murmured the girl who hung on Boulo's back. Boulo began coming out of his trance as a pair of lips nibbled at his ear and two slender hands worked their way down the buttons of his shirt. "Is Boo-boo got a crush on the little yanqui school-marm?" teased the voice.
"Don't get smart!" he half-snarled, slamming the folders down. He thrust himself back in the chair, tilting it so that his head caught the girl right in the stomach.
"That's my baby," she laughed, seizing the opportunity to spread his shirt open and run her hands over his well-stuffed stomach. She squirmed her hips against his head as he reached back to squeeze her thighs and buttocks through the thin flaps of the smock.
"You just keep your mind on mama and forget that little puta," she leered down at him, pushing her hands down to undress him further. "Mama's going to give that little yanqui a night to remember."
She backed away from Boulo's chair, pulling him farther and farther over, until suddenly the casters on the executive chair shot forward and spilled Boulo out of the chair, collapsing them both to the floor. She took advantage of the fall to pull his shirt back and off and then, with a wild yelp of glee, rolled free from him as he struggled to get to his feet.
He scrambled up and jumped for her as she dodged around the office. "Come on, Boo. Come and get your bad girl. Big, bad Alya." Circling to the desk, she kept it between them as they squared off around it. The fervid excitement of the game glowed in her eyes, matching the heavy-lidded look of punishing desire that was transforming Boulo's face. The office was filled with the sounds of their tense breathing as they circled the desk with increasing deliberation.
As if she were physically taking her cue from Boulo's expression, Alya's manner started to change. The wild playfulness ebbed away, and was replaced by a hurt and guilty look. It was what she wanted, what made the afternoons so complete for her.
"Alya's bad, a bad, mean thing," she said, in a kind of blank voice. "Tell me I'm bad, yes, say it, please say it, Boo!" she pleaded, at the same time crossing her arms over her head and in one swift motion pulling the smock clear of her body.
Boulo made no reply, but, circling to the back of the desk, opened a drawer and took out a thick leather strap. He crossed the room to the nearly naked girl, who lifted her face to receive a stinging slap from his open hand.
Boulo cursed her and, violently grabbing hold of her flimsy nylon panties, tore them from her hips. She smiled as he continued to swear at her, reviling her in the basest manner. She let him seize her by the hair and lead her to the couch, where she flopped limply over its padded arm.
Burying her face in the thick cushions, she spread-her legs apart and hunched her body, clad only in a bra, down against the couch.
Then Boulo's arm rose and the strap whistled through the air, the smack of its impact joining with the sound of her muffled, pleased cry.
"Bad, bad, oh hurt me, Boo, harder, darling, oh I want to hurt so badly," she blubbered as the strap rose and fell, leaving deep welts across the coppery globes of her proffered buttocks as Boulo's frenzy and his curses increased, until, like a madman, he was both beating her and kicking out wildly at her wounded form, rousing in both of them the fever of their mutually twisted passions.
Outside the office, his secretary noted the time and turned away all persons with the polite news that Mr. Boulo would not be receiving callers for the next half-hour.
It wasn't much later that Alya, her appetite sated for the afternoon, resumed her role as hotel staffer and sought out her ward the young schoolteacher. Robin trusted Alya implicitly, this lovely, cultivated woman who had made her stay at Sandozes such a pleasure. And she listened carefully as Alya outlined the fact that, while the island really did have a spectacle worth seeing before one left, the hotel could assume no responsibility for its guests' behavior.
"Oh yes," Robin had said, in response to Alya's query, "I've had such a good time here only I had wished, you know, at some time, to get out around the island and see a bit of its life."
To which Alya had replied, according to the formula, "Well, Miss Robin, there is the festival of propagation celebrated here by our people. But the hotel's of the opinion that it's rather strong stuff for our guests and we can never tell how people will react."
"Oh, you don't have to worry about me," Robin assured her. "I'd love to see the whatever-it-is."
"Well, in that case, if you just sign this disclaimer that the hotel is in no way responsible and didn't solicit your interest that's a matter of legal form you know; we've learned our lesson from some of our guests in the past I'll be able to arrange something for tonight."
"Thanks so much," said Robin, briskly signing the papers attached to what was a copy of her tour-contract. "Will it cost anything?" she asked.
"Don't worry about that," answered Alya. "Any expenses will just be entered here, under "Other," with your agreement. See you at eleven-thirty tonight, O.K.? "
"Absolutely," nodded Robin, "wouldn't miss it for the world at least now I'll have something to take home besides a suntan!"
If you only knew, honey, thought Alya, as she smiled and left the room.
If Robin had had any inkling of the organization behind her "night out" on the island, she might not have been curious as she was about the peculiar time Alya had arranged to pick her up.
But she was ready and bursting with interest that night when Alya came for her and they started over an unfamiliar island road in an old, rattling taxi. Robin really hadn't known what to wear to the celebration, but she had wanted to appear casual. So that afternoon she had bought herself a simple sort of dress which was half-way between the sexy smock Alya wore and the loose muumuus all the island women clad themselves in.
In the taxi, she already regretted that, after much deliberation, she had worn any underclothing at all. The thought that it was unnecessary had so surprised her that, once she had slipped into her bra and panties, she didn't let herself realize how incongruous they felt under the loose-fitting and comfortable smock. The night was exceptionally warm, and both women were bathed in the blast of humid air that poured in through the open windows of the taxi. And as grateful as Robin was for the luxury of the cool garment, she was partly annoyed with herself for wearing the constricting nylon and lace. It would be an easy matter to just hike the muumuu up, she thought, and slip the undergarments off but after shooting a sideways glance at her chaperone and then noticing the eyes of the driver in the little cracked mirror, she let the idea drop.
The taxi stopped, it seemed to Robin, in the middle of nowhere. But Alya, having paid the driver, grabbed Robin's hand and immediately led her off the road into the lush undergrowth. They seemed to be pacing along a well-defined trail, although Robin couldn't see a thing in any direction. Her ears were filled with the night sounds of the tropical world, and, with mounting anticipation, she stumbled along after Alya's energetic pace.
After several minutes, like a B-movie scene, thought Robin to herself, she detected the sounds of human voices and an exceptionally musical sort of drumming. And then, in a split second, her guide had pulled her from the darkness of the surrounding jungle into a torch lit clearing.
Robin instinctively tried to shrink back into the shadows, somehow sensing that she was a trespasser here the only white person. Her eyes darted around the shadows, noting the dark bodies seated in a circle around a mat-covered sort of arena, which in turn, was bounded by torches on poles.
Alya pulled her forward, and, as if on a signal, all the natives interrupted their noises to turn their gaudily painted faces to the newcomer. Robin's trepidation turned to real nervousness when a general clamor went up from the group as they acknowledged her presence. At the same time, a terrific volley went up from what Robin now recognized as a steel band several natives beating out an intricate music on brightly colored petroleum drums.
"It's okay they accept your being here," said Alya, leading the shrinking Robin to the other side of the clearing. Here there was a small bamboo lean-to, something like an oversized sedan-chair, and it was into this three-sided structure that Alya led Robin. From inside this shelter, they had a direct line of sight to the matted circle. Robin was surprised when, on looking about her, she could find nothing to sit down on. Standing nervously, feeling hot and sticky all over from the run along the trail, she turned after a minute to speak to Alya. But where Alya had been standing with her, there was no one now. And before Robin could begin to wonder about her companion's disappearance, the music started up again.
At the same time, a young boy wearing practically nothing, Robin noted in stupefied amazement ran up to the shelter and thrust a mug full of some liquid at her. The minute she took it, he bounded off. Whatever it was, it smelled good almost heady and without thinking, Robin began sipping it as her eyes followed the spectacle unfolding before her.
As the music increased in volume and rapidity, becoming an almost ferocious din, the bodies seated around the circle began chanting something which at times sounded like barking and then droning. The sound took hold of Robin's head and vibrated through her erect, flushed body, causing a novel kind of shuddering. But simultaneously, whatever it was she was drinking made her feel as though she were melting inside the soft center of her being growing hot with a strange fire encased in her trembling form.
Robin started swaying to the music in a stupor, automatically sipping more and more of the odd-tasting potion. She didn't blink when a figure sprang from the circle and started a graceful, leaping dance on the mats. like a news-ticker in the back of her head, her mind scanned the information that the dancer wore nothing. But Robin's mind was atrophying. She was seeing the muscular, whirling figure with her senses responding to his frenzied dance with her body.
And then a second figure sprang into the circle, and Robin's eyes widened a bit more as they registered the sight of a naked brown female body, glistening under the torchlight as it entered into a frantic but formal ballet with the Apollo-like male dancer.
Robin had never even dreamed in fantasy what was actually taking place before her. As the drums sang their unearthly song, and the dancers meshed and then shot apart, Robin began responding to the drama. She was swaying more intensely now, lolling from side to side in an attempt to rub her inner thighs together to quiet the burning hollowness she felt spreading within her. She hardly recognized the turmoil as desire, but instead felt empty, lonely hidden as she was from the euphoria and intensity of the spectacle. She dropped the mug to the ground absently. Her lips became wet with fascination. Her hands hitched up behind her, under the smock, and unsnapped the harsh halter that repressed the heavy pulsing in her breasts. With one arm under the smock, she sought her own flesh, steadying herself against the shelter as she drew one leg up in a desperate friction against the other.
Then, although Robin couldn't remember noticing it, Alya was in the group of dancers, which had grown to include several more naked bodies. The sight of her companion, springing about under the caresses of the dancers' hands and the torchlight, made Robin bite her lip in restless agony. Her knuckles whitened on the bamboo pole. Her body beat with a strange rhythm that was driving her out of her mind. And then she heard her name, heard the dancers, the others, the ringing drums calling her name, Robin!
And trembling as though she was going to split in two, a scream of want rising in her white-hot body, she finally lunged forward from the shelter. Running blindly ahead, she wrenched the smock from her body and plunged into the group of dancers. And then it was just relief, sheer relief as hands and limbs were pressed to her body as her mind went blank and the shutters of consciousness dropped over her eyes, and she sank into a thrumming, intoxicated void of pleasure.
Nineteen other guests had shared a similar experience that night, before it became Robin's turn. But, waiting in the airport's boarding lounge the next day, none of the twenty looked at each other.
For each was wondering in his or her own state of shock how they had been so successfully and completely trapped. Each had been called on by a member of Mr. Boulo's staff. Each had been shown pictures of what they had done the night before pictures that made some of them faint or become physically sick. And each had been shown the addresses of those to whom the pictures would be sent, back in their home towns, where they lived and worked and tried to love. Unless, of course, they were willing to acknowledge the extra $1000 added to their tour contracts under "Other Services" an amount of money each would be paying off for some time to come paying on the installment plan for their "Time-of-Your-Life" Caribbean vacation.
Some, like Robin, had reddened eyes from crying; others were helpless with anger. Each had realized that the world was composed of far greater powers than the institutions they thought they had a stake in back in their small home towns and cities. It was a gloomy, quiet plane trip back over the blue Caribbean.