Fingerprints of Previous Owners by Rebecca Entel

Author:Rebecca Entel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781944700430
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Published: 2017-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The Beach Blanket Blog said, “The House and Lovers’ Lookout Tour. Great views! Magical views!”

Going inland in broad daylight: the real magic trick.

I had a bunch of big greenish garbage bags Lem had given me. I’d convinced him part of my garbage duty could be collecting litter during the tour. I didn’t want to ask him for any favors, didn’t want to do anything that’d have him dogging up to me all the time again—all the time still. But Lem agreeing to the extra garbage duty I’d invented to do during my Maid hours meant I could walk up the path—the resort’s way inland—for the first time. The bags stuck to my hands in the heat, shimmered, as I slowly caught up to the tour group.

I knew the Manions had gone up with this group. Maybe Jasmine Manion had taken her book up there, to compare what she saw to the map. As if I wasn’t drowning in the inland already—now that bag of hers was something I couldn’t stop tracking. Eyeing how squared-out its edges seemed.

Getting inland through the resort’s path was so much easier than getting inland anywhere else on the island. They had dug into the hillside to make an evenly graded slope paved smoother than any paved road around here. As far as I knew, not a single one of us local folks who worked for the resort had ever walked this not-too-steep path, each serpentine curve the shape of a machete blade. It was as off-limits as swimming in the pool or sitting down to feast in the dining room. Drinking with a guest, island-glued to another in Lionel’s old truck. None of us had ever witnessed the AYS giving the tour: the storybook version of the inland, with its concocted Lovers’ Lookout.

I shook one of the bags out to its length. It filled with air and my pretense of litter duty. Pulled a wisp of paper out of a bush. Realized the plant I was reaching into was landscaped haulback posed, almost unrecognizably, in carved circular sculptures along the path. So it could be tamed. Pricked me just the same.

I knew I was getting closer when I caught bits of conversations. Even closer when slices of tourists flashed in between the landscaped foliage. A glimpse of a man unfolding the legs of his sunglasses and wrapping them around his puffy pink face, then wrapping his arm around the waist of the woman next to him, who seemed not to mind his sweat. A glimpse of a kid with thick white sunblock puddled in the valleys around his nose, the divot below his mouth, the swirls of his ears, and the creases of his elbows. Squirming away when his mother tried to rub it all in. Glimpse of his mother: Jasmine Manion. Glimpse of his nanny stooping to take the boy’s hand, her dark eyes probably bloodshot and glassy behind mirrored lenses. A glimpse of an older woman in a broad-brimmed straw hat batting absentmindedly at the camera strung around her neck.

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