Monday
I can clearly remember the first words Chuck said to me:
"Howdy, what are ya drinkin', hon?"
Nobody in their right mind back at home in Luton would say those words. 'Howdy' was obviously ridiculous but even calling someone 'hon' would sound strange. I'd been called a lot of different names in my nearly-forty years but I was fairly sure this was the first time it had been 'hon'. And he said it so casually, too, like he said that every day. I suppose he did say it every day.
"Double vodka and orange juice," I replied, in a very upright, British kind of way. Nothing extra except the exact drink order. Making it clear I wasn't in the mood for small talk.
Chuck completely ignored this.
"Coming right up, ma'am. Escaping from the kids, huh?"
I looked at him, and he looked at me, laughter on his face. "Saw you with them earlier in the pool," he explained, as he dispensed two measures of vodka and a bit for luck.
It was impossible not to be drawn in by his patter. "Yeah, something like that," I conceded.
In went the orange juice and the drink slid across the bar to me. It had ice and there was instantly condensation forming on the glass. The air was just as warm as it had been all day, even though it was dusk now, one of those nights in the Caribbean where the feeling of a thunderstorm was constantly in the air.
I necked the drink in one, before any more condensation could form, and put it back on the bar. Chuck's attention hadn't drifted for a moment and he had the vodka in hand the moment the glass was out of mine.
"Kids being a real pain in the ass, huh?" He laughed. And then, because he was male and his vision wasn't impaired, he looked at my tits. This had been a familiar experience for me since I was a teenager, blessed with large breasts as I was, and having two children had only increased the size. Although I now looked enviously back at how perky they'd been pre-kids. I was wearing a lime green one piece swimming costume, not an especially revealing one, with fabric cups to keep my nipples covered. Cleavage was unavoidable, though. I was wearing denim shorts for extra coverage from the waist down, too, so I looked very much like the mum-of-two on holiday.
That's why I didn't give his look any thought. All men seemed to notice my tits, but Chuck looked about twenty and was hardly going to be interested in a random middle-aged woman to whom he was serving drinks. In any case, I wasn't interested in him, nor was I about to open up to him about the reason for the double vodkas.
"Yeah, pretty much," I said, and he smiled, nodded, and after passing me the second drink, he walked off to the other end of the bar to chat to a couple of older American women in floppy hats and those peculiar three-quarter length trousers that American women seemed to love to wear when they were abroad. Capri pants, I think. They lapped him up, complimenting him and flirting gently, while he poked fun at them and flexed his biceps so they could touch and see how hard the muscles were. He did have nice arms; not the biceps so much as his thick, hairless forearms, roped with tendons, the kind of arms you expected to see hauling boxes, not serving drinks. And he was good-looking, too, although you could tell he knew it. Plus, you know what they say about black guys and their equipment down below. I blushed to myself and tried not to think about it. He was far too young for that, and it was probably all made up anyway.
I'm not a particularly heavy drinker, usually, but I could always hold my booze and by the time it was properly dark and all the other tourists had drifted off to their rooms, I was on my fourth drink and Chuck had been busy looking at his phone for the past hour. I wasn't even sure where my phone was. Probably in the room, no doubt, with Simon. At least he didn't know my passcode to unlock it.
"Same again?" Chuck asked, noticing when I tilted the glass right back to drain it.
I knew I shouldn't, the hangover would be killer, but I was past caring. With nobody else around, Chuck didn't even bother measuring the vodka, he just glugged it straight into the glass.
"No orange juice," I said as he reached into the fridge for it.
"You want something else? Or just straight vodka?" he asked, his hand hovering over the juice.
"Just how it is."
I could barely taste it anyway, and to be honest neat vodka wasn't the worst. Reminded me of being seventeen and riding around in the back of some guy's tatty car, drinking supermarket vodka from the bottle and hanging out in deserted car parks. Sounded awful, looking back, but something about the freedom of it all made me nostalgic.
"Do you mind if I join you? I'm not supposed to, but the bar doesn't close for two more hours and Mondays are always dead," Chuck said, not waiting for an answer before slapping a highball glass down on the bar and pouring his own vodka, neat. "Well, at this time of year most nights are dead, come to think of it."
I shrugged. Like I said, I was past caring at this stage.
"Cheers, as you Brits say." Chuck grinned, clinking his glass against mine. I sipped but he downed his, before coughing and spitting half of it into the sink.
"Oh boy, that's disgusting," he said, wiping his mouth on a towel. "I have no clue how you're drinking it like that."
I smiled gently. Not because I was in any way flattered, but because of the way he said 'oh boy'. Once again, nobody in Luton would ever say 'oh boy'.
"What's your name? I'm Chuck," he said, in the direct way that Americans had. I could probably have drunk at this bar all week and never asked his name quite happily.
"I'm Nat."
"Nat? What's that short for? Natasha?"
"Natalie."
"Natalie, huh," he said, trying it out. The way he said it was like neh-duh-lee, instead of how I said it, nah-tah-lee. "Nat. Makes you sound like an old guy, no offence."
I gave him a look and sipped my drink again, silently.
"You know, like, 'Nat and Paul are going fishing down at the lake', or something like that. You wouldn't get a gal named Nat doing something like, say, dancing on a table."
I stared at him. "Dancing on a table?" I asked, bewildered, and he laughed, pouring himself a rum and coke and stirring in brown sugar.
"I'm just saying, Nat's an old person's name. Natalie is cute, though."
"Cute," I repeated, mulling it over. I felt like there was an undercurrent of mocking going on here, behind his words. But he seemed genuine and let out a satisfied 'ahh' when he took a drink of his rum.
"Don't you want one of these? They're all included in the room package," he said, pointing to his drink. "Much nicer than what you're drinking."
I shook my head. "I'm fine, thanks."
"Your loss." He had more of his drink and we sat in silence for a few seconds before he spoke again.
"Tallie."
"What?"
"Tallie. Now that's a cute name. That's what you should call yourself."
Everyone, from my mum to Simon to my friends and even my boss called me Nat. Natalie was what someone called me when they'd never met me before. Never in my life had I been called 'Tallie'. Same as 'hon'.
"I don't think so."
"Suit yourself. Tallie would dance on a table, that's for sure."
I couldn't decide if Chuck was amusing or annoying. But talking to him was keeping my mind off Simon and I appreciated that.
"So where in England are you from, Tallie?" Chuck went on, swirling the ice in his glass.
"Luton." I ignored the 'Tallie' thing.
"Never heard of it. Is it one of them towns with a little park in the middle, and tiny little cottages everywhere? Like, uh, Stratford. Shakespeare's town, you know?"
I laughed. "It's the opposite of that. Think graffiti, blocks of flats and despair."
He looked puzzled. "Despair?"
