Grand Cayman Slam Read Free Page A

afternoon I climbed aboard a DC-10 that seemed somehow safer for its experience, then settled back in my narrow seat in second class. First class gives you a tad more room—which you can use when you’re my size—but it also suggests the sort of monetary hoity-toity crap that I hate.
    So I settled back while the big engines smoked and wheezed and watched the white concrete mass of Miami drop away and fade as we climbed to twenty thousand, where yachts were toy-sized amid the blue depths and green shallows of the great Atlantic.
    There was a holiday atmosphere aboard the plane. And why not? Grand Cayman has rapidly become the Caribbean’s tourist hot spot. There’s great diving, fine fishing, and plenty of long white beaches. The three islands—Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman—were relatively unknown to the American tourist trade until the early 1960s because they are so remote: 150 miles south of Cuba and far off the Bahama chain.
    So Americans were content to bake themselves and spend their dollars in the more accessible Bahamas until the Bahamians got greedy, then turned surly, and finally became downright dangerous to any American foolish enough to want to vacation there.
    Then word about the Caymans began to leak out. The islanders—a handsome mixed race of French, Spanish, Scottish, and African—were friendly and the rates were ridiculously inexpensive.
    The islanders are still friendly—probably because they’ve always been treated as equals by their British sovereigns.
    But it’s no longer inexpensive.
    Even so, the manifest of pale Northerners who flew with me seemed hellbent on making the most of this Caribbean vacation. While the flight attendants passed out complimentary rum punches, newlyweds made moon eyes and dive enthusiasts leafed through the scuba cult magazines and newly retired factory workers blinked at the expanse and light of open sea like kids seeing the world for the first time.
    I traded in my rum punch for cold beer and watched the western tip of Cuba roll by in fields of sugarcane and pasture beneath us. Castro leases us two air routes over his little Commie paradise: one to the east, the other over the western tip. This route wasn’t that far from Havana—and closer yet to Mariel Harbor. During Carter’s refugee boatlift debacle, I had spent a long and dangerous evening there. It didn’t exactly bring back pleasant memories. But my mission there had produced some valuable friendships. Sipping at my beer, I thought about the beautiful Androsa Santarun, who had been sired by a father she could never acknowledge. I wondered if I would ever see her again.
    And I thought about Wes O’Davis, too. I had met him in Mariel. And he had saved my life. Not once, but twice.
    So when he called for help, there was no indecision on my part. His was a debt I could never truly repay.
    So I was thinking about all these things when I noticed that the flight attendant who had brought my beer was staring at me. They don’t like to be called “stewardess” anymore. And I can’t blame them. People in any profession should have the right to be called what they damn well please.
    She had long smoky brown hair and a mahogany complexion that suggested Caribbean antecedents. Her airline uniform was a calf-length dress and a suitcoat over a white blouse. The suitcoat dutifully tried to cover the heavy swell of mammary development—but failed. An impossible job on this woman. She had quizzical brown eyes that snapped away when she saw me returning her look. I guessed her to be about twenty-two or twenty-three. She wore no makeup and little jewelry. Few women can let themselves go into public without even the barest of beauty props—but this lady was obviously one of the few. She didn’t need them. She had a delicate, expressive face and a complexion that suggested a childhood spent on a tropical island where everyone bathed in coconut milk.
    I felt her eyes lock on me twice more as the DC-10