A Trip to the Beach Read Online Free PDF

be on higher ground—preferably facing the road to keep track of the neighborhood activity.” He laughed. We didn’t.
    Bennie tapped on the map at an intersection in the west end. “Here’s a house that’s ready to move in to,” he said. “Malroy Jefferson owns it. He lives in England but he’s from Anguilla, so you can rent from him. His brother, Bertroyd, is a bellman at Malliouhana.”
    We knew Bertroyd, who agreed to meet us at his brother’s house. It was instantly apparent that life as an Anguilla resident would not resemble life as a guest at Malliouhana or Cap Juluca. The hotels were lush with gardens. The house did not have a single plant or tree—or, for that matter, a single blade of grass, just rocks and dirt surrounding a white concrete box. Bertroyd’s brother had tried to replicate parts of his English home, but something had been lost in the translation. There was a bidet in the bathroom, along with a cast-iron tub with gobs of dried cement oozing out the edges. More problematic, the entire house had been covered in various shades of beige and green wallpaper. The moist Caribbean climate is not conducive to wallpaper, which in this case had come unglued; strips were hanging down in all directions like half-peeled bananas. “We could tape it back to the walls,” said Bob, always looking for the bright side.
    Otherwise Bob and I stayed mum as Bertroyd guided us from room to room, past the toilet with the broken-off flush handle and the shower plugged with cobwebs. Hoping to let in some fresh air—the house was as hot as a pizza oven—Bob turned the rusted cranks on the louvered windows, but they just went round and round, refusing to catch. The kitchen cabinets were scattered with mouse droppings, and the refrigerator was smaller than the one we’d given Jesse for his room at college. “If the fridge a problem,” said Bertroyd, “I think Malroy would get a bigger one. Everything else just need to be cleaned.”
    The rent, said Bertroyd, was eight hundred dollars a month. It was while I was processing this figure—which seemed exorbitant—that I noticed the Shell station across the road.
    We drove back to the hotel in silence. The cons of moving to Anguilla were suddenly smothering the pros. What
were
the pros, anyway? We would trade our beautiful house in Vermont on its private, ten-acre hilltop for a rectangular concrete bunker on the main road with a view of a gas station. Opening a little beach bar with just the two of us was one thing—there wasn’t much to lose. But now we were going to sink all our money into building a fancy restaurant. We’d need waiters and sous chefs and dishwashers and . . .
    What the hell had we been thinking?
    â€œOh, God!” I said out loud, and started to sob.
    Bob pulled off the road, shut off the engine, and put his arm around me. “We can keep looking for a better house.”
    â€œIt’s not just that!” I wailed. “You have no idea how much it’s going to cost to build this restaurant, and even less of an idea how to run it.”
    â€œI’ll take some measurements tomorrow,” said Bob, patiently, “and we’ll work on a design for the building. We’ll get the best prices on materials.”
    â€œYou always think you can build everything for less than it actually costs! You’re such a goddamned . . .
optimist
!” The word came out like a curse. It certainly shut Bob up.
    â€œI don’t want to do this,” I went on, glaring at Bob through tears. “Eight hundred dollars a month for an ugly house on the main road with no view, and three thousand dollars for that stupid little shack. We don’t have the money.” I knew I was losing it, but I didn’t care. “We know nothing about living in a country with goats and lizards thousands of miles from anywhere. I just want to go home,” I said,