Island of the Sequined Love Nun

glared at him. She paused on the coral pathway. "I am not a monkey," she said. Then she picked up a stone from the path and hurled it at him, barely missing his head.
    Kimi scuffled to the leeward side of the tree and peeked around. "I didn't say you were a monkey. I said that if you didn't shave your legs, you would soon look like a monkey."
    A rock whizzed by his face so close he could feel the wind of it. She was getting more accurate with each throw. "You know nothing," she said. "You are just a girl-man."
    Kimi dug a stone from the sand at his feet and hurled it at her, but his heart wasn't in it and it missed her by five feet. In English he said, "You just a poxy oar with a big mouth." He hoped this verbal missile hit closer to home. They were the last words of Malcolme, Kimi's pimp back in Manila. In retrospect, Malcolme's mistake had been one of memory He had forgotten that the overly made-up little aid standing in front of him with a machete was, in fact, a wiry young man with the anger of hundreds of beatings burning in his memory.
    "I no have the pox," Kimi said to Malcolme, whose look of surprise remained fixed even as his head rolled into the corner of the hotel room, where a rat darted out and gently licked his shortened neck.
    "I no have the pox," Sepie said in English, punctuating her statement with a thrown lump of coral.
    "I know," Kimi said. "I'm sorry I say that." He skulked off down the beach.
    Sepie stood outside the bachelors' house watching him, totally disarmed. No man had ever apologized to her before.

    Kimi hadn't meant to hurt her feelings. Sometimes it takes a thick skin to trade beauty tips with a girlfriend. Sepie was naturally pretty, but she didn't understand fashion. Why bother to put on a pretty dress if you're going to have monkey legs and tufts of hair hanging out from under your arms making it look like bats hanging there?
    Bats. Kimi missed Roberto.
    The Shark men wouldn't talk to him, the women ignored him, except for Sepie, who was angry at him now, and even Tucker had been taken away to the other side of the island. Kimi was lonely. And as he walked down the beach, past the children playing with a trained frigate bird, past the men lounging in the shade of an empty boathouse, his loneliness turned to anger. He turned up the beach and took a path into the village to look for a weapon. It was time to go see the old cannibal.
    Outside each of the houses, near the cook sheds, stood an iron spike-a pick head that was driven into the ground and used to husk coconuts. Kimi stopped at one house and yanked on the spike, but it wouldn't budge. He moved between the houses, vacant now in the early morning, the women working in the taro field, the men lounging in various patches of shade. He peeked into a cook shed, and there, by the pot that held the crust of this morning's rice, he found a long chefs knife. He looked around to make sure that no one was watching, then bolted into the shed and snatched the knife, fitting it into his thu so that only the handle protruded at the small of his back.
    Ten minutes later he was hiding in a patch of giant ferns, watching the old cannibal roll coconut husk fibers into rope on his leathery old thighs. He sat with his back against a palm tree, his legs straight out in front of him, pulling the fibers that had been soaked and separated out of a basket and measuring by feel the right amount to add to the coil of cord that was building on the ground beside him. From time to time he stopped and took a drink from a jar of milky liquid that Kimi was sure was alcoholic tuba. Good, he was drunk.
    Kimi moved slowly around the house, staying in the undergrowth of ferns and elephant ears, careful not to kick up any of the coral gravel that rang like broken glass if you didn't place your feet carefully.
    Once he was behind the old man, he drew the knife from the small of his back and moved forward to kill that man who had eaten his friend.

    From the window of his new quarters Tucker Case watched the Japanese guards move through the compound carrying palm fronds and broken branches, detritus of the typhoon, which they piled in an open space at the side of the hangar to dry in the sun. They were dressed like a police SWAT team, in black coveralls with baseball caps and paratrooper boots, and if he squinted, they looked like giant worker ants cleaning out the nest. From time to time one of the guards would look toward his bungalow, then quickly turn away when he