Island of the Sequined Love Nun

edges of the shower opening and vaulted back into the bathroom. The metal tray fell back over the opening, sounding like the Tin Man trying to escape from a garbage can.
    He heard Beth Curtis pad to the bathroom door. "Are you all right in there?"
    "Fine," Tuck said. "Just dropped the soap." He snagged a bar of soap off the sink and placed it in the bottom of the shower tray, then threw open the bathroom door.
    Beth Curtis stood there in a long red silk kimono that was open in a narrow canyon of white flesh to her navel. Whatever Tuck was going to say, he forgot.
    "Sebastian wanted me to bung you this." She held out a check. Tuck tore his eyes from her cleavage and took the check.
    "Five thousand dollars. Mrs. Curtis, this is really more than I bargained for."
    "You deserve it. You were very sweet to take the time to explain all the instrumentation to me." She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, keeping the warm pressure of her lips there a little too long. Tuck imagined her tongue darting though his skull and licking his brain's pleasure center. He could smell her perfume, something deep and musky, and his eyes locked on her breasts, which were completely exposed when she leaned forward. He felt as if he had been staring at an arc welder and that creamy powdered image would travel across his held of vision for hours. A chasm of silence opened up and wrenched his attention back into the room.
    "This is very generous," he said. "But it could have waited. It's not like I have anywhere to spend it."
    "I know. I just wanted to thank you again. Personally, without Sebastian around. And I thought you might be able to explain some of the finer points of flying a jet. It's all so exciting."
    Never a man of strong resolve, the combination of sight, scent, and flattery activated Tuck's seduction autopilot. He glanced toward the bed and the switch clicked off. Sexual response was replaced by the dummy Tuck shaking its coconut head. He looked back at her and locked on her eyes-only her eyes. "Maybe tomorrow," he said. "I'm really bushed. I was just going to catch a shower and go right to bed."
    For an instant her pouty smile disappeared and her lips seemed to tighten into a red line, then just as quickly the smile was back, and Tuck wasn't sure he'd seen the change at all.
    "Well, tomorrow, then," she said, pulling the front of her kimono together as if she had only just noticed that it had fallen open. "We'll see you at seven." She turned at the door and threw Tuck a parade queen wave as she left, once again the darling of the Eisenhower era.
    When she was safely out of the bungalow, Tuck ran to the bed and picked up the green coconut. "What in the hell was that about?"
    The coconut didn't answer. "Fine," Tuck said, fitting the head back on the sleeping dummy. "I am not impressed. I am not shaken, nor am I stirred. Weirdness is my business." Even as he said it, he dismissed the hallucination as his own good sense manifesting a warning, but the duel cravings for a drink and a woman yanked at his insides like dull fishhooks. He turned off the light and let the cravings lead him out the bathroom hatch to the moonlit sea.
    Forty minutes later he took his place in the circle of the Shark men. Chief Malink stood and greeted Tuck with a jarring backslap. "Good to see you, my friend. How's it hanging?"
    "It hangs with magnificent splendor," Tuck said, his programmed response to the truck covers and cowboys who used that expression, although he wondered where Malink had heard it. "But I'm a little parched," he said.
    A fat young man named Vincent was pouring tonight and he handed Tucker the coconut cup with a smile. Tuck sipped at first, fighting that first gag, then gulped down the coconut liquor and gritted his teeth to keep it from coming back up.
    The older men in the group seemed festive and yattered back and forth in their native language, but Tuck noticed that the younger men were sulking, digging their toes into the sand like pouting little boys.
    "Why so glum, guys? Someone kill your dog?"
    "No," Malink said, not quite understanding the question. "We eat a turtle today."
    Having your dog killed must mean something different here than it means back in Texas, Tuck realized.
    Malink sensed Tuck's confusion. "They are sad because the Sky Priestess has chosen the mispel from their house and she will be gone many days now."
    "Mispel?"
    "The girl you followed last night is mispel of the bachelors' house."
    "Sorry to hear that,