Excerpt from 'Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing'
In her best-selling collection of stories, "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing," author Melissa Bank follows her witty and observant heroine, Jane Rosenal, through 20 years of travails and triumphs. Literary critics have called Jane "the American Everywoman" as she makes her way through the minefields of family, romance and the workplace.
This excerpt is from "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" by Melissa Bank. Copyright © 1999 by Melissa Bank. Reprinted by arrangement with Viking-Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
"The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" (Viking) is $23.95 hardback, $12.95 paperback; the paperback version will be available in bookstores May 1.
It's the morning of our flight. Jamie sets my coffee and his on the night table and gets back into bed with me. This afternoon we'll be in St. Croix, the guests of Jamie's ex-girlfriend and her new husband. Now I sit up and, without giving myself the go-ahead, speak. "Honey," I say, "I suddenly have a weird feeling about this trip."
He looks over at me.
I try to think of how to say it. "I don't know these people."
He says, "You'll be with me."
Jamie has a beautiful voice, deep and private, and it stops me for a moment. Then I say, "It just seems awkward. Going on vacation with your boyfriend's ex-girlfriend."
He tells me that he doesn't think of Bella that way, she's just an old friend now.
I say, "What does your old friend Bella look like?"
He laughs and pulls me in for a kiss. "It was college," he says, pronouncing "college" the way I now pronounce "high school."
While he takes his shower, I watch him through the clear parts, the oceans, of his world-map shower curtain.
When he gets out he says, "Trust me."
From New York to San Juan, Jamie sleeps. I take off his baseball cap and touch his hair, which goes back behind his ears and flips up. He wears a white T-shirt, old jeans and sneakers. He is long and lean, all legs, like a colt.
Jamie is my first real boyfriend.
We are three months old.
For me, it started the night he told me he couldn't sleep with a woman unless he really loved her.
"I'm monogamous by nature," he said.
I said, "Same here."
We land in St. Croix and walk off the plane into a tiny airport. I see a man holding up a sign that says "Jane and James," and I'm thinking, "They sent a car for us?" But Jamie laughs and says, "There they are."
Bella is turn-and-stare gorgeous -- big dark eyes, long dark hair, smooth dark skin.
She says, "James," which sounds like "gems," and kisses him -- cheek, cheek, cheek.
The man I thought was the driver introduces himself as Yves, Bella's husband, and when he cheek-cheeks me, I think, "Grandmother, what soft lips you have."
Bella takes both my hands in hers, as though she has been waiting a long time to meet me. She says, "Janie," my childhood nickname, and I am so thrown off by her warmth that I say, "Belly."
For a moment I hope no one has heard, but, leading us out to their jeep, Yves whispers to me, "It's Bella."
When we pull up to the driveway, she jumps out of the jeep to unlatch the gate. First, though, she motions sweepingly to the sign on the wall, "The Floating House." Jamie squeezes my hand. I begin a joke about having known only generic houses, but the jeep lurches forward into the walled courtyard.
The house is cool and long, white ceramic tiled floors out to the veranda, and from every window you can see the blue-green Caribbean Sea.
Bella shows us the view from our room. When she speaks her voice is an orgy of accents. "My stepfather is the arr-she-tekk," she tells us. "He designed the windows so you feel the water. You will see," she says, "the house is cool." Her vowels and consonants are all off -- trying to understand her is like picking fish out of the clover and goats from the ocean.
Yves fixes us drinks, rum and whatever we want, and carries the tray out to the veranda. Below, the yard is long and steep, bordered by flowering trees down to the dock.
Bella says to Jamie, "Alessandra sends you all her love."
While Yves asks me about the flight, the snow, the bracelet I am wearing, I overhear Belly telling Gems about close friends he's never mentioned who live all over the world. It occurs to me that all my close friends live in the tri-state area.
"Can we swim down there?" Jamie asks her.
"Of course," she says.
Jamie turns to me and says, "Let's go swimming," like he's 11, which I love.
We change into our bathing suits, both of us pale as larvae, and then we walk down to the water. As soon as I go under, I begin to feel like it's all going to be fine, wonderful, perfect. The water is turquoise and soft, and Jamie and I are somehow Jamie and me again. Then I look up and see Yves and Bella at the railing of the veranda, holding hands. When they wave to us it is like seeing a photograph move. I say this to Jamie and he tells me I've been reading too many South American novels, too much magical realism.
"That's not what I mean," I say.
"What then?"
"It has something to do with photorealism," I say.
"Painting," he says.
I realize that all I mean is that they seem posed, but I continue, bringing in the colors of the lawn leading up to the veranda, the brushstroke-like swirls on the pillars, anything to keep from sounding as though I'm criticizing his friends.
For dinner we have local lobster and eat on the veranda. Bella and Yves speak to each other almost entirely in French. At first, Jamie interjects stray French phrases, as though joking, but Yves says, "You speak very well," and soon Jamie does, with an ease that surprises me.
I have not spoken French since eighth grade, when I learned about a wholesome French family living on the third floor of an apartment building near the railroad station. I remember that sometimes they took the elevator, sometimes the stairs.
"We visited Yves' parents at Christmas," Bella says, in English, touching Yves' cheek with the back of her hand. "They are so nice."
To me, she says, "How is your lobster?"
"Nice," I say, realizing only afterward that I've mimicked her, a bad habit of mine. I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.
In bed, Jamie says, "How do you like Bella?"
A voice tells me to say, "Great," and I obey.
He smiles. "I thought you'd like her."
I say, "I myself have dated several mannequins."
"Honey," he says, and reminds me that Bella is a good friend of his. I should give her a chance.
Here in the dark, I mouth, "You're right, I'm sorry."
By the time I get the sound to come out, he's asleep.
