Sylvia sat gazing at the muscular specimens swaggering past the Le Belvedere beachfront. They came marching ever closer to the fire bush hedges, high-stepping on the sand like prize horses, their black bodies glistening in the sun. I made my way through the lounge chairs under the tiki-hut, a sultry mix of sulfur and Chanel Number 5 wafting in the air.

A few of our fellow shade-worshipers had taken up positions alongside the bordering hedge to better appraise and be appraised by the sandwalkers. I climbed the wooden deck that doubled as a bandstand to Sylvia’s reserved spot. We greeted each other, she with her languid, “How are you, darling.”

With the towel neatly spread over the chair, I reclined beside her, our figures in full tropical regalia — flowing semi-transparent, peek-a-boo red and green materials revealing, obscuring what was there of us.

Sylvia extended her short vein-free legs, whiter than the sand on the beach, and slipped her skirt up to her thighs for effect. She knew how her white skin attracted their eyes.

“They’re coming closer,” I said.

“It’s almost noon, my dear.” Sylvia picked up her Bloody Mary, gold bracelets jingling.

“Ah,” I said. “Lunchtime — right?”

“You’re learning.” She winked at me from behind her wide-lens sunglasses.

Although I couldn’t imagine Sylvia having any idea as to what it would be like to be food hungry, I had to agree, feeling rather pleasantly corrupt myself. I was learning. One by one, every lounger in the hotel’s garden became the staging platform for a different Blue Ribbon lady, posed to magnetize. Lady Bismarck came working her way toward the garden beating the floor with a walking cane. She waved our way and sank herself onto the cushions of the nearest chair. She uttered something I didn’t understand until Sylvia answered loudly, “Yes. Lovely weather—” then under her breath, “At least she notices it.”

“A day for the races,” Lady Bismarck screeched from her chair.

Sylvia sighed. “Some boy out there is going to earn his tip today.”

On the beach, it was hot and bright, full of physical activity.

A couple of early birds had already gotten up and disappeared with their catch. The procedure was pretty straightforward. A smile or a wink would alert the sandwalker that he’d been picked and to proceed to the hotel’s side door, where a uniformed staffer would give him a final inspection and escort him to the guest’s room. Everyone observed the rules. We were also free to arrange our own trysts, the same as any guest outside the plan. But none of the Blue Ribbon ladies ever chose this option, too much of a waste of time. Besides, few dared to set foot outside the hotel’s boundaries on their own.

I thought of giving it a try as a personal statement of independence. It seemed the least I could do was to take a closer look at the boy before moving on. But one time was all it took for me to yield to the norms. Any wish for self-reliance, the same as any observance of convention, seemed pointless in the extravaganza of carte blanche privileges afforded to us Blue Ribbon ladies. 

I had found this beach town’s little secret through research I’d been doing for a new client last year, an international consortium interested in building a luxury resort on Hispaniola Island. During the study, I came across a New York Times report on rich American women who flocked to the Caribbean to get their ‘groove back,’ which mentioned Le Belvedere’s Blue Ribbon plan. At a department meeting, I proposed Le Karakol area as a possible location for the resort. Building in Haiti presented some unique opportunities I believed to be most favorable to the developers. To my secret surprise, my suggestion was approved and included in the list of possible sites — a win for me and my team. Later on, the notion of regaining one’s groove hit me in full as too great a temptation. So the day after Christmas, I got on the phone and made a reservation. The hotel delivered the travel documents by courier to New York a week later. I told no one about it except my sister Deb, whose response was, “Are you crazy? You’re looking to get rape — or worse?” In any case, on Epiphany Day, I took the three flights, the planes getting smaller at every connection until we landed at a nearby field outside the town.

Seen from the potholed road, Le Karakol could easily pass for an African village on the other side of the world. Multicolored taxi-pickup trucks zipped through unkempt alleys of zinc-roofed shacks; women with baskets on their heads and farm animals meandered in the equatorial heat haze. There were none of the usual attractions for the typical surf and turf vacationer. As far as I could see, the town had nothing to offer an outsider besides its tropical isolation and, of course, Le Belvedere’s body trade singularity.

The hotel’s unwritten policy, which allowed the guests on the Riban Ble plan to remain anonymous, was one of its magical attractions. The government-issued document with the blue ribbon gave the guest a kind of diplomatic immunity for the duration of the stay. We were not required to turn in our passports, not even at the two shacks they called the airport. It was like not being in Haiti at all if ever the need for denial arose.

On arrival, the manager at the reception desk handed me a pink card with a number like a nameless Swiss bank account. He asked me for an alias of my choosing, the name the staff and others would use when addressing me — an additional level of confidentiality that the guests particularly delighted on, he said. I told him to pick one for me to avoid having to guess the possible pros and cons.

“How about Mademoiselle Delphine?”

“Miss Dolphin?”

“It also means delphinium, a bluebell flower. A very chic name in French. Balzac used it in two of his novels.”

“Oh, well, in that case —”

It would have been easy to be cynical and hide what was so much in the open in Le Belvedere. But that was just how it was. Middle-age-plus, wealthy American women seeking ‘holiday romances’ in poverty-stricken lands. I could sense the weight of it passing by me in the carved-wood paneled lobby and in the private obsessions lazing under the palm trees in the garden. I knew what to call it, but I hated it, hated the sound the words made in my head. But I went with it. Wasn’t that why I’d paid a bundle to be here? To go with it?

On the sand, it was rush hour for the hungry sandwalkers. They paraded past us in their raggedy shorts, red and yellow the predominant colors, awkward young boys, men with huge smiles like children. Some tried to give off a sense of formality, heads bowing as they passed, carrying themselves as if applying for a job. The show-offs, the cartwheel performers, the tongue-lapping clowns, them, we blocked off. We looked for the confident ones, Sylvia and I. For the ones naturally overloaded with sexual cachet and a touch of mystery — the ones Sylvia commented on only if I brought it up first — even if as a whole, they looked almost identical.

“How about him?” I said of the one circling back, pretending to be looking at his wristwatch.

“If you go for the type,” Sylvia replied with a ghost of a shrug. “Oh, will you look at him over there,” she said, stifling a giggle with her jeweled fingers over her lips. A broad-shouldered sandwalker was standing by the surf stripping off his rags in full view of the guests. When he was down to something that looked like a loincloth, he ran splashing into the water.

“Is he allowed to swim here?”

“Why not? They do everything but breathe in that water.”

“Not much of a striptease,” I said.

Sylvia gave me an all-knowing grin. “Darling, it’s all promotional. You’ll see why when he comes out sopping wet in those undies.”

We looked at each other and laughed.

Just then, a boy in spandex shorts that left nothing to the imagination halted by the hedges. He squinted in our direction. I glanced over at Sylvia. She was fondling the sweat off her Bloody Mary glass. We couldn’t tell whose chair he was focusing on. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t his choice to make. He paced under a palm tree near Lady Bismarck’s lawn chair. She switched her beach bag to the opposite side. Useless caution, Sylvia said. The hotel had an armed guard somewhere tasked with dealing with any violations, but his presence would’ve been symbolic. The borderline between the hotel and the sand was secured by a greater more fearsome force. That of President-for-life Duvalier and his too-real Tonton Macoute henchmen, the secret police, a thing of wide-eyed horror to non-guests.

Two boys in matching net shirts stood facing my way now. My heart began to pound. I hated the feeling and tried not to show it. “It’s hard to tell who they’re looking at with those cheap sunglasses,” I said to make Sylvia feel there was no competition between us.

 “Oh, my dear, they’ll take anything they can get.”

When the sunlit boy in the spandex shorts came by again he halted, turned his skin-tight body, and looked away at the ocean with an air of carnal defiance. A signal of some kind? I wondered.

Sylvia’s slight grin set a process in motion. A black-vested waiter appeared as if she had snapped her fingers. She pulled a ballpoint pen and a notepad from his pocket, slowly wrote a few words on the page, and gave everything back to him. The waiter approached the boy on the sand, gave him some verbal instructions, and the boy walked off in the direction the waiter pointed with his arm. He made sure to watch the boy for a moment, nodded, and came back to the stage.

He spoke Creole to Sylvia, which I didn’t understand. The whole transaction seemed to have an extrasensory quality. She paused, thinking. “Rele Daniel,” she said with a single nod.

Daniel was the tuxedo-donning hotel man who accompanied her whenever she called, her personal valet, his full-time job. He helped her up and they walked away together, the somber skeletal Haitian in black holding her fleshy ivory arm across the small lobby and into the tiny elevator — the dumbwaiter, Sylvia’s name for it.

After a late lunch, I took a recovery nap and later went out to the garden. A hot breath blew on my face the instant I stepped outside the door. On the beach, only the gulls and the most desperate sandwalkers were out now. Nora, the widow from West Palm Beach, and Gabriella, the former Mexican beauty queen — both part of Sylvia’s clique — were sitting together with their backs to the beach. I took the table beside theirs.

Hi . . . hi . . . hello . . . For a few moments they remained silent, processing my presence. I asked about Sylvia. Nora, who at times acted like Sylvia’s lieutenant, said she didn’t expect her to come down. Sylvia had vanished to her siesta — as she called her midday rounds — and wouldn’t be back until evening.

“How long have you known Sylvia?” I asked Nora.

“Oh, we met four years ago, when the plan started.” She wiped her abundant blonde-streaked hair off her long face revealing diamond stud earrings of at least two carats each. “We keep in touch in the States, too.”

“She’s quite a character,” I said of Sylvia. “An interesting lady, for sure.”

 I glanced at Gabriella in her floral off-shoulder sundress, her round face made up as if for a night at Studio 54. I posed the same question to her.

“We met last December,” she said with her Mexican inflections. “Not here. In the airport in New York. Our flight was delayed because of a big snowfall. We hit it off — you know. We found we had a few things in common, yes.” She grinned and gave a little shrug with her shapely-tanned shoulders. “She was the one who told me about the plan. Now it’s my second time here — I have a friend coming in, too. But yeah, she is one colorful person, that Sylvia. God bless her. Unique. Says the craziest things sometimes. And you’ll never beat her on stamina, no, no. You must’ve noticed how the boys look at her. They’re scared of her.” She laughed. “But they won’t dare skip on her, either. If they know what’s good for them.”

“Oh, Gabriella,” said Nora. “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a little?”

“Yeah, maybe. But only a little. You,” she said to Nora. “You know that better than anybody.”

“Yes, I know. She does confide in me about some things. But what Sylvia tells me in private” — Nora gestured as if zipping up her lips — “stays between us.”

I looked away wondering why she’d bothered to bring it up at all. I supposed being in with Sylvia of Le Belvedere carried a measure of distinction worth flaunting.

“Put it this way,” Nora resumed. “Thanks to Sylvia, what happens in Le Karakol never happened. That should tell you everything.” She drank to it.

I did too. “I’m all for that.”

“That’s why they treat her like a queen,” Gabriella went on. “One word from her and that person is out of here, guest or visitor. It’s happened. And she’s picky,” she added, mockingly extending the last syllable.

“So she’s careful of who stays here and who she falls asleep with,” Nora said. “So what?”

“Who isn’t?” I said.

“But you’re not paying someone to keep an eye on you all the time,” Gabriella said. “She’s got that penguin of a man on duty all day, catering to her. It’s creepy. It’s too much. Don’t you think? I mean, any of us could hire a bodyguard or whatever, too.”

“Oh, not me,” Nora said. “I wouldn’t relax knowing somebody’s behind me all the time. God! Could you?”

I couldn’t work myself to judgment. Although Le Karakol did hold an element of menace when I thought about it, at no time had I felt my security threatened. The boys could be intimidating up close. Alone with them behind locked doors, it never failed to scare some part of me. But it wasn’t dread. Eye to eye, it was hard to ignore who they were. Men, boys, whose hunger made them travel miles for a chance to give the white mammas what the white mammas came for and live for a few hours the lives they’d only seen from the distance or on a TV screen. Few earned more than a meal and a tip, a bonus depending on their performance, and the generosity of the white mamma that had picked him. Most were let go with the equivalent of a Haitian week’s salary and a story to tell, or a secret to keep. Whatever it was the boys found in the soft white skin of women old enough to be their mothers, or their grannies, was a touchy subject among the guests at Le Belvedere — unless an unavoidable need to brag became too strong. I couldn’t form an opinion of the locals as easily as the others could. From my perspective, we were the ones they had to fear.

That evening Sylvia, Nora, and I sat together in the hotel’s restaurant. Thinking it an interesting topic over the dinner table, I brought up my company’s plan to build an international resort in the area. I regretted it the moment I said it.

“A vacation resort?” Nora said, her bronzed mask furrowing to its foundation, horrified. “My God! Did you hear that, Sylvia?”

It threw Sylvia into a sinister silence.

“You must do something to stop it,” Nora went on as if I had any influence over the matter. “You’ve got to try. I mean, it would ruin everything . . .”

I was well aware of the impact an international resort with all its trappings would have on Le Karakol and the hotel’s shady services. I just hadn’t expected their reaction. I wondered what I was missing. I had come here for the same reasons they had, there was no hiding that — when you’re a high forty-something American pale-skinned woman with a budget and not much to look at, the only reason to come to Le Karakol was clear. I just couldn’t imagine this piece of jungle by the sea being anything other than something to put behind you once you left it. There was so much wrong with it. But detesting, as I did, being cast as a messenger of doom, I tried to dampen the shock.

“Ah, come on, guys,” I said as cheery as I could make myself sound. “No point in worrying about that. These projects can take years to complete, if they happen at all. And by then, there’ll be greener beaches to go to. Wouldn’t you agree, Sylvia?”

I went to bed hoping she did.

In the morning the sun came out, a fiery force slashing through the room’s half-opened blinds, the night gone forever but for its leftovers. Letting the madness off the leash had its consequences, the hangover being only one. I took a long shower and went downstairs to another sun-drenched day in Le Karakol.

Sylvia hadn’t yet come down. So I waited by the veranda, having a cup of ginger tea. The rasped murmurings of the previous night’s affairs filtered through the dining room window. The recently arrived were louder and peppier. I caught the occasional oh-my-god and the usual giggling descriptions of the boys’ vitality and dimensions — together with the reluctant undertones of disgust at the way some fantasies crash in the face of reality. The morning longing for the touch of someone of your own, not of a rental, also filtered out in the quieter voices.

“Good morning, you,” I heard Sylvia calling, her valet escort by her side.

“Hi.” She seemed pleased to see me. I was glad about that. We walked together to the long table in the wraparound veranda where her coterie had gathered for breakfast.

I asked for The Queen’s Breakfast on the menu. Sylvia glanced in my direction. I felt a comment on my appetite coming on.

“My, are we famished this morning.”

“Missed dinner last night,” I lied.

She assented with a silent vow of her head.

Afterward, the drinks came and the wait staff left us alone in the garden. Being Sunday, the sandwalkers were few and only the newcomers were by the fire bush shrubs watching them. It was hot, and I drained my rum special inside a fresh pineapple drink too fast, so I went to the bar for another. When I came back, Sylvia was holding court from her fan-backed wicker chair.

“Theoretically,” she was saying, “the total of one hundred thousand men on each coast is all our country needs to serve the American woman. It’s been studied and analyzed. One, two hundred thousand —”

  “That can’t be any good,” Gabriella said. “We’re millions of women. That would be horrible.”

“Not to mention how bushed those poor men would be all the time,” said Capri — short for Capricorn. “Sylvia, tell me you’re not serious.”

“I’ve read about it, too,” Nora said. “It’s a scientific theory. There’s more to it than you think, I promise you.”

“Please,” Capri hissed. “There aren’t enough men as it is.”

“One hundred thousand men on each coast, distributed through every county or whatever,” Sylvia went on. “The number of partners — we’ll call them partners — will depend on the number of the specific female population in each area. It’s just an estimate, really, to illustrate how few are needed. Don’t worry; there’d be as many men as necessary to take care of every woman’s natural needs.”

“Sounds like science fiction to me,” I said.

“It’s not fiction. If women were to own up to their place in the world, it could be done. It’s a question of numbers. The calculations exist.”

“Keep them like studs in stables nationwide? Hmmm,” Capri hummed.

“Sounds like whorehouses to me,” Gabriella said.

“Certainly not,” Sylvia said. “We want the men to be useful, too. To have full lives while they’re in the service. Eventually, they will retire the same as anybody.”

 “Oh, Sylvia.” Gabriella laughed. “You have one fertile imagination, my friend. A little twisted — I mean that in a good way, of course.”

“I do have an imagination, don’t I?”

“And there’ll be no other men? Only those?” I said to keep it rolling.

“Oh, we don’t want all of them,” Sylvia said, laughing. “Whatever for? The others can go about their business. This would be a service, an institution as any of old, for men of the right age and specifications to serve on active duty for their country. Are we not part of our country?”

“And how much will it cost?” Gabriella asked.

“Oh, I guess an administration fee would be in order — unless in dire situations. We don’t want to seem un-inclusive.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Nora said, laughing.

None of the girls seemed inclined to call Sylvia’s loveless fantasy what it was, insane, but I wasn’t going to be the one to break the spell. I sort of let it drop, though, softly.

“That’s one crazy idea, Sylvia,” I said. “But hey, who’s to say? It might work. When women rule the world.”

Nora’s eyes opened wide when she saw Sylvia’s pallor harden.

“Oh darling, you just don’t get it,” Sylvia said, turning to me. “It’s not about ruling the world — not right away, anyway. The problem is the number of men in our species. It’s out of proportion with womankind. Unbalanced with nature. There are too many of them. And it’s not going to get any better.”

Capri cut in, “Unless it’s changed, and I didn’t hear about it, it’s a well-known fact the female population is higher than men’s everywhere.”

“That’s precisely the problem,” Sylvia said, her collection of gold bracelets chiming. “Use your imagination. Think of studs on a farm.” Sylvia smiled, but it wasn’t a hypothetical question. “How many do you need? What would happen if you had more cocks than hens on a farm? What would a farmer with eight bulls for every cow get out of that arrangement?”

“Doesn’t sound like a problem to me,” said Gabriella in an attempt at humor.

“Busy livestock?” I said, joining in.

Sylvia let out a humorless laugh. “What you get is the world of man, ladies. Which is, by the way, where we all reside.”

“So what are you saying?” I said. “Make an army of studs? Institutionalize male prostitution? Reduce the male population?”

Nora said, “I think she just means that men could be trained to serve women. Make it a trade like firemen or policemen. Right?”

“A career, why not?” Sylvia said delighted with the new spin on her idea. “I wasn’t thinking of that. But who’s to say? Something for boys to hope for. They’ll love it. Trust me.”

I looked at Sylvia’s made-up face in the shade of the thatched-roof tiki, a perfect mask of Mary Kay, L’Oréal, Chanel products. It was hard to read her expressions behind her sunglasses. I wasn’t sure if she truly meant what she was saying or if it was her Bloody Marys or some other spirit talking. Every one of us Blue Ribbon ladies may have had our own dark little secret story, but the parts that showed all seemed to have something in common, an unburied madness, a hidden self-reproach, something denied for far too long. And Sylvia was no exception. 

“Well,” I said. “If anybody can do it, it’s you, Sylvia.” And she loved it, gave me a tap on the arm and a smile as a reward.

A sudden tropical shower erupted on the beach. I gathered my things quickly to get back indoors. Sylvia didn’t stir, her cat-eyed gaze fixed on a speckle of islands out on the ocean, until Daniel came rushing with an open umbrella. She invited me to get under it with her and murmured in my ear. “You had two last night.”

I felt the heat rising in my face. “What?”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Sylvia’s brows arched up. “It’s none of my business. But my girl, what’s the use? You know,” she said, huddling closer under the umbrella. “That’s what I like about you. You know how to keep things to yourself. You remind me of me. A little. Not looks-wise. I never had legs like yours or hair like yours.”

“Nonsense,” I said, ready to change the subject. “You have gorgeous eyes. They remind me of Elizabeth Taylor’s.”

“Oh yes, my eyes. My lone attribute. Every guy’s opener when hitting on me. Not that it happened often. My good years were few and they didn’t belong to me. I could’ve been born in a place like this and been better off, really. A gilded cage is still a cage.”

“Had you been born here, you would’ve been president of the republic.”

“You flatter me, darling,” she said. “Though I would have rather it be a monarchy.”

“And you the queen.”

“Of course.”          

Listening to the rainfall in my room, I kept thinking of the conspiratorial tone in which Sylvia had brought up the issue of my two visitors last night. As if she’d noticed something about me that I myself didn’t know it showed.

That evening, a new flight brought four new Blue Ribbon guests, Gabriella’s friend among them, and the lobby was busier than usual. After dinner, I went straight to my room. I felt limp, nauseated from the meal, as though my body couldn’t take any more abuse. From the night chambermaid, I was able to buy a couple of marihuana cigarettes, hoping for the kind of sleep the smoke gave me. I wanted to crash and not wake up until I could stand myself again. I brushed my teeth and was about to get into bed when I heard a soft knock at the door.

I was handed a handwritten invitation to have a nightcap with Sylvia in her suite. I knew hers was the only suite in the hotel—upstairs at the end of the creaking mahogany hallway, I found the door ajar.

“Come in, my dear.” I heard her voice coming from the couch. “So happy you came. Close the door and sit over here.” She was wearing a black sleeping gown that covered her from shoulders to ankles. Her feet were like a doll’s, white with shiny red nails.

I sat across her on a cushioned bamboo chair, still feeling the smoke’s influence. The room was twice the size of mine. It was crammed with suitcases and packed, store-like hanging racks; the top of the dresser was completely covered with jars, atomizers, and rows of perfume bottles. It did look like she lived in the room as I’d heard in the garden gossip. Rumors about her abounded whenever Sylvia wasn’t around. That she was part owner of the hotel; that she had the local government on her payroll; that the sandwalkers belonged to her, hired and bred at a private stable she owned. And my favorite: that she was part of the same secret voodoo sect the President-For-Life belonged to, thus her influence in town. Did I believe them? Yes and no.

“Chardonnay? It’s nice and fresh,” she said.

“Thanks.” My mouth was so dry.

She settled back with a regal pose, her legs up on the couch pillows. I didn’t wonder for long what she had in mind. Of all the things that had gone through my head so far, I would’ve thought my job to be the last one. But that was what our private tete-a-tete was about to be.

“So, your firm is looking to purchase land to build a tourist resort around here?”

“Not my firm directly. But, yes —”

“I did hear something about it from a friend in Port-au-Prince,” she said.

“Really.”

“How close are you to securing a deal?”

“It’s still up in the air. Actually, they’re leaning toward the Dominican Republic next door, a place called Samaná. A beautiful beach.”

“I see,” Sylvia took a sip of cognac and paused in thought, gazing at the night outside the window. Sitting under the overhanging lamp, she seemed older without her heavy makeup, tired, a strange brand of sorceress in a black silky puddle.

“You can’t see them now because it’s dark,” she suddenly said. “But there’s a group of islands out there. Maybe you’ve seen them during the day. There are four in all, about three miles out. Nobody lives on the islands. On the one closest to the mainland, there are a few structures, ruins from an abandoned naval station built to fight German submarines during the War. Some of the local fishermen use it for storage, but not a soul stays in it. The locals say it’s possessed by some unhappy deity.” She paused with a grin on her tiny mouth. “I’m thinking of buying that island.” She looked my way to see my reaction.

I smiled. “The whole thing? How big is it?”

“Twenty-some acres or so of useful land. A swamp of mangroves covers part of it. The rest is okay to build on as is.”

“What do you have in mind to do with it?”

“Ah, that’s the best part of it, darling. I see it as the birthplace of a new order.”

“Wow.”

She grinned as if saying, yes, I know it sounds crazy. “Maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. Of course, it will begin with a private club. An idea of mine based on what I’ve learned from the Blue Ribbon plan. But,” she said with her stubby index finger up, “infinitely better. Just imagine an entire island designed by experts for our particular interests, with lavish grounds and luxurious accommodations, equipped to cater to every woman’s desire.”

“Wow and wow again.”

“That’s what I’m planning to do with it.”

“Pretty ambitious. Not just from the financial standpoint of a project of that size in this country. I’ve heard it’s a nightmare dealing with the government here.”

“Very good,” she said with a tone of surprise. “But I’m happy to say that isn’t a nightmare anymore. Everyone and everything that had to be taken care of for the Amazonia Manor to operate on the up and up has been taken care of. Yes,” She smiled, “Amazonia Manor, do you like the name?”

“Very feminine, in a way,” I said.

“And you can guess who its members would be, can’t you?”

“I can?”

“Of course, you can. Us! Women like the ones here.” She leaned forward, her aquamarine eyes glittering with excitement. “In the beginning, it’ll be a club and resort with a membership by invitation only, ultra-exclusive. Something like — and I hate to put it this way — a counter-play to Club Med and the Playboy club — the image of it that Heffner has made acceptable, but without the magazine. Our privacy rules wouldn’t allow for that. We’ll be merely borrowing the concept, turning it on its head, if you will, to conform to our needs.”

“Something like the Playboy mansion, but for us girls?”

“Except in Amazonia Manor confidentiality would be sacred. Not like they do it, publicly showing off their celebrities and their bunny business.” She sipped her drink with a devilish smile.

“Very impressive. An island paradise. Definitely not an enterprise for the faint-hearted.”

“It’s doable, love. That’s what’s important.”

“So the club will come first.”

“Yes. And it won’t just be a nicer place to pick up sandwalkers either. It’ll be much more than that. We will forge a philosophy,” she said. “Just like the boys did, but more beautiful, because it will be ours. Believe me, there are plenty of us to make it work. And when I say us, I mean women as ourselves who, for different circumstances, are alone — relatively speaking,” she added with a grin. “But in a financial situation as significant as any of those big-shot bankers and crooked executives who rule our lives.” She leaned closer as if to reveal a secret. “If we, just a few of us here now, were to manage our assets together as a group, let me tell you,” her grin made her eyes sparkle, “our potential would be unlimited, my dear. There’ll be no end to what we can do. We may be few, but — do you know what Lady Bismarck is worth?”

I had no idea.

“Her real name is Margaret Kapmann. The widow of Samuel Alfred Kapmann. Does it ring a bell? No? Well, she’s good for at least a billion dollars. A billionairess! And she’s right here with us. Now Gabriella,” she said, nodding. “Yes, her, the Mexican Chihuahua. She’s the eighth richest woman in her country. Can you imagine what a sisterhood of the likes of us could do if we’re to join our resources, invest, create our own agenda?”

“An investment club for women only?”

“Oh, you make it sound so dull, darling. Think bigger.” She nodded at the window. “Amazonia Manor won’t be just a private resort to come and get your groove back. It’ll be so much more than that. Something such as the world’s never seen. Not just made up of widows either, but of any independent-minded woman on the same level of affluence as us, powerful women who own their own destiny…” She stopped in mid-sentence, shaking her head in wonder. “I tell you, my mouth just waters when I think about it. Our possibilities are infinite.”

“All I can say is, wow, Sylvia. From a resort to an empire.” I raised my glass to her.

She shot me a side grin. “I know you don’t fit the profile. I know you’re a working girl, ten, fifteen years younger than the average. But you could be a founding member if you’re interested. In time, that’ll be an important position, I promise you.”

“Oh, Sylvia. Are you offering me a job?”

“No, darling, no. I’m offering you the possibility to be a collaborator. In what capacity? We can talk about it down the road. That island,” she said pointing at the night, “will belong to me in less than a year. And then my Amazonian plan will begin.” She downed her cognac, holding me in her gaze.

“Next year, huh?”

“All permits, licenses, certificates, and all the paperwork has been completed and paid for in full. It’s a tradition here. The government gets paid first. From the local Trou-du-Nord Arrondissement to the governor of the Nord-Est Department, to the President-for-Life and his police chief, they’re all onboard. Everyone is interested in the success of this project. It’s taken two years — believe me, it will happen.”

“How much does an island go for in Haiti?”

“Not as much as the construction of the facilities, the cabanas, the main house, our offices, the help’s quarters. Plus all that would come after the docks are rebuilt to start receiving supplies. There’s nothing there now of use, except for the wells and a small landing field. We’d be starting from scratch.”

“Who’s financing this project, if I may ask?”

“Well, darling, I am,” she said, settling back on the couch. She scrutinized me for a spell. “You don’t think this is too crazy of me?”

She paused to give me time to take in what she had asked.

“I have to admit your idea is in the realm of fantasy for me. But I like it. It sounds like you have a strong vision of what you want to accomplish. There must be fortunes in untapped wealth out there in the hands of widows, in women in general, who might be willing to invest in a project of this magnitude. As for me, I can’t wait to see it.”

“Together,” she said. “We could bring Wall Street to its knees. Not that we would do a crazy thing like that.” She laughed as she stood up to refill her glass — the first time I’d noticed no one being around to do it for her. “But, you know what I mean…”

How many millions was Sylvia of the Belvedere worth? Her madness was having an effect on me. Megalomaniacal as her idea sounded, it did seem to possess a touch of genius.

“I’m delighted you see it that way,” she said. “Very pleased. So let me ask you this. How worried should I be about your resort project?”

Her bluntness shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I said the first thing that came out of my mouth. “Well, it’s not my project —”

“I know that. But your input carries some weight, or do I have that wrong?”

“It does, except the final decision is made by the client in Paris.”

“I know that too. But the client counts on your firm’s assessment to make the final decision as to the location, right?”

“Yes, in part — it’s what they pay us for.”

“A question: What would happen if your office were to downplay the benefits of building here, instead of in the D.R.?”

 “I wouldn’t know, really.”

She paused and looked deeply into my eyes. “What would I have to do to keep your French resort away from here for, say, ten months to a year?”

I knew what she was driving at. I suddenly felt like running out of the room. “If the kind of thing you’re asking me has ever gone on in my firm, it would’ve been handled upstairs. Way above my head and pay grade,” I said, softly.

“What I’m asking you is,” she said just as softly. “Is there a way that you’d be able to delay the decision for one year?”

A knot in my throat suddenly cut my speech.

“A year, my dear,” she whispered. “One silly little year.” All she needed was to hiss like a snake.

I remembered something like that happening once at the firm when a conflict of interest surged between clients and a delay-maneuver was put into effect to benefit the principal account. But that was handled upstairs in the CEO’s office, just as I’d told her.

“I wish I knew what to tell you, Sylvia. It has never even occurred to me to do anything like that. But I am flattered that you think I could help.” I tried to laugh it off, blaming it on the drinks. “Boy, oh, boy. I must say, I didn’t expect this tonight — not at all.”

“Let me try to help you a little.” Sylvia sat up. “I already know a few things about you. Not much. I know your name is.” She halted with a playful smile. “Nancy. Nancy Barkley. You reside on Park Avenue and 69th Street — in a classic eight. You have an income of $80,000.00 a year, as a researcher, thanks to Granddad. You’re a City College graduate. Took some courses at NYU. You’ve never married. You’re forty-eight. You have a DUI in your —”

“What?” I jumped to my feet, shocked. “What the fuck, Sylvia,” I said both furious and scared. Was I about to be blackmailed? “What’s this all about?”

 “Aaah, my dear, don’t get like that, please. There’s nothing sinister about this, I assure you.”

“You know,” I started to say, but choked on it. I put the glass down and stepped toward the window. I needed some air; I was so mad.

“Come now, sit down,” I heard her say, her bracelets jingling, coaxing me to sit. “Please…”

I took a deep breath and sat on the edge of the chair. Now I needed to know what was on her shifty mind, for sure.

“Darling, listen to me. Don’t get so upset. All the information I have is in the application you filled out for the consulate in New York. They passed it over to me. How else do you think I know about the others? Please. Here, have some of my cognac. Try it, it’s delicious. Napoleon.”

I tried calming down but hated the cognac. “You know, Sylvia, this really sucks. I was guaranteed our identities would remain secret. This is just —”

“And they are, just not to me. But they’re safe with me, I assure you. Listen,” she said, pausing to find the words. “There’s so much we can do here for Le Karakol.”

“Right now I couldn’t care less about that.”

“I know, I know.” She brought me a glass of water and apologized in her sweetest voice while I sipped it. She continued talking, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I was too upset and too much under the influence of the smoke and the alcohol to care about any of it.

“ . . . Amazonia Manor will be so much more beautiful than anything we could ever dream of,” her voice sounded as if from a distance. “That island will be the one place in the world where women will truly rule, away from the influence of men . . . We’re going to change things for all women. Trust me, we will . . . And I’d like you onboard with me, Nancy.”

All I wanted to do was get out of there, so I just kept yessing her again and again as I moved closer to the door. “Sure. Yes, yes, I’ll think about it . . .”

 “Of course, darling. Of course,” she kept repeating.

*  *  *

The only souvenir I brought back from Le Karakol was a blue orchid in a hand-painted little pot, a parting gift from the hotel. On my first day back at the office, I placed it on the windowsill next to the cactus. I had no hopes for a flower sitting on the twelfth-floor window over Madison Avenue in the dead of a Manhattan winter. But I’d been told this type of tropical plant grew in the air rather than in soil, something like Haiti itself.

A week later, I received a large envelope mailed from an address I didn’t recognize in Port-au-Prince. It contained a series of Haitian official documents in Creole: a government gazette with a list of new zoning restrictions by Le Karakol’s local government, a UNESCO study on the town’s broken infrastructures describing the disastrous state of the roads and water supply system in the area. Along with a Parliament report on a proposed law raising taxes on foreign investments. It came without a personal note or instructions, but neither was needed. This was ‘the material’ Sylvia wanted me to include in my department’s final report to discourage investment in Le Karakol.

The meeting of the department heads had taken place that afternoon. So I knew Sylvia would be calling this evening to find out how her little scheme had played out. It was almost midnight when my phone rang. I knew it had to be her. After a flash struggle with whether to answer or not, I picked up the phone. I leaned on the window. Seven floors below, Park Avenue was bright with headlights in the wet night traffic.

“Sylvia, so nice of you to call.”

“It’s just wonderful to hear your voice, my dear. Have I called at a bad time?”

“No. It’s okay.”

“I’ve been in town for a few days. Are you surprised?”

“Oh yeah? That’s wonderful, Sylvia.”

“Yes. I came to do a little shopping and a little business. I’m looking forward to seeing you, darling. You will make some time for me, won’t you? Perhaps on Sunday?”

“Absolutely.”

“Oh, you’re precious.” She skirted the purpose of her call until we ran out of small talk. “So, tell me, darling, how did it go in the meeting with the big boys?”

My spine froze when she finally uttered the words. I hadn’t taken the Haitian reports to the meeting. I’d thrown the envelope in my desk drawer and left it there. I couldn’t find the courage or see the sense in doing anything with it. Risk my professional life or worse, for Sylvia? No way. So I lied. I told her I’d done it. “It went well,” I said. “The director agreed to pass it on to the investors.”

“Uff.” Sylvia let out a sigh of relief. “You have no idea the weight you’ve taken off my back, my dear. I shall never forget what you’re doing for me — and our cause.” She laughed her choppy laugh. “Oh Nancy, darling, your name will be on the plaque of the founding members of Amazonia Manor, no matter what happens from here on. So tell me, I heard the real big boys from Paris are scheduled to fly in this week. Is that right?”

How did she know that? “Yes,” I said. “They’re getting in on Thursday for the finals.”

“Are you aware the three heads will be present? It’ll be an all-or-nothing day for us.”

I hadn’t known myself all three of them would be coming until that morning; the fact that she knew, probably before I did, made the palms of my hands wet. “How did you get this information? If I may ask.”

“Oh, my girl. It’s our business to know. Isn’t it?”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

When Thursday dawned, I’d been up for hours. At eight, the taxi called from downstairs. By nine, I was in my office, a nervous wreck. The meeting was set for eleven. Mr. Campeu of Toronto was the first to arrive. I saw him from down the hall, being escorted to the drawing room. My department chief called us in for a final run-through of our presentation. I had left the envelope with the Haitian material inside another envelope in my desk drawer. I just couldn’t work myself up to touch it. I wasn’t even sure of why I had lied about it to Sylvia. But I felt under no obligation to do anything for her. Her reaction on the phone, though, the way she’d shown her gratitude was now making me sick with guilt.

When they buzzed from the conference room, my associates put on their suit jackets. I stepped into my office for mine. I glanced at the Haitian orchid on the windowsill, its bluish, scarlet petals the colors of Sylvia’s eyes. I opened the desk drawer and picked up the oversized envelope with the Haitian documents inside. I slipped it in between the files I was taking to the meeting.

In the hallway, Jonathan, my department manager, noticed my agitation. I told him I was worried about the clients signing the deal. “I really have my heart set on this one,” I said in my most professional voice.

With the files against my chest, I walked by the long oval table in the center of the Conference Room. I glanced at the place cards on the polished tabletop. All the names Sylvia had mentioned on the phone were there. I took my seat next to Jonathan, behind our director’s empty chair.

Waiting for the clients to come in, I kept feeling more and more layered away from the reality around me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what The Belvedere had done to me. If Sylvia and the whole mad Le Karakol fantasy had shown me anything, it was how much more there was besides all this. Then the CEO’s secretary walked into the room and shocked everyone with the announcement the meeting had been postponed until after lunch. I picked up my files and left the Conference Room.

Back in our offices, everyone was convinced there was trouble being covered up in the postponement. The entire department was buzzing with dire rumors. Later, we learned from our colleagues in other departments that during the investors’ pre-meeting reunion there had been loud, hollering voices in French coming from the lounge room. They’d seen Monsieur Gerard of Club Méditerranée storm out of the room, practically running to the elevators. It couldn’t look any worse, we all agreed.

Before lunch, though, our director called our team to his office and told us not to worry. “The contracts will be signed, I promise you that much,” he assured us. “There are going to be some changes, but it’s a done deal . . .” and so on.

It’s funny how our biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

That night I opened a bottle of Chardonnay when I got to my apartment. I changed into my hangout duds, went to the kitchen, made a cheese omelet, and settled on the sofa to eat it. At around seven, I left a message with Sylvia’s answering service. Losing a client at any stage was always demoralizing for our department, but losing this one was particularly depressing for the entire firm. So why did I feel so relieved? Giddy, almost. Whatever it was that made it possible, Sylvia was at the heart of it.

The truth was I really wanted her to build her island paradise. I believed she would achieve something important with it. I wanted to believe she would.

We laughed like schoolgirls on the phone when I told her the resort would not be built. “Yes, canceled, dead for the long foreseeable future.”

“That’s fantastic, Nancy. You did it. Darling, you’re the best. But tell me, are they going to build elsewhere, can the cancellation be reversed?”

“Don’t think so. One of the investors jumped ship. But, my, Sylvia, I’m surprised you didn’t know that,” I said, half teasingly.

“No, I didn’t know,” she said, her telephone voice lowering a few tones. “But I had you for that — didn’t I? You were there for me. And I’m forever in your debt.”

I blushed, I’m not sure why. “Us, girls got to stick together.”

“That is right.” We laughed.

“So tell me, did the material I mailed you play any part in the outcome? Did it come in handy?”

I don’t know what made me say, “Oh yeah. It was right at the top of the folders we gave out. They couldn’t have missed it. It was a brilliant idea, Sylvia.”

*  *  *

I didn’t see Sylvia until ten months later at Le Belvedere. It was late December, and I was on the yearly special Blue Ribbon New Year’s plan, which meant we had the entire hotel to ourselves. The word among the girls was the work on Sylvia’s island was going slow and that she wasn’t around much. But she was there, at Le Belvedere, waiting to see me the day I arrived.

I pictured I’d find her wearing a hardhat, a pink one, but she was dressed as regal as always. We hugged in the lobby. 

“So nice to see you.” She confirmed how busy she’d been. “Yes, I’ve become unrecognizable.” She laughed. “All work and too little play. But I’ll always find time for you, darling.”

She dismissed the Haitian man she’d come with and sat down with us in the garden of the hotel. Even the sandwalkers on the beach took a break when they saw our get-together. To the girls I hadn’t met — there were several new faces — Sylvia introduced me as her favorite “founder.”

Judging by how Sylvia was talking about it, her island project was now an open secret. “I’ve become a bore, I know,” she was saying. “It’s just been work, work, work, I’m sorry to say. But, ladies, Amazon Manor is coming!”

She tried to gloss over the troubles of her day-to-day, but she couldn’t keep them to herself. She went right into it in detail. The nightmare it was trying to get anything done in Haiti, her frustration of having to deal with the arrogant architects, the boring engineers, and the lazy hardhats . . . “I mean, you’ve got to see the boatful of bricks and stacks of lumber just sitting there for days, the stacks of paperwork . . . Men! It’s unbelievable they’re running the world.”

The week moved on as expected. Sylvia only dropped by in the evenings. Nora told me she had spoken to Gabriella, who was unable to get away for the holidays. As for me, I reunited with the Boucher brothers, Charles and Guy, still wearing their matching net shirts. They seemed happy to see me. With them, I was finding out how reiteration and healthy competition bore their own delights. Then, on the eve of the New Year’s party, we were treated to a surprise tour of Marinette Island, the name Sylvia had given her island.

In the morning mist Sylvia’s motorboat, a former cruise ship tender, took us out into the choppy gray waters. For twenty minutes, we bobbed and listened to Sylvia’s soprano swagger cutting over the boat motor noises. She stood on the bow steps, wearing a lifesaver under a yellow oilskin rain cape and a sou’wester. 

“The actual existence of the Amazonian women may be a myth,” she said, trying her sales pitch on us believers. “But here in the Kingdom of Marinette, my ladies, our vision of Amazonia will become reality, the seeds of a new order.” 

Our cheers made her smile as I’d never seen her smile. Her eyes twinkled with delight as she described “The amazing guests’ suites and luxurious cabanas under construction as we speak — each with a Roman bath — were designed by none other than the Jacques Granges firm, the newest and hottest designers in Paris today . . .”

Through the open cabin door behind her, the deep greenness of Marinette Island appeared in the mist floating over the cloudy ocean. When Sylvia announced we were about to land, she signaled Nora and me to come forward. “I want you two to disembark with me,” Sylvia said. “I want you two to be the first founders to set foot on my island.”

I felt flattered, carried away by her gift of turning even something as mundane as getting off a boat into a historical event. After we landed, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t picture the paradise she’d been talking about among the chaos of construction materials and machinery strewn over a worksite as big as four football fields. That I couldn’t see her world-conquering images on the rutted mud before me wasn’t important. I realized what Sylvia dreamed of was not what drew me to her. Something else was sweeping me along, some phenomenon inside me with a hunger of its own.

Later that day I found Sylvia in the hotel garden, talking to a group of her minions. “Here, she is,” she said when she saw me. She gestured at a chair next to her for me to sit on and went on with her discourse, bracelets jingling with her every hand movement.

I looked around me at the smiling old faces at the table, stirring my rum special in a pineapple with the straws. Hearing their laughter reminded me of how I felt the first time I sat in Le Belvedere’s garden and of all that had transpired since. And how the world hadn’t come to an end but spun anew. I felt as though some idea I once held deeply had expired and been put to rest in this sad, happy place. I couldn’t tell what exactly, but it didn’t matter. Its absence made me feel lighter and had toughened me in some way.

As the sun sank into the darkening sea, a light flickered across the water from Sylvia’s Island and I heard Sylvia inviting everyone to raise their glasses. I didn’t catch what we were toasting this time. But that too didn’t matter. I couldn’t think of another place I’d rather be.