A woman takes a vacation to a remote island in the Pacific. The first few evenings on the island, she visits the beach after dinner. She finds her favorite spot on the boardwalk and leans against the railing. Sure enough, she spots a couple fucking. There has been at least one couple fucking every time she’s come here. She always stays until they’ve finished.
She comes back to the same place the following night and sees a man standing against her spot on the railing. She seethes with resentment. From this distance, she thinks the man looks familiar, but as she draws closer, she realizes he’s not who she thought he was. He has uncut, scraggly hair and several weeks of beard growth. His odor becomes more pronounced the closer she gets. Oddly, his apparent poverty makes him feel safer to her. Or maybe she just feels sorry for him.
“Fun to watch, isn’t it?” she says. “Someone’s been here every night … doing that.”
“They’re prostitutes,” the man says. “Well, sometimes they’re shooting a video.”
“Oh, sex workers,” the woman says. “Yeah, that makes sense. I never thought of that. Although, I’d have to say with all the surveillance here, everybody is making a video all the time. I always watch until they’re finished.”
“Does it turn you on?”
She pauses before speaking. “I don’t think so. I’m on so many pills I can barely feel my body. It gives me a sense of completion and accomplishment.” She introduces herself.
“People call me Jimmy,” the man says. “I don’t remember what my real name is.”
She doesn’t pry. She doesn’t even really care.
“You wanna come back to my place?” he says. “Just to hang out.”
“Sure,” she says, figuring she’ll barely feel it if he decides to murder her.
“Do you want to stay until they’re finished?”
She thinks about it. “No. They will finish. Knowing that’s good enough.”
She follows him down the beach to an abandoned lifeguard shack. He’s got some blankets on the floor, surrounded by empty liquor bottles and cigarette butts. There’s a ratty backpack. She imagines it probably holds a change of clothes or something. This is a pretty posh island. She feels like he must work at one of the hotels or restaurants. She’s pretty sure homeless people are not allowed to exist here.
She isn’t planning to mention it, but he talks incessantly about bathing in the ocean and not having to do anything he doesn’t want to.
She finally asks him.
“Are you unhoused?”
He smirks.
“I’m not,” he says. “But do you want to see someone who is?”
She’s slightly confused by this.
“A … an unhoused person?”
“The only one on the island. Not me.”
“I … I guess so.”
She doesn’t really need to see the unhoused person, but now she kind of wants to.
The man goes over to his backpack and brings out a pair of binoculars.
He steps out of the shack and points the binoculars down the shore.
“Ah!” he says. “There he is.”
He hands the binoculars to the woman. She presses them into her eye sockets and squints until she sees the unhoused man. There’s no question about it. He’s definitely living off the mountain of supplies in his rickshaw.
“Sometimes he tries to give people rides in his cart thing there, but he smells so bad nobody can take it.”
The woman whimpers a sympathetic sound.
“Nothing to worry about,” the man says. “He’s mine.” Jimmy tells her his real name that he supposedly couldn’t remember only moments before. She recognizes the name first and then the man. She was used to seeing him clean-cut and always on her phone or TV screen. He reminds her of an overgrown baby learning to walk for the first time. Something about the way he holds his arms and moves his legs. It all clicks into place. “I like to keep him around just so I know how things could’ve gone if I hadn’t worked so hard.”
The woman knows he comes from a fantastically wealthy family and assumes he’s had a lot of job titles but has probably done very little work.
“I make sure he doesn’t get too close because, yeah, that smell is no joke. But I like knowing he’s around. I think other people do too.” He motions to the shack surrounding them. “You know, it’s all just billionaire stuff.”
Suddenly, the woman wants to be anywhere but in this shack with this ghoulish creature. She doesn’t think any niceties are necessary since this man is probably so used to it and isn’t really deserving of anything.
She turns and bolts out of the shack. She’s running down the beach, kicking up sand. She thinks about running toward the unhoused man, inviting him back to her room, letting him shower, and ordering a feast for room service. But eventually she gets too tired or maybe her body just forgets what it’s doing and she collapses in the sand. She rings the hotel and they send two islanders down to collect her and wheel her back to her room.
The next night she goes back to watch the people fuck on the beach.
The billionaire isn’t there but it occurs to her he probably pays at least some of these people.
Her vacation is ruined.
