Free Thai Horse by William Diehl

pressed his lips against the window and she moved slowly through the water, rising up against it, pressing first her breasts, then her stomach, then her thighs, against it, and he opened his mouth slightly, flicking his tongue against the inch-thick window, and she began to slowly wiggle, taunting him as he moved his head over her breasts, down to her hard, flat stomach and then down farther, to the matted hair that was pressed on i n ch away from his mouth. Then she was gone.
    He lay there, watching the fish darting in and out of the coral cluster, thinking about Ginia. He was lucky. She was bright, beautiful, and sensuous. They had been lovers for almost a year.
    It had been Cirillo who found this island. And it was to Cirillo and his wife, Millie, that H atcher had come after Los Boxes. He had walked away from Sloan’s rescuers, hitchhiked from Miami and arrived at Cirillo’s door in the middle of the night, a gaunt hollow-eyed replica of himself, wet to the knees from stumbling through the marsh. The Cirillos had asked n o questions; they simply had nursed him back to health, providing the care and understanding necessary to heal this shattered mind and body.
    The years after Los Boxes had been almost as traumatic as the experience itself. His emotions had become so armored, so distrusting and involuted, that he had spent the first months alone, wandering the bases of his past, looking for someplace to sink a root, something to hook him to reality. The closest he had come was a boat, but there were no roots in the sea. For a year he had indulged himself, cruised the Caribbean, lain in the sun, gorged on good food and wine, read constantly, and made love to women of every possible persuasion — white women, black women, red women, married women, unmarried women, smart women, dumb women, old women and young women.
    Ultimately he had returned to the island. Hatcher had learned to love the place; to love the marsh that insulated the island from the rest of the world, and the island itself, so teeming with new life that it had rekindled his own spirit after Los Boxes. It had become his first real home. The isolated corner of the world was a perfect refuge for him.
    There had been rumors about him, this strange, quiet man with the shattered voice and the haunted eyes, who sat night after night in Murphy’s Tavern, nursing brandy. That he was a doper on parole, that he was a doper who had never been caught, that he was a narc looking for dopers on the isolated island, that he had served twenty years for murdering a faithless wife. All fictions written with whiskied tongues by the women he ignored and the men whose women were attracted to him.
    He laughed at the stories, flattered by a status that had become mysterious and legen d ary and gradually the islanders had accepted him, attracted by his sense of humor, his independence and a sense of loyalty to fellow islanders that was revealed slowly and without fanfare. He was one of them now and the stories had been put aside. Like many others who had escaped a checkered past and sought refuge in the small waffle of land two miles off the coast of Georgia, his past remained a mystery.
    Ginia had her eye on him for a couple of months before he finally moved on her. She asked no questions, nor did he, although he knew she was a native of the island, had graduated from the Wharton School with honors, had been one of the most respected brokers on Wall Street, married a wealthy attorney and then, on her thirtieth birthday, had chucked it all and returned to the island and set up a small brokerage firm. That was all Murphy talk, and he never asked her anything about it, just as she never questioned him. It was as if they had no past, only their future.
    It was two months before he asked her to dinner, a dinner he cooked and served a mile offshore, anchored over what since had become their favorite reef. They sat on the floor and ate dinner and watched the sea creatures at play through