That makes three women. Three dead lovers.
What the hell are we investigating here?
Chapter 25
Half of me was convinced Ackerson had put me on a no-fly list, but I got through customs and security in New Zealand without a hitch, then onto the flight. But it wasn’t until after the plane was in the air that I relaxed.
A bare three hours later and we were on the runway in Nadi, Fiji’s largest airport.
The humid heat of the tropical country hit me like a damp wall when I stepped off the plane. The air was as thick as molasses and somehow slower, the scent of the earth different in a way I couldn’t explain. As if all that lush tropical vegetation had permanently altered its chemical composition.
No one rushed ahead of me, most of the male passengers in shorts, and shirts featuring hibiscus blooms or palm trees. Many of the women wore strappy sundresses and had pulled out sun hats in readiness for hitting the outside world.
Tourists.
Hardly any locals on this midweek flight, to my eyes, though I did spot a couple of little old Indian ladies in light saris, and a small group of native Fijians in black shorts and white tees bearing the name of a local rugby sevens club. The latter was a game with which I had littlefamiliarity, but that Rajesh Prasad had followed with near-religious fervor.
My jeans weren’t going to cut it in this heat, but they’d have to do.
An airport staff member in uniform, a red hibiscus bloom over her ear, pointed the passengers toward the immigration line. Unlike when I landed at LAX, no one was impatient, and a number of people chatted to each other as if they were in no rush to be anywhere.
I shifted from foot to foot.
And heard Diya’s laughter in my mind as she teased me about my need for constant forward motion. “Island time will drive you crazy,” she’d said one night, after we’d been talking about her childhood home. “But resistance is futile—things will happen when they happen, so just relax and enjoy life.”
As it was, the line moved along quickly enough even with no one in a hurry. When the officer, with his dark skin and tight curls, first saw me, he said, “Bula. Coming home?”
Funny, how I’d never thought I’d be asked that question on island soil at the far end of the Pacific. Hadn’t ever thought about visiting Fiji at all; my grandparents had immigrated from India, my only knowledge of this land due to seeing its name splashed across my mother’s favorite bottled water.
“First-timer,” I said. “My wife’s from here.”
“You’ll be back,” he predicted before returning my passport and waving over the next person.
I had no luggage to pick up, nothing to declare, and was soon exiting into the arrivals area, where people waited for their relatives. A little girl in a pretty pink dress was jumping up and down as shepeered at the stream of arriving passengers, her hair pinned to the sides of her head with barrettes. Dressed up to fetch someone important to her.
Her father stood next to her, smiling indulgently.
Skirting past the others milling around, I found the sign pointing out the direction for the domestic terminal, from where I was to fly to the more rural of Fiji’s two big islands. The walk took me a minute, if that, the international and domestic terminals side by side.
I barely noticed the palm trees or the cabs lined up at the stand.
The ninety-minute wait for my flight almost drove me insane, but the journey on the small commuter plane was mercifully short—and the descent into Labasa Airport a breathtaking glide over endless sugarcane plantations. The tall gray-green leaves waved in the breeze, the airport nowhere in sight until we were suddenly landing on the tarmac.
Even from this lower vantage point, all I saw were the sugarcane stalks in every direction, as if we’d been dropped from the sky into the middle of the fields. Unlike in Nadi, there was no skybridge when the plane taxied to a stop. Instead, staff wheeled over stairs, and we were directed to disembark directly onto the tarmac.
I was braced for the tropical warmth this time, but it was worse when my feet hit the tarmac, the sticky black of it reflecting the heat back at me.
“Bula!” A smiling member of airport staff standing on the tarmac directed me along the safe pathway to an entrance. His skin was as dark as cocoa beans, his smile beaming white; the lack of any sweat stains whatsoever on his clothing shouted local louder than even his Fijian greeting.
Meanwhile, I was pretty sure I was melting.
This was the smallest airport I’d ever been in, but it moved fast because of that.
When I stepped out on the other side, I found my face brushed by a breeze that felt like a silent welcome to this place that lived in my wife’s heart. The sugarcane in the distance rustled, creating ahush-hushsound that was just a touch rough.
“I love fresh sugarcane,” Diya had told me when talking about her birthplace. “Have you ever had it?”
When I’d shaken my head, she’d said, “You strip off the hard outer shell, then just chew on the white flesh inside. It’s thready, so after you chew out all the juice, you spit the husk out and take another bite. It’s not the same as having sugarcane juice—half the fun is in the chewing and holding the cane in your hand.”
