most auspicious, most gargantuan resort in these islands, no doubt sucking a good number of tourists from sprawling Providenciales, now blanketed end-to-end with ritzy hotels, condos, malls and golf courses. For now, sleepy Grand Turk still mostly consists of quaint inns, thatch-roof shacks, a couple of dive operations, and a candy-colored row of buildings known as “Cockburn Town” fronting the docks. Highpoint could really put the island on the map – if it is ever built.
Lately Butch’s loosely-formed group of protesters has fought the project on two fronts: one, it’s to be built on top of a rare flamingo colony nesting site, and two, a small cave on the property’s rocky north side has recently been found to contain mysterious, ancient drawings which have yet to be fully evaluated. The Governor has promised to preserve the colony and cave, and have developers build around them. Although I am sure he’s thinking they might also make a nifty tourist trap.
Distant roaring, growing louder. People hurry over to view The Spectacle. I get up, stretch, join the crowd. The DC-9 punches out of the clouds, swoops down onto the short runway, bounces twice, brakes screaming metal-on-metal, grinds to a thrilling whiplash stop inches short of plunging into the sea. The bloated behemoth makes a U-turn, hunkers over toward the hangar along the uneven tarmac, screeches to a stop. A stairway juts out of its ribcage, people spill onto the asphalt. A greasy customs agent surveys the pungent crush of humanity behind wraparound shades.
"Jeremy.”
"Mojo. What bring you out here."
"My crew's on that plane, with our equipment. You're going to help us sail through customs, I expect."
"Expectation dangerous ting," he says, surveying the heat-wavy horizon. "Expectation nuttin but de flip side a frustration."
As the rake-and-shake band starts up an anemic island calypso tune in the open-air gate area, my photographer Guicho sways in, hugs me uncomfortably hard, dances me around like Fred Astaire on heroin. "We made it!" he shouts, breathing stale rum-fumes in my face.
As we twirl, I catch a glimpse of The Kid, his head a thin white cork bobbing on the sea of passengers. He smiles, waves.
Two men throw piles of designer luggage and ratty, taped-up boxes off a flatbed, onto the concrete floor. We plunder the pile as the empty truck rumbles off. We find the camera’s underwater housing, tripod, lighting equipment cases, boxes of batteries and tapes, audio equipment, chargers.
"Guess that's about it," Guicho observes non-commitally.
"What about the camera?" The Kid asks.
Panic! We frantically root around the dwindling heap of luggage. I look out onto the runway, see the tongue-like stairway curling back into the plane. I tear off, out the door and onto the tarmac.
"Stop!" Jeremy screams, but I know he is too old and fat to catch me, and cannot risk shooting me. I still fit the category of "American tourist", much too valuable a commodity to kill.
Engines tuning to an ear-splitting pitch, the DC-9 pitches tentatively forward, freed of its wheel chocks, gaining speed. I run faster. As the plane humps off down the rippling runway, a pistol shot cracks behind me. I slow down, not because of the warning shot, but because I do not wish to be french-fried by the turbines. Standing in an oily, brownish haze of jet-fumes, I curse defeat, insanity.
Jeremy, panting hard, grabs my arm.
"Jeremy, dude, you shouldn't be exerting yourself this way," I say, stretching my arm around his chubby, sweaty shoulders. “You’ll have an aneurism.”
The pilot guns the engines to full blast as the plane, miraculously weightless now, lifts off over the ocean. Jeremy cannot talk yet, but his choppy gestures indicate he is hopping mad. Finally, he wheezes, "What are you - you creezy?!"
"Sure, I'm crazy," I affirm, as we stroll back toward the hangar. "I'm one of you. I live here on this stinking rock. Now, come on, we'll get you something cold to drink. A Presidente. How about that?"
"Next time I shoot you, no mistake," he manages, voice rising to a screech. "You cannot break de law in dis way! Dis a secure area..."
"Jeremy, you know, you look awful," I continue. "You should take better care of yourself."
We blink back sudden shade as we enter the hangar, the smell of old frying-grease mixing with the sour-sock smell of Jeremy, who is unarguably right about one thing: the essential fact about expectations is, they are prone to failure. The opposite side of expectation is frustration, the mirror of hope, despair. It’s all about proximity. The sun seems