Chapter Eight

And last, but not least, Orville knew that when he began to think outside of his body in third person as though he were a gigantic omniscient presence looking over the clouds at his body on the street below, he knew that then that meant that someone was following him.
At that moment in a land not that far away, at least in the same time zone, Thompsen was humping his way through the streets looking for the flower man, wondering, where in the hell is that flower guy gone? He had walked through street after street of Pago Pago and learned little more than maybe how to construct a rudimentary dugout canoe and that he really did think that the smell of coconut can be attractive coming from the right Polynesian women. But what he didn’t know was that that someone had been looking for him as well.
The man in a white panama hat tilted it at the passing of a large Samoan. The man stood under the shade of a large palm tree. The base of the tree was littered with several rinds of husky coconuts as though some giant sitting around watching Monday night football had peeled them like peanuts and discarded the shells nearby. He wore a blindingly white cloth suit and casually cracked his knuckles. A coconut fell from the palm splashed up a tiny whisp of the salty white sand that it fell into.
From beneath the broad shade of the palm, the man in the panama hat checked his wristwatch, carefully turning the button on the side two full clicks until it stopped with a final tight ratchet. He had been watching the man in the oily black trench coat wander the streets of Pago Pago for the better part of the morning and found that he had nothing better to think of him than, let him wait. Recuerdo Santocristo-Timex Sancristo had amused himself with the man in the black trenchcoat. Already the man in the trenchcoat had passed him while Recuerdo had sat at the tiny outdoor bar/cafe, twice in a public mens room and once, just for the hell of it, Recuerdo had bumped into Thompsen slightly while passing him outside the Hotel Pago Pago Carlton. He had brushed his shoulder and then bowed grandiosely with his outstretched palm gripping the panama. Excuuuseee me, he had said and Thompsen readjusted (he could tell this by a glint of metal and the all too obvious form of a submachine gun under his coat) his Thompsen and walked on.
Recuerdo looked at his watch again. It was nearly the afternoon and he would have to approach Thompsen soon and deliver into his hand the greatest piece of news that horticultury and gardeners and heck, the world had ever seen.