Trips to the Cayman Islands. Gifts bought on shore. In exchange, you were careful to look like the women from island-boutique ads in glossy magazines, those women parading designer Euro wares that were so glaring in this island world, so exalted – Hermès at the neck of each woman, grotesque Hublots on the wrists of men overnighting from St. Barthes, Perrier Jouet, six bottles down, as usual, at table six.
He adored you, but it was on his terms. And you knew, at all times, that you were also replaceable. Later on he loved you for other reasons: you began to become his equal, to understand how to be his ally. And then he saw your potential to be too equal, to have the power to be his enemy.
“That’s right, I figured out your world a little, didn’t I? When your belly grew fat I took that as I sign that I could let things slide just a touch too. Cutting my primping to half-time, what else was there to do but try to be on your side? To get in on it. You didn’t like that in the end, did you?”
“I love you like this,” he’d said, stroking your track-panted leg on a weekend. Together you’d pour over the real-estate files, the bastard occasionally jumping up to rant and strut around the table full of maps, and you, ever-present audience to his chaotic utterances. What he didn’t know was that you were taking notes. Over tumblers of scotch you sorted the touchable from untouchable lands, those that you could rule versus those owned for generations by the blacks. Shanty structures mostly, but in prime locations. Impenetrable for inexplicable reasons. In the family lands there was another order of ring leaders, but not the paper kind. A lack of papers, more like it. Buried or lost for decades.
“We’ll get to those parts when we run out of these,” he’d say pointing to the mountainous sea vistas where he held monopoly, his hands moving up from one side of the mountain to the other, then from the paper to your arms to pull you away from where you too were now plotting. Yeah, you loved each other back then. And later on you’d put on your gold, and arrange your hair to fit with his vision of a nymph: tumbling blonde folds draping over all the white folds of your dress. And as usual, the guests would arrive and you’d say mum about the lands. Let him be king. You were becoming more than his prize. You were his partner.
The sun is still just coming in. Your sense of self-entitlement vaguely revived in you, you have no trouble sidling by a lawn chair and stealing a lady’s empty beach bag.
The most eager guests are now meandering down to the wading pool for a yoga session. Their voices shatter the air, a confidence that doesn’t fit with the fragile, flabby skin they carry as they pad by. As the hip-hop blasts out into the morning air, you spy a guest, who like you, has come onto the beach part of the resort alone. She sits on a lawn chair several metres away. Her nice, even tan and brash, hot-pink lipstick betrays that she is likely not from too far away, maybe from another island. No northerner on holiday. You envy the clingy gold jersey of the dress, how it fits her rather ample body, making her look so good. You take note of the heavy Yves Saint Laurent sunglasses as she removes them, and folds them into the dress which she takes off, stashing it into her bag. You get up then, and pass her so that the sun turns you almost completely into a silhouette. You perceive that she has seen you only as a flash, and that she has determined that you are staff, and therefore black. Or that you are one of the roaming band of outworkers who glide, almost invisibly, from resort to resort, each with a small bag out of which endless treasures cascade, from plants to patterned fabrics to shells to holding your hand and painting your nails right there on the beach. Rarely anything is sold. Then the mass of it gets mysteriously coiled up again into a small bundle before they amble away to the next beach. As she passes you, making her way carelessly down to the water without looking back, you say with the expected accent:
“I know you lady, seen you before, you wan’ an aloe vera massage later on, I give you a nice one . . .”
Maybe your voice trails off with one of her arms waving at you, but at first she hardly even notices you, except as a familiar silhouette passing by, one with whom she understands she can trust her belongings. You laugh and say, “Alright, alright, lady, later on. I see you later on.” As you bend down over your tummy rolls you draw in a deep and luxurious sigh, tidying up her striped towel, which the wind has blown sideways off her lawn chair. You pick up her hat and pat it twice so it stays put on top of her striped towel. Then you pick up her bag with that gold dress and YSL glasses rolled up inside of it, place it into the stolen beach bag and sling it over your shoulder like it’s your own. As if it were simply full of the aloe vera stalks you carry with you from beach to beach, looking for a white lady to give a massage to.
You wait until night. At a garbage depot you find a plate nearly full of food the dogs haven’t smelled out yet. You eat some greasy rice and the good part of a chicken leg, at the same time putting on the gold dress. It’s a light-knit Prada and fits snug. The problem now is, you haven’t got any shoes. But since food is in your belly this problem feels like something for later, even though your plan was to get moving to the main street by six. With one foot you kick about the overturned garbage at the side of the metal drum. Your fingers comb upwards into the mass of blonde, arms feeling light because you’ve lost weight. So many times in front of a mirror making this same twist at the back with a prominent bouffant at the front. You’re doing it, eyes closed, when your foot hits a flip-flop. It’s hot-pink and pretty dirty but you figure there must be a mate. There isn’t. You find another set, one with the thong ripped out, but between the three you make a pair. Then you saunter slowly in the direction of the next resort.
If you yourself believe you have a reason to be somewhere, no one will question you. Walk up to the bar, look straight ahead. Anyone who looks at you: hold their eyes and their eyes will meet your defiance and fold with a flicker. How predictable all this is. A glimpse to your hair and your figure now stuffed into the gold Lycra and they are instantly defeated. They see almost nothing else. You pray so.
The bar is at the far end of a pool, flickering under torchlights, candle-lined and curved to face the sea. Casually you dip your hand into the stringent aqua waters of the pool and discreetly splash your face. Rub the crusts from your eyes and the red-hot sauce from the corners of your mouth.
Sit on the barstool next to him: a late-twenty-something man, the one you’ve sized up as having a wad of cash in his breast pocket. Order something, anything, and drink it down, and let the bartender buy you another. You count on the fact that it will be paid for. Here he is, noticing you from the beginning, oblivious to your reek. He is young, and you see from his clothes, clearly not from here.
What is the cut-off point for the complete loss of sex appeal? Up until now, good grooming and posture, an attitude supported by money and friends, all have done wonders to hold off age. Then one morning you wake up and you hardly recognize yourself anymore. You’d seen this happen to others, but you couldn’t figure out how or when it would happen to you. It would happen. But not yet.
Your shoulder turned to the young man has the effect of drawing him closer to the bar ledge. He pushes his drink your way with his index finger. You laugh to give him a flash of your still-good teeth: over-white and capped, the artificial blinding kind that outshine lipstick, which you don’t have anymore. Keep talking, you think, you are saying something sassy to the bartender, overdoing it, mesmerizing him. The bartender throws back his head and laughs. He leans in. Too close maybe, and you gracefully back away a little. Neither one of them can feel threatened by the other. Nor can they feel sure. Keep the laughs going and any unsavoury scents from blowing their way. The transaction itself is wry and scripted on both sides, but mostly with the intent to create tension so that the young man is torn between feeling slightly left out of this sexual game and desiring to step in, to play the game. He seems a little unsure. Bashful yet somehow bold. He wants to try. He wants to be a man. He doesn’t want to fuck it up.
You sense all of this, and you sense your advantage without even having looked his way. Now
his wrist with the thick watch rises towards the bartender who shoots an annoyed glance at him – the young man orders two drinks: one for himself and one for you. The bartender relinquishes, straightens his shoulders, and slips back into his aloof persona, pouring and sloshing martinis.
One hour later, in a villa not a kilometre from your own where the bastard surely is, you are frantic in the young man’s renoed bathroom, armed with his razor. Breathe, breathe, you tell yourself. You made sure he kept the lights off, kissing him at the car, then again as you entered the doorway so he wouldn’t find the light, so instead was searching blindly to put his hands all over your body. Which you also held at bay. Silently putting your flip-flops into his garbage bin, you entered a chilly, high-ceilinged house.
“Let me use your bathroom first,” was all you’d said. He pointed through the darkness to a spiral staircase made of glass. You walked the first half of the ascent, then raced the second to the bathroom where you turned on the shower and scrubbed and washed your body and hair. “Hurry, hurry . . .” you now whisper to yourself, raking the razor over your armpits, up the sides of your vagina, along your calves, with a steady, practiced hand. Jump out and rub yourself dry, comb your hair, ransack his drawers for face cream or anything resembling makeup. All you find is a jar of Clarins for men and a single black eyeliner which you figure was left by a fling. He doesn’t seem to have a present girlfriend. Or even live here himself often. The bathroom is empty, like a hotel. You place the packet of money and your NAUI card next to the sink, intending to collect it later on. You come back down the stairs naked and burning hot in his long white bathrobe.
“A freshen up.”
“I gathered.” Which is cue for him to gather you in his arms. He luxuriates in your full bum, squeezing it and kneading it into circles. Slips his hand into the robe, lunges and bites so you have to laugh a little, slow him down. He is breathing fast, trying hard to do it right. To control himself. He pulls away shocked, eyes wide.
“Upstairs?”
“Let’s just sit awhile.”
“Here?”
“Sure. Anywhere is fine.”
Sex with a young man when you’re just “passing” for young. Not yet old. Something you do with pleasure, yet stand outside of to observe: a certain ravenousness brings you there quickly; reckless false moves he believes in, so you marvel; a violence you haven’t felt in awhile and know you could only tolerate a handful of times. How long could this intensity last? So you smile and stay with him. Love is always getting mixed up with lust at his age. You think: tenderness and an endless hard cock. So you do it twice.
Afterwards, while you had your eyes closed to dream yourself out of the hell and back into the cool caressing smell of marble, freshly cut, he got dressed again. It wasn’t perfect and he knows it, and you don’t care. He offers you a drink and you open your eyes, see the flash of his skin that matches the amber liquid he’s putting into your hand. As he plunks onto the other end of the couch, a hot night breeze drifts in over you both.
Ice tinkling in the oily amber liquid when you’re dying of thirst. Suck the cubes and he brings his face close to yours: a narrow nose and eyes that see you but also seem to be looking right through you, or far off to some other distant purpose. You guess Dutch because of his name and accent, when he says, “I’m Flemish. That, and . . . other things before.” You feel your eyes narrow, trying to sort through what he can mean against your own prejudices: his skin colour is so distinctly from the island. He looks like he’d be the brother to all those young girls who walk around with older white men, driving their cars, toting their babies. And then the very word Flemish: something antiquated in your mind. He is from here but also has those northern traits: dark circles under the eyes and a refined, narrow nose. Like in those paintings you saw once in a book on Coke-Bottle’s coffee table. But this young man has nothing to do with all that red drapery and those high foreheads. And yet, you know his sense of home is divided somehow.
He brushes his hands over your legs. “And these?” The welts are brilliant red and have been brought to life again by the shower and the sex. Now that he’s had you, he eases back onto his own couch. You see he is fascinated, but underlying this is an arrogance that, no matter what, will make your time in his life temporary.
“I’m new to the island too.”
“You are?” You nod, as he looks you up and down examining your parts, one by one, to distill you down to something he can understand.
Deflect his calculations by holding his eyes to yours. That way men have of assessing you both for your beauty-value and your use-value. As if they are torn between the two. Cunning, but there is something else, some underlying motive that drives him. You lay back and run your hands through your hair. You’re so tired, you realize, and wish you could just fall asleep right here in his enormous white couch. Letting your eyes close again, dozing, you feel the taut rungs of his breast and shoulder bones brush past you. The sound of the tap, then a little while later a kettle boiling. And his voice, suddenly animated and loud:
“I’ve been invited by the local baron it seems. To a party.” He laughs and looks to you questioningly. You say nothing. “He accosted me yesterday in a café, I have no idea how he knew who I was. Anyway, I’d love it if I went with someone. I like that you’re not from here either.”
Your eyes flash wide. Heart flickering in two directions at once. The use of that word ‘baron’ said like a joke can only mean one thing: the bastard. The bastard’s having a party just as he always would for a newcomer. Your innards writhe at the fact that his life hasn’t changed despite having so recently murdered you. But this feeling is calmed by the remote thrill of this young man wanting to see you again.
Best to say nothing, even though you are dying to ask more. Half an hour passes, and why this mutual peace passes as though in love, you can’t say. And you both seem to drift off, to tune-in to the blare of crickets and warm wind from the balcony. You sleep awhile, naked legs intertwined.
Then both of you at the door, a little shell-shocked, teetering on your feet over the queerness of standing next to each other, not sure now where your intimacy stands.
He looks at your feet questioningly.
“Don’t worry, I left them by the car.” His brow furrows then smooths as you blow him a kiss.
That night you walk the long route back to the shore. Into the blackness you spot an abandoned sailboat, invisible but for another boat nearby spilling light onto it as it tips and totters on the waves. You ready yourself, disrobing. The gold dress fits fine wrapped around your head and you rush down the cold sands, naked, and stride into the warm waters. They invite you. Your strokes are powerful. You’ve eaten, drank, fucked, and have a plan: to accompany the young man to the bastard’s party. It’s then that you realize that with all the echo of his tongue still burning on your skin, you forgot your NAUI card and the packet of money in the young man’s bathroom. Panic turns your heart for a second. Then as you go underwater, and stay below so long, you wonder if you still need to breathe to stay alive. You wonder what really matters anymore for your survival? The symbolic value of those objects vanishes, as below you, the ocean opens up like a consciousness, a galaxy of dimmed green flecks in which your heavy mammalian body becomes muscularly slow, almost dissolved. The envelope of money and the identity card have no currency here. Money and Bunny can’t help you anymore, you think. Eons away, stars pulse like tiny bright minerals. You come up gasping for a giant breath of air, and you drift, breathing hard, your thighs brimming ovaline and spent against night sky, until your head gently bumps up against the boat. As you lay in the clean sailor’s bed, the rock of the boat draws you into a calm, lucid sleep.
Day six dead
(In which Bunny goes to the
family lands.)
COOL AND OVERCAST. The main sail flutters. This boat is much like the rest but with some country-chic flair. You run your hands along the lacquered honey-brown panels. You push the ruffled flora
l cover off and go to eat whatever’s in the fridge. A cold hotdog nearly gags you. You make up the bed, at the same time searching the drawers underneath for a swimsuit.
You find a Laura Ashley bikini, two sizes too small. Busting out of the B cups, you wonder what to do with the gold dress you’d worn on your head for the swim. Pretty soon it’s going to be like a relay of clothes left between sailboats. How funny if you were to return to a boat and find your original outfit, the one you wore over the cliff. Now, the options before you: dresses in mauve and dusty blue, with white bibs in the shape of triangles, diamonds, and circles. Over your dead body . . .
You wind the still-damp gold knit back around your head while eating a carrot, and rifle again through the drawers. The lady of the ship is clearly an Avon investor. You set the distinctive pink case on the bed and open each of its shiny black drawers, taking out some things. Then pat and mop your face, armpits, crotch, pulling aside the bikini bottom, and wash your vagina with a wet face cloth because you’re within arm’s reach of the sink. Looking in the mirror you apply baby-pink cream that is cold against your cheeks, then a layer of beige powder, followed by sand, pink, then turquoise eye shadow, forming a dramatic zigzag gradation right up to your eyebrows. Then thick mascara and liner. Gloss on the lips. You feel better now. Even the babyish bikini makes you look cute and it’ll go with your curls. Maybe you’ll even spend some hours tanning today.
But once in the water simple thoughts are replaced by a tranquil blankness. You swim with your head above the surface to protect the Avon. The waves lap calmly against your chin, warm and tingly. As you come near the shore, the scene unfolds before you in slow, lazy detail, mostly people arranging their towels for a day of lying down. The stillness of the palm trees and the solemn sunbathers on the beach steady you. All that sun being soaked into leaves and skin gives a meditative rhythm to your strokes, a tranced repetition, and a pall of sunlight, a nothingness, is cast over the ocean, blaring over the surrounding sand, so that your mind opens and strange thoughts enter. Scenes of yourself in perfect solitude, wandering stretches of the island invisibly, living contentedly off scraps, being fed by the town, the jungle, and the ocean, then more active visions of yourself carrying out quiet, calculated but absurd acts fueled by the feeling of injustice. Soft apocalypses blow up in your mind. You set random fires with the last flame of a found lighter, smash a lowland rock soundlessly through a car window. Shit on a doorstep at dawn. Or kinder acts that would be like rewards to strangers. You don’t know why, but somebody would be given the gift of something stolen from the plaza boutiques; as you walk the warm concrete mains some man might be drawn aside, into the bushes, for a silent, expertly executed blow job. You see how your body could morph daily, how it could come closer in look and kind to the blinding brightness of the island, how it could transform by night into the dark sway of sultry bars bordered by the succulent morbidity of the mountain with all its foliage. Living outside of yourself and time. Adopting the clothes of others. Maybe even a mask, maybe made up of your own hair? Or stalks of dried leaves, fruit detritus, broken sunglasses, things plucked from the garbage, to make yourself truly unrecognizable. Tunnel-visioned, muscular and untouchable, something symbolic so you could wander more freely in your new Bunny power.
Bunny and Shark Page 5