by Danyel Smith
“Cute girls and cute guys, right, Lil’ John?” He’s looking at me like I’m the pretty one, and he’s the lucky one.
“Yes, I said. Some of both.” Ron indulged today’s game, amazed at himself. Wondered if he’d found a girl he could respect. A girl he could attempt faithfulness with. A girl who’d leave him if he acted an ass too many times in a row. One who wouldn’t give him a pass on his lies because of the money he was starting to make. For Ron, Eva was the distillation of every Vanity 6 desire, every swollen bass loop, every pretty black girl who’d played him to the left wth an eye roll, every beautiful black girl who’d laughed at his jokes because she felt sorry for his corny ass at the bar, every aromatic, graceful, wild sister his dad had as mistress while Ron was a kid.
“And they didn’t matter, did they?” Eva was literally bouncing with glee.
“Nah,” Ron said. “They didn’t matter at all.”
And then the messy kisses were dewy as the Mediterranean air, apple tangy and long. His lips were slim pillows kissing her forehead and then sucking her tongue softly—not like he was trying to take it from her, not with any noise, not with one sound at all. But he pulled on it with a sure suction that made Eva spin into the warm belief that his arms were okay arms to lean into for a minute.
He’s the best kisser in the world, Eva thought drunkenly. But this is all a dream.
Seven hours later, Ronald Littlejohn and Eva Glenn talked about love at Heathrow Airport. Her layover was four hours; his, one hour. Ron was going to Los Angeles International via Boston’s Logan, Eva direct to John F. Kennedy. They were seated in British Airways’ tidy first-class lounge. Eva was back on Giada’s turf, and Giada had Trix and Imperial Court doing some in-stores in Brixton that Eva wouldn’t be bothered with. Ronald hadn’t told Eva that he loved her; he told her that he could.
“You could,” she said. “Ain’t I the lucky one.” Ain’t I the Lucky One. Sounded to Eva’s ears like the B-side of a Stax 45.
“I’m saying that if we were … real people, with everyday lives—”
“Then what?” But Eva understood what he meant. She’d already begun to feel like her life wasn’t quite real. She made more dollars per year, at twenty-six, than her dad had made in any three years of his life. She’d been to twenty states, three continents, and six countries. She shopped with confidence and freedom. She had an assistant. Eva went, with decent seats as well as backstage passes, to the Grammys and other nationally televised award shows and concerts. This was her everyday. She knew celebrities like other people knew their coworkers or neighbors—closely and without intimacy. The thing most people did with celebrities—wonder about them—Eva’d stopped doing two or three years ago. They were as usual to her as were sacks of coffee beans or patients to grocers and doctors.
“I might,” Ron said, “think about trying to make it happen with you.”
His ambiguity was irritating and, Eva thought, plain lame. “Make what happen?” There was a crunched question mark on her face, like the idea of her allowing anything to happen with him was ludicrous, like he was bigheaded for even imagining it. Her frown was reflex.
“We could have, like, a sex house,” Ron said. “All the perfect shit for sex.”
A sex house? Eva wasn’t thinking marriage, but … a sex house? That’s trifling. She felt disappointment—that was her ego. And a tiny bit of relief because she was back on familiar ground. Eva knew the rules of on-tour hookups. “Um, no, Ron. We’re road dogs,” she said without sadness. “And the tour’s over.”
“But that’s who really should be, if you think about it, together.” Ron was having a real revelation. “We roll well, don’t get on each other’s nerves. You understand my life as an executive. Watch when I get back. How shit goes down. Watch your boy as he blows up the whole spot. Flips the crazy corporate cheese. Watch.”
Eva felt she’d be watching. She thought, White boy or no, he’s a nigga like any other. In this case, Eva thought “nigga” to mean a man acting in a way that disappointed her, a way in which she expected, though she’d hoped for at least the option of the opposite.
British Airways called his flight.
“You got all my numbers, right?” Ron held her hand tight, and looked in her eyes.
Eva was unmoved. “Yep, sure do.” She sounded overly bright, wanted him to suspect she was faking brightness so he’d suspect she was overcompensating for true nonchalance about their situation.
Ron, though, took her words to mean what they meant. He hadn’t asked for her numbers. Not like Ron couldn’t find her easily. But in Eva’s mind, he hadn’t asked her for anything, really, but that first blow job.
“So when you’re in Cali,” Ron said, using the abbreviation for California that Eva hated because it was used to mean L.A., like L.A. was the only city in California, “buzz me up. We’ll hang out.”
Buzz you up? The hell is that? “If I get out there, I sure will.” Suck my dick.
They called his flight again. Last call.
“You will,” he said, walking toward the other stragglers. Men ruddy-cheeked and focused. Money Min with three shoulder straps and a half gallon of Evian. “I know how you do, Eva. You’ll be all at the Nikko Hotel, flossin’.”
“Flossin’ for sure.” Why is he stretching this out? We know what this is. Must these people be privy to our tired-ass good-byes? Eva thought to say, I stay at the Mondrian when I’m in L.A. But she didn’t. “Safe travels” is what she did call out.
“Call me.” Ron’s hand was in a hang-loose sign. He put it to the side of his face, pinkie at his mouth, thumb at his ear.
As if I would ever call. He doesn’t know yet that I’m not that girl.
Eva didn’t call Ron. Not until she felt she owed him, at the very least, the courtesy of a conversation.
CHAPTER 13
Cat Island
They stood under a long wooden sign that read SMITH BAY.
“Miss, we are looking for a place to rent a car,” Dart said in loud, clipped tones.
The woman, harassed, pointed a finger curved as a question mark. “Down there.”
“Down where?” Dart moved into her space.
“There,” she said, taking a step back. “Not far.”
“Not far,” Dart said earnestly. He moved toward her again. “Be more exact than that.”
But the two women walked away from Dart and Eva, and toward Édouard and his boxes of peaches and condensed milk.
“WAIT,” Dart yelled after them. “Tell me.”
They stopped, and turned to him from about ten feet away.
“I’m looking for an Obeahwoman,” he shouted. “Or a man. I want to experience it.”
They looked at each other, and then back at him.
“You don’t have to give me a NAME.” Dart was suffering. “You can just POINT, like you did for the car.”
Édouard looked at Eva. She walked past the two women, and over to Dart. “Dude. Let’s settle in,” Eva said, soothing and silencing. “Then we can ask around.” Eva turned to the women, hoping for a nod that included her in their sensibility. None came.
He has no finesse. Eva wanted to apologize for Dart, but sensed the futility. She wanted to provide him with a more articulate energy, but knew the desire was her trip, and was vain, as well.
“The only way you can find out things,” Dart said to Eva, already ahead of her on the road, “is to ask.”
“That’s working real well for you about now.” Eva stopped walking. “Do you have your pills?”
“They’re not pills,” he said, still stepping. “They’re herbs.”
“Do you have them?”
“They don’t work like that,” he said, not even over his shoulder. “If you wanted a brother on meds, you missed that window.”
They walked, Eva behind Dart. The woman had pointed to a small white cottage with a closed door and an open service window. There was no lot.
“HELLO? Hello!” Dart yelled. “Anybody work here? HELLO?
”
Eva, her mind made up to let Dart be Dart, slowly brought up the rear. Then Dart pounded a bell on the ledge three times.
“What the—”
“It’s why the bell’s here,” Dart said to her.
From behind the cottage a man in neat slacks and a thin shirt emerged. “I can help you?”
“Yes, sir. How are you? We need a car,” Eva said quickly, wanting to beat Dart.
“Your name? You reserved a car?”
“No,” Eva said, “we didn’t. Are there any?”
Dart stood next to her. Taking short, heaving breaths.
“I’m sorry. No car today. Maybe the day after tomorrow.” The man, unfazed by the yelling and the bell-banging, spoke to Eva, and looked at Dart.
“Where are the cars?” Dart was accusatory. “Where do you keep them?” Dart marched toward the rear of the cottage while the man watched and made no move to stop him.
“Where are you staying?” the man asked Eva.
He’s at least fifty. And he looks good. Eva sat in a metal chair and stretched out her legs, now that she could connect with someone minus Dart’s histrionics. “We’re trying to figure that out now,” she said.
Eva reached in her bag for her cell, pressed ON, and watched the screen come to life. The notice flashed up: ELEVEN MESSAGES. Eva stared at it. Picked up the scrap of paper next to her phone.
“Can you tell me where is … Hermitage?”
“On the mountain?”
“Car-rental place? Maybe? Hotel?”
“You are at Hermitage Transport right now.”
“Are you Ben?”
“I’m Benjamin. So you did call and reserve.”
“Édouard gave me your name.”
The password finally uttered, Benjamin laughed. “Eddie is my brother-in-law. What he promise with my name?”
“Nothing, really. He just gave it to me.”
Benjamin took a drag from his cigarette, dropped it, and pressed his sandaled foot over it. “Well then,” he said. “I guess that means you can ask of me anything.”
“A car?”
“There are no cars. I don’t lie. If I had one I would provide. It’s my business.”
Eva’s phone rang.
From out of sight, Dart yelled, “Don’t answer it.”
“It’s Eva,” she said into the phone.
“Where are you? Tell me Dart’s with you.”
“Yeah, Sun. He is.”
“What’s going on?” Sun was as nosy as she was worried. “He’s all right? Eva, you know Dart is supposed to be on … his stuff, and he stopped taking it, and … you see how he’s been acting. Not crazy, but like—” Sun paused. “Where are you?”
Eva glanced around. Fishing boats with rods outsticking like hairpins, up-pointing like steeples. Every beige catamaran and blue dinghy with a number-stamped hull, every Pure Visions and Kokanee and Carpe Diem noosed by soaking lines but still nodding smugly with the secret of its ability to float.
“On the Out Islands,” Eva said, like she could be on six hundred of them at the same time.
“That’s what it’s called? They have a spa? I should come there?”
“For what? We’re fine.”
Benjamin lit another cigarette.
“I knew you’d be good for him right now. After he told me he got that bracelet and everything, acting like he’d gotten you a square-cut diamond. It was so important to him and I was worried, but then I saw you had it on, but you were talking about Ron, so I just didn’t know.”
Yeah, yeah, whatever. “Where are you?”
“At the airport, about to fly to Miami. Went to the gospel brunch.” Sunny added the last like a spoonful of honey.
“With who?” The question was in regards to all three statements.
There was a short pause. “Vic and Swan are with me,” Sunny said. “Hawk’s talking about getting on our flight. And Myra. Piper’s coming down, to meet us at South Beach, to help me out, since Dart’s … away.”
Eva was silent.
“Ask, Eva. Ask.”
“Kiss my ass.”
“Ron’s got a bungalow, at the Delano. And some guy from the Heat’s got both penthouses, having some supposed-to-be-chill parties or whatever. So—”
“I gotta go,” Eva said. She thought of the Delano with its airy lobby and billowing drapes. Thought of its back courtyard with the rows of coiffed palms and the chess set with pieces the size of boot boxes next to fluffy daybeds on a lawn so green and tight you could bowl balls on it straight into the pale blue pool. Eva thought of the Delano, and she wanted to be there with people she could predict. In a lofty duplex bungalow with a flagrant view of the Atlantic and a mini-bar with Glenfiddich and Perrier and Orangina and Famous Amos. The hotel suddenly held for her all the tenderness of an adored home. “Car’s coming to pick me up,” Eva said sharply. “I’m out.”
Benjamin smiled a bit to himself.
“Just gonna stay in Miami for a day or two, Eva. And don’t go getting mad at Piper. She loves you. You and Dart come, to the Delano. Tell me now, so we can get suites big enough—”
“I’ll call you.” Eva pressed OFF. So Piper’s crying to Sunny, now.
“Who was it?” Dart sidled up. He was disheveled and damp, as usual. And like he’d been walking through shrubbery. Standing next to Benjamin, who was neat and cool in the ninety-degree heat, Dart was anxious, and seemed, as he could sometime, half-embarrassed to be alive.
“Just work,” Eva said. “I turned it off.” Suddenly she was tired and hungry. A breeze came up, fluttered the skirts in the distance, and cleared for the moment the smog from Eva’s head. She leaned her head against the cottage and closed her eyes. Thought of hotel room after hotel room, and Ron Lil’ John in each one.
“You want a ride, you two?”
“Yes, please,” Eva said. She looked at Benjamin like he’d offered up Dart’s cure. “To anywhere.”
Cat Island, from what Eva could tell was shaped like a curved Band-Aid.
There were a half-dozen homegrown hotels, mostly clusters of tidy cottages. The Greenwood, and the Bridge Inn (both NO VACANCY), whose cottages were appointed with periwinkle columns, in no way qualified for the enormity of experience “resort” implied. Cat was all but untouched by commercialism or development.
Eva had no idea where they were going. Dart lolled in the backseat, dropping in and out of sleep. She kept turning to check on him, felt like his head might bounce too hard against the car window. As they rode along the main way in Benjamin’s air-conditioned four-door, Eva saw a few intent people on bikes, but not a soul walking or driving.
Water here’s so blue it looks chemically created, like a melted tropical Bomb Pop they sell off ice cream trucks in Manhattan.
Benjamin turned onto a narrow unpaved road. There were stone bungalows with thatched roofs. People sat talking on porches. Motor scooters leaned against yellow walls and whitewashed outdoor ovens. Gray satellite dishes mushroomed along Benjamin’s route, huge and familiar and big enough, Eva thought, to sleep in.
Benjamin stopped at a house that would be considered small in most U.S. cities, but next to the others, it loomed like a manor. Dart scrambled from the backseat. In front of the big house with the shingled roof, Eva got out as Benjamin did. There was an asphalt path leading to the front door. The knocker was a marlin green with patina. In the near distance, blue-green sea lapped pink sand. Eva saw a smaller house off to the left. Clothes hung heavily there on a line.
“A nice place,” Benjamin said, and he could have been talking about either house or both of them, or Cat Island itself.
“Real nice,” Eva said. “And quiet.” Damn near the sound of silence.
Dart walked to the front door and opened it without touching the marlin. Eva caught Benjamin’s almost imperceptible frown, but she was too tired to apologize. They followed Dart in.
“How much is it?” Dart asked, like he was paying. He dropped his pack on the couch. The room was plai
nly furnished, and immaculate.
To Eva, Benjamin said, “Come see the patio.”
Once outside, Dart bounded off to the shore. The patio was the same beige stone of the house. There was a lounge, a small table, and a few chairs. Brown-and-white striped cushions neatly stacked under a plank shelter.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m sorry. It’s Eva.”
“You’re from?”
“All over. But from the U.S.”
“Yes, Eva, I guessed that.”
The sun was setting. Eva looked at the unnaturally blue stretch of surf. Dart, with his shirt still on, walked purposefully out into the water, deeper and deeper. He’s fine. He’s a grown man. Been around the damn world. Dart’s discordant self was rubbing off on her, though. She felt inadequate and muzzy.
“He’s not your husband.”
“No.”
“Your boyfriend.”
“Kind of,” Eva said. And then she didn’t like the casual way it sounded. She didn’t want to be on a blasé encounter. Not on Cat Island, where Édouard’s brother-in-law was being so gracious and comfortingly brusque. “I’m—”
“My wife and I,” Benjamin said, “take care of this property. That’s our house—” he waved toward the clothesline. “You can stay here tonight. No one is expected. Then tomorrow, when you and…”
“Dart,” Eva said.
“—have rested, we’ll see about a car. You can find a good place on Fernandez, or in Bight.”
Wherever that is. “You’re sure?” Eva was relieved as Benjamin nodded. “Thank you.” The sun raged, the sky hot plum as Benjamin’s shirt. His rounded forehead was lustrous enough in the light to make him seem wise, and his hair sat back on his head like a yarmulke. The Delano’s blowy, sterile ambience seemed second-rate to her suddenly, and remote.
“Keep things neat,” he said bluntly. “My wife will bring you something by. Her name is Audrey. Call me Ben.”