Saint X

by Alexis Schaitkin

  When I pass Arthur’s father’s store I’m close. I ride past the gas station on George Street where Keithley used to work, past the three-legged goat tied to a post in Daphne Nelsen’s yard, past the clinic where the antimen go when they’re deading. Past Prosser’s School Uniforms—pink for Horatio Byrd, yellow for All Saints, blue for Sir Northcote. Past the scrub that leads to the nameless cliffs. Past the house where my father was born. It’s abandoned now. The roof is more sky than galvanized. Chickens roost there. I crest a hill and the ocean appears, a color nobody can describe. Damien once told me science says mankind came up in the sea—we started as lizards with fur or some shit. It’s only recent we left the sea for land. Maybe that’s why the sea feels so, like a house in a dream you wish so badly to enter, but where’s the door?

  Indigo Bay is the last resort on Mayfair Road. When I look at it, I see it twice at once: the white buildings and the clean sand, but also as it was when we were boys, with wild pomme-serette trees and needles and condoms in the seaweed and the antimen who loved this spot. With its stink and sand flies, nobody bothered they. Well, nobody but we.

  Morning is morning. Edwin and me carry the lounge chairs out from the storage house and arrange them in a crescent, just so. Next, the chair cushions. I carry them four to a stack on my shoulder. Finally, the umbrellas. A bit later, the early birds arrive. By nine, the beach is crowded. Then it’s towel, bottled water, adjust umbrella, drag chair, fresh towel, fresh water, all morning long. Today, a man with dolphins on his swim trunks and a pretty Asian wifey orders a Red Stripe.

  “Peace, mahn,” Edwin says when he sees the bottle on my tray. Edwin thinks it’s fucking daft how Yankees love to order Red Stripe here. But Jamaica’s not so far from here. I see their point. Later, Edwin will chat this daft fucking Yankee up to see what else he likes. Guests who order a drink in the morning often turn out to be good customers.

  When I bring his drink, the man reaches in the pocket of his swim trunks, pulls out five dollars, and says, “Get yourself one, too.” He smiles.

  “Thank you, sir,” I say. His smile goes flat. He wants me to make some chat, but chat is Edwin’s thing.

  Midday, the girl’s daddy asks me where the locals eat. I’m glad he asks me and not Edwin. It pisses Edwin off when guests ask for recommendations for authentic island food. A few weeks ago we had a guest order only curry goat and conch creole for lunch all week.

  “Fucking dolt,” Edwin said to me one day after he took the man’s order.

  “Last week you say the same about the lady who only ate burgers and pizza. What would you like they to eat? How can they do right by you?” I thought I had him then.

  He shrugged. “Maybe they can’t. What I care about it?”

  “That sounds fair.” I rolled my eyes.

  He snorted. “Gogo, man, you so soft it get you someday.”

  When he takes break past the rocks at the edge of the beach I see she, gallivanting down the sand toward he.

  * * *

  THIS JOB’S not so bad. The Yankees who go to Papa Mango’s and stay at hotels near the Basin and shop in Hibiscus Harbour where the cruise ships dock act like they’re royalty because they bought some budget Caribbean cruise package. The guests here are so rich they can relax about it. They’re polite, mostly. The food trays are heavy, the chairs are heavy, the umbrellas are heavy, but that’s just usual job shit.

  One thing I do mind. While I walk the beach, I feel the guests’ eyes on me. It’s like I’m onstage, but at the same time, the audience is not even interested in me. I feel so big under their gaze, like if I open my mouth I may swallow the world by accident and leave myself alone.

  Everybody knows Yankees are fat, but at Indigo Bay, most of them are thin. All day they eat and drink and sleep like babies. I walk back and forth carrying trays heavy with they cheeseburgers, coconut shrimp, and conch fritters. Food so oily it shimmers. So how are they thin? It seems like someone somewhere just decided it.

  Not all the guests are beautiful, but they all have a certain something. A wellness, maybe. Terrible things may happen to any person, rich or poor, white or brown, and I’m sure terrible things have happened to some of they, but they don’t appear so. They appear like they believe the universe loves them, and maybe it does.

  A few guests are not so well maintained. At present, we have a fat woman with skin like cottage cheese and a Frenchie man with a hard round belly. They don’t cover up; they lie out like everybody else. When we’re waiting at the bar for our orders to be ready, Edwin says, “You check the belly on the old fucking Frenchie?” and puts a finger in he mouth like he’s gagging. I laugh. But when I’m not with him, laughing at they, it’s different. These fat people, almost naked under the sun—I’m amazed by they.

  * * *

  FLEET. I learned this word from Jan, the old Dutchie we used to lime with when we ditched school. One day when Edwin and me were walking to Paulette’s, it started to pour. Edwin took off he shoes and sprinted through the rain and I followed behind, panting all the way. When we arrived inside, all soaked through, our school polos stuck to we, Jan said, “Edwin, how fleet you are!”

  English was not Jan’s first language or he second; first came Dutch, then German, then French, then English, but he still knew this word I didn’t.

  I never looked it up, but I have the idea of it. Fleet. A thing I’ll never be.

  * * *

  WE HAVE a customer. The man with the dolphin swim trunks. Edwin chats he up after volleyball one afternoon. Turns out his lawyer wifey needs to relax. This morning, after my daily highlight morning piss, I reach under my bed and pull out the lockbox. The combination is Bryan’s birthday. First, so I don’t forget it. Second, to remind me I do this under under business for he. When I open the box, the ganja scent rushes out. Gran must smell it, but she’s given up being up in my business. This is why the lockbox stays at my place. Edwin’s sisters are nosy as shit.

  The lockbox is how I do my part. Edwin chats up potential customers. Edwin makes the sale. I keep the lockbox under my bed. We split the profits even. I weigh out ten grams. Most I put in one baggie. Enough for two spliffs, I put in another. This bag’s for we.

  I wait in the car park, and when Edwin arrives I hand he the big baggie. In the afternoon, the man with the dolphin swim trunks has a rendezvous with Edwin by the tennis court. The wifey’s there, practicing she serve; she pauses in she little white skirt and watches. The man gives Edwin sixty dollars. Edwin gives me thirty.

  Sundown is sundown. Insect coils with their sweet fake smell, last call, a posse of children chasing Edwin around the sand. Girls and boys tug at he legs and tickle he, and finally he lets them take him down. The girl’s pale little sister doesn’t join. She watches. Her finger turns and turns.

  When the guests leave the beach we collect the towels, hundreds of they—damp and sandy and smelling of salt. We take down the umbrellas. We drag the chairs across the sand and stack them up. After a day trudging in the sand beneath the hot sun, we uniforms have the same strong, mothy smell as the boys’ P.E. changing room at Everett Lyle Secondary, full of sweaty plimsolls and pinnies. We change out of them and throw them in the bin for the wash lady. In the car park, we roll a spliff with the extra herb we skimmed from we sale.

  Evening, I give Sara my tips plus the money from the sale. If she suspects where the extra money comes from some days, she never says so.

  * * *

  TODAY, WHEN we’re smoking in the car park after work, I see the girl coming up the path, swaying she hips before she even spots us. “What the ass?” I whisper to Edwin. He shrugs, as if her arrival is unexpected for he, though we both know it’s not so. When she asks what we’re doing here, Edwin takes a spliff out of he pocket, twirls it in he finger, and says, “Nothing much.”

  She raises she eyebrows. “Mind if I do nothing much with you?”

  This girl appears cunning.

  * * *

  WORD GETS out from the man in the dolphin swim tr
unks. A few newlyweds purchase from we. Some retirees also. We sell some pills to the girlfriend of the actor on holiday. She has a body like a porn star. “That man have it made,” Edwin says. “So old he balls must sag to his knees and still the women line up to be fucked.” The actor appears shy to me. He touches his girlfriend’s body, but he doesn’t appear to enjoy it. That’s some Yankee shit right there—rich, famous, porn-star girlfriend, and still he’s so low.

  One day I arrive at Sara’s with fifty dollars, and do you know what she says?

  “Look at you, high as a kite! How can I leave him with you now?”

  “I’m not high as a kite, Sara.”

  She places she hand on she hip. “You smoked before you showed up here. Do you deny it?”

  “Don’t be like that. I’m out there breaking my back ten hours a day for you.”

  “You think I’m not breaking my back all day, caring for this child?”

  “Me and Edwin just smoked a bit. A man needs his breds.”

  “What about me? When do I get to see my friends? As if I have any left, anyhow.”

  Here’s some words of wisdom for you: Don’t ever try to out-talk a woman. They store the right language up so it’s ready to throw down when the time comes. Her face goes bitter, but then she changes it—she crinkles she eyes and gives me this injured look, like she’s a gentle woman without a nasty bone in she body and in the face of all the poor treatment I dole out she feels only this soft, pretty sadness. Such fuckery.

  “All I ask is one hour’s reprieve from taking care of him, Clive,” she says. “One hour. So that I might bathe and, heaven forbid, lie down and put on a little perfume and listen to the radio.” She’s crying now. I can’t tell if it’s more pretty acting or if she’s crying for true.

  I look past she. Through the window I see the dead yard, the clothesline, and the old cookhouse. We were together there, in the dark. She led and I followed. What was I thinking? Only one thing: Sara. It was Sara pulling me through the dark yard. It was Sara opening the door, and Sara unbuttoning me, fast and urgent like she would combust if she didn’t manage it soon, and it was Sara’s small, narrow hips I was pulling the yellow dress away from with my shaking hands. It was Sara pulling me against she, Sara I entered, Sara who I had loved for so long. I look at the woman before me, her eyes so tired it’s like she’s been watching this life since the beginning of time, and I wonder how we got here.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Clive,” she says. Then she closes the door.

  * * *

  NIGHT, EDWIN picks me up. When we get to Paulette’s, Don and Des are already there. Edwin buys two rums, one for each of we, though we know I’m going to drink both. Edwin hardly drinks, though I’m the only one who notices. He holds he glass, then when I finish mine, we switch. It’s been this way so long I don’t recall how it became so.

  “Tonight’s spliff brought to you by the Yankee in the pink dolphin swim trunks,” Edwin says.

  “You shitting we,” Don says.

  “Antiman?” Des asks.

  “Nah. Hot Chinese wifey.”

  “Women in America must be desperate,” Des says.

  “Man must be filthy rich,” Don says.

  “Man be nice,” I say. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s true. He tipped nice, too.

  Edwin grabs the spliff from me and takes a puff. “Nice,” he snorts, “is some real fuckery.”

  * * *

  THE NEXT day I arrive at Sara’s sober and on time. Bryan’s toddling on the floor. I sit beside he, make some silly faces. My boy gurgles when he laughs. His eyes are big and round like his daddy’s.

  While I entertain he, Sara takes a bath. She comes out looking refreshed. She wears a scarf around her hair the color of grass on a cricket pitch. Sara has parts of she so small sometimes I wonder how God did manage it. She tiny toes, all lined up. She leans down and tousles Bryan’s ringlets. He gurgles. Her small small feet carry her to the kitchen. She takes the lids off the pots on the stove and ladles food onto a plate.

  “Dinner, Mum,” she says.

  Agatha stops she scratching in the parlor and trudges to the kitchen. She sits down at the table in such a way. I can’t explain how she does it, what it is she does with she eyes or she back or she jaw or she hips, but she manages to sit down at a table in a way that says that she—she! scratching lady in the parlor!—is too good for this, and that it takes all she has to abide she daughter, who falls so far below she expectations. Here’s the thing about women: If the world was only women, there wouldn’t be language at all. They don’t need it.

  Sara pretends she doesn’t notice the way her mum sits. Her pretending pains me.

  Agatha takes a single bite, then sets down she fork and says, “There’s grit in the callaloo.”

  I lose it a bit then. I walk to the table and stand over she. I pick up the fork and hold it out to she.

  “Eat,” I say.

  Agatha looks at me with she black beady eyes of a hen.

  “Sara does everything for you! She cooks and cleans and tends to Bryan while you sit around with your feet up like some grand woman you never was, scratching at your nasty head. Now, eat.” For a moment our eyes lock. Then Agatha takes the fork. She eats.

  When I leave, Sara walks me to the door. “See you tomorrow, Clive,” she says. She smiles.

  * * *

  TONIGHT, WHEN Edwin turns left onto Mayfair instead of staying straight on to Paulette’s, I feel the evening congeal like old porridge.

  “Edwin,” I say.

  “One stop.” Like the stopping’s the problem.

  “You promised.”

  “Relax.”

  When we pull into the car park the girl is there, waiting pretty against a palm tree. So many weeks the girl waits against this same tree. Women always know their best angles.

  “How would you like to stick your cock in that?” Edwin whispers to me as she walks toward the car.

  “Girl decked out for you.” I never know how to stay vex with he.

  “Ten dollars say she decked out belowdeck, too.”

  We laugh at this, at she, as she approaches. He loves to laugh at they.

  “Look who decided to grace us with she presence,” he says.

  This one is perfection when she rolls she eyes, and she knows it. She climbs in. This is happening, no stopping it. Though Edwin promised how many times this shit be finished, we’re driving to Paulette’s with somebody’s daughter in the backseat.

  * * *

  THIS WEEK’S girl keeps appearing. When we arrive at the beach in the morning she’s in the water, stroking. I’ve never seen a pretty little thing swim with such power. She stays in the sea a long time and never pauses to look at we.

  “Oh, hey,” she says, back on land, like she’s surprised to see we. Who does she think she’s fooling? We know she’s performing for we. For he. The girls always do so. Sometimes they do it by sunning themselves in their tiny bikinis. Sometimes they do it by getting drunk and crazy at Paulette’s. There was a girl a few months ago, Callie, who climbed onto the bar and danced, and when she was up there you could see straight to her pum pum because she wasn’t wearing any panties. Edwin and me lost it. I think he still fucked she in the end, but he fucked she like it was the funniest thing in the world. Sometimes, if they’re shy, they even do it by pretending to ignore him, but the way their gaze keeps flicking back at him gives them away—their walk, their pretty dresses, even the way they read their book on the beach like it’s so interesting they can’t spare a moment to look up at he as he passes—it’s all for he.

  Volleyball, she’s there, flashing she scar. Everybody watches she. Edwin, the Yankee boys. On the sideline, her sister spectates and does she tracing with she finger in the air. Poor little girl—such an odd child, and she sister so pretty.

  Sundown she’s there, too. She comes around the car park and shares we spliff like this is she usual routine. People see she with w
e, and I don’t like it. Waitresses arriving for the dinner shift. Gardeners departing. Sometimes women shake their heads as they walk past us. Sometimes they do nothing, but still I know they disapprove. Let me take this even further for you: Women don’t even need bodies to tell us exactly what they think. They could be ghosts, all air, and still men would walk through this air and know just how vex they be with we.

  Night, she’s waiting in the car park for we, in she little dresses with she little sweaters over she little shoulders for the chill. This girl can hold she liquor, and when Edwin compliments her on this, she says, “The value of a college education,” and rolls she eyes. When the dancing begins, I stand to the side and watch she motion. How does a body know and choose everything it does like that?

  Sometimes in the afternoon I see she gallivanting down the beach after he. She flashes over the black rocks and gone. What they do there, just the two of they, I don’t know. He’s not fucking she yet. At least, I’m pretty sure, though this is the one thing my chatterbox friend doesn’t speak about much. Don’t get me wrong, he makes plenty of big talk about banging these rich-daddy girls. But when Don or Des bang a girl, they go into the particulars … this girl smells like fish down there, that one knows how to work she teeth, another one has nipples wrinkled up like walnuts. Edwin stays on the surface, no matter how we pump he for details. Still, I gather he waits for the last night to fuck they. He likes pursuing them even more than he likes fucking them. Fucking is easy for he. Waiting’s what he loves, and making them wonder: Did their pretty little performance work?