Not like what? she said.
You know what I’m talking about, you lying there. This is how women change the subject, isn’t it? He rediscovered the bottle of rum in his hand and took a nasty swallow. It’s too much.
Is that what I’m doing, changing the subject?
This isn’t our goddamn honeymoon, is it? You need to put something on and we need to talk.
But it’s so fucking hot. Honestly, aren’t you hot?
Unchastened, she had made him think about it and he felt the swampy airlessness of the room and suddenly he was sweating through his shirt and he could feel the rivulets dripping down his forehead and his feet were stewing mercilessly in their boots. Yeah, he admitted, it’s hot.
The room came equipped with a ceiling fan, and a leaky air conditioning unit in the window but the electricity had been off since nine o’clock. The water too, she said. I can’t even shower.
She wanted to negotiate and he grudgingly allowed it, letting her convince him that in another minute he would be as miserable in the heat as she was if he didn’t come into the room and relax and at least get into a pair of shorts if he had them, and while she talked she put her book on the nightstand to get up from the bed and with her back turned toward him she squatted by her pack and he found himself electrified by this perspective of her nakedness, the angularity of her ass and the swell of her vulva from behind and its pale haze of pubic hair, thinking he needed to get out of there. She stepped into navy blue panties and went back to the bed and he said thanks, what about a T-shirt too, and she said with an edge to her voice, Oh, just get used to it. Upright against the headboard and cross-legged, she watched Tom as he undressed down to his boxers, which he exchanged for a pair of gym shorts in the privacy of the bathroom and then dipped water from the bucket on the floor and washed his face at the sink and felt not refreshed but refocused and went back into the room, determined to have it out with Jackie.
I’m sorry to be so immodest, she said. Like, I’m not trying to offend you or anything, right? But it’s too fucking hot in here for me to pretend I’m in high school and the world will end if a guy sees my tits. Feel better?
Yes. Thanks, he said and looked at her warily but he still did not know what to do with his eyes and he could feel the restlessness forming beneath his skin and a current of tension seeping into his groin. He took another swig from the Coke bottle and put it back on the floor but then picked it up for another swallow. Look, he said, I’m enormously stressed, and told her he was craving a cigarette. Do you mind?
Oh, perfect, she said. I have ganj.
He lit a Comme Il Faut and inhaled deeply and began to cough with such violence that for a second he thought he might throw up but he waved away her sudden mask of concern and composed himself and she lit the joint she took from her makeup bag and lay back down and exhaled a lavish cone of blue smoke into the heavy air.
I’m pretty mad at you, Jackie, he said evenly, shifting in his chair. I’m very upset.
I know, she said, subdued at last, with the regret he hoped to hear in her voice. She got up from the bed and crossed the room and bent over him, her breasts ballooning again into his vision. Want some? she asked, holding out the joint, and he saw the greasy sheen where she had salved the bite marks on her right hand but his eyes were drawn back to her breasts and he struggled with the possibility that leaning forward a few inches would allow him to circle the lovely pink aureoles of her nipples with the tip of his tongue, knowing that to do so would make him nothing more at this point than a bigger fool than she had already proven him to be.
Maybe a taste, he said without thinking about why, because the cannabis on the island had an insane potency and he did not enjoy it. As soon as he inhaled he felt a dissolving swirl pass through his shoulders and lift his head from his body, and he anchored his eyes to the set of gashes on her fingers. How’s your hand? he asked.
It’s nothing, she said, retreating to the bed and positioning herself with a stubborn look that let him know she was ready for his questions.
How’s Lecoeur’s man?
Tom, okay, listen. I’m sorry. I freak out when somebody grabs me. It’s bad, I know.
Bad. Stupid.
I know.
You could have killed him.
I suppose. The Pakis seemed to know what to do with him. It’s pretty simple, really, and he could hear the dope loop its strange energy into her speech as she explained in detail the antihistaminic recession of the inflamed tissue and the suturing of the tracheotomy.
I want you to tell me why you were taking pictures? I never see you shoot a frame and then all of a sudden, wham. Tons of pictures.
That’s my thing. Why else even invite me along? she said coolly and met his eyes with a hardening defiance and propped herself with pillows against the headboard of the bed.
He stared at her without kindness and a craven thought ranged into his head that he could not accept, that what was most troubling about this situation, this moment, was her beauty. If it were not for her beauty, he never would have had anything to do with her. He would have known better, given her a wide berth, after the game she played in Saint-Marc.
I told you to stop, he reminded her. You have to talk with these guys. You have to ask permission. Some will say yes, some no. It’s delicate. You don’t just walk up and fire away.
But come on. Don’t you think their faces were so amazing, said Jackie, her desultory words coming at a rate he found increasingly hard to follow. So fierce, and the lines of their expressions making this web of pathos and hope and belligerence and I just went with the moment, you know. Like you’re not even conscious of anything but getting the shot, which is not a cliché, man, it’s a crazy state of grace. You’ve got to get it no matter what and I know you probably think I’m not much of a photographer but, you know, photojournalism is like, Oh, look, get out of my way, there’s somebody killing somebody else, snap snap, or the herd heads off into the slums but where is the substance to poverty, poverty has no substance, that’s the definition of poverty, the context is inert, nothing’s happening to raise it beyond what it is, it’s like a form of paralysis. Do you see what I’m saying?
No.
What I’m into is making portraits, vernacular photography, visual anthropology, right, I want to paint figures, I want someone looking at the picture to say, who is this person? I don’t want to document, I want to interpret, and it’s important for me to find a subject, guerilla fighters is a classic, it’s modern, it’s timeless, it’s us, it’s not us. Think of Mao and his fighters in 1946, think of the French Resistance or Fidel and Che in the Sierra Maestra. Incredible, right? And to find a core theme, something transformative and magical in the spirit—like, where the fuck did this come from? You know? Don’t you think so? Then more harshly, Look, I said I was sorry, okay.
What’s going on with you and Sergeant Burnette? he asked impatiently.
What do you mean what’s going on? I’ve been here for what, a week? I’ve known him for like twenty-four hours. What are you trying to say? That we cooked up a scheme to ruin your day? Wow, that’s a fucked-up question. Fuck you, Tom.
You weren’t taking pictures for him for some reason?
Fuck you, Tom. She sang it like the chorus to a jolly song. Fuck you, Tom.
He felt himself on the brink of shouting at her, making clear the damage she and Burnette had done, interfering with serious matters, and their actions had placed him in the unthinkable position of being the driver of a car that had hit a man and sped away. But he did not want to tell Jackie this last piece of information, he did not want to hear himself say it out loud. The rum and the wing-tip brush of ganja had dizzied him and the dizziness lay spread like oil on the greater pool of his fatigue and the heat had begun to feel like a fever. His confusion about Jackie made him oddly fragile and n
ot altogether rational and he did not want to spend this night in such close quarters with her chaperoned by his anger. Because she appeared to be telling the truth he wanted to comfort her but the impulse felt too close to desire and unmanageable and so he rewarded her instead.
I have your camera, he said, reaching down for his day pack.
Oh, my God! she said. Oh, my God! She came flying off the bed and in her excitement said I love you and kissed him not passionately but a moment longer than she might have, her eyes searching for his reaction as she pulled back, glancing down at his lap and quickly back up. Sorry, she laughed, taking the camera. Thank you, thank you, how the fuck did you get it, I thought I’d never see it again. Her happy steps bounced back to the bed where she plopped on her back with her arms out wide, the camera in one hand, as if in a swoon to the sudden wonderfulness of life. Here we are, she half-sang in a familiar melody he failed to identify, and ever shall be in our memories.
Tom slumped, dumbstruck, in his chair.
Fuck fuck fuck! She examined the frame counter and popped open the back of the Nikon. They took the film.
Right, Tom said woodenly. They yanked it.
No! she wailed again like a child. We have to go back for another shoot.
You’ve lost your mind.
No, really, stop kidding. Let’s go back tomorrow. Are you going back?
I’m never going back.
No, no, no, Tom. Bad Tom. She left the camera on the bed and crossed the room, humming the tune he could not name, placing a hand on each arm of the chair to capture him, leaning over, her nose inches from his and her eyes puffy and blinking, unable to sustain their focus. Bad Tom, she whispered, and repeated it silently to make him read her lips.
You are so stoned, he said. Way out there.
He did not try to stop her from climbing into the chair, sitting crossways on his lap, her long bare legs draped over the armrest and her right hand sliding up the sensitive nape of his neck into his hair, the gentle kneading switching on and off to a rough caress, a clumsy attempt at sensuality. Her mouth was slack, her lips parted too much, and he held the drift of her gaze long enough to see that her eyes were empty of desire, and he did not know what he was seeing except the parody of a vixen and the suggestion of a shared knowledge that might allow them to slip effortlessly forward into the role of lovers or send them simultaneously blazing off in opposite directions.
Bad Tom, she said again. Let’s go back. Please, please, and she squeezed a fistful of his hair to punctuate herself.
He told himself she was out of her mind and now so was he, Jackie there again in his lap, the stick of skin against skin, her crotch atop his, the boundaries that seduction took such exquisite art in dismantling cast aside from the moment he had opened the door. He dropped his eyes to her breasts and she allowed this, her fingers curling along his scalp, and Tom became acutely aware of his hands and what he might do with them—unless he raised them in the air there was nowhere for them to go but on her body—the right hand in a tentative pause on her closest knee, the left hand clasped on her rib cage below her left breast, and he stopped looking at her breasts and watched his right hand turn so that the shelf of his fingers was snug between her closed knees, her own hand in his hair, squeezing harder, her nails pressing painfully into his scalp as his hand took its time traveling from her knees up her slick thighs and stopped without touching her panties. He moved his hand then infinitesimally closer yet not all the way and she gasped and in the sublime and terrible tension of the moment he looked into her eyes and saw them become empty and although she did not stop him he knew something had changed and something was wrong and he stopped himself, withdrawing his hand.
Jackie, I need you to get up, he said, and she got up awkwardly and stood before him with skittish eyes in a confusing posture of submissiveness, telegraphing both a strange challenge and imminent surrender. I need to use the bathroom, he explained, getting up himself.
He stayed in the darkness of the bathroom a long time, too long, a deep dull ache in his balls, wondering what to do, and when he started to fall asleep perched on the toilet he went back out. The candle was sputtering in a puddle of wax on the nightstand and she lay on the top sheet, naked again, on one side of the bed with her eyes closed and her hands cupped protectively at the top of her legs. He would not get into the bed with her and returned to the upholstered chair and slouched onto its cushion, finding its comfort incomplete, his body unappeased. When he looked back at her again her eyes were open, lambent, watching.
Why are you over there? she asked.
I’m not sure.
He made himself stop thinking about it and came to the empty side of the bed and lay down and wrapped his arms over his head, careful not to touch her but disabled by the citric smell of her sweaty body. She asked if he wanted her to blow out the candle and he did and then they were in darkness. Listening to her breathing he could barely draw a breath himself.
After a while she said, What were you doing in there so long? and her voice was strained and reedy and not beckoning, she was not being playful or teasing but mocking the desire she must know he could not silence forever.
Nothing. Sitting.
Were you thinking of me?
He turned on his side facing her, the dense but indistinct shape of her, and wondered if he was imagining this, the impression that she was touching herself while she talked with him. I’m too tired to think.
You were thinking about fucking me, weren’t you?
The crassness of her mood jarred him but still he replied as if she were joking, wanting her to stop being weird.
Maybe. You got a problem with that? he asked, trying to sound lighthearted, but she didn’t answer.
For several minutes they lay quietly in the rippling hush of the darkness, Tom trying to determine if her breath actually quickened as he imagined it, trying to decide if it would be all right if he reached over to put his hand on her shoulder or pet her cheek. He was telling himself how could it not be all right when she spoke again.
What’s your daughter’s name?
How do you know I have a daughter?
You told me, she said, but he could not remember ever mentioning such a thing.
Her name is Allison. Why are we talking about her?
How old is she?
Eleven. Let’s stop there.
She made a thoughtful sound and whispered, That’s the age, isn’t it?
Age for what?
When they become luscious. When they start resisting.
Resisting what?
You.
Yeah, he said, misunderstanding her implication, she’s getting around to that.
How old was she when you first finger fucked her?
What the hell are you talking about? He bolted upright. That’s fucking sick.
The bedsprings creaked again as she changed positions, turning on her stomach, her answer muffled by the pillow.
What? Tom said, leaning closer.
Have you ever fucked her?
What?
You’ve wanted to fuck her, right?
What galaxy are you from?
You’ve thought about it, haven’t you? Is your dick hard?
What do you think? You’re getting off on this, aren’t you?
Then in the darkness her hand reached over to his face and then his mouth, clutching, pushing, the pissy scent of her fingertips flooding his nostrils and he moved and straddled her and unbuttoned his shorts and underneath him felt the power contained by her body and its exquisite summoning as he pressed himself between her legs where her other hand, underneath her, blocked his entrance. He pressed harder, tried to pry an opening with his cock but she filled herself with her fingers and he heard her say something and Tom said What? un
sure if she had said Don’t. Stop. or Don’t stop, and so went higher, pressing himself beyond the halo of tightness into her anus and he heard the sharp intake of her breath and the root of a sound she made behind the grit of her teeth. When he blinked his eyes stung with his sweat and after several thrusts she said to the pillow, Get off, or maybe, Get off me, and after an uncertain pause and then several more strokes he was shuddering and done and off her, gulping the air like water and as he fell to his side of the bed for an instant he no longer knew who he was and the day had become a death that crushed him under its weight and left him, for seconds or minutes or an eternity, in an insensate afterlife, his body so heavy it hurtled away through black space and all that remained was the disconnected awareness of a world from which he had been evicted.
In the morning he woke to a sour residue of grimness in the room and saw that she was gone. Thanks for the lecture on permission, Jackie had scrawled on a page in the notebook she had removed from his day pack. Now you know what kind of a man you are.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cui bono?—the question he was peppered with by his professors at law school. Who benefits? The line of inquiry would, on occasion, arc and plunge away from the perpetrator of an act and burrow itself into a labyrinth of concealed interests, which may or may not deliver up the wizard, the ultimate and unexpected source. Was Conrad Dolan the wizard, Tom Harrington asked himself, or was he simply a man in the difficult position of having to save himself by letting go of the rope he had thrown to save another? Or was the rope itself a subterfuge?
No matter how he looked at his increasingly unsavory relationship with Dolan, he could find no like-mindedness and thus no common purpose between the lies he told himself and the falsehoods and manipulations manufactured by Dolan, a man who circumambulated the truth like a Buddhist monk speaking in riddles and koans. Stories truly told are true, except when they are not. Harrington felt duped and duped again, and this journey north to Saint-Marc must, he told himself, be the end of the game, forfeit as acceptable an outcome as any other.
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