Bliss

by Fiona Zedde

  They stepped through the curtain of vines then stood still as it settled closed behind them. Sinclair gaped.

  "This is the reason I brought you up here."

  It was a sanctuary, a hidden garden of exotic blooms, orchids, lilies, hibiscus, all sporting colors that Sinclair had no idea existed in nature. Butterflies of every hue and size flitted from flower to flower, delighting in the chaos of color and scent. The sun lay over the glade like a blanket, warm and golden.

  "There's a hot spring on the other side of the gardens. We can soak in it later on if you like."

  "I would definitely like."

  They found a clear spot and spread the blanket out, being careful not to crush any of the carelessly flittering butterflies in the process. Hunter sighed as she lay down with her head in Sinclair's lap.

  "This place is so peaceful, so perfect." Her eyes drifted closed. "It's almost like I can feel the rest of the universe when I'm in here."

  "It is lovely. I'm surprised that other people haven't found out about it."

  "I'm a little surprised too. Or maybe they know about it but just make sure that when they come they leave the place just as they found it. That's fine with me too."

  Sinclair rubbed her lover's stomach through the shirt, pleased that Hunter had chosen to share this moment and place with her. Happiness warmed her, nearly burning away the awareness that she would soon be leaving for America.

  "Aw, isn't this sweet."

  Sinclair jumped at the unexpected intrusion. Hunter froze in her lap then turned, slowly, in the direction of the voice. It belonged to one of two men, who stood much too close to them in the clearing. One held a machete in his hand. Sinclair's pulse started a panicked riot in her body.

  "You gals look really good together. Especially back there in the jeep." He rubbed his chest and stared hard at the two women.

  Hunter slowly stood up, watching them walk closer. "Hey, there," she said. "Can we help you boys?" Her voice was vicious with scorn.

  "Yeah, you can help us," the one with pale eyes and the bare chest said. "You can give us another show like the one you did in the truck."

  "Or," his friend laughed breathlessly, "you could just keep on doing what you were just doing. We'll take care of the rest." The front of his trousers bulged.

  Fear prickled over Sinclair's skin. This was not happening. Not again.

  "I'm afraid we can't do that," Hunter said.

  "Well, foreign woman. We're not going to give you a choice."

  In a blur of motion the men flew at them. The one with the machete went for Hunter. He hurled his body at her with the long blade held behind him. His eyes widened when Hunter's foot flew up and slammed into his belly. She danced out of the blade's way. Then Sinclair had her own problem to deal with and couldn't watch anymore. The other man abruptly materialized in front of her and slapped her hard across the face. She tripped on the edge of the blanket and fell on her backside. The man lunged at her. Galvanized by fear, Sinclair scrambled backward, reaching desperately for a weapon to hold him off with. With a sob of relief her hand closed on something. Her camera. She swung it by its strap, hitting him full in the face. Stunned, he staggered back and fell in the grass. Blood rushed up, splashed across his skin and the grass. She came up after him, slamming the heavy Nikon in his face over and over even after he brought his hands up to protect himself against her assault. Then, he stopped moving.

  Sinclair stumbled back from his battered and slack face. Her harsh breath was loud in the clearing. Where was Hunter? She looked around at the sudden glint of steel in the sun.

  "Hunter!"

  The dark woman held the machete in her hand, the blade descending in an arc toward the prone man's chest. Her foot pressed hard against his throat.

  "What?!" she snarled.

  "Don't. "

  "Don't what? Do you know what they were going to do to us, Sinclair?" She held the weapon above his bleeding chest, arms trembling with the effort of not striking. "They were going to fuck us to death." She released a harsh breath. "You know, they find dead bodies in the bush every day. Two more, especially the bodies of two rapists wouldn't make that much difference."

  "No, baby. No. Don't defile this place any more."

  "Defile? Don't talk about defilement to me-"

  "Let's leave them. Let's go before they wake up." She didn't ask Hunter this time; she pulled her lover's arm, forcing her to drop the machete in the grass. "Come."

  Hunter turned once to look at the two men sprawled in the afternoon sun, their faces and bodies bloody. She spat in the grass then turned and walked back to the jeep.

  Sinclair gathered the pieces of her camera and its film and dropped them in the unused picnic basket before picking it and the blanket up and following her lover. With each step she slowly became aware of her body's aches. Her jaw was beginning to sting from where the boy had slapped her. An unpleasant sense of deja vu made her stumble as she tried to get into the truck. Hunter was silent during the drive down the mountain, her mouth hard and set. At a crossroad, she turned to Sinclair.

  "Do you want me to take you home?"

  "Home with you, yes. We need to go to your place and get you cleaned up."

  Blood ran sluggishly from a gash along Hunter's cheekbone. The knuckles of both hands were raw and bleeding. She drove on without another word. At the house, they parked the jeep and walked inside together. Once in the safety of her blue haven, Hunter collapsed. Her stony facade crumbled and she leaned against the wall, trembling.

  Cooing words of comfort, Sinclair led her to the bedroom where she gently undressed her lover and tended to her wounds. Hunter curled up on top of the sheets.

  "You know, Sinclair," she said. "I love this place. I really do. But when things like this happen ..." her voice roughened and she stopped. Sinclair slipped her arms around the dark woman and held her close. She quietly shook, her body vibrating like a plucked string in Sinclair's embrace.

  "The island is beautiful," Sinclair said. "But it's also poor. A lot of desperate people live here, and desperate people do desperate and awful things. You have to love Jamaica still, with all her faults. You just have to."

  "I do. But it hurts." Her voice broke. "Sometimes it hurts too damn much."

  "I know. I'm sorry." Sinclair rocked her trembling body, feeling tears begin to run down her face. "I'm sorry. I know."

  They slept. Their emotional exhaustion laid them out on the bed and pulled their eyes closed to the bright sun just outside the large windows. At some point Hunter woke, undressed Sinclair, then fell back asleep. The sun was gone when Sinclair opened her eyes again.

  The dark woman lay propped up on one elbow, watching her. "Hey."

  "Hey, yourself." Sinclair yawned and carefully stretched her bruised body. "How are you feeling?"

  "Better."

  "Good. I was getting worried for a minute there."

  "So was I."

  Sinclair touched Hunter's face, traced its smooth lines, even the bandaged cheek, before moving to the slash of a nose and the curved mouth. Her lover closed her eyes.

  "You are an amazing person," Sinclair said. "And I am glad to know you, to be close to you."

  Hunter kissed her wandering fingers before pulling them away from her face. "I should be saying those words to you." She sighed again. "I've been here for two years, and in that time I've heard of so many horrors, so much brutality hap pening on the island. A time or two I even encountered some of that craziness myself, and I was terrified. But none of that came close to what I felt today when those men came after us." Her fingers stirred around Sinclair's. "Thank you for being there with me. Thank you for being here with me now.

  "Where else would I be?" They both looked surprised at the words that came out of Sinclair's mouth. Yet neither woman rushed to put them away. That evening Sinclair called her father to let him know that she wouldn't be home until tomorrow. After an unguarded heartbeat of silence, he told her to be careful and wished her a good night.r />
  When morning came Sinclair was the one who woke first. She left her sleeping lover, who looked vulnerable and unexpectedly sweet with her face tucked into the pillow, to make an attempt at breakfast. The kitchen was meticulous and intimidating but she managed to make decent scrambled eggs with cheese and toast. She brought the food to the bedroom where Hunter was still peacefully sleeping, and put the tray on the bedside table.

  Sinclair woke her with kisses, lingering over the warm skin of her face before trailing down to her neck, the skin between her breasts, then her stomach. Hunter stirred beneath the soft touches but did not open her eyes. Sinclair paused at the juncture of her thighs when a familiar scent reached her nose.

  She laughed. "Open your eyes, you faker."

  Instead Hunter with her eyes still closed, widened her thighs and gently nudged Sinclair's head down. "I thought you were going to continue this to its logical conclusion."

  Sinclair batted her hand away and moved back up the bed. "I was trying to wake you up with breakfast not an invitation to sex."

  "Hmm, but you can do both." She opened her eyes. "That's the beauty of a woman like you."

  Sinclair lightly pinched her arm. "Wretch."

  Hunter flinched away then groaned as she sat up. "Careful of my battle wounds, temptress."

  "Oh, shit. Sorry about that." Sinclair sat back against the headboard. "I forgot."

  "If only I could forget, too, and pretend that none of this ever happened."

  "At least we left them alive and you don't have to live with the regret of killing them."

  Hunter growled. "I wouldn't have called that regret."

  Sinclair's troubled gaze flickered over the other woman then away. "Have some breakfast. I don't cook very often so it's a rare treat. Eat up."

  "Don't try to change my mood, woman."

  "I'm not trying to change your mood." Sinclair retrieved the tray and sat it between them on the bed. "Have some breakfast, dammit."

  "Some merciful angel you are," Hunter said, reaching for the food. "This is good," she murmured after a few mouthfuls.

  "Glad you like it."

  Sinclair stole a piece of toast and watched as Hunter devoured the meal, sitting cross-legged on top of the white covers. She was gorgeous in her nakedness; even the sadness in her eyes and the pale bandage on her cheek added to her beauty.

  "I think you should rest," Sinclair said. "Take it easy until tomorrow when you feel a little better."

  Hunter shook her head. "I doubt that I'll feel any better tomorrow, so I might as well try to make a dent in the work piling up on my desktop today."

  Which meant that she wanted Sinclair gone. "That makes sense, I suppose. But don't overdo it." She stood up and went back into the kitchen on the pretense of getting more orange juice. Her face stung with the slap of rejection. At least now she knew the quicker way to catch the bus back to her father's house. Sinclair brought Hunter back another glass of orange juice and stayed only long enough to change the dark woman's bandage and wipe her wounds down again with witch hazel.

  "I'll talk with you later on," she said from the doorway of the bedroom. "I'll let myself out."

  All the way back to her father's house, she was angry at Hunter for letting her go without a word of protest. Then she chided herself for being passive-aggressive and too weak to tell Hunter what she wanted from her. Which was ... what exactly?

  At home that night she let Nikki know what happened, told her about Hunter's reaction and her own sudden possessiveness.

  Nikki sat close to Sinclair on the sofa. "You said all that happened with Hunter and what she was feeling, but what about you?" Her voice was low. "Do you feel the same way she does?"

  Sinclair shook her head. "I don't know." She had been so caught up in taking care of Hunter, in trying to give her lover what she needed that her own fear had been erased from the equation. She shivered, remembering the intent on those men's faces, the jutting penis and feral look of the one who had raised his hand to her and forced her to break the camera.

  "I left my camera in Hunter's jeep," she said inanely.

  "You can get it from her tomorrow." Nikki touched her hand. "It's OK to be afraid, you know."

  Sinclair shook her head. "I know. And I was. I was so afraid for her, so afraid of not being able to see you or Papa again." She took a cleansing breath. "I'm just glad we got out of there alive and without getting raped."

  "So am I." Nikki squeezed her hand and they sat, silently, in the dark.

  "Do you think she'll want to see me tomorrow?"

  "She'd be stupid not to."

  When Sinclair walked up to Hunter's house the next morning, she heard laughter. She hesitated a moment before knocking. Hunter came to the door looking relaxed and calm, much better than the day before, in her loose drawstring pants and a white T-shirt. The bandage on her cheek was fresh.

  "Hey, come in." She kissed Sinclair briefly on the mouth. "This is a day for visitors. Della is here with me in the backyard."

  "Oh, that's the sound that I heard."

  "We must have been pretty loud for you to hear us at the gate."

  You said it, not me.

  "Hello, Sinclair," Della greeted her as she stepped out into the backyard. "Would you like something to drink?" She gestured to the folding table set up with a pitcher of something red swimming with ice cubes and, next to it, a tall carafe of water.

  "No, I'm all right. Thank you, though."

  "Have a seat, Sin." Hunter pointed her to the stone bench where she must have been sitting beside Della. She sank into the grass at the older woman's feet.

  "Hunter was just telling me about what happened in the hills," Della said.

  Sinclair sat down. "It was pretty awful."

  "I tell you this country is going to hell in a handbasket and it's us Jamaicans who're taking it there."

  "We're not all to blame, Della." Hunter squinted up at her ex-lover in the sun.

  Sinclair took her sunglasses out of her bag and passed them to Hunter. Without pausing her conversation the dark woman smiled her thanks and slipped them on. "There are bad elements everywhere, back in Manchester and London and certainly in the U.S. I'm trying not to be bitter about this whole experience."

  "You're a sweet, naive thing." Della said, brushing her hand through Hunter's hair. "That's why the rest of us have to look out for you. Isn't that right, Sinclair?"

  "I'll do what I can, although so far she's done an excellent job of taking care of herself."

  "A mere illusion." She poured a glass of water and gave it to Hunter. "Drink up before you fall over in the heat."

  "I'm not a delicate flower, Della." Hunter took the water anyway and drank deeply before passing it back. With a low sigh, she lay back in the grass and crossed her ankles. "See what I've been putting up with all morning?" She directed a look of long suffering at Sinclair. "Della is convinced that I'm going to fall apart any minute now just because those boys roughed us up."

  Despite Hunter's bravado, Sinclair noticed that the incident in the garden had left a faint shadow in her eyes, a shadow that she knew would linger for some time. Although the boys hadn't touched Hunter, at least not in a sexual way, she still felt violated.

  Della rolled her eyes. "When she called this morning to tell me what happened, I couldn't just stay at the shop languishing in the air-conditioning while she was here probably suffering from post-traumatic stress or some such. I left my niece to watch the shop before I came down."

  "I didn't know that you had a shop," Sinclair said, turning an interested look on the older woman so Della would give Hunter a little breathing room.

  "I sell my pottery and sculpture out of the back of my house. A lot of the rich white tourists buy them so I can keep myself in women and food."

  "She is minimizing what she does," Hunter said. "Della is actually quite successful around the island. She even has made a name for herself here. People keep wanting to whisk her off to New York or London to do a show and sell ev
en more than she does here, but she's not interested."

  "How wonderful," Sinclair leaned slightly toward Della. "Maybe one day I can see your workshop?"

  "Come up anytime. If I'm not there then my niece, Sofia, should be."

  "Great. I'll drop by sometime this week."

  Della nodded and handed Hunter another glass, this time it was filled with whatever juice was in the pitcher. The dark woman shook her head and pointed to the water.

  Watching them it would be easy to think that they were still lovers. That lingering stare of Della's and the solicitude she showed to Hunter in nauseating abundance said that she still cared deeply for the dark woman. Her attentions sent little prickles of annoyance racing along Sinclair's nerves. She didn't deceive herself by pretending that she wasn't jealous. Meanwhile Hunter acted ... like herself. Sinclair smiled then stood up.

  "I'm going to head out and leave you two to chat," she said. "I just stopped by to make sure that you were all right." She knelt down to kiss the dark woman in farewell. Hunter sat up and grabbed her arm.

  "What's going on with these sudden exits? Have I become that unbearable so soon?"

  "Don't be ridiculous. You have company and I know you two want to catch up."

  "Della is not company. We can `catch up' with you here." She pulled Sinclair closer until she was almost in her lap. "Stay." Their lips were inches apart. Hunter shoved the sunglasses to the top of her head to reveal her pain-flecked eyes. "Please."

  "OK. I'll stay." Sinclair stood up and reclaimed her seat on the bench.

  "Well, this is interesting." Della said, looking at the two women. "How long has this been going on and why didn't I know about it?"

  Sinclair looked down with too-warm cheeks. The dark woman shaded her eyes again and lay back down in the grass. "A few days."

  "But you're leaving. Right?"

  Did Della want to make sure of that fact? "Yes, I am. But I'm going to stay for a few more weeks than I had initially planned." The decision made itself the moment those words left her mouth. She'd wanted to prolong her time with her family and her new lover. Since she hadn't taken a vacation in three years, it should be more than possible. She just had to call Shelly and have her make sure.