Waiting in Vain

by Colin Channer

  “And what if she should just turn up right now.”

  Fire’s eyes came alive and he began to laugh, booming fists with Ian over the top of the flame. “She would go back to America with a pregnant belly—then she woulda really haffe leave de bwai.”

  They began to debate now. What should Fire do? Ian, who had seemed enlightened earlier, was insisting that Fire get his closure by taking some revenge. Send the letter, he implored, and win her heart again, then fuck her good at least once before letting her go. It wasn’t good for a man to go around with a big what-if, he argued. Things like that can make you crazy. Laughing with Ian, who presented his ideas with a comedian’s sense of timing, Fire disagreed, hiding his true feelings, while countering that sleeping with her would be giving her the victory, because she would believe that she could have him and eat him too, like cake. The real reason, however, was that he was afraid that his infatuation might take control of him and make him believe that he could conquer fate—which he believed was the true force that directed the universe.

  When the corn was done, they peeled away the blackened husks and entered into the ritual of eating, a bonding marked by burnt tongues and scorched fingers, into which little boys were initiated by older men. You have to know how to blow the corn or else you’ll singe your lip.

  “So what you have there?” Fire asked, referring to the CDs that Ian had brought outside along with the kitchen stereo, a Bose Acoustic Wave Music System.

  “Foreign Exchange, Cassandra Wilson, Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare, Al Green, ZZ Top, Nusrat Ali Khan, Johnny Winters, Shabba Ranks …”

  “Gimme some Shabba. I feeling like a bad bwai tonight. The thought of getting her pregnant just gimme a vibes.”

  They began to talk about Sylvia again, as Shabba horse-galloped on a rugged ragga beat: “Love punanny bad / Love punanny bad …”

  “You think you guys would make a good couple?” Ian asked. “Let’s say Lewis wasn’t in the picture.”

  “Yeah,” Fire replied, as he cooled down the corn with a few bursts of his breath.

  “Why?”

  “Because we seem so compatible. It’s been a while, Ian, since I met a woman that I can talk with about so many things … and I’m not talking about open-mindedness—which is important—but a shared set of references, man. One afternoon we strolled the Brooklyn Promenade and talked and talked and we covered so many things, just moving together, man, like athletes out on a Sunday run. There was this immediate understanding that nobody was trying to outrun anybody and the pace picked up and slowed down with the clear sense that nobody’s brain would be tired or that no one was being held back. That’s it, man, she’s got a great brain. And that’s really hard to find. And I personally need that. Everybody doesn’t—but I do. I need someone that I can talk with about Nabokov and Leon Forrest but also Stephen King. Someone who can leave a museum and go see a karate film. I want partnership, man—someone that’s wired for me outta the box, someone with the same intellectual and spiritual vocabulary. I check for Sylvia, man. She’s not big-headed about being smart … and with all that she is, at her core she’s really a cool West Indian girl.”

  “Being West Indian matters?” Ian asked.

  “Not anymore. But I must admit that it used to.

  “In some ways it makes things easier though. It adds another set of shared assumptions. Y’know … you don’t have to explain certain jokes and you might have similar expectations of how you should act and how you should raise children and that kinda thing. But no … being West Indian isn’t so critical to me anymore. Today everybody has to step outside themselves and learn about other people, other ways of thinking.”

  “I can’t believe you used to be so stupid,” Ian said. “To limit yourself to one kinda pussy like that.”

  “I never said I used to limit myself,” Fire said, bitingly. “And it’s not a pussy thing. And I’ve already said it was a foolish thing to say.”

  “You didn’t say that.”

  “Well I meant to.”

  “So why you getting so hype?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are. I can hear it in your voice.”

  Fire was annoyed now, but he didn’t show it as he gave his explanation.

  “I used to feel that way, because to me West Indian women were my mother, my aunts, my cousins, my teachers, the first girls I fell in love with. And so I was drawn to them in a special kinda way, even after living abroad and traveling the world.” Then he felt something unraveling inside him. “But why do I have to explain this? Isn’t this how most men feel about the women that raised them?”

  Ian shrugged.

  “So when you stopped thinking this way?”

  “I can’t remember exactly. Some time in my twenties, I guess. At college.”

  Ian chuckled.

  “When you start to fuck whitey?”

  “That has never been my style. You know that. There are boundaries that still remain.”

  They became quiet for a while as they attacked the corn and listened to Shabba. There must have been about ten cobs on the fire, and they were all gone in less than thirty minutes.

  Out of the blue, Ian began to laugh. Fire looked up from his cob and asked him what was up.

  “Boy,” Ian said, “just listening to Shabba right now I just got a mental picture of him face when him come.”

  Fire burst out laughing and sprayed Ian with spit and corn mash.

  “Is awright, man,” Ian said, wiping his face with his shirt-tail. “Is awright. But seriously,” he continued, “if your woman have a fling with Shabba it wouldn’t make sense take her back. Shabba woulda blow her engine and twist her chassis. Oil woulda start seep inna her crankcase.”

  Fire was cracking up. Ian was on a roll.

  “Bwai, Fire, me woulda love borrow Shabba wood and just walk down de street wid it out and terrorize women. Just frighten dem.”

  “Ian, and you say me talk plenty fuckery?” Fire said.

  “You think is joke, Fire? Me woulda love borrow Shabba wood. Cause me sure say Shabba wood is about twelve inches long.”

  “Ian, nobody no have no twelve-inch wood! In any case what de fuck would a man do wid a twelve-inch wood?”

  “How you mean, Fire? Fuck!”

  “Fuck who? Zachy donkey?”

  Ian rolled his eyes as if Fire had just questioned the earth’s roundness. “Fire,” he began, “me meet women already dat woulda love twelve inches.”

  “A twelve-inch tongue maybe,” Fire quipped.

  “No! Twelve-inch wood.”

  “Ian, which woman you know coulda take a twelve-inch wood?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Ian, trust me, size matters to men more than to women. I’ve talked to enough women to know that size is overrated … is how you work with what you have.”

  “Hey, Fire, watch it, y’know … is only a small-wood man say things like ‘size don’t matter,’ y’know. Well, let’s just say I prefer to err on de side of excess.”

  “You know who look like she coulda take on Shabba … come to think of it?” Fire replied as he thought of a way to introduce the topic of the sketch pad. “What she name again? From New York?”

  “Who?” Ian responded jauntily.

  “Pretty girl, man,” Fire replied, pretending to forget Margaret’s name. “Yeah, man, you know. Big breasts, look kinda soft and milk-fed, healthy body—”

  “Who de fuck is dat?” Ian said, hoping that Fire would drop the subject.

  “Phil say you introduce him to her … aah … aah … Phil girl, man … Margaret! Right, Margaret! When she told me that Phil was her boyfriend I almost flipped. She look like too much for Phil to handle. That’s one sexy woman, Ian. She coulda take on The Ranks. Speaking of Phil, I haven’t heard from him. Having a girlfriend has really changed him. Did he make it with the New York Philharmonic?”

  “No,” Ian replied quietly.

  “He’s still in New York?” Fire asked quickly.


  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Fucking Margaret, probably. That’s all they do.”

  It took a great deal of strength for Ian to answer Fire’s questions without betraying his true emotions. His head was a sphere of warring jealousies. Competing for his attention was his anger about Margaret and Phil and his envy of Sylvia, for she had come out of nowhere, it seemed, to claim Fire’s heart. Fire came to New York in June to see me, Ian thought, met Sylvia and avoided me. Then he came back to see Sylvia again in August and did not call. What did this mean? What did it mean that Phil was a part of Fire’s love affair and he himself was not? How could he talk to Fire about his troubles with Margaret now, when Phil, it seemed, had displaced him.

  “Y’awright?” Fire asked. “You cool?”

  “Of course I’m awright,” Ian answered, running his fingers through his thinning hair. “It’s just that this whole thing, y’know”—he gestured with his hands and head to the world at large—“is just a nice thing, y’know … to siddown and talk with you. I feel like ah know you better.”

  Fire knew Ian long enough to know that he was lying. It was the sketch pad, he said to himself. It had to be the pad. “What’s really going on?” he said, trying to draw him out. “I think this is a good time to put some things out on the table.” The flames were dying now. Fire couldn’t see his face very well. The voice will tell it all, he thought. The voice will tell it all.

  “I just feel a little left out, that’s all,” Ian said. “You came to New York to see me, and you ended up spending all your time with Sylvia. Is kinda childish anyway, to think like that. You’re a grown man. You can do whatever you want.”

  “Oh, don’t say that,” Fire replied. “Is not simple like that.”

  “You said we should put things out on the table, right? So I’m putting things out.”

  “Okay,” Fire said. “Oh, fuck!”

  The corn that he was eating had slipped out of his hands. And in that moment Ian saw him spilling the beer on Sylvia at the gallery, and remembered that they hadn’t spoken about his exhibit.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go ahead,” Fire said, fanning the embers with his hands to revive the flames. The movement kicked up ash and sparks.

  “What did you think of my show? And I want you to be honest.”

  His voice was small but razor sharp, like a baby’s fingernails.

  Fire wasn’t sure how to answer. “I don’t know,” he said, realizing as he heard the hesitation in his voice the depth of his disappointment. “It wasn’t the Ian Gore that I’m accustomed to. Let’s put it that way.”

  “Don’t tell me that kinda bullshit, man. You said we should lay things on the fucking table.”

  “Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. What makes me qualified to judge?”

  Ian sucked his teeth.

  “Come on, Ian, man. Be cooler than that.”

  “Ah Fire, you’ll never change.”

  “What you mean by that?”

  “You always try and pussy your way outta things.”

  “You can say anything,” Fire replied, angered by the word. “You can talk all you bloodclaat want.”

  “But is true … that’s how you are.”

  “What the fuck you talking about, Ian?”

  Ian began to chuckle as he felt himself burrowing under Fire’s skin. “Everybody knows that,” he said. “Your father knows that. Look at this. A grown man like you had to run away from Kingston because his father was going to scold him. That’s what I’m talking about. And you allowed Sylvia to dangle you. And Blanche did the same. You’re not nice, Fire, you’re a pussy.”

  “Ian,” Fire said, narrowing his eyes, “if you call me that again, you won’t like it.”

  Ian dusted off his jeans as he stood up, jabbing his finger in Fire’s face and saying, “My show was shit and you know it.”

  “You’re right,” Fire said, rising to his feet. “I hated the fucking show. What next—painted wooden fish to sell to tourists in Negril?”

  As Fire stared at him, prepared for a shouting match, Ian began to laugh. “See, that’s the Fire I like to see.” He began to imitate Fire’s bowlegged stance. “See, I always knew you had some Shabba in you.”

  “You’re a sick man,” Fire replied as Ian’s hyena laugh blew most of his anger away. “Come here, you fucking moron, gimme a hug and promise to be good or I won’t let you out tonight.”

  As they slapped each other’s backs in the dark, Fire said to himself, What can I do with this madman but love him?

  They left the house for Battery at eleven-thirty, jerking along the main, stopping and starting in the traffic jam that clogged the road like arterial plaque. Fire was wearing black tonight, a linen shirt and baggy jeans. Ian, who’d shaved, and washed and brushed his hair, had dressed himself in white—a ribbed tank top and slim-fit jeans and a pair of vintage tennis shoes. There was a hopeful anxiety between them. Stretched almost to the point of breaking, their love had shown its strength and elasticity, but had given birth to envy, anger, and mistrust. Fire was still resentful that Ian had called him a pussy and meant it. And Ian still burned from the remark about painted fish.

  Along the lane that led to town, higglers edged between the cars, hawking gum and cigarettes, which they carried in homemade wooden trays strapped across their shoulders. The night was humid and the thick air trapped engine fumes and the scent of roasted nuts and sweet colognes and sweat. Crashing in waves of echo from the hills and cliffs around them, the music claimed their bodies with its tidal ebb and flow. They began to float along in their own ruminations, so it was with great alarm that Fire saw a young peanut vendor jump in front of his wheels. Slamming on his brakes, he stopped in time, and the youth quickly pointed to the culprit, a racing bike that had almost run him down.

  “Pussyhole!” Ian shouted into the night.

  “Don’t do that shit!” Fire snapped. “You don’t know who is who!”

  “I’m not like you, y’know,” Ian replied. “I can’t be a hypocrite. I have to say what I feel.”

  To Fire the reference was clear. “So we’re fishing again,” he countered.

  Ian sucked his teeth.

  Fire shrugged, noting to himself that this was not the mood in which to discuss the sketch pad.

  In town, they parked with the rest of the cars on the common, which had been turned into a temporary parking lot. Picking their way through the thick crowd outside the bar, Fire and Ian pressed knuckles with Mikey Magnum and Trigger Finger, who immediately gave them some big-ups over the microphone. Then they went to help Buju at the stall set up in front of his house, stirring sauce and slicing bread and turning meat in the smoker, an oil drum sliced in two and set on legs. The dance was being held in the yard of the primary school beside Mr. Bartley’s bar, but there was rival entertainment in the theater of the street—people skanking on the sidewalks and telling jokes in the street and whistling at the girls who sauntered by in colored wigs and poompoom shorts. Sometimes a girl would stop, and the town would pause to see how long a man could hold her attention; they would shrug with him if all he got to say was hello, and raise their fists and Guinness bottles if she came out with her number. Later on, a woman caught her man by the park with a sweetheart and beat him with her platform shoes, chased him round the bend by the seawall and came back walking hop-and-drop to cheers of “Nuff respek.”

  At nearly three in the morning, as a crowd converged on the stall to buy food for the road, Fire heard a stranger say his name. He looked up, searching pairs of eyes for recognition, which he found in those of a tall woman in a red T-shirt with a hood.

  “Can I see you for a minute?” she said.

  Ian leaned into his ear. “Is long time she a-watch you, y’know. She walk by couple time and look, then turn back … You might get lucky tonight.”

  The hood, in which her face was shadowed, created an aura of mystery.

  “Can it wait?”
Fire asked. “My boss, Mr. Buju, only believes in work. He doesn’t believe in pleasure.”

  “I have time,” she said. “Meet me by the seawall.” To Buju she said: “Don’t work him too hard … I think he’ll need his strength.”

  Then she left, walking away on long, thick legs, and the crowd said, “Woiieee!” and people began to boom Fire’s fist and slap his back.

  “Bomboclaat,” Ian said. “You see the way she walk. Jesus Christ, is like she have a egg between her leg and she doan want it break.”

  And in all the commotion, Fire kept watching her, as the sway of her hips, wide and languid, fanned hot coals in his belly. It was not the walk so much that was pulling him in. Jamaican women tend to walk that way. It was the boldness of her approach, a confident directness that said that she could fuck without commitment, which he was prepared to try now … now that he’d decided that he wouldn’t wait for Sylvia, but would go on with his life. Sylvia was his love but not his destiny.

  But could he do that again? Just screw and be friends? He needed to know, and this woman represented possibility. He took off his apron, used Buju’s bathroom to straighten himself and freshen up, then sauntered down the street to meet her.

  She pushed back the hood when he reached the sidewalk. Like him, she had dreads, but hers were short and tinted maple red. She had nut-brown skin and a broad, flat nose and cheekbones that defined her face.

  “So … you wanted to talk,” he said, stopping directly in front of her.

  “Yes,” she said, looking up at him. Her eyes were dim and moody like candles. “But first you must do me a favor.” Her voice was low and softly modulated, the voice of someone equally equipped as masseuse and dominatrix. He looked at her appraisingly, trying to see which side of her was easier to engage, using his longest dreads to tie a ponytail, his fingers working deftly, like a gypsy playing a Spanish guitar.

  “What would you like me to do?” he asked, raising his brows indulgently.