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 trunks. 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 we, 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 smell like fish down there, that one know 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?
Another thing: I think he waits because this way, if the girl regrets it, by the time the feeling sinks in, she’s on the plane to Chicago or in she pretty purple bedroom in Boston, and what’s she going to do then?
A few months ago, a girl almost made everything go bad. Julie. A California blondie, pretty pretty. Julie was quieter than the ones Edwin usually picks. A good girl. She barely touched her drinks at Paulette’s, and when we offered her the spliff in the car park, she said, “No, thank you,” like she was declining a fresh towel on the beach. I thought she was a lost cause, but then she spirited Edwin away one sundown to she room. With Julie, he didn’t wait; he went right along with she. When she bled, he knew it was a mistake. Virgin girls are not a thing to mess with. They think they know what they want, but how can they? And a virgin Yankee girl who decides this is how she wants to lose it? Holy shit.
After that, Julie started acting funny. Her daddy wasn’t stupid. He knew something was going on. One sunup when we arrived at work, he was waiting for we in the car park. He marched up to Edwin and grabbed his shirt and told us to stay the hell away from his daughter and threatened to get both our asses fired and to beat the shit out of we if he found out Edwin had laid so much as a hand on his little girl. First time I ever heard a guest threaten to beat the shit out of someone. We were lucky. Julie was so embarrassed she kept she trap shut about what happened. Ever since, Edwin waits. You never know when a girl will get vex. You never know what a vex girl will do, or say.
These girls have a danger to they. He likes that, too.
WHEN WE meet the girl in the car park after work today, she appears troubled. Restless. Maybe it’s the rain. It fell all day, constant. Her fingers keep moving like they’re not ruled by she. She drums she fingers on the hood of Edwin’s car. Then her fingertips circle she scar, around and around. Maybe something happened between she and Edwin. Maybe with this one, so pretty, he failed to wait. Shit.
Then she furrows she brow and says a thing I never expected.
“When I was swimming today I saw a woman on Faraway Cay.”
For a moment nobody says a word. I look at Edwin. I expect him to grin and brush her off, but his face is dead serious, even a bit afraid. I shiver.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he whispers.
“What?” she says. “Do you know her or something?”
“Woman you say you saw—she have long hair, black black?” Edwin asks.
The girl nods.
“White white skin?”
She nods again. “She was, like, staring at me.”
I’m thinking, it can’t be. But this girl freaks me out a bit. She fingertips never stop tracing she scar. A silly notion comes over me that this scar is the source of she power.
Edwin looks across she to me. “Tell her, Gogo.”
I tell her about the Faraway woman’s hooves for feet and her wildness. I tell her how she lures people to Faraway and leads them across the cay, how if you follow the woman to the waterfall and see the stars reflected in the water you will lose all sense of up and down, earth and sky, you and she, and they say that’s how she takes you.
“I saw her,” she says when I finish.
I shiver again.
Edwin snorts. He claps his hands, tosses back his head, and laughs.
“Check you two,” he says. “Girl, only thing you did see was a goat. Faraway’s overrun with they.”
I should have known he wasn’t being serious with his Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
“It wasn’t a goat,” the girl says. “It had black hair and white skin, just like you said.”
“Old nanny goat, probably.” He shrugs.
“Why you think Faraway is overrun with they in the first place?” I say. I turn to she. “Every time someone vanish on Faraway, a new goat appears. She turns they.”
Edwin cracks up. “Goges here’s the only one under sixty who believes that old-folk fuckery. Tell me something: What you ever see a goat do beside eating, shitting, and rutting? How do you think that cay became overrun with they?”
“How you explain the planes, then?” I say. I can’t tell anymore if I’m defending she from Edwin’s ridicule or fucking with she, too. Maybe it’s some of both.
“Oh, yes!” Edwin says, grinning. “Let it be known that there are not one, not two, but three downed planes on Faraway Cay.”
“And they form a triangle,” I say.
“Three things always form a triangle,” Edwin says.
He’s right. Shit.
The girl appears nervous.
“But the triangle’s not the point,” I say. “Guess what’s at their center? The waterfall. She lures they. How else you explain it?”
“Drug runners. In shit prop planes.”
&nb
sp; The girl chews she lip and looks down at the ground. “Maybe I didn’t see it as clearly as I thought.” I’m pretty sure she only says this to please Edwin, though, because she gazes past the parking lot in the direction of the cay with this dreamy look, like something legit is happening to she. Like she thinks she’s special now because we local folkloric creature has taken an interest in she. I feel so annoyed then I wish I didn’t argue with Edwin on she behalf. Anyway, he’s probably right. Must be a goat she saw.
We change the subject. We smoke we spliff. We pass around a bottle from Edwin’s car—hot, unpleasant liquor. We’re ready to leave when the girl asks, “Why is it called Faraway Cay anyway, if it’s so close? Is that supposed to be, like, a joke or something?”
“No, miss,” Edwin says. “This is a deadly serious matter. This name protects us from the cay’s proximity.” He snorts. “Typical superstitious island shit, thinking if we call it so, it will be so, when that goat-infested cay is staring we right in the face. Better take care, now, girl. The Faraway woman has she eye on you.”
TODAY WHEN I arrive, Sara opens the door with a basket in her arms. “I thought I’d take him to Little Beach,” she says.
“Oh,” I say. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
She looks at me with softness in her face. “Come with us.”
We stop off at the food mart on Hopper Lane and I buy three Cadbury bars, one for each of we. We arrive at Little Beach at that magic hour just after sunset when everything is veiled in blue—the sky, the sea, the sand. The guests at Indigo Bay miss this hour. They take their photographs of the sunset and then they go inside and they miss it. Little Beach is quiet, but not empty. We choose a spot a bit away from the others. Sara takes a cloth from the basket and spreads it on the sand. I set out the Cadbury bars. Bryan pets the sand beside the cloth like it’s a living thing. Sara lies down, closes she eyes, and lets the remains of the day warm her.
In the distance, one fishing boat is still out, a small dinghy with a fishing pole planted at the bow. The boat is a black silhouette. The fishing pole appears to lance the clouds. At the water’s edge, a shirtless man in track pants sprints down the sand. A few strays follow after him, yapping and so happy. Boys scamper onto the pier, then dive into the sea. Not long ago this was me, and someday it will be Bryan. The lampposts on the pier are rickety and their white paint is nearly all flaked away. The lampposts have no lights and they never have and I’ve never known why, and I like this.
Saint X (ARC) Page 30