EVERY WEEK THERE’S A GIRL. Every week she’s pretty. Some weeks she’s tall, some weeks she’s short, some weeks her hair is blond and silky, other weeks it’s red curls. She has big tits or flea bites, it makes no difference to he. He does like them with freckles.
He picks this one straightaway. I see it happen. She gallivants down the sand to the volleyball game and when she arrives she takes off she shirt. I was some distance away, but I saw it. He went still. I followed his eyes to she belly, where she has a big pink scar. Edwin and me have been breds since second grade. I know his mind and how it turns. He likes them with some twist to their pretty. He picks her then. I know even before he.
On the sideline, the girl’s pale little sister spectates. She does something funny with she finger, waving it through the air. She’s burning, but it’s not my place to say so.
AFTER WORK, me and Edwin smoke in the car park. We count up we tips on the hood of Edwin’s car. Me, twenty dollars. Edwin, thirty-four.
“Figure,” I say.
“What I tell you? You’re too serious. Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. Yankees want to be your friend.”
He’s right, but so? When I try to make chat, the guests’ faces go crooked. When Edwin tells a wife she looks lovely, her husband smiles because he loves to hear how his wife is pretty. When I say the same thing, the husband thinks it’s none of my business how pretty his wife be. I can’t do the job the way he does it. But I’m polite. I’m prompt. Some days, anyway.
After, I bike to Sara’s house to see my boy. When I arrive, Sara’s standing in the doorway with Bryan in she arms and displeasure on she face. Agatha is on the sofa in the parlor, scratching at she scalp.
“You’re late,” Sara says. I feel annoyed, though she’s right—I am late.
She tries to hand Bryan to me, but my boy clings to his mum. When I take him he cries. I stroke he ringlets. My boy is handsome, and I’m not just saying so because he’s mine. His ringlets have light in them. “There, there, my Bry,” I say.
THE NEXT morning I wake up to pounding on my bedroom door as usual. Gran.
“What’s wrong with you? You late!”
Shit, woman.
I don’t say this. I get up and stumble to the toilet. How sad is it for a man to look forward so much to his morning piss? When that relief may be as good as his day will get? But it’s such a good feeling. It could have gone another way. God could have made a world where good things feel bad. Pissing, eating, banging. Maybe he would have been doing us a service.
I bike Mayfair to work. I’m hungover as usual from liming at Paulette’s last night. My bike is old and rusted and squeaks with every pedal. When cars pass, they stir up the dust and leave me in it, and I hold my breath until it settles. But this hour, the streets are mostly quiet. The only sounds are roosters and women sweeping and cartoons inside houses. I feel myself on the bike, a big thing on a little thing. I’m of two minds on this ride, always. It’s a mortification, but so peaceful. When I set out, as long as I’m not running too late, the sky is still smoky blue, like something far away. As I ride, it turns the color of an oyster shell. The breeze still possesses some coolness. Dogs wake. The skinny black hound with the white belly trots alongside me sometimes. Early morning feels like church, when I did go.
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 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 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?
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. “She 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 nonsense. 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.”
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 she 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.
“Should we draw shapes, my Bry?” I say.
He doesn’t reply. A shy day. I hoist myself from the cloth and squat in the sand. I trace a balloon with a squiggly string. A bird. A sailboat. Bryan looks at the shapes with interest and also some wariness. “Do you know what that says?” I ask, pointing. He shakes his head. “B-R-Y-A-N. That’s you, Bryan.”
He murmurs something.
“What’s that?”
“A nana.”
“You want me to draw a banana?”
His lips part and release the faintest, “Yes.”
I do my best, a thin shape that looks more like a crescent moon. “Like so?”
He nods. “Thank you, Dada.”
It’s not me who taught him thank you. It’s Sara. Already she’s showing him good manners. I didn’t even notice it happening.
Bryan is still shy with me when I tear the corner off a Cadbury wrapper and show him how to press out the melted chocolate. My boy accepts the chocolate I squeeze onto his finger like it’s something holy. He licks it off with his small pink tongue. Sara’s tongue.
Sara sits up. “Should we go in?”
I undress Bryan and take off his nappy. My son’s skin is dark and even and supple. His belly button is a small sweet nut. Sara removes her shirt and her skirt to reveal her swimming suit. I take off my polo, so I’m down to my shorts and singlet. I’m a bit embarrassed for Sara to see me, but she doesn’t stare.
With Sara beside me, I take Bryan in my arms and carry him into the sea. At Indigo Bay, the guests pause on the sand before they walk into the water, as if some sort of preparation is required. It’s different here. We walk into the sea as easily as taking our next step. We are not alone in the water. I see a father with a daughter. A woman in a pink bathing cap. An old man holds an old woman by the arm and guides her through the soft waves.
We wade out until the water comes to Sara’s waist, Bryan nestled in the crook of my arm. The water is warm, almost the same as the air. Then I feel something warmer on my arm. At first I think it’s the last of the day’s heat, but the warmth is moving, flowing. I look at Bryan. My boy is laughing—big laughter, full and free. Sara and I look down at my arm at the same time. Urine, trickling in a small channel. We laugh, too. Then Sara closes her eyes, leans back, and floats.
I see us then, a family together in the sea. And something happens to me that maybe I can’t ever explain. On this evening, I am a father. Later, Sara and I will tuck Bryan’s sleeping ragdoll body into bed. Later still I’ll lime with Edwin. For the first time ever, my life feels like my life.
ISN’T IT the fuck of it all that tonight of all nights, when all I want is to lime with my mate, to feel my life being my life, we’re saddled with the girl? We’re in the car on the way to Paulette’s. Engine sputtering, chicken in the road, and she. Tonight’s she last night. Edwin knows what this means and from the way she’s dressed in a short skirt and a top that ties with a string around she neck, she knows it, too.
“You ready for a wild night, girl?” Edwin says.
She scoffs. “Paulette’s is not exactly the pinnacle of wild.”
“Maybe we’ll take you out to Faraway,” he says with a grin. “See if the goat lady take an interest in you.”
“I’m down for whatever,” the girl says, like it makes no difference to she. But I see she hidden smile, so pleased to think we’re going to do something big for she last night. What is it about this one, so convinced she’s special? I want to tell she there was Julie and Callie and Lisa and Lauren and Molly before her, and there will be plenty of pretty pretty girls after her. She may be a bit sharper than most, she may be quicker with her tongue, but in the end she wants what they all want: to take home the story of how she fucked the man who brought she towels on the beach. But so what? She’s using him, but he’s using she, too. They get their story and he gets them.
At Paulette’s, Edwin buys all of we a round of ganja shots. Next, rum. At some point I must switch glasses with he, because soon both of ours are finished. I buy another, and another. I’m getting good and gone now. Music playing, bottles clinking, mutt begging. Sounds of Edwin and the girl.
I watch them dance. She does have a nice sway. Together they move so right. You can’t learn this. You want to know the secret of life? You will never be they. They is always someone else.
We’re at Paulette’s an hour or so when the girl says, “I’m bored. Let’s get out of here.”
“Where do you have in mind?” Edwin says.
“I thought we were going to Faraway?” she says with a glint in she eyes.
He laughs. “You mad, girl?”
“But I thought you said—”
“I was just messing with you. Anyway, how you think we would get there?”
She looks down at the floor. “Whatever,” she mumbles. “Forget it.”
“Relax. Plenty of wild places to go.”
Next thing we’re in the car. Edwin drives fast. Windows down, radio blasting. The potholes give a good bump—the girl bounces so high she head hits the roof, hard, and she laughs. We’re all good and drunk. Ready for the night to take we.
When Edwin pulls off the road at the spot where the scrub leads to the nameless cliffs, I turn a hard gaze on he. I don’t want to take some Yankee chick to this place. But Edwin pretends not to notice. He turns off the car and climbs out. He grabs a bottle of rum from the car and says, “Follow me.”
We walk single-file, Edwin then she then me. We’ve limed here pretty regular over the years since we found the spot in the boat with Keithley, and there’s a path carved into the scrub, so faint you have to know it’s there to find it. But the ground is uneven and the path is narrow and the scrub is so thick sometimes you have to shield your face as you walk. I see the girl turn around and look behind she. The road is gone.
“Where are we going, anyway?” she asks. She tries to make her voice calm, but she’s nervous, and I feel a bit pleased to see this cocky one brought a little low. She stumbles as she walks. This is she drunkest night yet.
“This wild enough for you, miss?” Edwin replies.
She wraps her arms tight across she chest like she’s cold. She’s scared for true now, and just when I’m about to break and tell she everything’s fine and where we’re going, the scrub parts and we’re here. The stretch of smooth, flat rock that leads to the edge. The ocean lit up by the moon. The girl doesn’t hesitate. She dashes right up to the edge, so fast for a second I think she’s going to go right over.
“Shit, girl, watch yourself!” Edwin says.
She turns to us. “This place is amazing.” She kicks off she sandals and we do the same, leaving we shoes in a pile. She walks the edge like a high-wire walker in the circus, up on she tiptoes with she hands out to she sides. Next, she stands with she toes curled over the edge, looking out. In the distance, Faraway is a black shadow against the black sky.
Edwin nudges me. “She ripe to be fucked or what?”
Then he runs at she, his bare feet soundless against the rock. When he reaches she, he puts his arms around her and she shrieks. He scoops her up. He twirls her around.
“You scared the shit out of me!” she says, laughing so hard she’s gasping. She hits him, but not hard; she’s not angry, she’s flirting. She leans back in Edwin’s arms and looks up at the stars and kicks her feet like she’s swimming through the air. He puts her down and we sit together on the rocks.
Edwin passes the bottle of rum around. He pulls a spliff from his pocket. We’re having a real bacchanal now, the three of we. The rocks are smooth and cool. The sky offers we everything: crescent moon, stars so bright it’s like they’re fucking with we.
She tips the bottle back and lets the liquor flow down she throat. She blows smoke into Edwin’s face and he breathes it in. I reach for the spliff. She shakes she head, wags she finger.
“Not yet.” She takes another hit, brings she face close to me, and exhales. Then her mouth is on my mouth. I’m so gone I don’t wonder what or why. Her tongue twists around my tongue. I take she hips in my hands. She berry lips. She little tits pressing against my chest. I feel myself going hard.
She pulls away. There’s a twinkle in she eyes. She turns to Edwin. Then her mouth is on his mouth and I watch she kiss he. Her ponytail tosses in the wind. He unties the string around her neck. He runs his hands up and down she sides and groans.
She pulls away from he, same as she did from me. I look to see if something’s wrong, but she still has the twinkle in she eyes. She twirls her ponytail with her finger, like she’s alone here, amusing herself. Then she looks at we. “Your turn.”
I laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she says.
“You shitting we,” Edwin says.
“You scared, boys?” She makes a big show of tying the string around her neck again, though she’s so drunk she does it sloppy. “I thought you were up for something wild. Never mind, I guess.”
Edwin shakes he head. “Fucking girl.” He grabs me and pulls me toward him. Next thing I know, his lips are on my lips. His tongue pushes into my mouth. Quick, he pulls away. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and I do the same. We spit onto the rocks. He kissed me hard, like a smack across the mouth. At first I want to laugh. Can you believe what we just did? Can you believe how far my bred will go to fuck a girl? But then I look at he and he looks at me and something in his face stops me. For the first time in we life, Edwin appears afraid.
I hear the girl clap, slow slow. I hear she say, “Bravo.” We don’t move. “Guys?” she says. “Hey, guysss.” Out of the corner of my eye I see she stumble. She falls to her hands and knees like she’s going to be sick. Then she lies down on the ground, curled up like a baby.
Edwin snaps back into the moment then. He turns away from me and faces she. “You satisfied, miss?” he says.
“Shhh. The stars,” she mumbles. Her eyes are closed.
Edwin goes over and sits next to she. He takes the string of her shirt in his fingers and pulls. She lets him. She shirt falls down to she waist. She’s not wearing a bra. Her tits are like Sara’s, small small, the kind that remind you a woman was a girl. He unbuttons his trousers. He runs his fingers up she leg, she thigh, under she skirt.
“Mmm.” She says it so faint I barely hear it.
I go off to give them space. I walk to the edge of the rocks and lie down and listen to the sea crash. I close my eyes and for a moment I’m falling, weightless. Then I hear Edwin.
“What the fuck?” he says.
I look over.
He’s wiping his hand on his trousers. “Girl, quit slobbering!” he says.
I laugh. “Edwin, man, she passed out!”
He groans and shoves she away. In the starlight her scar glistens like a thing that could slither away. He lifts she arm and lets go. It flops.
“Typical,” he spits.
Edwin leaves her there and walks over to me. He lies down near me, right at the edge, so close he hangs one arm over it and swings it back and forth through the abyss above the sea. We look up at the stars. A memory comes over me like a breeze, of lying like this back in this same spot in secondary, when Keithley would take us out in the boat and sometimes, amid the bacchanal, the night would find its stillness. I’m drifting off now. Ground cool and smooth. Air cool and smooth. Sound of waves far below.
Then I feel Edwin’s hand on my hand.
He turns and looks at me. I don’t laugh or pull my hand away. It all happens fast. He unbuttons himself, then me. I make my mind go empty. I make myself all body. Not because I know what I want or don’t want, but because this night has taken us to a place we may never find again, and I need to be there with him before it’s gone. I don’t believe we’re doing this until he places my hand around him. He’s warm, like my own self. It’s he or me or we—I don’t bother to understand, just touch and rub, touch and rub, until the world goes tacky with we. We’re together beneath the cold stars, and then the stars groan and unleash their white light and the night goes so thick and sweet with our chlorine I swear that perfume will last until the stars are dead.
Then I’m on the ground. Shoved off by he, hard, and at first I don’t know why, but then I sit up and rub my eyes open and see she looking at we.
“The fuck you staring at, little girl?” Edwin says.
Her eyes open wide. Her mouth makes an O and a sound comes out so small the wind takes it.
She stands, gathers she sandals, and runs.