Spoiled.
Needy.
Kate woke up hearing Deaver’s voice, not sure where she was. He had been a master of the one-word put-down. And short seductions. Pet. Love. Sweet cheeks. She remembered where she was in layers: girls chattering and scuffing along the sidewalk outside her shuttered window; Ginger’s extra toe; Sunny! All the loss came seeping into her as she awoke, all the poison. Vidalúz and all that she had told her.
A blue bar of street light across the tile floor. A door slamming, vibrating.
They had parted without a mention of meeting again; Kate wished she had given Vidalúz her address, in Antigua and in the States. Maggie would have. Maggie kept track of everyone she met; she sent regular care packages; she wrote postcards and letters. An undersong echoed back and forth across her aloneness: it won’t be long, soon, soon. She imagined in one brief flash Maggie arriving, all laughter and teasing, flushed and excited by her adventure and love life. Ready for the next go-round.
She turned on the lamp beside the bed, sat up, and ran her hands through her hair. She had come back from the park, taken down her braid, and slipped stealthily into her bedroom, that cool dark cave, the windows shuttered, the darkness more a substance than the absence of light. She remembered nudging off her sneakers without untying them and easing onto the double bed. The bedspread of thin cotton; the pillow smelling like bleach. She’d remembered a green paisley cotton bedspread hanging on a wall in a college dormitory; how the smell of India, the sizing they used in the dye, had remained in the bedspread; the music they had listened to then, the Beatles or Bob Dylan; and the boys, the boys at the window, bringing them a pizza and begging them to sneak out of the dorm and make them men.
And then she’d slept. Dreamless. Until Deaver’s voice.
Things were not turning out; she would have to dredge up resources to deal with the changes. Her head hurt, a pinch between her eyes. Her mouth felt parched.
She went out to the courtyard. Jazz played in the kitchen. She placed it. Billie Holiday. Night was coming on. A golden light from the kitchen lay in a blurry rectangle on the twilit courtyard. There were good smells: roses, moist wind, cardamom and raisins. She heard voices; she prepared herself to have to meet people and be sociable. She felt she was in no condition to have to give—anything to anybody. In English or Spanish. And she dreaded more of those conversations in which you detail your history, the high points, just enough to give form to the shadow of your presence.
At the kitchen door she said, “Buenas noches.”
There stood Dixie. And others, but Kate focused on him. She recognized him.
He was stir-frying vegetables in a cast-iron skillet. Billie sang, “Pennies from heaven.” He was tall, with a sweet boyish face; you could see the boy he’d been in his face. In his forties, handsome, in a way that made Kate think, Handsome is as handsome does: her mother’s words. Not classic but with a kind smile, a strong hooked nose, abundant gray-blond hair curling over his collar, clean-shaven. The shadow under his eyes bespoke the illness, the fever: he didn’t look frail, only fatigued. He wore a chambray shirt and chinos; his clothes inspired comfort in her; they were a mirror of her own.
“Hola, where y’at?” Dixie said. Then, “I remember you. It was the rainy season, wasn’t it. When we met in San Cristóbal?”
Kate said, “Are you sure?”
“Cool,” Ginger said. “Déjà vu.” She hunched over her bitten fingernails, polishing them with lavender nail polish. She had put on a flannel shirt to ward off the night’s chill.
“Not exactly,” Kate said.
She stood there slack-jawed, still waking up, with the wilted disoriented sensation induced by afternoon naps that stretch into evening. Dixie bore down on a manual can opener, opened a tin of shrimp, dumped the shrimp into the stir-fry.
“This is Lino,” Dixie said, pointing with a wooden spoon.
Lino was not quite a man, a boy still, seventeen or so, in a white shirt and pressed black slacks, with a gold cross on a gold chain around his neck. His face was dark and smooth like oiled wood. A notebook lay open before him on the table, filled with pencil script. A Spanish-English dictionary at his elbow. A softcover Bible on the chair next to his. “Buenas,” Lino said, smiling broadly.
“Kate, right?” Dixie said.
Kate folded her arms and nodded. “Is there … water?”
“They’ll deliver tomorrow,” Dixie said. “Hows about an agua mineral? Fetch her one, Ginger.”
And Ginger did as she was told.
“Things have kind of gone to hell in a handbasket, but we’ve got Victoria and Juanita coming to clean tomorrow. Dixie. Dixie Ryan,” he said to Kate. He wiped his hand on his pants and reached out to her.
She let his hand hang there for a split second before she took it. He was solid. There. A man who attended to whatever was right in front of him. She saw a question in his eyes. He wore glasses but they weren’t thick and you could read his eyes perfectly. Blue as a night sky two shades before you call it black.
She shook his hand. “I think I do remember you,” she said. “You were on your way here.”
“Been and gone and been again,” he said. “I can’t stay away.”
Steam and a sweet smell rose from the stir-fry. Kate took the mineral water from Ginger, thanked her, and sat down in a cane-bottom chair. The music went on, “Who loves you, ask yourself the question.” Ginger hovered over her nails. Lino took up his pencil and wrote in his notebook.
That May evening, eating Dixie’s stir-fry in the kitchen in Antigua, she was not sure what made her shy. She gave him one-word answers to questions.
When she finished her meal Ginger went to the sink, rinsed off her plate, said good-night. “I’m out of here,” she said. “They’re showing Something Wild at the video bar.” Lino too rinsed his plate, put away his books and papers, and said he would go with her. Ginger shrugged. In that offhand gesture Kate could see that certainly Lino was not the guy Ginger had mentioned.
Kate thanked Dixie for the meal. She picked up a leather footstool, went out to the courtyard, and sat down near the fountain. The light from the kitchen shone in ribbons on the water. The night felt silky and plush, a place to relax into, but Kate guarded against that. She and Maggie always liked to say that they landed on their feet, wherever. She had landed all right, in this unexpected household in an unfamiliar town. Things could be worse; that seemed like the best take; she could convince herself of that.
She thought of Maggie in her tent with her new lover. She wished them all good outcomes. Maggie had been alone for a long time while Kate had been able to garner consolation with Deaver. Such as it was. Maggie had loved Flory and their love had struck them in the middle of la violencia and they had never had a simple romance; fear and desperation had colored every kiss. Flory had maintained a darkroom in Guate, in a friend’s house, and finally that darkroom had been broken into and all of the equipment smashed. When that had not stopped Flory from taking photographs and sending them to newspapers in the States, she had been murdered. Her Renault had been forced off a switchback one slick and rainy night on the Pan-American Highway. The night she found out the news Maggie had hitched a ride all the way from San Cristóbal to the refugee camp to be with Kate. They had sat up all night under a tarp, feeding a fire and drinking gin straight from the bottle in manageable sips. Salud y amor, Maggie.
“May I join you?” Dixie said.
Kate nodded and with her open palm gestured toward the canvas slingback chair nearby. It was a niggardly response, she knew. Barely polite. Better be nice, she warned herself. He’s all you’ve got.
Dixie settled down, spreading a gray-and-white blanket over his lap. His eyes were merely blue smudges in the dark but his feet in sandals rested near the kitchen light shining on the tiles. He told her about his illness, the dengue fever, what they called breakbone fever. He said that in the first phase of the disease his temperature had gone up to one hundred and four. He told her about Lino, what a good soul he was, how he dreamed of teaching his people to read the Bible and understand its call to justice.
Kate said nothing. She had for years skirted around religious talk, though it was hard to avoid in Central America.
All the while she kept looking at his ankles and his feet in sandals. They were slender and perfectly formed, the feet of a statue. There was something graceful about the hollow of his ankle around the anklebone. The Billie Holliday kept on scratchily from the kitchen, too intimate, too sly, too bold. She would have liked listening to it with Sunny.
“Where’ve you been?” Dixie asked.
“Managua mostly,” Kate said.
He waited. When she said nothing more, he said, “Doing?”
“Delivering babies.”
“So—what’s it like there now?”
“Poor. It’s very poor.”
“And the people, how’re they holding up?”
Kate pursed her lips, tried to formulate what she could say that would be true. “They’re very tired. Worn out.” She shivered.
Dixie reached for an afghan that lay folded on the hack of his chair. He handed the afghan to Kate. “Here.”
She said, “That’s okay.”
“Take it.”
She wrapped the afghan around her shoulders.
She said, “I talked to Sunny this afternoon.”
“Oh?”
“What’s going on with them?”
“Did you expect them to be here?”
“Months ago—they said come on. We—my friend Maggie and I—we didn’t know … their circumstances had changed.”
He waited until she met his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
A racket on the street, traffic, the kinky haul of a truck across the cobblestones, gave her pause. And then she asked, “How well do you know them?”
“It’s been a couple of years.”
“Where’s she living?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“She … was in a hurry.”
“I don’t feel at liberty to talk about them.”
“I thought Ben was in the States.”
He frowned. “That’s right.”
“Didn’t Sunny say we were coming?”
“I believe she did. A while back.”
The parrot toddled across the patio, cocked his head, and seemed to squint up at Dixie. Dixie bent down and stuck out his index finger. The parrot stepped up on his finger. “Hey, Posh, hey, Posh,” he soothed. He drew the parrot in close to his chest and petted him behind his head in a gentle circular motion. Posh’s feathers were the green of an unripe mango. “She wasn’t quite sure. When you were coming.”
“We couldn’t get away.” She was tempted to tell him about Vidalúz. But she’d promised.
“I like to cook,” Dixie said.
Kate said nothing.
“You’re welcome to eat with us. We chip in to a kitty—five Qs a day. We take turns marketing.”
“Could I play it by ear?” Kate said, standing up and folding the afghan. “I’m kind of an erratic eater.” She put the afghan on her chair and said, “But thanks for tonight. For the stir-fry.” She didn’t want to get involved in domestic arrangements.
“My pleasure.”
He did not scrutinize her; she felt grateful for that; she was not at her best. Posh chirked quietly under Dixie’s stroking.
They heeded the click of a key in the front door. Out of the shadow of the foyer came Jude.
“Hello,” Dixie said, reluctantly it seemed.
“I see you have company,” Jude said. She walked over to them. She wore a wooden rosary around her neck. Its crucifix hung between her breasts. Her jeans were baggy, her sweater patched.
“This is Kate Banner,” Dixie said. “A friend of Sunny and Ben’s. Maybe you remember her from San Cristóbal? She’s passing through. Kate, this is my sister. Jude Ryan.”
Kate and Jude shook hands. Kate remembered her. Jude had eradicated any nooks and crannies of New Orleans from her voice. She had been in the capital; the jeep she and Dixie shared had gotten a flat tire halfway back to Antigua and two men had stopped to help her change it.
“I’m tired,” she said. She fingered the crucifix on her rosary. Then, “We need to talk.”
“We will,” Dixie said. “Have your dinner. I saved you some veggies and rice.”
“This is important,” Jude said.
“I was … ah … just going to take a shower and turn in,” Kate said. “Do you have hot water?”
“Hey, we’re uptown,” Dixie said. “It’s one of those electric gizmos. On the showerhead. Don’t touch it or the pipes or you’ll get a shockeroo.”
“Good-night, now,” Kate said.
“Pasa buena noche,” Dixie said. “God bless.”
And Kate walked across the courtyard, trying not to stalk. Or run. The impulse to run, to hide, was strong in her. She got a towel and a kimono from her room and went to the bathroom to shower. They sat very still in the dark as she walked by again. As she shut the door she heard Jude say urgently, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
In the shower she masturbated standing under the warm water. To come she thought of a woman Deaver had desired and she had known. She could imagine the woman opening her blouse—a sleeveless white cotton blouse with a pointed collar—and Deaver’s breath coming ragged, almost imperceptibly. That was enough to make her come this time though sometimes she had to go further. She made herself sick with the fantasies she had shared with him.
Afterward she leaned against the mildewy wall—a yellow tile wall with a pink flamingo on each tile and faint green swirls like grass or a dream of grass. Then she turned the water on as hot as it would go, curved her back to its pulse, and tried to shut out everything else. She thought these things would make her sleep.
She went back to her room, passing the open door to the kitchen, where Dixie and Jude talked. Jude said, “… but you’re arrogant. In the worst way.”
Kate stopped at her own bedroom door. She listened.
“That’s mine to confront, not yours to point out.”
Their voices were raised but controlled. They did not want anyone to hear.
Jude said aggressively, “I don’t want what happened to Sam to happen to you.”
And Dixie said, “Sam’s happy, Jude. He went to seminary when he was only seventeen. Leaving—that had to happen. And now he’s happy. Why in the world do you begrudge him that?”
Get out of here, Kate warned herself, get out. Wait for Maggie. Find Sunny if you can. Put out your hand to no one. Suddenly Billie sang again: “I can’t give you anything but love.” She could not hear Jude and Dixie anymore. It did not matter anyway. She had her own concerns. She slept a light and irritable sleep.