“I know. Is sad, eh?” she says gently to Ata now. SC had met Francisco and was getting to know all that went on in Ata’s life.
“I miss him already.”
“Is not sadder than this rahtid Happy Cooking Oil shitting artwork we have to redo again, though.”
Ata glanced at the Happy logo at the top of her desk and realized that she should have taped it under the draft paper on her drawing board. The client wanted the y slanted and the whole thing set at an angle.
The day passes like a proper office day. Clean, neat lines glide from her nib along the slide rule. Stencil font from the big gray catalog. Happy Cooking Oil. Ideal Flour, for all your baking needs. And the never-ending annual report for CariCo Insurance. Helen is in charge of that, so she has priority at the square old Macintosh computer they share. Transparencies are the thing. And color separations done by hand, crude flash-card ads for TV that you can’t spend much time on ’cause they’re cheap. Tedious, monotonous, and unimaginative. Every now and then, they get to design something from scratch. Not today.
Drinking instant Nescafé with Carnation creamer after lunch at her desk, Ata refocuses, to get through the day. She has gotten used to the musty air-conditioned carpet and cow-gum smell; it even comforts her, now mixed with the coffee steam. Claris sneaks up to the tape deck and slips in one of her endless U2 and Queen cassettes. On certain days this kind of music makes Ata crave any other kind of sound. But now it’s Friday. Next week will be end-of-month and she will collect a check for a small amount, barely enough to pay her bills and eat. Nothing more.
“What you need is a man,” SC says finally at four-thirty as they’re packing up. She goes out with Ata sometimes to her jazzy arty events and feels that, with Francisco gone, Ata might become an even better best friend. “I mean, a real man. Sex. Is good for the hormones.”
“Right, and the first five men I take a liking to in Trinidad all turn out to be gay.”
That made the mouse giggle as she scuttled out the door.
“I know. And the next good-looking ones married or they just damn stupid or ordinary. You telling me, girlfren. Anyways, cool yuhself and I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, right? Six p.m.”
* * *
Ata halts abruptly, just outside the open kitchen door of the apartment SC had directed her to.
“The Perfumed Garden. Concerning Praiseworthy Men. The virile member must have at most a length and breadth of twelve fingers, or three handbreadths, or at least six fingers, or a hand and a half breadths.”
A recognizable, high-pitched turkey-gobble laugh shrieks above other laughter, cutting across the deep voice of the man proudly announcing this.
“Lawd, Fraser, you too much!” SC splutters. “Oh my God…”
“And that’s Arab men,” the carefully cultured voice goes on to boast. “So you could imagine the dimensions…”
“… of black men!” SC cuts in, her cackle rising again.
“And as Sir Richard Burton went on to explain — the how-many-fingers breadth represent nine inches, ‘which is rare in the Englishman, the Frenchman, and other Europeans.’ Do you know they went and did thousands of measurements, and this was in the thirties and forties, concluding that the average American and European is between five and seven inches?”
“Well I would’a like to be there with the tape measure!”
Ata steps into the doorway to see her ridiculous friend bent over, miming the measuring action.
“Soldiers,” the owner of the deep voice says.
“Of course — is easy to get them up!” She happily jerks off another imaginary one, quickly, shrieking again and flapping an arm at Ata as she notices her.
“Come in, my dear,” Fraser welcomes her.
A few people are seated at a blue table full of drinks watching SC in the middle of the kitchen floor, near Fraser, trying to control herself. She hugs and kisses Ata, then turns to introduce her to Fraser.
“My best friend I been telling you about, Ata.”
“Delighted.” Fraser’s eyes twinkle frankly.
“Shocked.” Ata smiles broadly, shaking hands.
“Don’t worry with her, nuh. She only playing decent, if you know what she calls me…” SC mock whispers to Fraser, “I can’t tell you in front of people.”
He only raises his eyebrows but she can’t contain it. “SC! You know what that stands for? Small Clit!” Before he could begin to guess. “Clit as in ‘clitoris.’”
“Yes, yes, I think I get the idea.”
SC’s clucking, ready to burst again, delighted at the opportunity for rude talk. In fact, this is the only kind of conversation that brings her to full-form life. “My word!” She sniffs, straightening her tight clothes. “Well … this is a party, isn’t it? When the people coming? I should have a drink right about now, I think.”
Ata and Fraser watch her prance her shapely self over to the drinks table and the amused set of people there.
The flat is small but feels spacious with the open kitchen almost the same size as the living room. Bare sliding glass doors open onto the veranda with a view of the steep valley. A white tiled floor throughout cools it. Fraser points out what he has done — removed a wall here, replaced the windows there, created this odd-shaped table, built in the chunky concrete shelving.
“Is nice, eh?” SC swans into the living room. “I told you he have style.”
Ata takes in the books and well-positioned art pieces. A deep-red painting rests casually against a wall and a bizarre purple candelabrum hangs, dangerously low, over the couch and Persian rug. The party now begins arriving, in new cars, from their well-off homes in better parts of Port of Spain. The “ho-to-toes,” according to SC. And Fraser gracefully greets and introduces them around. Ata watches him stretch his neck out from his broad shoulders and tapered bulk, trying to look someone square in the eye, intelligently. A turtle. And returnee. Fraser Goodman. A big creative lump of an architect, from good Trinidadian middle-class stock, properly educated in England. “Great virtue in intelligence,” he’d later quote. Looks like he feels he’s in the presence of it now, blessed to be able to entertain such people. Sucking in his large stomach and trying to calm himself, to become an eloquent, British-accented gentleman. For a while.
“Marriette, my dear! You made it. How wonderful of you to grace us with your presence this afternoon.”
Marriette slinks into the room and offers Fraser her cheek, exchanging a sly and secretive smile with him, like a cat that loves the game. Her voice is husky as she casually hello’s all round. She perches herself on the kitchen counter against the window light, superciliously watching and swirling her drink, as Fraser welcomes and introduces more guests. Eyebrows permanently arched high over skin-colored eyes, silky hair in a sharp jaw-length bob, framing her almost Egyptian, perfect face. Marriette crosses a bare bronze leg and slickly hooks some hair, swiping paw behind ear. Her presence had silenced SC.
“Marriette works with the French attaché but is destined to become one of our ambassadors. The woman speaks five languages. Don’t you, dear?”
Marriette just grimaces at their little charade and shakes the hand of a very tall man who had just arrived — Terence, the professor. Bespectacled, dark, and low-spoken, he seems almost embarrassed to be present. Marriette picks this up immediately. “So this is the Terence you were telling me about, Fraser,” she drawls, eyeing his wedding band and watching him turn away hurriedly. Arching her long neck and smirking, she eyes the next arrivals.