A light lick is waving the trees out there … his house phone rings.
It is his mother, calling to check that he hadn’t gone to Jouvert and that he’s eating, and if the nurses had come already, lah-de-dah. She still could never tell when he was lying. Her shrill singsong voice chirps away without listening and even though he manages to cut it short, the call takes away some daylight. It tinges the edges of his vision with a little tiredness.
The trees out there keep waving an ocean green. “Remember Back Bay, in Tobago, Al?”
Alan nods. He had painted him as a turtle too, emerging and disappearing in the lip of the sea.
The rough sea crashes Fraser onto the beach and slams a grunt out of him. It shunts him sideways, drags him back into its clutch, and growls. Fraser gives himself up to the greediness, and lets it beat and wallop him about.
Alan watches him, overturned and round, sticking on the sand. Boboli Gardens, Florence — the fat man riding a turtle …
Fraser’s cell phone rings, and Alan gets it. Helen’s mud-covered voice is all croaky and sad-happy. “No, it’s not a good idea right now,” he replies. “He’s fine, just quiet. Okay.”
“Let’s just do nothing and watch movies and vegetate all day,” Fraser suggests.
Alan finds some wine and snacks and doesn’t say much. And they stay in, cocooned and slowly blinded by the blue screen and white glare. Night swimming, in mute light.
* * *
Macaripe Bay, the beach closest to town, is where the thirsty head. Ata slips into the cool blue-green arms and shivers. Bubble fingertips run up her back and she dives under, wriggling into the open lung of water.
Deep green — this bay is always dim, even on a bright day. The sun is quiet, listening to the overhanging cliffs of black rocks, and a man is perched there, fishing. He turns his back to the ragged Jouvert stragglers stumbling down the steps and into the sea. Their hollow shrieks about cold water are soon swallowed by the bay. It strews their empty bodies on the sand when it’s finished with them. And they begin falling asleep in the sun. Safe.
* * *
Ata lies facedown and the Trini girl from New York looks up at the sky. Ata can see that it’s Calvin Klein men’s-style underwear on her now, gray from all the paint. They serve well as a swimsuit on her muscular body. She could most probably walk down the street anytime in that underwear and look and feel comfortable — that’s how brazen and friendly she is.
The girl keeps smiling and not saying much, only, “I want you.”
Ata places her ear on the wet sand and she hears a heavy pulse, a brown heartbeat, drumming. She pushes aside the stranger’s eyes and closes hers.
* * *
In the chest of her bed. Her bedroom. Clean and airy in soft afternoon light, the pretty mas town beat washes her asleep. Something warm and heavy rests on her. Its head against the small of her back. Ata feels a male throat pressing her buttocks, lungs between her thighs. It breathes, deeply. Arms along the length of her legs, weighing her down, clamping her in thick, moist earth. She stirs. Soft puffs of breath against her waist, halt. And the weight rises, hovering over her back. She can feel its heat bearing down. A bite.
Gnawing her nape, it raises the tail of her spine up. A large hand swipes her hair and the mouth drawls down licking, tasting, holding her hips like a cup and drinking.
Ata pushes back without looking. She welcomes the throbbing flight. Night.
Day, light, and longing.
* * *
Pierre wakes early that Tuesday on the North Coast. Early for him because he likes to think he’s a night person and could sleep late at any opportunity. Not a chance here, the way the sun comes straight through the open doors onto the bed. He steps out into the blinding morning, squints at the sea, and goes back in to make his strong coffee. His body is stiff and achy.
He finishes his jam and toast at the table on the veranda, reading the U.K. newspapers that Alan brought, without wondering about the things that haunted him last night. This is good, he realizes, since he hadn’t a clue where those things were taking him or, indeed, what they were. His phone rings and the clear electronic bleat sounds out of place in this seaside peace. It would be Ata.
Her voice is rested, soft, and … lonely, it seems.
“I miss you too,” travels from Pierre to Ata’s perch above the town.
She stares out at the calm gulf, the derelict ships and seized Venezuelan vessel. “It’s quiet for now, early yet, just the birds and me, by the pool. It’s almost like a normal morning, except you’re not here and soon the noise will start. I can see the cars beginning to gather down there.”
She rambles on, about Alan looking after Fraser, and Jouvert, not attempting to describe things he doesn’t care about. Still, it brings back everything he cannot understand. His wine-colored dreams of Provence were distorted last night. After he had stumbled into bed, it felt like the sea was crashing on him. Something strong had rolled and tumbled him and left big dents in the lavender field. A storm, perhaps. The cigales were deafening. And there is something unsaid in Ata’s voice. “I don’t feel to go and meet the band today,” she says.
“Then don’t. You’re finished with them anyway.”
“It’s not that … I’d like to see the end result but I wish it were over. You only see the individual bits, up until this one day.”
“Well, go. You don’t know what you want.”
She pauses, watching the Savannah dust beginning to rise, feeling the dry heat pulling it up. The sky a clear glass bowl over the town.
Pierre looks out at the blistering, endless blue … so beautiful but untouchable.
Ata gazes at the artificial pool of water, the lovely landscaped yard and privileged home, and doesn’t know what to think anymore. What does she want? What is happening inside her? “You okay?” she asks.
“I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay, my love, soon.”
* * *
Thomas came to stand beside her on the garden wall. “How come you ain’ down there?”
“I don’t know, I’m just exhausted.”
“The body getting old, girl!” He finds that funny. He chuckles, spreads his feet a little, and crosses his arms on his chubby chest. “Is like me, it does reach a point when the body can’t take it no more.” Thomas is well away from fifty but eagerly embraces a good old age, from the time they started setting up this perfect nest. That’s what “nest” means to him.
The town reverberates with the booming, show-off part of Carnival. Flamming. So happy with itself, bouncy and socarizing, it embraces everything that moves. The poor old houses, like her gingerbread ex-home, rattle their windowpane dentures and jalousie teeth, shaking, till the very putty between boards cracks as the trucks and bands crowd past. Even the hills, the sour guardians of the swamp port, are rejoicing now. It tempts Ata to jump in the jeep and get down there, force her way through to the stage, to see Amen crossing, plain white and black simple glory. But she doesn’t feel like celebrating. With thousands of blessed revelers. With the heat, the dust, and braying frenzy.
“Can you believe, eh … that de whole show going to be innadoors, just now. When they build the new building. They say they designing a t’ing to replace the Grand Stand and North Stand and stage, and make everything under one roof, so when rain fall or anything, is no disruption. I guess it go have to be air-condition too.”
“Can you believe?” Ata steupses and sits down on the wall.