“I have to meet someone—” Margot says, pushing her leg inside her sheer stocking. It rips and she cusses under her breath.
“Another man?” Horace asks. “Vat is he paying you? I can give more.”
“No. It’s not a man.”
“Then who is more important than me?”
“My mother,” she lies. “I have to meet her somewhere.” She pulls up her skirt and hastily buttons her white shirt over her bra. Horace props himself up on an elbow and watches her. When she’s dressed, she walks over to the bed and kisses him on the forehead. Horace puts his hand at the back of her head and brings her closer. Without warning, he kisses her on the mouth. Margot pulls away a little. “Yuh acting like yuh won’t see me again, sweetness,” she says, holding his hand.
“Okay,” he says finally. “It’s on ze table.” He gestures toward the fat leather wallet sitting on the computer desk. “Take it all.”
Margot hesitates. She counts three hundred. The Germans tend to exchange their money for U.S. dollars. It’s the only currency accepted on the North Coast besides Jamaican dollars. Margot thanks him and hurries along, closing the door softly behind her.
The sight of Margot sleeping with her thumb in her mouth raises something intense inside Verdene. Margot stirs, her eyes barely fluttering awake, though it’s noon. Her limbs are spread-eagled on the bed, sugar-brown skin on yellow sheets. St. Theresa’s church bell rings in on the hill, and Verdene, instead of making a sign of the cross like she learned to do as girl when she went to mass, looks down on the woman she loves and studies her. An open face that wears its emotions. Wounded and sensitive.
She inhales deeply, the love swelling inside her lungs. Afraid she might combust, she exhales. She lowers the tray of breakfast food she cooked for Margot — fried dumplings, ackee, and saltfish, with a side of sliced pear — and glances at the wardrobe that holds two full-length mirrors. Verdene catches a reflection of herself holding the tray. At forty there are still glimpses of youth in the handsome face with sculpted features and eyes that blaze a startling black. She has gone gray early, a patch of silver surrounded by thick black curls. But since being with Margot she has regained a youthfulness that enables her to ease into laughter, fits of playfulness, and a sexuality that oozes from her without effort, without any fuss.
She adjusts the tray on the small night table and reaches for the Holy Bible (just for a little Sunday devotion like Ella taught her), which is kept there like a secret inside the drawer. But the sight of her mother’s picture halts her movement. All the loveliness and life and breath seem to stop at the sight of Ella. Oh, dear Mama. Usually the picture is turned to face the wall when Margot sleeps over. Margot doesn’t like the idea of Verdene’s deceased mother staring at them in bed. Quite frankly, Verdene doesn’t mind. Her whole life she has lived in secrecy. Why be ashamed at this point in her own house — the house her mother left her? Nevertheless, she complies.
Margot’s eyelashes flutter, her eyes opening to glance up at the wide expanse of the room and the sheet falling below her waist. Verdene blushes, as ashamed as a little girl who has just walked in on her mother having sex.
“It’s okay,” Margot tells her, picking up the sheet to cover her breasts, suddenly self-conscious.
“Brought you something,” Verdene says in the clipped British accent she adopted during her time living in London. It dances gaily with her Jamaican accent, so her intonations come out sounding proper — the kind of proper that makes people in River Bank just as curious as they are fearful of her. As a foreigner, or rather, a returning resident, she is untouchable.
Margot grins as Verdene places the tray on the bed. “You don’t have to spoil me this way all the time, cooking breakfast and carrying it to the room.”
“Are you saying you don’t like it?” Verdene asks.
“I didn’t say that.” Margot laughs. Verdene laughs too, allowing her body to ripple with the effects of that pleasant itch in her belly. She pretends to turn away in defeat, but Margot leaps from the bed and pulls her back down, for a moment forgetting her nakedness. Verdene allows herself to fall, entangled between Margot’s legs. They remain like this, trembling in a fit of giggles. When the giggles subside a minute later, their breaths rise in the pleasant silence of the room, contained within its four walls. Verdene moves away slightly, aware of how close they are — Margot with no clothes on and Verdene in a T-shirt and the wraparound skirt she always wears around the house that reveals the golden flesh of her thighs when it parts.
“I have to go back to the kitchen,” Verdene says, untangling herself. “You must be hungry. Eat.”
She pulls herself away and Margot lets her. Margot reaches for the cover again as if to hide. Verdene knows that she slept in the nude hoping Verdene would come into the room during the night and slip under the covers. But that didn’t happen.
“Can’t we just—”
“Not until you’re ready,” Verdene quips, sensing where the conversation is headed.
“Ready? I’ve been ready,” Margot says.
Verdene looks down at her hand on the doorknob. She’s squeezing it and letting it go. Her knuckles are shiny like marbles under her skin. “I don’t want what happened last time to happen again,” Verdene finally says in a whisper that comes off like a sigh. “I just can’t—”
“I already apologized. What else yuh want me to do?” Margot grabs a pillow from the foot of the bed and puts it between her legs. It’s another habit of hers, as persistent as the urge to bite her nails.
“Sweetheart,” Verdene says, more softly. “I can’t push you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Margot moves the pillow and sheet away from her body and gets up from the bed. She moves closer and pushes Verdene against the door. It closes behind her. Up close her eyes are a pair of glistening onyx like the stone Margot gave her. Margot takes Verdene’s hands into hers. “I’m ready.”
Verdene fights the urge to follow her to the bed, for deep down she knows, for her, sex is a drug. She’s tempted to let Margot do to her whatever she wants. But what happens afterward? It’s the after that Verdene fears more than anything else. What if Margot’s renewed willingness to be seduced is nothing but curiosity?
She remembers how Margot leapt off the bed in the middle of their lovemaking the first time, and wept. When they began seeing each other, Margot refused to do anything more than kiss and cuddle. She wanted to be courted first. So Verdene acquiesced, grateful for Margot’s insistence that they should know and explore each other in other ways. But after six months of waiting, Verdene had enough. She made her move and Margot gave in, though reluctantly. She wept as if lamenting every wrong done to her in her life. She wept as though their intimacy were happening against her will. She stayed, but she wept. Verdene, stunned, asked if Margot was all right. Margot responded by shaking her head, her body trembling and shuddering. “I’ve never felt this way with anyone,” Margot said.
“It’s okay, Margot. It’s okay.”
“It’s like that dream where I’m drowning.”
“You’re not drowning, baby.”
“I have no control whatsoever.”