Everyone in the equation fulfilled a function. I got everything I wanted. #1 got the live-in and accompanying perks without a permanent mosquito in his ear. #2 got as much as or more than he expected since he knew when he got involved that he wasn’t #1. And Kaya got the relationship with accompanying perks and protections, without the worry of some jealous man showing up at the club four out of five nights, making trouble and cutting into her customer time and tips. Each person effectively purposed.
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to bring this up cause I know you’d get vex. I was hoping you’d get bored with him.”
“Sorry.” Again.
“No, I’m sorry.”
Conversation shifted into silence. I went back to the kitchen to make tea, confused. I’d never expected the #1 beneficiary to have a problem with the arrangement.
By the time I got back to the big room, in-hand liquid warmth spreading, the door was thudding closed, Post-it fluttering: end it tonight. never see him again. please.
I gulped my tea, grabbed keys, phone, and notebook, and left Diego with such haste that I nearly killed a pedestrian too stupid to realize the Cocorite walkover exists because the maxi-ride there tempts fate enough. 3 canal didn’t make it through “Watch Dem” the third time — we ent takin’ dey lies / propaganda tearing de place asunder / we want a new agenda— before I parked in Charford Court.
I gestured to Face’s shadowy outline by the stairwell that I’d be back soon and immediately cut across from Charlotte Street along Oxford onto Henry, blowing a kiss over my shoulder at Renegades’ panyard to make up for bypassing my usual melodious route. The job made me a regular in Port-of-Spain at night even if average citizens weren’t, and the panyard knew me too well for me to pass without stopping in.
Two-thirds of the way to the Promenade, “Watch Dem” still in my inner ear, I stepped up from Henry Street into the dark, narrow stairwell, each foot automatically falling into the next worn spot, bass thump reverberating Gregory Isaacs’s “Cool Down the Pace” through my pelvis, then cut through skanking pipers and rootsmen and women only to pull up short, sense of purpose deflated. If not here, I didn’t know where else to look for #1.
As I turned mindlessly, a skinny man in a Rasta-colors mesh vest, matching hat bulging, center-stitch Clarks, obligatory black bottle and spliff in one hand slid up and grabbed my elbow with the other. Flashing gold with every word: “Sistren, you hadda leave here now.”
“Excuse me?”
“You hadda ride.”
Confused, I allowed the pressure on my elbow to lead me back to the street that only seemed refreshing after the stifling dive I’d just been ushered out of.
“I know who you come for, but you hadda wait home.” Urgently hissing this instruction in my ear, he hustled me into a light blue pH car idling empty, off-route as if its driver didn’t need fares. “Fidel, take this lady for me, nah.” He rattled off what I belatedly recognized through mental earmuffs as my address, and the car peeled out before I could collect myself.
By the third red light run, I managed to squeeze out, “Drive, I’ll take it here.”
“But miss lady, Ras say take you Diego.”
“Thanks, Fidel, but I can’t make any promises about the length of your life if you don’t stop this damn car so I can get out right fucking now.” Fidel acquiesced. But as I memorized his face, suspicious and fearful eyes followed me out onto Green Corner, sticking, worried that I was leaving them ransomed.
A few blocks later, Face emerged from the stairwell as I reached my car. Unusual. We rarely spoke in public. He peered up at the fifth-floor railing behind which his daughter was trying to wriggle out of her mother’s arms. A shrill voice descended, fighting to cut through Port-of-Spain smog, the panyard’s loose, jangling harmony and the nearly tangible smell of the dumpster at the end of the yard.
“Face, go, nah. She don’t settle if she could still see you.”
He steupsed, short but eloquent. “Damn child have no right to be awake this hour, far less on the gallery. Aye, Star, plenty people mark your ride, eyeing up your plate number.”
“Anybody we know?”
“Don’t know yet. I go call, nah.”
“Safe.”
“Yeah, Star.”
I drove not homeward but back around the Savannah and up Lady Chancellor for the second time that night and pulled over at the lookout, ignoring the other two vehicles parked as far as possible from each other to further identical purposes. Sitting on the warm bonnet, gazing at town spreading westward into the inky Gulf of Paria, I mulled over the night’s events and reminded myself to call #2. He didn’t know yet he could live without me.
Overlooking my turf was calming. The island never failed me. I strolled back to my door, pausing to take a mental snapshot for the road before ducking into the driver’s seat.
Speeding down the foreshore with one eye running along the edge of the island instead of the road, I switched out the Canals for my 12 bootleg, “answer when it call” blaring through open windows, anticipating my imminent opportunity to do so... feel the change coming in, it’s overcoming you, answer when it call...
I stopped by Peake’s for a Royal Castle Neptune’s Catch and post-smoke Tunnocks, finished the sandwich before I crossed Majuba, was licking the chewy, chocolatey wafer from my teeth by Diamond Boulevard, and could taste the coconut water calling from the fridge before I had my key out the ignition. Hopefully, the preemptive strike against the munchies would hold me until morning and I wouldn’t remember the Guinness ice cream tucked away in the freezer behind the rainy-day sorrel, pastelles, and pelau.
He wasn’t back. I wasn’t surprised.
I poured coconut water into my proudly stolen BWee glass and put on the kettle, knowing the glass would empty quickly. I prepped my mug and scribbled tea on the list on the fridge, lifted the latch and lid of my wooden box just enough to slide out a skinny spliff and fire, threw an eye back at the kettle, and went to deposit clothes in the bedroom.
I shrugged out of my dress, letting it puddle around my feet, then lit the spliff as I stepped out of my wedges and over the puddle to catch the boil and whistle of the almost-empty kettle. I turned the fire off, filled my mug, lit incense, and hit play on Plantation Lullabies with an already heavy-lidded nod to Me’Shell for being so right, the sandalwood scent wrapping around my smoke, hot tea in the works.
It was 4:32 a.m.
Morning proper found me on the couch, sun shouting me awake through too-thin curtains. My bedroom was protected against this onslaught. Why hadn’t I made it there? Based on the stillness of my surroundings, neither had he.
It was already a slightly sweaty, but otherwise perfect beach day, and the stickiness was nothing that couldn’t be justifiably alleviated with a bikini. I jump-started myself by flinging open the traitorous curtains, then dug out a bathing suit and complimentary wrap and rolled one for the road. A morning at Hundred Steps would help clear the funk so my mind could track the story.
I took St. Lucien to Majuba Cross Road and over the hill toward Maraval, past the maxi-taxis turning around at the wider but still too small bend in the shaded road, twisting and climbing between the wall of vegetation broken by impossible-to-reach houses on one side and the immediate drop into the valley on the other. Burning it on this hill with Manu Chao bubbling in my speakers was the perfect precursor to driving up Moka, Maracas Bay, and beyond. This morning I caught myself singing along, substituting home for Tijuana, Welcome to Trinidad, tequila, sex, or marijuana...