Sas, nothing is like the ’70s, when the boys hung out on the railings of Victoria Square and begged you to pick them up and life was civilized and poor and we weren’t dying, being shot, or kidnapped. Well, just so, say friends whom I can increasingly tell about my nightly sojourns — everyone is home because you can no longer walk the streets at night. And some PC jerk at More Vino, trendy wine bar on Ariapita Avenue, butts in with, “Anyway, you’ll fucking get HIV.” “What?!” I scream and question. From driving around slowly at night, because that is where I feel most comfortable, rather than being locked up in my cage of an apartment, wondering what those poor kids are going through. Odd, and always interesting, how homophobia manifests itself — often through guilt and self-loathing disguised as social responsibility.
Pat, don’t become too moralizing, and watch yourself. I know this stuff is raw for you.
The kids are all boys. Another one gone today. And none as yet found. The press keeps telling us the lurid stories of yesteryear because they don’t have fresh blood. It isn’t that I expect to find them out on empty streets playing or abandoned, or walking hand in hand with their abductor. I feel I need to have my finger on the pulse of this city, my beautiful belle d’Antilles. She, the city, is my femme fatale, my la diablesse, luring me into her darkness...
I fade out.
Take it easy, Pat. If you use too much of that kind of purple blood, you’ll lose your readers and yourself.
What? Not too dark, Sas? Well, what can I do with an insufferably romantic turn of mind and a burning anger for the things I love? Cynic, no, can’t do cynic. What, like that fucker in More Vino? What does he understand about my desires?
Cool it, Pat. Write your story, sweetheart. I love your romantic side.
Are you worried about me, love? Condomize, as they say here. No bareback. The latest attack is on bi — big headlines about low-down and stealing a beautiful tender frame from Brokeback Mountain for their bigotry. Do people understand desire?
I get the paper now after my walk from the fella outside Hi-Lo. And it’s the usual thing, looking for the monster in a stranger when the statistics tell us that the monster is probably the big bad wolf in your parent’s bed or your priest in the confessional.
There’re security guards and three policemen at the school gates. I tried to get past them the other morning in an attempt to set up an interview with the headmistress. No dice. “Miss Beaubrun just step out.” Keeping her head down. And the guards? Look what happened again the other day! Who is slipping through and how do they steal these boys?
I feed birds and I watch birds. Binoculars are wonderful! And I must admit that when I’m watching the palm tanagers and my friend the one-legged tropical mockingbird, I’m taking in the arrivals and departures of the little boys in their khaki shorts and blue cotton shirts and their school bags bulging with libraries and sports kits. The national flag unfurls itself in the wind from the schoolyard pole and the children pledge their pledge. Education! Was all part of a dream once in ’62. I feel sick. Independence!
Doorbell. No one visits me. No one knows me. Is it a welcoming party? Callaloo and crab? Trinidad does not do welcoming parties. All of we is one! You know what I mean?
“I just wanted to say if you could mind how you feeding the birds because they does shit the pawpaw on my planter underneath.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m Patrice.” I put out my hand through the burglar proofing to shake the small hand of the delicate Indian lady from downstairs. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop feeding...”
“I’m Savi. And the water dripping from your air conditioner onto my louvers.”
“Oh dear, well...”
“I go get the fella in the yard to fix it. Run a PVC pipe...”
“Yes, anything. I’ll pay.”
“Good. Have a nice day.”
“You too. Excuse me. It’s terrible, isn’t it...” But she had slipped down the stairs in the shadow of the palms on the landing. Then she called up, sticking her head around the pillar.
“You like using your binoculars?” Then, like an afterthought as she flew, “You shirt pretty, eh?”
“Yes, you know...” But she was gone again, as swift as a hummingbird. I wondered what she thought of the disappearing little boys. I wanted to talk to people in the apartments. Someone must’ve noticed something. She’s been keeping an eye on me.
I’ve forgotten with all the frantic e-mailing to mention Carmella, my neighbor opposite on the same landing who amounted to a welcoming party — Chinese delicacies passed through a crack in my door the first morning. “Thought you would like these.” Steamed wontons! Why not fried? I leave them for my lunch. Never saw her again for days, except I notice that every time I park my car under her window, she parts her curtains and looks out. Always at the window, peeping. I wonder what she’s seen.
It’s this one boy! He disappeared the day after I arrived in the apartment. Odd that the school has not been shut down. That would give me some peace but it might make it more difficult for me to learn anything. I still feel I will discover something as I sit here on mornings like James Stewart in Rear Window with Grace Kelly. Love those oldies with the stars. There’s no Grace Kelly here. I wanted to be Grace Kelly once.
I sit with my binoculars, not lame like James Stewart. I stare into the assembly hall, keeping a watch on the main gate and playground. I train my binoculars on the tiptop flowering of the palmiste where the blue-gray tanagers and keskidees love to feed on the berries of the flowering royal palm.
I had been doing this the morning after my arrival, when I saw him being picked up by a respectable-looking gentleman in a smart Rover. Not the most common car here, I thought, Japanese dominate with a variety of Nissans. The boy was black and also the gentleman, what I called old-fashioned political type, like the first crooks who stole all the oil money in the ’80s. Of course, then I thought nothing of anything. It is only now, piecing together the stories, that I realize that I was probably the last to have seen him.
I phone Sasha: “I think I was the last to see one of the little boys.” Then, I can’t help myself.
“Take it easy, Pat. Come, come...”
“I keep going over the moments and wondering what was in the frame which could tell me now that the man was or was not his father and if the little boy was at all anxious, resisting, being forced, some clue. I wish now it was not just the binoculars but the digital which I could have clicked away on and had the whole scene over and over to examine.” Sasha had given me the digital, bless him. “But as you know, not like me to have any of that ready. Not like me at all. I have just bought my first mobile, cell. As I said, I’m stuck in the middle of the nineteenth century.”
Patrice, it’s been days! Where’s my story?
Sasha, as soon as I‘ve got something you’ll be the first to know.
I lie.
p. s. I’m very close now.
He doesn’t reply. He’s getting impatient.
I was entertaining myself with the daily opera, Australian Open over, and checking the gate and the playground when the doorbell went. Wontons? I could do with a Carmella visit. Shitting birds? Leaking air conditioner? Not Savi, please. I turned the lock, slid back the emergency chain, opened the door. “Oh my god!” The man in front of me carried what seemed like an enormous machine gun pointed almost straight at me, but a little down to the ground when I looked again, catching my senses. I quickly wondered how he had gotten into the foyer. Then that thought slipped away.