Dying for Revenge (36 page)

It was easy to ask for a .38 or a .357 or a .22.

Not this.

She showered, dressed in linen and Blahniks, then headed to the Seabreeze Café. Metal bistro tables on wooden floors, baseball caps hanging high on the wall, maybe from some of the ships that had come into the harbor. Eighteen-inch television over in the corner, nobody watching, not an American CNN world. At the counter, croissants—roast beef, vegetarian, salmon—and muffins for sale.

She had a salmon croissant, green tea, and a muffin.

The nightmare still with her.

She looked around, leg bouncing, searching for a face she could trust.

All around people were on computers enjoying the free Internet; over in the corner British newspapers were available,
Daily Mail
and
The Daily Telegraph
. Someone had left a copy of
The Daily Observer
behind, one of the local newspapers. Front page. Bold letters. POLICE HUNT FOR GUNMEN WHO SHOT MEN ON YACHT IN FALMOUTH HARBOUR. They were hunting for
gunmen
, not
gunwoman
.

She searched for news about the young boy who had made her moan so deeply.

Articles about a brawl in the magistrate’s court, an infant ingesting kerosene, a
youngest
mom award, a serial rapist on the loose, the rising cost of bread, fuel shortages, beginner karate classes on Nevis Street and Cross Street, a fete at Christ the King High and Saint John’s Catholic Primary. Finally there was an article about a young man from Swetes being found dead on the beach, robbed of all his wares. Anthony Johnson. A simple name. A beautiful name. Eighteen years old. He was married and lived on Matthews Road with his grandmother. A black-and-white photo was in the paper. They actually showed the boy’s dead body as it lay on the beach, his grandmother, Volda, and the boy’s young Guyanese wife, Sharon, both standing around the corpse, holding each other and crying over the body.

The boy’s grieving grandmother was quoted in the papers.

“Me go fin’ out who e be an’ me ga tek ma cutlass an’ chop dem up!”

She read the words over and over, deciphered what was written as if it was a foreign language.

The threats and explicit vengeance of the grieving had been posted in the papers.

Anthony Johnson. She still felt him; his rhythms stirred her, his scent rose from her skin.

This was a nightmare.

There had to be somewhere she could go. Had to be somewhere on this island she could go.

She looked around. Glanced down the way at the Skullduggery. Saw a woman sitting out there with two kids. European woman with mixed-race babies. Then she saw another woman, darker hair, her children of mixed heritage. Not many, a few, crowd of thirty, maybe more. A white British man with his hair twisted into locks was there with his beautiful little girl, smiling, laughing, smoking, suntanned, and wonderfully happy, as if he had run away, reinvented himself, found a place that was Kumbaya. She looked around and saw another white man, sipping tea, a beautiful dark-skinned island girl at his side.

It terrified her. The thought of having a beautiful mixed baby, a baby whose hair she wouldn’t know how to comb in the beautiful styles that little girls with curly and strong manes wore their hair in. Looking at the white Rasta with the pretty little girl and assuming, imagining herself in that man’s place, her skin tanned and her locks long, eating a muffin with a beautiful daughter at her side.

She hurried away, that desperate sensation swelling inside her, crossed the nameless road at Falmouth Harbour, headed back to the yacht club, made her way to the security hut, the female workers there now, men working only at night. The daytime workers working twelve-hour shifts. She approached one of the young women, one who looked like she was in college, asked her if she could have a word.

The girl said, “I know what you want to know.”

“Do you?”

“You want to know how to get to Hawksbill Bay, no?”

“What is that?”

“The nude beach on the other side of Five Islands.”

“Uh, no. Not looking for that.”

She took a breath and lowered her voice, whispered her problem to the security guard.

The security guard nodded, not as a security guard, but as a young woman who understood.

“There is a certain pharmacy in town where anyone will send you if you have a problem like that.”

“Is it legal to buy that?”

“They sell it.”

“Where do I go to buy it?”

“Redcliffe Street. There is a clear guy who sells it.”

“I’d rather buy it from a woman.”

“Only this guy who sells it.”

She took a frustrated breath. She didn’t have the luxury of time.

She asked, “Where on Redcliffe?”

“The block between Market Street and Corn Alley.”

The girl told her where to find the mysterious clear guy, reminded her to be discreet.

The girl asked, “You ever use that before?”

“No.”

“Two pills. And one for inside you.”

“Inside me?”

“Yeah. One dissolves up there. Then you swallow two when that’s put up there, and one more later on in the day. Then I think you take another pill, have to take one a day for a little while, maybe a week. This pill you need, it can be taken up to eight weeks into the pregnancy. I was at six.”

“Were you?”

“Yes. Unfortunately. You cannot go back to school when you are pregnant.”

“You can’t go and get an education if you are pregnant?”

“No, they kick you out.”

“Really?”

“If you get pregnant at thirteen, your education is over.”

“Wow.”

“I was six weeks.”

“How are you supposed to make a living with no education and a baby?”

“That’s the way it is.”

“But the boys who get the girls pregnant, are they kicked out of school too?”

“Nobody cares about boys getting girls pregnant. They have babies with three or four different girls and nobody cares.”

She nodded, understanding, feeling the girl’s pain.

She remembered what she hadn’t paid attention to, all the young girls working at full-service gas stations, up early walking the roads to go to work, selling wares on the beaches all day long, working at the market in town, never wondering why all the young girls were at work from twelve to fourteen hours a day, not questioning any child-labor laws in this land, not understanding what she had seen.

She had a lot in common with those girls. It didn’t show. But she did.

That commonality: her fear.

She handed the girl one hundred dollars, Eastern Caribbean, price paid to forget a conversation.

 

The sun beat down, left boiling sweat on her brow, on her neck, and she’d been outside only ten minutes. She returned her scooter, exchanged it for a car. Wouldn’t have to chance being run off the road, or have to inhale carbon monoxide, or have loose debris and pebbles thrown in her face. She parked in the West Indies gas station lot on Dockyard Drive and bought breakfast from a food vendor who set up a tent across from Sam and Dave’s Laundry, a vendor who offered home-cooked breakfasts from the back of her truck. Salt fish, bread, plantain, eggplant mixed with spinach, okra, fried plantain, boiled eggs, cucumber and tomatoes, lettuce, chicken sausage, egg omelets filled with corned beef. She asked for it all. Then she stepped inside the gas station and bought two bottles of water.

She had eaten at Seabreeze, and now, less than a mile later, she was eating again.

Nervous. Famished. Terrified.

“To the left . . . to the left . . .”

Then she drove away, struggled to adjust to driving on the opposite side of the road as she sat on the opposite side of the car, the rearview mirror to her left instead of to her right. Felt like she was going to destroy the left side of the car at any second. Thought about her young lover as she hit a patch of rugged road. Thought about her husband as she tried to make turns without swinging out too far. She headed up the snaking curves, up All Saints Road, fear in her gut.

She shuddered as she remembered her dream.

 

Without warning cars stopped moving. No room to go around. Trapped in traffic that curved through Liberta. People were in the road, like they were marching in a parade. Up ahead she saw what they were waiting for, saw the party machine coming toward her. A gigantic truck that had been converted into a rolling boom box, people on board dancing, jumping up and down, women bent over and grinding against the men who were behind them. Abracadabra in the daylight hours. Men dressed in hip-hop gear, baggy pants, shirts off, girls and women in short shorts. Locals surrounded the truck and jammed. She was trapped in her car, an urgent errand on her mind, not able to move. The eighteen-wheeler took forever to move ten feet, then stopped for another thirty minutes before it inched her way. People moved between her car and the one in front of her, moved around her car, then the crowd doubled again. People were too close. The smell of weed and alcohol perfumed the island air as people leaned against her car, pushed up against it, the car rocking as she blew her horn and panicked and yelled, yells that were ignored, lost in the music and celebration.

The crowd surged and pushed a big man against her side mirror. She blew her horn over and over. Screamed as she watched the mirror being bent. Yelled for them to get off her car as the mirror snapped off. She reached out and grabbed the mirror before it dropped into the parade. People moved on. No apology. Left her screaming and holding a mirror that had been left hanging by its wires. She screamed until she couldn’t scream anymore. She screamed in vain. The music dwarfed her scream.

The dancing and jumping continued; no room to move forward, but still she laid on her horn, blew it with urgency, blared it over and over as she held the mirror with her other hand. People looked at her like she was a stupid tourist, but she blew the horn anyway. Time was of the essence.

The moving boom box stopped in the middle of the road, left her surrounded by the celebration.

Left her screaming, blowing her horn like a madwoman, broken side-view mirror dangling.

 

Rituals was located on the other side of Woods Mall, west of an area called Gambles, across from AUA, in Jasmine Court on Friars Hill Road. She had all of that written down and still ended up lost, drove back and forth for more than two hours, ended up at Blue Waters Hotel the first time, then at Jabberwock Beach, finally found her way back to Friars Hill Road, again driving past Woods Mall and Friars Hill Power Station, the landmarks she had been given, over and over for the better part of another hour, past the sign that said JASMINE COURT a dozen times. Not many had heard of Rituals, which was a coffee shop, a Trinidadian business new to the island of Antigua.

When she made it to the coffee shop she looked around the court-yard, saw no one who caught her eye, then ordered a chicken salad panini. Mango guava smoothie. She looked down at her legs, saw mosquito bites, and cursed, didn’t want to have the legs of a woman marked by mosquito bites.

She was across from American University of Antigua College of Medicine, tucked in the mouth of a U-shaped two-story business plaza. Lots of trees, lots of shade. Exposed wood ceiling, one wooden ceiling fan, not needed because the breeze was nice. Spanish-style ceramic tile. Maybe clay tiles. Wrought iron chairs, same for the tables. A dozen tables, four wrought iron chairs at each.

Spanish, Trinidadian, East Indian, Portuguese, and Guyanese people came and went.

She looked around, tried to pick out the contact, no idea what nationality the contact would be.

Matthew was testing her. Fucking with her. Sending her on a damn errand run.

Like he was her goddamn daddy.

Young Arabs. Americans with East Coast accents. Spanish-speaking people about the same age, the age of college. Lots of Indian girls, a couple wearing T-shirts with AUA across the front.

She checked her watch, nervous, knowing she was late, knowing she had fucked up again.

A student walked up to the counter, ordered a smoothie, beautiful Punjabi girl, her long black hair parted down the middle. The girl looked back at her, her eyes going to her shoes, and the girl smiled.

The girl said, “Those are
killer
shoes.”

“Yes, they are.” She wanted to curse the girl, that line so lame, immature. “Killer shoes.”

And the girl smiled.

She followed the girl out to the parking lot, where another man was waiting, a tall and lanky young man who had feet the size of boats but looked like he was barely old enough to be enrolled in college.

The girl said, “Was about to give up waiting on you.”

“Got lost. Somebody should put up some street signs.”

“The only street signs are in town.”

“Lack of signs. Not exactly tourist friendly.”

“How are you enjoying the island?”

She told the Punjabi girl that she hated the roads, so narrow, so many deep potholes, some roads unpaved, some made of gravel, some streets with no names, so it was easy to get lost, especially since they weren’t hooked up for GPS. And they drove on the British side of the road.

The Punjabi girl shrugged like she had heard that complaint so many times that the conversation was pointless and cliché. She said, “Open the boot.”

“Boot? I’m not wearing boots.”

“Oh, you’re American.”

She hesitated. “I’m American.”

“Assumed you would be British.”

“What were you saying about a boot?”

“
Boot
means ‘trunk’ in Britain. Open your trunk.”

The young man with her loaded two heavy boxes inside, never speaking a word.