Nothing Like Love (26 page)

A vision of Sangita pouty and bejewelled, clinging to his arm as they walked up Kiskadee Trace, materialized in Faizal’s mind. He wet his lips and smiled to himself.

Sam nipped at Faizal’s finger, and Faizal reached idly into his shirt pocket and retrieved a handful of unshelled peanuts. When he scattered them on the table, Sam grasped a shell in his black claw. He brought the shell to his beak and worked away at it until the nut was free. Faizal stroked Sam’s head with his finger. “Nice boy,” he murmured absent-mindedly.

Lal returned then, hugging a box draped in an old pink curtain to his chest. He set the box down on the bar and, checking to make sure all eyes were on him, whipped the curtain off like a magician.

Puncheon shoved his chair back and stood, upsetting his
drink and wobbling dangerously close to Gloria’s lap. Rajesh manoeuvred around Faizal and Gloria and took a seat closer to the bar. Om and Headmaster pivoted on their bar stools in unison to face the unveiled object.

Faizal gasped quietly. His face fell ashen.

“Eh, boy.” Om whistled. “That television nice. It working?”

Lal ran his hand over the twelve-inch television, beaming like a child with a new toy. When he plugged it in and turned it on, the screen crackled to life in a whirr of silver static.

“Adjust the antenna!” Gloria cried.

“To the left,” Headmaster said.

“Move it one inch so,” Rajesh said, gesturing to the right with his hand.

“Bring the right one down and leave the left one up,” Om said.

“Hold up! Hold up!” Puncheon exclaimed as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz appeared on the screen.

Gloria clapped, and then pressed her hands to her chest, beaming. “
I Love Lucy
! I does watch this show when I visit my son in Port of Spain,” she told the room. “He have two television. My son own a jewellery store, you know.”

Nobody answered her. They all leaned in and admired what they thought was the first black-and-white television in the district.

“Where you get this, Lal?” Om asked.

“Port of Spain.” Lal dusted an invisible speck of dust off the television.

“How much channels you could catch?” Rajesh asked.

“Two.”

“What you could see?” Om asked.

“Panorama News. I Love Lucy. Bonanza. Teen Dance Party. Mastana Bahar—”

“
Mastana Bahar!
Eh, boy, I does always hear about that talent show on the radio, but I never see it yet,” Rajesh said.

“Shh! I can’t hear!” Gloria waved her hand with impatience.

Puncheon and Om signalled silently for another round of drinks and propped their chins in their hands at the bar. Gloria lifted her swollen ankles onto a stool and arranged her floral dress over her knees before settling against the hard back of her chair. Rajesh slouched in his seat and interlaced his fingers behind his head, so that his brawny arms were partially flexed and jutted out to the side like wings. Headmaster glanced back and forth from the television screen to his notebook, scribbling with haste. There would be no more gossiping tonight. No more digs.

Faizal looked away from his neighbours. He seethed with jealousy. It was too late now to tell them that he had purchased a television a month ago. If they believed him, they would want to know why he hadn’t told anyone, why he had kept it all to himself. They would accuse him of selfishness. But selfishness had never been his motive for secrecy. Sangita had. He had wanted to show her his new television first. Except the opportunity hadn’t presented itself and now Lal had ruined everything.

Faizal’s face twisted into a profound sulk. He pushed Sam’s empty peanut shells around the table with a finger. He was thinking how unfair life could be, when something occurred to him and he froze: Rajesh wouldn’t be home for hours now. Faizal grinned. Suddenly he was scraping the unshelled peanuts off the table and depositing them back in his pocket. He
held out his finger for Sam, who stepped nimbly on and crept up to Faizal’s shoulder again. In an instant Faizal Mohammed was tiptoeing behind the turned backs of his neighbours and slipping out the door. As he disappeared into the night, Sam began to whistle.

“I
like a woman with broad hips and a big, fat, round bamsee. When she dance, she bamsee must roll.” Puncheon gyrated his narrow hips, puckering his lips at Raj. “When she walk, she bamsee must swing.” He sashayed along the riverbank, wagging his scrawny bottom from right to left.

Rajesh shook his head. “Man, behave yourself! If I see a woman move like that, I go bust I down the road in the opposite direction.”.0

Puncheon pulled his T-shirt over his head and his smile disappeared momentarily. He revealed a chest permanently scorched by the sun. Silver threads stretched against his pectorals with coconut oil. “How this looking, Raj?” He reached for his crab net, a long stick with a scrap of wire mesh fastened to the end. “Nice?”

Rajesh nodded. “Nice.” He lay back in the grass, enjoying
the familiar prickle against his hardened heels and the backs of his calves. It was a cloudless day and the sun blazed in the sky. “I think is a woman like Gloria Ramnath you want,” Rajesh said, crossing one ankle over the other and lacing his fingers behind his head.

“Gloria?” Puncheon sucked his teeth as he settled onto his belly and propped his chin in his hands. “I tell you I like a woman with curves, man, not a lumpy pillow with two hand and two foot.”

“How about Leela, then?”

“That mosquito? She too skinny-minny for me. Nothing to pinch on that body except she big nose.” Puncheon twirled the net in his fingers, scanning the river bottom for crabs.

Rajesh raised his head and squinted at Puncheon with one eye. “I find you too picky, man. You go pick and pick until you pick shit.”

“Who said I picking? Nah, man. I go stay a bachelor for life. I just saying, I like a woman with broad hips and a big, fat, round bamsee. That is all.”

“But why you never marry? It have plenty gyul like that in Trinidad.”

“Marry?” Puncheon looked at Rajesh, incredulous. “It mark
stupid
on my forehead?” He leaned in close to Rajesh’s face, tapping the spot just between his eyebrows. “Marriage is only one set of problems.”

Rajesh palmed Puncheon’s gaunt face and pushed it away. “How you mean?”

“When I liming in the rum shop, ain’t you think my wife go get lonely? Ain’t you think she go look for a man-friend to keep she company?” Puncheon shook his finger in Rajesh’s
face like a windshield wiper. “Uh-uh. No, sir. Marriage ain’t for me. If I find a next man with my woman, I go surely end up in jail. And, Raj”—Puncheon looked sombre—“jail ain’t have rum, so I go surely dead.” He deposited his chin back in his palm. “So you see, marriage go kill me.”

Rajesh grunted a laugh. “Rum go kill you first.”

“I rather dead from too much rum than none at all,” Puncheon said, his gaze trained on the rippling water again. And then: “Man, it look like all the crab hiding today. They must be see your ugly face and hole up in the mud, Raj.”

“Shut your ass and do fast. I ain’t have all day to lime by the river and catch crab. I have garden work to see about.”

Puncheon extended the net so that it hovered over the water, ready to dip it in at the first sight of a crab shell. “You have to hurry home to make sure nobody ain’t running Sangita down for a kiss!” He flashed a wicked smile.

Rajesh sucked his teeth, but a familiar uneasiness wormed its way into his brain.

“If you wasn’t so big like a bison, I would be waiting by she gates, too. Everybody need some Puncheon in they life—even Sangita Gopalsingh.”

Rajesh’s face was stony. “Puncheon, you is a real motherfu—”

“Relax, nuh, man. Is a joke,” Puncheon said. He plucked a blade of grass and tickled the bottom of Rajesh’s foot.

Rajesh delivered a swift kick to Puncheon’s hand, and Puncheon crowed with mischievous delight before turning back to his fishing.

Rajesh thought of Sangita. Was she lonely? It was true: he was away from her a lot, tending to his land, liming in the rum
shop or by the river, playing cards. He scratched the scruff at his neck, itchy with sweat. Would Sangita seek out a “man-friend”? For a moment, the doubt dithered and he almost laughed at the absurdity of heeding Puncheon’s reservations about marriage. Puncheon, who had collapsed everywhere in Chance, from the ditch by his house to a stranger’s plate of curried duck. Puncheon, who for a time was banned from all weddings after he arrived at one intoxicated, dressed like a pundit, and tried to officiate a ceremony. Puncheon, who stole clean shorts from his neighbours’ clothesline when his were dirty. This was not a man you took seriously, and yet, the more Rajesh scorned his outrageous ideas about marriage, the louder Puncheon’s words rang true in his heart.

Sangita Gopalsingh was a busy woman, but she was not lonely. His wife—a tentative smile softened his expression—was a businesswoman, after all, too busy to seek companionship outside their marriage. In fact, Rajesh thought, Sangita was always bustling about the neighbourhood, taking measurements for someone, sewing this dress and that blouse. When would she find the time? The smile faltered on his lips as he realized he was working hard to convince himself.

He had heard whispers about Sangita. She was too showy, too forward, too free. But those were the words of envious women. Women like Gloria Ramnath and Chandani Narine, who had no beauty to speak of and no skill beyond the kitchen to set them apart from the other women in the district. Their words were nothing but idle gossip steeped in insecurity, Rajesh told himself.

He shielded his face from the pelting sun, as if to hide his growing suspicions behind his forearms. “Punch, who you
think go be interested in Sangita?” He tried to sound casual, but Rajesh heard the insecurity in his own voice.

Puncheon abandoned his net and rolled onto his back, laughing and hugging his knees to his chest. He laughed until tears streamed down his face and fell into the parched grass. “Who?” He gazed, unbelieving, at Rajesh. “Me. Om. Lal. Pundit Anand. Krishna. Kapil. Bulldog. Dr. Mohan. Faizal Mohammed. Pudding.” He began to count on his toes. “The dreadlock vagrant. Headmaster—”

Rajesh growled. “I ain’t ask you to list all the damn men in the district, jackass.”

“Eh—you just now figure out you have a pretty wife and you calling
me
a jackass?”

Rajesh sat up and glared at Puncheon. His old friend just grinned back, drunken merriment dancing in his watery brown eyes.

Something rustled in the grass across the river. Rajesh saw a pair of orange ears twitch and heard a familiar purr. Flambeaux stalked into the open and sat on the other side of the riverbank, staring at Rajesh and Puncheon in his haughty way.

“Watch Flambeaux, Puncheon.”

“But how Sangita does let she cat run free all over the place?”

“Get home, Flambeaux,” Rajesh said.

Flambeaux squinted at Rajesh, flicked his tail and walked away.

Puncheon nudged Rajesh with the handle of his net. He had spotted the crimson shell of a crab through the shallow water. It glistened in the sunlight, a jewel free for the taking. “Eh, sweetie-sweetie,” Puncheon said as if cooing to an infant.
He inched closer to the riverbank. “Come to Punch, my dahling.” In one quick motion, Puncheon scooped the crab and a blob of sludge from the river bottom and flung the crab through the air. It landed a foot from where Rajesh sat.

Puncheon began to leap and whoop.

“Catch the damn thing before it run away,” Rajesh said.

Puncheon dropped the net in the grass and fell to his hands and knees. “Don’t talk to me as if I never catch crab, Raj. I catching crab by this riverbank since I was two years old.” He called to the crab as it scuttled away. “When I was two years old, I used to say to myself, ‘Self, why you don’t go and catch a crab for your mother?’ And so I did, with my bare hand and my eyes close.” Puncheon pounced on the crab, his bony bottom thrust in the air. “Got you, dahling!”

As he stood, the crab twisted in Puncheon’s hand and fastened its claw around his thumb.

“You blasted motherfucking crab!” Puncheon held his hand away from his body and shook, but the crab held on.

Rajesh watched, amused, as Puncheon danced around in the grass with the crab dangling from his thumb. He didn’t notice the blood at first, mistaking it, in the whir of Puncheon’s movements, for the crab itself. But when Rajesh saw red trickle down the length of Puncheon’s skinny arm and drip away at his elbow, he sighed and lumbered to his feet. Puncheon cussed and stomped while Rajesh pried the crab’s claw open and freed his thumb.

Rajesh tossed the crab. It went cartwheeling through the air, claws snapping in vain, until it landed with a splash in the pail of water sitting on the bank. “I thought you was catching crab by this riverbank since you was two years old?”
he said, sauntering away. He plunged his feet into the water, stirring up swirls of brown and green sediment.

Puncheon examined his bloody thumb and scowled. “Who catch the damn thing—you or me?” He dunked his hand in the river and then wrapped it in the shirt he’d discarded earlier. “Next time go be better.”