Here Comes the Sun(31)

“A Red Stripe for me. What do you want, Margot?” Alphonso asks, bringing her into the conversation.

“A promotion,” Margot replies, too loudly.

Alphonso stares at her with his penny-colored eyes. He then fans away the visibly perplexed young waiter. “That’ll be all for now. Just get the lady a glass of water.” The waiter bows and leaves the table. Alphonso leans in as though he wants to climb over the table and smack Margot across the face. “I said, your time will come.”

Margot laughs. “I’ve been hearing that for years now, Alphonso. I’ve seen other people get promoted. I’ve seen Dwight parade around the place like a jackass, pretending to be in charge. I’m tired of lying in bed with you feeding you ideas that you use without giving me credit. Or listening to you talk about how hard it is to run a hotel that your father still controls from the grave.”

The waiter comes back with Alphonso’s beer. He only takes Alphonso’s lunch order, since Margot has lost her appetite. She folds her arms across her chest, staring out at the deep blue waves in the farthest distance of the ocean. She should’ve known this would happen. She’s the one with the blinders on. Why would Alphonso give her the position to manage his hotel, and not someone else with connections? Isn’t that what this is about? How many connections you have? Your family name? The reality stirs inside her belly, bellowing like the hunger pangs she refuses to assuage. She excuses herself from the table just as the waiter comes back with Alphonso’s food. “I have to leave,” she says.

“Was there something you wanted to ask me?” Alphonso says.

“I forgot.” Margot gets up and pushes her chair under the table.

“Well, I want to see you tonight.”

“Alphonso, you know I—”

“Please. I promise you’ll like the deal I have in store for you.” He winks at her as he puts a forkful of fish into his mouth and chews. Margot stands there for a moment longer, staring at his mouth. Had they been more than they were, she would’ve made a public display of dabbing the oil residues from each side.



Margot needs a distraction. She wheels into the street, blind to moving cars and deaf to their horns. She walks in a zigzag pattern, turning the heads of passersby. If they look any closer they might see the knife rammed in her back, its blade deep inside her chest. She stops under a tree to catch her breath and hide from the sun. As air slowly fills her lungs, so does the sharp pain of the moment Alphonso snatched it. “I love you, Margot.” She had heard him right. So what happened? Who is this bitch he has given Margot’s job to?

Eight years ago Alphonso put himself in charge of his father’s hotel empire. When word got around that the son of Reginald Senior and heir to his hotel empire would be on the property, everyone scattered, fixing what didn’t need fixing, straightening uniforms and hair and papers on desks. The front desk clerks assumed postures. The concierges stood erect like police officers during a Jamaica House event, the housekeepers dusted places that were already glistening with shine. And the gardeners watered flowers and the manicured hedges that were already watered. Alphonso exited from a chauffeured vehicle and Paul, the concierge, gave a slight bow when Alphonso approached the door. “Good day, sah,” he said. But Alphonso didn’t respond.

Alphonso didn’t take off his dark shades inside the building. He stepped silently past the workers on the compound, who stood around holding on to things in their hands more for comfort than necessity—handkerchiefs, smooth stones for luck, papers soiled by sweaty palms. To them, he was God himself. Like his father—the one who granted them jobs that put food on their dinner tables. But to Alphonso, these people were mud crusted under his heels. At any point he could get rid of them, wipe them clean from the property.

He fascinated Margot. The hotel staff came to know him as the exact opposite of their beloved boss. He took over the hotel while Reginald Senior was still on his deathbed, fighting prostate cancer. This angered the employees. (“Him couldn’t even wait till him daddy get put dung inna di grave.”) It was feared that he would be the one to destroy everything his father and grandfather ever built. They were right. Alphonso immediately fired old staff without an ounce of remorse. He even fired the Jamaican chefs and hired foreign ones. (“Tourists want to eat their own food on the island. They don’t come to eat Jamaican food wid all dat spice.”) New boys were hired from other parts of the island, as far as Portland, to work in the kitchen under chefs that came from Europe.

When he saw her that first day, he lifted his shades, appraising her.

“And who are you?”

“Margot.”

“Margot,” Alphonso repeated. He put his hands inside his pockets as he played with her name on his tongue, rolling the r. She spotted a flash of the pink flesh, and a perfect set of white teeth closing together as he swallowed the t. “Marrrrgot.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “My pleasure.” His eyes held a reflection of her face. “You’re very pretty, Margot.” Margot looked away, hoping that he would drop his gaze. By twenty-two, Margot knew what that look meant. She knew how to smell lust rising from men’s pores, enveloping her like the thick musk of sweat from the heat. She smelled it the way women at the market knew how to smell the ripeness of fruits even if they were green on the outside. But a man like Alphonso was a different breed. A different smell. Unlike the men she had been with, including his father, Alphonso was young, green, only a couple years older than her. He reeked of youthful privilege—a privilege that made him unaccustomed to ambition, sacrifice, hunger, hustle. His palms were too soft, teeth too white, nails too polished. She could smell his mother’s milk on his breath. He wasn’t ripened in a way older men were ripened—creased and blemished with old habits that thicken their skin like leather, blunt their edge. This man’s skin was smooth. The girls in River Bank would have loved to catch the attention of a young man like that. Visions of light-skinned, pretty-haired babies would certainly dance in their imaginations. Add cubits to their height among other downtrodden women who could only choose from “ole neggars” who gave them nothing, except picky-head “pickneys” and swollen black eyes. Alphonso was a catch. The type Margot saw in movies with bow ties and tuxedos, plotting murders while seducing unaware damsels caught up by their charm. “Yuh should be grateful fah a man like dat to show interest in yuh,” Delores had said to her years ago when the stranger at the market brought her back to Delores’s stall. A man like that. That was what Alphonso was—a man like that.