Here Comes the Sun(41)

“And I’ll screw them all?” Margot is surprised by the sarcasm in her voice. Alphonso is serious.

“You will recruit and train girls you see fit for the business. You’ll be the boss lady in charge.”

She almost says no. What if Verdene finally takes her up on her offer to build a new life together? What would she say if she found out what Margot did when they were apart? But the money. “I’ll do it,” is what she says. Alphonso reaches for her and brings her ear close to his lips. “Now let’s f*ck.” That night Margot f*cks Alphonso with renewed drive. She marvels at the way he throws his head back, exposing his jugular vein, vulnerable and pulsating. He grits his teeth, clutches the sheet, and swallows hard—his Adam’s apple slides up and down his neck like a ping-pong ball. For only then, while looking down on him from the height where she sits, rocking like a queen being carried on a bamboo raft across a river, can she feel her power over him. And she’s sure he feels it too.



Maxi pulls into the driveway, his old white Toyota taxi shabby amid the manicured hedges and high, sturdy gates flanked by bushes of bougainvillea and red hibiscus. She told him earlier to pick her up by midnight. “Yuh went to a party up here?” Maxi asks as soon as Margot gets inside his car, smelling of cigars and whiskey. She ignores Maxi’s eyes clocking the thigh-high slit in her dress and her exposed cleavage. She winds the window down on her side. “Jus’ drive,” she tells him.

Maxi drives them to River Bank, the sound of the breeze comforting Margot. Maxi must sense her need for silence, because he says nothing. She knows well how he feels about her breaking her back for foreign money, what it takes from her.

“Remembah when yuh asked me what my dream is?” she asks.

He nods, his eyes on the road as though he’s trying not to look at her.

“I gave it more thought,” she says, toying with her seat belt.

“Yuh did?” he asks with one eyebrow arched.

“I want to own my own hotel. Bettah yet, ah want to be in charge of tourism. And it g’wan happen sooner than ah think.” The words seem to fill out her cheeks, and she surprises herself with a light chuckle. She hopes he can’t see the uncertainty in her eyes. The guilt.

Maxi laughs. His laughter is like a faint cough.





11


MARGOT WANTS MORE. THERE’S NOTHING SATISFYING ABOUT leading cattle—a herd of fifteen girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. Even as she watches them graze, she’s still hungry. She takes the girls under her wing, feeds them, dresses them, teaches them how to carry themselves among moneyed men. Men who have invested a lot of money in the hotel business. Men who come to the country for the sex and weed; and the sex, like the weed, has to be “high-grade.” Which is why Margot spent four weeks scouting the girls. Some came highly recommended. Others she had to go out and find. She patrolled the Hip Strip at nights, skirted her way inside the dark, dingy hallways of brothels. Observed how the girls carried themselves, how they hustled. She followed the ones who struck her fancy—ones with sharp tongues and sharper minds, not afraid to tell the men they’re short a dollar or two, pretty ones capable of fulfilling fantasies, the darker the better. She eavesdropped on their conversations, even in bathrooms at local clubs, their laughter penetrating Margot’s stall like the baby-scented talcum powder they reapplied to their necks and cleavages. She knows who has been on the streets for years as well as who just started two days ago, who has a man and who shares one. Who has the John who can’t get it up and who has had to fight one off. The one who sells herself for the love of her children as well as for the love of sex. The girls’ conversations were unfiltered in these stalls, their confessionals.

When Margot approached the ones she wanted—the ones she knew the men would want—they gave her queer looks. She handed them cards with her number. “I want you to work for me.”

And they would inch away a little, folding arms across bare chests as though just realizing that they were scantily dressed. “Me nuh inna di sodomite t’ing.” Margot then assured them that her only interest in them was what they could do for her new business.

They called. Their voices quavered with uncertainty, unsure about the strange woman who had cornered them in the restroom. Margot brought them to Alphonso’s villa for an orientation. They wore regular clothes since it was daytime, and Margot was able to see their faces without makeup, how they lit up like little girls when they admired portraits of the cream-at-the-top-of-Horlicks faces of the Wellington dynasty. Alphonso made sure Margot had the villa to herself that weekend, sending home the housekeeper. Margot was grateful for this, since the woman was too nosy anyway. She handed the girls contracts she drafted.

“Dis is a contract of secrecy.”

“Secrecy?”

“Yes. Dis is not something yuh tell yuh friends. Under dis contract yuh must not, and I repeat, must not let anyone know about dis. Not even yuh mother. If you know a girl that might be eligible, mek me screen her first before yuh invite her.”

“How much yuh g’wan pay us?”

“I will get to dat in a moment.”

“More than we already getting by we-self, ah hope.”

“Mek me finish, please.”

“Me cyan sekkle fi chump change, boss lady. Me too hungry. Ah have meself an’ me pickney fi feed.”