Here Comes the Sun(45)

“Turn around,” Georgio tells her as soon as she’s naked. He places his cigar inside a simple ashtray by the desk. She does as she’s told, bending over right there by the swivel chair. She imagines the last sliver of the sunlight casting them in gold—Margot bent over with her legs spread, and Georgio behind her. She closes her eyes and thinks of Verdene. The weeks she has let slip by without calling her. She has told Kensington to screen Verdene’s calls at the hotel.

“Who is she to you?”

“No one.”

“Suh why she calling yuh like every othah minute? It ah drive me crazy. Ah have t’ings to do, yuh nuh.”

“Just keep telling her I’m not here.”

A slight breeze embraces her, reminding her of her nakedness in this stranger’s room. Margot bites her lips and sucks in her breath as she awaits Georgio’s initial thrust. He’s taking a mighty long time. She hears him cussing at himself.

“Is something wrong?” she asks him, turning her head slightly. She catches a glimpse of the old man sitting slumped on the bed, looking like a boy who has lost his best friend.

“Sorry,” he says, not looking up at her.

“What you mean by ‘sorry’?” Margot asks. She knows exactly what he means. She watches with annoyance and pity as the man gestures to his soft front. Georgio is shaking his head and pouring himself a drink from an expensive-looking bottle he keeps on the nightstand. Margot resists the urge to ask him to pour her some. She remains standing. She doesn’t get dressed; and he doesn’t instruct her to do so. She stands there for what feels like a long time. Long enough for the sun to disappear completely and the moon to spread across the night sky. She gets down on all fours. The new moon floods Georgio’s room. Margot is down on both knees in front of him and takes the cigar out his mouth. She can make out the stricken look in his face when she does this. “Is there anything I can do?” she asks, taking his flaccid penis in her hand. She tugs it, gently at first. Then more vigorously. For what she knows—and has always known—is how to milk desire. Georgio stirs, tilting his pelvis as his penis hardens in her hand. Would there ever be a time, she wonders, when she will not have to do this? Only with Verdene did she begin to experience pleasure on her own terms, and not responsible solely for someone else’s. She tries to shut this out by focusing on Georgio’s grunts, but the thought is persistent, a nagging that has been long subdued like dark secrets she has held in her belly. It is here, while sitting in a moonlit puddle in the penthouse suite with her fist clenched around another man, that the gigantic organism she imagines her secrets to be uncoils and pushes from her navel. She doesn’t take her hand away from Georgio but feels, for the first time, the sadness she ought to. It floods the room and pulls her back into the night sea. She’s afraid she might drown. She remembers—too late—that Verdene had promised to teach her how to swim.





12


THANDI SITS IN MISS RUBY’S SHACK, FEELING THE COARSENESS OF Miss Ruby’s palms on her skin. “Yuh coming along fine.” Miss Ruby hums while she rubs Thandi. She is in a rare good mood. “In no time yuh g’wan be as white as snow white,” Miss Ruby promises.

“You mean light brown?”

“Same difference.” She touches Thandi’s face. “Trus’ me when I say this. Yuh g’wan see the doors open up so wide.” Thandi relaxes under the woman’s hands. This is exactly what she needs. More than promises of lightness in her skin is someone’s touch. Though it is far from gentle, it is just enough for Thandi. She lifts her arms above her head for Miss Ruby to get under her arms and sides. Thandi closes her eyes when Miss Ruby gets to her breasts. This circular motion reminds her of other touches. Whenever she pulls out the neatly folded towel from under her pillow at nights and rests her head on it, her fantasies turn to Charles. His light brown eyes pull her gently in a dare. Her restless fingers seek comfort inside her cotton underwear. Her own wetness surprises and shames her. Since the attack on her as a child, she hasn’t touched herself this way, not even to idly put her hand there while bathing. It became a separate entity from her body, an organ with its own blood supply, something mangled and left behind. But it’s not him who comes to mind anymore. Some nights, before Margot comes home and well after Delores and Grandma Merle fall asleep, she floats outside of her body to the ceiling. She curls up next to a pillow of guilt, afraid she has conjured the devil; but more afraid of the possibility of Delores’s eyes opening, the whites of them flashing. She hears Charles. Come, he says. And Thandi reaches toward him, her fingers growing and growing to close the distance between them.

Miss Ruby stops her rubbing and frowns. “Yuh all right?” she asks. Thandi hugs herself and crosses her legs. A wave of shame washes over her.

“Uhm. I’m fine,” Thandi utters in a small voice, avoiding Miss Ruby’s eyes. “Why?”

“Yuh jus’ made a noise.”

“It wasn’t me.”

Miss Ruby begins to wrap the plastic around Thandi’s chest. But she still has a look of concern when she pauses again to study Thandi. Just then something shatters outside, and she hears her name: “Thandi!” Miss Ruby stops what she’s doing, leaving the plastic dangling. Thandi leaps to the other side of the room to seek cover and Miss Ruby grabs a knife—one she once used to cut the heads off fish she sold—and opens the door of her shack. The door bangs on the zinc. She looks from left to right; then, up in the quivering branches of the mango tree, she sees Charles. “Hey, dutty, stinkin’ bwoy! Don’t mek me cut yuh backside t’day! If me eva catch yuh, me will kill yuh!” she screams.