Lisa Allen-Agostini - Trinidad Noir

He opened my door with a spliff in the palm of the hand offered to help me out. I took both, the question still lurking behind lowered lids — could anybody remain so attentive?

At a table under the big tree in the backyard, I waved at Martin, ordering a red rum and tamarind juice as we sat. We got lifted while endnotes of another delicious night in Ruthmin’s kitchen teased my nostrils, my stomach commiserating with Tanker’s wail of longing for Lena from the speakers. I allowed one hand to drift under the table, masking the action with my legs as I reached into his lap. The phone rang again.

Same caller, no message this time.

Across the table, the other eyebrow raised. “Somebody anxious, forget what night it is?”

“Sorry, babes.”

“We good.”

I felt bad anyway.

Shortly, sliding back into the passenger seat, I looked up at him and tried to smile. “Sorry, lovin’.” I found myself saying the word twice as often lately, meaning it about half the time.

#2 took me back home, Billie’s voice slicing deeper into my mind. I hesitated at the door, hunting for a reason to turn the key — not a fitting end to my night, especially since there’d probably be little appreciation for my cutting it short to grant this request — of course I’d cancel my plans and come home to “talk” since he thought it was important enough to call, knowing full well he shouldn’t have.

The latch plunked reluctantly back from the well and I pushed, then pushed again, annoyance rising. The door was still sticking — the last flood seemed to have swelled the wood and no amount of hot sun would shrink it.

“I’m here.”

He paced the big room, all but pawing and snorting. “I hear this one might be serious.”

“What?”

“I want it to done.”

“Want what to done?” For dragging me away from a previous engagement, the least he could do was make sense.

“Him. Stop seeing him.”

“I’m sorry...” Again. Maybe I meant it.

“No. I sorry. But I can’t help it. This one different and I just... not handling it. I not trying to cramp your style, babes, but just... not this one...”

“Hear what — I need a cup of tea. I coming.” I prepped my favorite mug with Lipton Yellow Label and two teaspoons of brown sugar, turned on the fire under the kettle, and returned to the big room, dropping into the couch and silently thanking it for being the most forgiving thing in my life these days. “So, why?”

“I don’t know, and I feel shitty asking you, but I not dealing, and I don’t want this to mash us up, so I asking you to let this one go.”

“You asking plenty, wanting me to throw away a relationship because of some vague, undefined... unease. You better come better than that. I don’t know if I can agree, on principle. I mean, if I give up this, then what? What else after that?”

“You know is not like that. Come on. You trying to tell me you can’t do this one thing for us? This small sacrifice to maintain something more important?”

“And what about me? Why I have to be the one to fucking sacrifice? Why you can’t just fucking deal?” I was defensive, happy equilibrium threatened.

Everyone in the equation fulfilled a function. I got everything I wanted. #1 got the live-in and accompanying perks without a permanent mosquito in his ear. #2 got as much as or more than he expected since he knew when he got involved that he wasn’t #1. And Kaya got the relationship with accompanying perks and protections, without the worry of some jealous man showing up at the club four out of five nights, making trouble and cutting into her customer time and tips. Each person effectively purposed.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to bring this up cause I know you’d get vex. I was hoping you’d get bored with him.”

“Sorry.” Again.

“No, I’m sorry.”

Conversation shifted into silence. I went back to the kitchen to make tea, confused. I’d never expected the #1 beneficiary to have a problem with the arrangement.

By the time I got back to the big room, in-hand liquid warmth spreading, the door was thudding closed, Post-it fluttering: end it tonight. never see him again. please.

I gulped my tea, grabbed keys, phone, and notebook, and left Diego with such haste that I nearly killed a pedestrian too stupid to realize the Cocorite walkover exists because the maxi-ride there tempts fate enough. 3 canal didn’t make it through “Watch Dem” the third time — we ent takin’ dey lies / propaganda tearing de place asunder / we want a new agenda — before I parked in Charford Court.

I gestured to Face’s shadowy outline by the stairwell that I’d be back soon and immediately cut across from Charlotte Street along Oxford onto Henry, blowing a kiss over my shoulder at Renegades’ panyard to make up for bypassing my usual melodious route. The job made me a regular in Port-of-Spain at night even if average citizens weren’t, and the panyard knew me too well for me to pass without stopping in.

Two-thirds of the way to the Promenade, “Watch Dem” still in my inner ear, I stepped up from Henry Street into the dark, narrow stairwell, each foot automatically falling into the next worn spot, bass thump reverberating Gregory Isaacs’s “Cool Down the Pace” through my pelvis, then cut through skanking pipers and rootsmen and women only to pull up short, sense of purpose deflated. If not here, I didn’t know where else to look for #1.

As I turned mindlessly, a skinny man in a Rasta-colors mesh vest, matching hat bulging, center-stitch Clarks, obligatory black bottle and spliff in one hand slid up and grabbed my elbow with the other. Flashing gold with every word: “Sistren, you hadda leave here now.”

“Excuse me?”

“You hadda ride.”

Confused, I allowed the pressure on my elbow to lead me back to the street that only seemed refreshing after the stifling dive I’d just been ushered out of.

“I know who you come for, but you hadda wait home.” Urgently hissing this instruction in my ear, he hustled me into a light blue pH car idling empty, off-route as if its driver didn’t need fares. “Fidel, take this lady for me, nah.” He rattled off what I belatedly recognized through mental earmuffs as my address, and the car peeled out before I could collect myself.

By the third red light run, I managed to squeeze out, “Drive, I’ll take it here.”

“But miss lady, Ras say take you Diego.”

“Thanks, Fidel, but I can’t make any promises about the length of your life if you don’t stop this damn car so I can get out right fucking now.” Fidel acquiesced. But as I memorized his face, suspicious and fearful eyes followed me out onto Green Corner, sticking, worried that I was leaving them ransomed.

A few blocks later, Face emerged from the stairwell as I reached my car. Unusual. We rarely spoke in public. He peered up at the fifth-floor railing behind which his daughter was trying to wriggle out of her mother’s arms. A shrill voice descended, fighting to cut through Port-of-Spain smog, the panyard’s loose, jangling harmony and the nearly tangible smell of the dumpster at the end of the yard.

“Face, go, nah. She don’t settle if she could still see you.”

He steupsed, short but eloquent. “Damn child have no right to be awake this hour, far less on the gallery. Aye, Star, plenty people mark your ride, eyeing up your plate number.”

“Anybody we know?”

“Don’t know yet. I go call, nah.”

“Safe.”

“Yeah, Star.”

I drove not homeward but back around the Savannah and up Lady Chancellor for the second time that night and pulled over at the lookout, ignoring the other two vehicles parked as far as possible from each other to further identical purposes. Sitting on the warm bonnet, gazing at town spreading westward into the inky Gulf of Paria, I mulled over the night’s events and reminded myself to call #2. He didn’t know yet he could live without me.