Evening, I give Sara my tips plus the money from the sale. If she suspects where the extra money comes from some days, she never says so.

TODAY, WHEN we’re smoking in the car park after work, I see the girl coming up the path, swaying she hips before she even spots us. “What the ass?” I whisper to Edwin. He shrugs, as if her arrival is unexpected for he, though we both know it’s not so. When she asks what we’re doing here, Edwin takes a spliff out of he pocket, twirls it in he finger, and says, “Nothing much.”

She raises she eyebrows. “Mind if I do nothing much with you?”

This girl appears cunning.

WORD GETS out from the man in the dolphin swim trunks. A few newlyweds purchase from we. Some retirees also. We sell some pills to the girlfriend of the actor on holiday. She has a body like a porn star. “That man have it made,” Edwin says. “So old he balls must sag to his knees and still the women line up to be fucked.” The actor appears shy to me. He touches his girlfriend’s body, but he doesn’t appear to enjoy it. That’s some Yankee shit right there—rich, famous, porn-star girlfriend, and still he’s so low.

One day I arrive at Sara’s with fifty dollars, and do you know what she says?

“Look at you, high as a kite! How can I leave him with you now?”

“I’m not high as a kite, Sara.”

She places she hand on she hip. “You smoked before you showed up here. Do you deny it?”

“Don’t be like that. I’m out there breaking my back ten hours a day for you.”

“You think I’m not breaking my back all day, caring for this child?”

“Me and Edwin just smoked a bit. A man needs his breds.”

“What about me? When do I get to see my friends? As if I have any left, anyhow.”

Here’s some words of wisdom for you: Don’t ever try to out-talk a woman. They store the right language up so it’s ready to throw down when the time comes. Her face goes bitter, but then she changes it—she crinkles she eyes and gives me this injured look, like she’s a gentle woman without a nasty bone in she body and in the face of all the poor treatment I dole out she feels only this soft, pretty sadness. Such fuckery.

“All I ask is one hour’s reprieve from taking care of him, Clive,” she says. “One hour. So that I might bathe and, heaven forbid, lie down and put on a little perfume and listen to the radio.” She’s crying now. I can’t tell if it’s more pretty acting or if she’s crying for true.

I look past she. Through the window I see the dead yard, the clothesline, and the old cookhouse. We were together there, in the dark. She led and I followed. What was I thinking? Only one thing: Sara. It was Sara pulling me through the dark yard. It was Sara opening the door, and Sara unbuttoning me, fast and urgent like she would combust if she didn’t manage it soon, and it was Sara’s small, narrow hips I was pulling the yellow dress away from with my shaking hands. It was Sara pulling me against she, Sara I entered, Sara who I had loved for so long. I look at the woman before me, her eyes so tired it’s like she’s been watching this life since the beginning of time, and I wonder how we got here.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Clive,” she says. Then she closes the door.

NIGHT, EDWIN picks me up. When we get to Paulette’s, Don and Des are already there. Edwin buys two rums, one for each of we, though we know I’m going to drink both. Edwin hardly drinks, though I’m the only one who notices. He holds he glass, then when I finish mine, we switch. It’s been this way so long I don’t recall how it became so.

“Tonight’s spliff brought to you by the Yankee in the pink dolphin swim trunks,” Edwin says.

“You shitting we,” Don says.

“Antiman?” Des asks.

“Nah. Hot Chinese wifey.”

“Women in America must be desperate,” Des says.

“Man must be filthy rich,” Don says.

“Man be nice,” I say. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s true. He tipped nice, too.

Edwin grabs the spliff from me and takes a puff. “Nice,” he snorts, “is some real fuckery.”

THE NEXT day I arrive at Sara’s sober and on time. Bryan’s toddling on the floor. I sit beside he, make some silly faces. My boy gurgles when he laughs. His eyes are big and round like his daddy’s.

While I entertain he, Sara takes a bath. She comes out looking refreshed. She wears a scarf around her hair the color of grass on a cricket pitch. Sara has parts of she so small sometimes I wonder how God did manage it. She tiny toes, all lined up. She leans down and tousles Bryan’s ringlets. He gurgles. Her small small feet carry her to the kitchen. She takes the lids off the pots on the stove and ladles food onto a plate.

“Dinner, Mum,” she says.

Agatha stops she scratching in the parlor and trudges to the kitchen. She sits down at the table in such a way. I can’t explain how she does it, what it is she does with she eyes or she back or she jaw or she hips, but she manages to sit down at a table in a way that says that she—she! scratching lady in the parlor!—is too good for this, and that it takes all she has to abide she daughter, who falls so far below she expectations. Here’s the thing about women: If the world was only women, there wouldn’t be language at all. They don’t need it.

Sara pretends she doesn’t notice the way her mum sits. Her pretending pains me.

Agatha takes a single bite, then sets down she fork and says, “There’s grit in the callaloo.”

I lose it a bit then. I walk to the table and stand over she. I pick up the fork and hold it out to she.

“Eat,” I say.

Agatha looks at me with she black beady eyes of a hen.

“Sara does everything for you! She cooks and cleans and tends to Bryan while you sit around with your feet up like some grand woman you never was, scratching at your nasty head. Now, eat.” For a moment our eyes lock. Then Agatha takes the fork. She eats.

When I leave, Sara walks me to the door. “See you tomorrow, Clive,” she says. She smiles.

TONIGHT, WHEN Edwin turns left onto Mayfair instead of staying straight on to Paulette’s, I feel the evening congeal like old porridge.

“Edwin,” I say.

“One stop.” Like the stopping’s the problem.

“You promised.”

“Relax.”

When we pull into the car park the girl is there, waiting pretty against a palm tree. So many weeks the girl waits against this same tree. Women always know their best angles.

“How would you like to stick your cock in that?” Edwin whispers to me as she walks toward the car.

“Girl decked out for you.” I never know how to stay vex with he.

“Ten dollars say she decked out belowdeck, too.”

We laugh at this, at she, as she approaches. He loves to laugh at they.

“Look who decided to grace us with she presence,” he says.

This one is perfection when she rolls she eyes, and she knows it. She climbs in. This is happening, no stopping it. Though Edwin promised how many times this shit be finished, we’re driving to Paulette’s with somebody’s daughter in the backseat.

THIS WEEK’S girl keeps appearing. When we arrive at the beach in the morning she’s in the water, stroking. I’ve never seen a pretty little thing swim with such power. She stays in the sea a long time and never pauses to look at we.

“Oh, hey,” she says, back on land, like she’s surprised to see we. Who does she think she’s fooling? We know she’s performing for we. For he. The girls always do so. Sometimes they do it by sunning themselves in their tiny bikinis. Sometimes they do it by getting drunk and crazy at Paulette’s. There was a girl a few months ago, Callie, who climbed onto the bar and danced, and when she was up there you could see straight to her pum pum because she wasn’t wearing any panties. Edwin and me lost it. I think he still fucked she in the end, but he fucked she like it was the funniest thing in the world. Sometimes, if they’re shy, they even do it by pretending to ignore him, but the way their gaze keeps flicking back at him gives them away—their walk, their pretty dresses, even the way they read their book on the beach like it’s so interesting they can’t spare a moment to look up at he as he passes—it’s all for he.

Volleyball, she’s there, flashing she scar. Everybody watches she. Edwin, the Yankee boys. On the sideline, her sister spectates and does she tracing with she finger in the air. Poor little girl—such an odd child, and she sister so pretty.