Sundown she’s there, too. She comes around the car park and shares we spliff like this is she usual routine. People see she with we, and I don’t like it. Waitresses arriving for the dinner shift. Gardeners departing. Sometimes women shake their heads as they walk past us. Sometimes they do nothing, but still I know they disapprove. Let me take this even further for you: Women don’t even need bodies to tell us exactly what they think. They could be ghosts, all air, and still men would walk through this air and know just how vex they be with we.

Night, she’s waiting in the car park for we, in she little dresses with she little sweaters over she little shoulders for the chill. This girl can hold she liquor, and when Edwin compliments her on this, she says, “The value of a college education,” and rolls she eyes. When the dancing begins, I stand to the side and watch she motion. How does a body know and choose everything it does like that?

Sometimes in the afternoon I see she gallivanting down the beach after he. She flashes over the black rocks and gone. What they do there, just the two of they, I don’t know. He’s not fucking she yet. At least, I’m pretty sure, though this is the one thing my chatterbox friend doesn’t speak about much. Don’t get me wrong, he makes plenty of big talk about banging these rich-daddy girls. But when Don or Des bang a girl, they go into the particulars … this girl smell like fish down there, that one know how to work she teeth, another one has nipples wrinkled up like walnuts. Edwin stays on the surface, no matter how we pump he for details. Still, I gather he waits for the last night to fuck they. He likes pursuing them even more than he likes fucking them. Fucking is easy for he. Waiting’s what he loves, and making them wonder: Did their pretty little performance work?

Another thing: I think he waits because this way, if the girl regrets it, by the time the feeling sinks in, she’s on the plane to Chicago or in she pretty purple bedroom in Boston, and what’s she going to do then?

A few months ago, a girl almost made everything go bad. Julie. A California blondie, pretty pretty. Julie was quieter than the ones Edwin usually picks. A good girl. She barely touched her drinks at Paulette’s, and when we offered her the spliff in the car park, she said, “No, thank you,” like she was declining a fresh towel on the beach. I thought she was a lost cause, but then she spirited Edwin away one sundown to she room. With Julie, he didn’t wait; he went right along with she. When she bled, he knew it was a mistake. Virgin girls are not a thing to mess with. They think they know what they want, but how can they? And a virgin Yankee girl who decides this is how she wants to lose it? Holy shit.

After that, Julie started acting funny. Her daddy wasn’t stupid. He knew something was going on. One sunup when we arrived at work, he was waiting for we in the car park. He marched up to Edwin and grabbed his shirt and told us to stay the hell away from his daughter and threatened to get both our asses fired and to beat the shit out of we if he found out Edwin had laid so much as a hand on his little girl. First time I ever heard a guest threaten to beat the shit out of someone. We were lucky. Julie was so embarrassed she kept she trap shut about what happened. Ever since, Edwin waits. You never know when a girl will get vex. You never know what a vex girl will do, or say.

These girls have a danger to they. He likes that, too.

WHEN WE meet the girl in the car park after work today, she appears troubled. Restless. Maybe it’s the rain. It fell all day, constant. Her fingers keep moving like they’re not ruled by she. She drums she fingers on the hood of Edwin’s car. Then her fingertips circle she scar, around and around. Maybe something happened between she and Edwin. Maybe with this one, so pretty, he failed to wait. Shit.

Then she furrows she brow and says a thing I never expected.

“When I was swimming today I saw a woman on Faraway Cay.”

For a moment nobody says a word. I look at Edwin. I expect him to grin and brush her off, but his face is dead serious, even a bit afraid. I shiver.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he whispers.

“What?” she says. “Do you know her or something?”

“Woman you say you saw—she have long hair, black black?” Edwin asks.

The girl nods.

“White white skin?”

She nods again. “She was, like, staring at me.”

I’m thinking, it can’t be. But this girl freaks me out a bit. She fingertips never stop tracing she scar. A silly notion comes over me that this scar is the source of she power.

Edwin looks across she to me. “Tell her, Gogo.”

I tell her about the Faraway woman’s hooves for feet and her wildness. I tell her how she lures people to Faraway and leads them across the cay, how if you follow the woman to the waterfall and see the stars reflected in the water you will lose all sense of up and down, earth and sky, you and she, and they say that’s how she takes you.

“I saw her,” she says when I finish.

I shiver again.

Edwin snorts. He claps his hands, tosses back his head, and laughs.

“Check you two,” he says. “Girl, only thing you did see was a goat. Faraway’s overrun with they.”

I should have known he wasn’t being serious with his Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

“It wasn’t a goat,” the girl says. “It had black hair and white skin, just like you said.”

“Old nanny goat, probably.” He shrugs.

“Why you think Faraway is overrun with they in the first place?” I say. I turn to she. “Every time someone vanish on Faraway, a new goat appears. She turns they.”

Edwin cracks up. “Goges here’s the only one under sixty who believes that old-folk fuckery. Tell me something: What you ever see a goat do beside eating, shitting, and rutting? How do you think that cay became overrun with they?”

“How you explain the planes, then?” I say. I can’t tell anymore if I’m defending she from Edwin’s ridicule or fucking with she, too. Maybe it’s some of both.

“Oh, yes!” Edwin says, grinning. “Let it be known that there are not one, not two, but three downed planes on Faraway Cay.”

“And they form a triangle,” I say.

“Three things always form a triangle,” Edwin says.

He’s right. Shit.

The girl appears nervous.

“But the triangle’s not the point,” I say. “Guess what’s at their center? The waterfall. She lures they. How else you explain it?”

“Drug runners. In shit prop planes.”

The girl chews she lip and looks down at the ground. “Maybe I didn’t see it as clearly as I thought.” I’m pretty sure she only says this to please Edwin, though, because she gazes past the parking lot in the direction of the cay with this dreamy look, like something legit is happening to she. Like she thinks she’s special now because we local folkloric creature has taken an interest in she. I feel so annoyed then I wish I didn’t argue with Edwin on she behalf. Anyway, he’s probably right. Must be a goat she saw.

We change the subject. We smoke we spliff. We pass around a bottle from Edwin’s car—hot, unpleasant liquor. We’re ready to leave when the girl asks, “Why is it called Faraway Cay anyway, if it’s so close? Is that supposed to be, like, a joke or something?”

“No, miss,” Edwin says. “This is a deadly serious matter. This name protects us from the cay’s proximity.” He snorts. “Typical superstitious island shit, thinking if we call it so, it will be so, when that goat-infested cay is staring we right in the face. Better take care, now, girl. The Faraway woman has she eye on you.”

TODAY WHEN I arrive, Sara opens the door with a basket in her arms. “I thought I’d take him to Little Beach,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

She looks at me with softness in her face. “Come with us.”

We stop off at the food mart on Hopper Lane and I buy three Cadbury bars, one for each of we. We arrive at Little Beach at that magic hour just after sunset when everything is veiled in blue—the sky, the sea, the sand. The guests at Indigo Bay miss this hour. They take their photographs of the sunset and then they go inside and they miss it. Little Beach is quiet, but not empty. We choose a spot a bit away from the others. Sara takes a cloth from the basket and spreads it on the sand. I set out the Cadbury bars. Bryan pets the sand beside the cloth like it’s a living thing. Sara lies down, closes she eyes, and lets the remains of the day warm her.

In the distance, one fishing boat is still out, a small dinghy with a fishing pole planted at the bow. The boat is a black silhouette. The fishing pole appears to lance the clouds. At the water’s edge, a shirtless man in track pants sprints down the sand. A few strays follow after him, yapping and so happy. Boys scamper onto the pier, then dive into the sea. Not long ago this was me, and someday it will be Bryan. The lampposts on the pier are rickety and their white paint is nearly all flaked away. The lampposts have no lights and they never have and I’ve never known why, and I like this.

“Should we draw shapes, my Bry?” I say.

He doesn’t reply. A shy day. I hoist myself from the cloth and squat in the sand. I trace a balloon with a squiggly string. A bird. A sailboat. Bryan looks at the shapes with interest and also some wariness. “Do you know what that says?” I ask, pointing. He shakes his head. “B-R-Y-A-N. That’s you, Bryan.”

He murmurs something.

“What’s that?”

“A nana.”

“You want me to draw a banana?”