Bliss (30 page)

"You know, Sinclair," she said. "I love this place. I really
do. But when things like this happen ..." her voice roughened and she stopped. Sinclair slipped her arms around the
dark woman and held her close. She quietly shook, her body
vibrating like a plucked string in Sinclair's embrace.

"The island is beautiful," Sinclair said. "But it's also poor.
A lot of desperate people live here, and desperate people do
desperate and awful things. You have to love Jamaica still,
with all her faults. You just have to."

"I do. But it hurts." Her voice broke. "Sometimes it hurts
too damn much."

"I know. I'm sorry." Sinclair rocked her trembling body,
feeling tears begin to run down her face. "I'm sorry. I know."

They slept. Their emotional exhaustion laid them out on
the bed and pulled their eyes closed to the bright sun just outside the large windows. At some point Hunter woke, undressed Sinclair, then fell back asleep. The sun was gone
when Sinclair opened her eyes again.

The dark woman lay propped up on one elbow, watching
her. "Hey."

"Hey, yourself." Sinclair yawned and carefully stretched
her bruised body. "How are you feeling?"

"Better."

"Good. I was getting worried for a minute there."

"So was I."

Sinclair touched Hunter's face, traced its smooth lines,
even the bandaged cheek, before moving to the slash of a
nose and the curved mouth. Her lover closed her eyes.

"You are an amazing person," Sinclair said. "And I am
glad to know you, to be close to you."

Hunter kissed her wandering fingers before pulling them
away from her face. "I should be saying those words to you."
She sighed again. "I've been here for two years, and in that
time I've heard of so many horrors, so much brutality hap pening on the island. A time or two I even encountered some
of that craziness myself, and I was terrified. But none of that
came close to what I felt today when those men came after
us." Her fingers stirred around Sinclair's. "Thank you for
being there with me. Thank you for being here with me
now.

"Where else would I be?" They both looked surprised at
the words that came out of Sinclair's mouth. Yet neither
woman rushed to put them away. That evening Sinclair
called her father to let him know that she wouldn't be home
until tomorrow. After an unguarded heartbeat of silence, he
told her to be careful and wished her a good night.

When morning came Sinclair was the one who woke first.
She left her sleeping lover, who looked vulnerable and unexpectedly sweet with her face tucked into the pillow, to make
an attempt at breakfast. The kitchen was meticulous and intimidating but she managed to make decent scrambled eggs
with cheese and toast. She brought the food to the bedroom
where Hunter was still peacefully sleeping, and put the tray
on the bedside table.

Sinclair woke her with kisses, lingering over the warm skin
of her face before trailing down to her neck, the skin between
her breasts, then her stomach. Hunter stirred beneath the soft
touches but did not open her eyes. Sinclair paused at the
juncture of her thighs when a familiar scent reached her nose.

She laughed. "Open your eyes, you faker."

Instead Hunter with her eyes still closed, widened her
thighs and gently nudged Sinclair's head down. "I thought
you were going to continue this to its logical conclusion."

Sinclair batted her hand away and moved back up the bed.
"I was trying to wake you up with breakfast not an invitation to sex."

"Hmm, but you can do both." She opened her eyes.
"That's the beauty of a woman like you."

Sinclair lightly pinched her arm. "Wretch."

Hunter flinched away then groaned as she sat up. "Careful
of my battle wounds, temptress."

"Oh, shit. Sorry about that." Sinclair sat back against the
headboard. "I forgot."

"If only I could forget, too, and pretend that none of this
ever happened."

"At least we left them alive and you don't have to live with
the regret of killing them."

Hunter growled. "I wouldn't have called that regret."

Sinclair's troubled gaze flickered over the other woman
then away. "Have some breakfast. I don't cook very often so
it's a rare treat. Eat up."

"Don't try to change my mood, woman."

"I'm not trying to change your mood." Sinclair retrieved
the tray and sat it between them on the bed. "Have some
breakfast, dammit."

"Some merciful angel you are," Hunter said, reaching for
the food. "This is good," she murmured after a few mouthfuls.

"Glad you like it."

Sinclair stole a piece of toast and watched as Hunter devoured the meal, sitting cross-legged on top of the white covers. She was gorgeous in her nakedness; even the sadness in
her eyes and the pale bandage on her cheek added to her
beauty.

"I think you should rest," Sinclair said. "Take it easy until
tomorrow when you feel a little better."

Hunter shook her head. "I doubt that I'll feel any better
tomorrow, so I might as well try to make a dent in the work
piling up on my desktop today."

Which meant that she wanted Sinclair gone. "That makes
sense, I suppose. But don't overdo it." She stood up and went
back into the kitchen on the pretense of getting more orange
juice. Her face stung with the slap of rejection. At least now
she knew the quicker way to catch the bus back to her father's
house. Sinclair brought Hunter back another glass of orange juice and stayed only long enough to change the dark woman's
bandage and wipe her wounds down again with witch hazel.

"I'll talk with you later on," she said from the doorway of
the bedroom. "I'll let myself out."

All the way back to her father's house, she was angry at
Hunter for letting her go without a word of protest. Then she
chided herself for being passive-aggressive and too weak to
tell Hunter what she wanted from her. Which was ... what
exactly?

At home that night she let Nikki know what happened,
told her about Hunter's reaction and her own sudden possessiveness.

Nikki sat close to Sinclair on the sofa. "You said all that
happened with Hunter and what she was feeling, but what
about you?" Her voice was low. "Do you feel the same way
she does?"

Sinclair shook her head. "I don't know." She had been so
caught up in taking care of Hunter, in trying to give her lover
what she needed that her own fear had been erased from the
equation. She shivered, remembering the intent on those men's
faces, the jutting penis and feral look of the one who had
raised his hand to her and forced her to break the camera.

"I left my camera in Hunter's jeep," she said inanely.

"You can get it from her tomorrow." Nikki touched her
hand. "It's OK to be afraid, you know."

Sinclair shook her head. "I know. And I was. I was so
afraid for her, so afraid of not being able to see you or Papa
again." She took a cleansing breath. "I'm just glad we got
out of there alive and without getting raped."

"So am I." Nikki squeezed her hand and they sat, silently,
in the dark.

"Do you think she'll want to see me tomorrow?"

"She'd be stupid not to."

When Sinclair walked up to Hunter's house the next
morning, she heard laughter. She hesitated a moment before knocking. Hunter came to the door looking relaxed and
calm, much better than the day before, in her loose drawstring pants and a white T-shirt. The bandage on her cheek
was fresh.

"Hey, come in." She kissed Sinclair briefly on the mouth.
"This is a day for visitors. Della is here with me in the backyard."

"Oh, that's the sound that I heard."

"We must have been pretty loud for you to hear us at the
gate."

You said it, not me.

"Hello, Sinclair," Della greeted her as she stepped out into
the backyard. "Would you like something to drink?" She gestured to the folding table set up with a pitcher of something
red swimming with ice cubes and, next to it, a tall carafe of
water.

"No, I'm all right. Thank you, though."

"Have a seat, Sin." Hunter pointed her to the stone bench
where she must have been sitting beside Della. She sank into
the grass at the older woman's feet.

"Hunter was just telling me about what happened in the
hills," Della said.

Sinclair sat down. "It was pretty awful."

"I tell you this country is going to hell in a handbasket and
it's us Jamaicans who're taking it there."

"We're not all to blame, Della." Hunter squinted up at her
ex-lover in the sun.

Sinclair took her sunglasses out of her bag and passed
them to Hunter. Without pausing her conversation the dark
woman smiled her thanks and slipped them on. "There are
bad elements everywhere, back in Manchester and London
and certainly in the U.S. I'm trying not to be bitter about this
whole experience."

"You're a sweet, naive thing." Della said, brushing her
hand through Hunter's hair. "That's why the rest of us have
to look out for you. Isn't that right, Sinclair?"

"I'll do what I can, although so far she's done an excellent
job of taking care of herself."

"A mere illusion." She poured a glass of water and gave it
to Hunter. "Drink up before you fall over in the heat."

"I'm not a delicate flower, Della." Hunter took the water
anyway and drank deeply before passing it back. With a low
sigh, she lay back in the grass and crossed her ankles. "See
what I've been putting up with all morning?" She directed a
look of long suffering at Sinclair. "Della is convinced that I'm
going to fall apart any minute now just because those boys
roughed us up."

Despite Hunter's bravado, Sinclair noticed that the incident in the garden had left a faint shadow in her eyes, a
shadow that she knew would linger for some time. Although
the boys hadn't touched Hunter, at least not in a sexual way,
she still felt violated.

Della rolled her eyes. "When she called this morning to tell
me what happened, I couldn't just stay at the shop languishing in the air-conditioning while she was here probably suffering from post-traumatic stress or some such. I left my niece
to watch the shop before I came down."

"I didn't know that you had a shop," Sinclair said, turning
an interested look on the older woman so Della would give
Hunter a little breathing room.

"I sell my pottery and sculpture out of the back of my
house. A lot of the rich white tourists buy them so I can keep
myself in women and food."

"She is minimizing what she does," Hunter said. "Della is
actually quite successful around the island. She even has
made a name for herself here. People keep wanting to whisk
her off to New York or London to do a show and sell even
more than she does here, but she's not interested."

"How wonderful," Sinclair leaned slightly toward Della.
"Maybe one day I can see your workshop?"

"Come up anytime. If I'm not there then my niece, Sofia,
should be."

"Great. I'll drop by sometime this week."

Della nodded and handed Hunter another glass, this time
it was filled with whatever juice was in the pitcher. The dark
woman shook her head and pointed to the water.

Watching them it would be easy to think that they were
still lovers. That lingering stare of Della's and the solicitude
she showed to Hunter in nauseating abundance said that she
still cared deeply for the dark woman. Her attentions sent
little prickles of annoyance racing along Sinclair's nerves. She
didn't deceive herself by pretending that she wasn't jealous.
Meanwhile Hunter acted ... like herself. Sinclair smiled then
stood up.

"I'm going to head out and leave you two to chat," she
said. "I just stopped by to make sure that you were all right."
She knelt down to kiss the dark woman in farewell. Hunter
sat up and grabbed her arm.

"What's going on with these sudden exits? Have I become
that unbearable so soon?"

"Don't be ridiculous. You have company and I know you
two want to catch up."

"Della is not company. We can `catch up' with you here."
She pulled Sinclair closer until she was almost in her lap.
"Stay." Their lips were inches apart. Hunter shoved the sunglasses to the top of her head to reveal her pain-flecked eyes.
"Please."

"OK. I'll stay." Sinclair stood up and reclaimed her seat on
the bench.

"Well, this is interesting." Della said, looking at the two
women. "How long has this been going on and why didn't I
know about it?"

Sinclair looked down with too-warm cheeks. The dark
woman shaded her eyes again and lay back down in the
grass. "A few days."

"But you're leaving. Right?"

Did Della want to make sure of that fact? "Yes, I am. But
I'm going to stay for a few more weeks than I had initially planned." The decision made itself the moment those words
left her mouth. She'd wanted to prolong her time with her
family and her new lover. Since she hadn't taken a vacation in
three years, it should be more than possible. She just had to
call Shelly and have her make sure.

"Are you now?" Della looked down at Hunter. "That dangerous charm of yours strikes again."

The dark glasses shielded Hunter's eyes from view, but her
mouth was smiling. "As long as the charm works on the ones
I want then I'm not complaining. Are you, Sin?"

Sinclair grinned. "Not at all."

Della left them an hour later, to get back to the shop, she
said. Hunter walked her out while Sinclair lingered in the
backyard, taking sips from Hunter's abandoned cup of water
and replaying the afternoon's conversations in her mind. She
stretched out on the bench and put her feet up. Della didn't
seem at all jealous that she and Hunter were together. Rather
toward the end of her visit she had smiled oddly at Sinclair
and said something about wishing that Sinclair could stay because Hunter needed some stability in her life. Stability? The
older woman might as well have called her boring.