He did as she said; walked to the shower, allowed her to wash him down, cleanse him from head to toe as he continued sipping his Red Stripe. She kissed his chest, sucked his nipples, held his firm ass.
He had the nicest ass. Taut and round.
She made sure he was fresh and clean, old lovemaking washed away.
All DNA sent down the drain.
She dried her skin, put on the black linen pants she had in her bag, slip-on sandals, a dark T-shirt, did that while he pulled on his shorts and sandals and tugged his RUDE BOY T-shirt over his head.
She smiled at him, a little nervous, as she grabbed a hotel towel, stuffing it inside her bag.
She said, “Enough with the bed. I want to do it outside. I’ve never done it on a beach.”
Holding his hand, sneaking past the red phone booth, she paused and stared back at the front office of the hotel. It was dark, the office having closed long before midnight. The restaurant, Coconut Grove, that sat on the edge of the Caribbean was pitch-black as well. She didn’t see a light on in any of the hotel rooms. Most island businesses were closed now, all but a few employees at home with their lovers and families.
She looked out toward the quay for a moment, where she had Jet Skied and dropped everything she had used or stolen, then led her anxious lover up the footpath, sand getting inside her sandals, exfoliating her once-perfect pedicure. She held her lover’s hand tighter with each step, not talking, the cool breeze and sound of the ocean like music. It was as if they were the only people in the world.
She asked him what the people who lived here did for fun, not the tourists.
He told her there were a lot of political protests, some about the roads that had been built around the cricket stadium, a stadium that was built by the Chinese and not maintained, lots of marches, barbecues, parties, going to clubs, visiting friends, church, raffles, fund-raisers, going to the cinema in the evening.
She wasn’t listening.
She was tingling.
Thinking she had never been fucked like that.
She wanted to keep him. Have him for her selfish needs, no matter what it cost.
She kept to the edges where the water met the sand, where the water washed over her footprints, the edges so dark nothing could be seen, they couldn’t be seen. The couples’ resort was as dark and quiet as Antigua Village. They walked close to a mile to where that stretch of the beach ended, beyond another section where Jet Skis were rented, beyond another restaurant on the beach, walked to where it all ended at the base of a cliff. Holding hands, fingers tracing palms, she let him lead her deeper into the darkness.
She wondered what it was like to do it in the sea, waves smashing into her body.
The constant roar of the Caribbean waves stealing all sounds.
She smiled at her young lover. A slice of heaven for twenty U.S. dollars.
Felt like he had given her a year of therapy in a few hours. The E had helped. But the flip side of taking E, she hated that part. Suicide Tuesday. When the E began to wear off, the crashing, the depressed feeling, the sadness, being scared to death, feeling empty. On E, sex was so incredible.
Then the dehydration, how her body temperature soared, the way her brain felt fried.
Her young lover put his tongue on the palm of her hand, sucked her fingers.
He touched her, kissed her neck, again rising like wood, pushing against her as he pulled her linen pants down. She took the towel from her bag, put it on the sand. He eased her down on her back, spread her legs, his locks tickling her flesh as he kissed her knees, her legs, and sucked her toes.
In his dialect he told her he wanted to take her to a special place tomorrow, said he wanted her to rent a Jeep so he could drive her across the roads behind Falmouth Harbour, past a basketball field, Falmouth’s cricket fields, and beyond the horse stables, a journey that would take them up a rocky hill past homes that were isolated and situated on the edges of the bush, leave civilization behind and take to treacherous and natural roads steep and worn by rain, no road signs, just a rugged pathway going deep up into the mountains, the view of the sea and harbors magnificent from up there, before descending into country that looked like the land before time, a section of Antigua that was unspoiled, parts of it still occupied by wild boar, a difficult ride that would end thirty minutes later at Rendezvous Bay, a hidden treasure along the southern shore of the island, a place few had ever seen, sand so pure and undisturbed that each step in its softness would allow her feet to sink into the sand up to her ankles, to her shins in some spots. He licked her orgasm, told her Rendezvous Bay was a place people went to escape the world.
She moaned.
He told her it was a beach they could go to and be naked all day. He kissed her skin and said they could make love in the sun, have sex out in the open, beach towels and the sand becoming their mattress. He put his tongue against her flesh and she imagined her lover eating her out on the shores of Antigua with the Atlantic Ocean lapping at their feet. He put many more kisses on her skin, whispered that he would give her sex from morning until night, give her any kind of sex she wanted, make her come over and over, pleasure her through the night if she wanted to stay there, camp and sleep under the stars.
She asked, “How much would that little fantasy cost me?”
“One hundred.”
“Eastern Caribbean?”
“U.S. ’Round two seventy E.C.”
She hummed. “All day?”
“Whole day.”
“Are you serious?”
“Whole night if dat a wha’ u want.”
That made her tingle. Imagined her young, enthusiastic lover pleasing her. Sex from morning until night, coming over and over, receiving pleasure throughout the night, underneath the stars, camping and sleeping under the constellations, the roar of waves, maybe riding him and coming with the rising of the sun.
He went down on her like he owned her, licking her, making her moan, tears trying to rise again.
Her young lover was a damn good salesman.
He licked, told her he was free all week, licked, said he could show her around the island, licked, said he could take her out on peddle boats, licked her with a fast-moving tongue, then told her they could scuba dive, swim with stingrays, licked figure eights and said they could go into the rain forest and do a zip-line adventure. All she cared about was what he was doing at that moment, the way he used his mouth.
She moaned. “Love the way you are eating my pussy . . . damn, you are eating my pussy.”
It felt like he was making love to that part of her with his mouth, lips, and tongue, so meticulous, licking her as if he knew her, taking his time, not at all what she had expected from a boy so young.
Her hands held his strong hair; she sent her hips up into his tongue, a tongue that went deep. She gazed up at the sky. A million stars. Had never seen that many stars at once. Not while coming. Had an orgasm and imagined the same thing happening all day and night at Rendezvous Bay. Getting like she was Heather Graham in
Killing Me Softly.
Helen Hunt in
The Waterdance
. Halle Berry in
Monster’s Ball
.
She could get fucked repeatedly like Halle Berry in
Monster’s Ball.
Taboo and intense. Sunrise to sunset. Naked on an uninhabited beach.
All for one hundred dollars.
She whispered, “Take your clothes off. Let me get some protection.”
Her teeth chattered, her eyes fluttered.
As he undressed she reached inside her bag.
Lying back, eyes closed, a tree rising between his legs, her lover never saw the gun.
One soft pop and a small hole opened in the center of his head.
Death came quickly.
She hurried, pulled her linen pants back on. Sand stuck to her damp skin. She grabbed the hotel’s towel. Had to push his dead weight away. Rolled him over on his erection. Gathered the hotel towel. Picked up her bag. Stood in darkness. Listening. Heard nothing that caused alarm.
She whispered,
“The Graduate.”
The name of the movie with Mrs. Robinson had been
The Graduate
.
She walked back through the darkness, heart racing, but her pace as casual as it had been on the initial journey. She kept to where the water met the sand. Waves erased her footprints. Darkness concealed her. The only noise she heard was the same din that had masked the sound of her handgun being discharged, the sweet sound of Caribbean waters as they crashed into the shores.
She went over everything in her mind. He didn’t leave the beach with her. No one had seen him come to her room at the Siboney. In the shower she had washed all of her DNA away from his body.
Weed, lager, and ecstasy in his bloodstream. Bullet in his head. His wares missing.
She walked back to the Siboney, picked up the inexpensive briefcase her rented lover had left behind, wiped down all he had touched, then carried his merchandise to the property on the other side of the hotel, Buccaneer Cove. She listened again, looked around again. No one in the world but her. She threw the contents of the briefcase into the sea, wiped the briefcase down, dropped it in a trash container. She wiped down her backup gun and threw it as far into the darkness as she could.
It hit a roaring wave and went to the bottom of the sea, emerald waters sparkling in the moonlight.
Again she looked up at the stars. She folded her arms, held herself beneath the constellations.
London. The missed shot on the yacht. The unnecessary shoot-out on All Saints Road.
Now this mess. This couldn’t be justified. This wasn’t a contract. This had been murder.
But she didn’t want Matthew to find out she had cheated on him.
Just like she had done in Barbados.
She got ahold of herself, slipped back inside her rented room, wiped everything down twice, gathered her things, and left the room key on the dresser. Then she looked at the key again. It had the number twenty-nine attached to it. This was room 8. She had the keys mixed up. She found the right key and left it, took the key to room 29, and put it back in her pocket. She cursed, ran her hands over her hair. Again she’d almost fucked up. Almost. She crept downstairs, took to the dirt and gravel parking lot, and got on her black scooter, this tropical part of the world having very few streetlights, this part of the world so dark.
Down the road at a club called Rush there were a lot of cars, people still partying. But where she was there was no traffic. No headlights. Antigua Yacht Club, where she had another room, was a long way away. There was no GPS on the island and not many streets had their names posted, so she had to drive by landmark, hope she remembered how to get to the bottom of the island from where she was.
She shivered and sang, “To the left, to the left . . .”
She sang Beyoncé’s song as a reminder to keep to the left side of the road as she turned right and went away from Sandals, passing the Anchorage Inn, one of the three KFCs on the island, Percival’s Texaco, down Popeshead Street and through the red-light district, passed Wendy’s and Burgers 2 Go, then got lost when the street ended, saw a big church up to her left, but turned right, made her way through downtown, again at Heritage Quay, recognized the area, headed up St. Marys, found her way toward Independence Avenue. She knew she would have to fight darkness and narrow roads that had potholes, had to travel from town through areas that had herds of goats, livestock that might run into the streets without notice. And compete with cars that raced by her, others that came right at her at lightning speed, zooming like they wanted to run her off the road. She was driving through a pitch-black obstacle course, nervous and shaking as she maneuvered from the northeast to the southern portion of the island.
A pond was to her left, then she passed by Sir Vivian Richards Street, Acme Preschool, some place called City Motors, and a Latter-Day Saints church, became nervous, and pulled off to the side for a moment, had to because someone was riding her back tire.
Her cellular rang.
Again her husband was calling. His calling was relentless. She didn’t answer.
She let traffic go by, then pulled back onto the narrow road, nervous because of the drugs in her body, nervous because the sides of the roads were uneven and open; the drainage area to the left was like a small ditch, but to her the opening looked cavernous.
She pulled out, zoomed into the wrong lane, the American lane.
She screamed at herself,
“To the left . . . to the left . . .”
Heart thumping in her chest, she swerved back into the left lane as headlights zoomed at her.
She had to keep away from the edges so her back end didn’t drop off the road and have her sucked into a concrete ditch, had to swerve to the right into the bright lights of oncoming traffic because of stopped cars, people who had pulled over to chat, no turn signal being used to warn they were about to park and obstruct traffic, then she had to swerve back into the left lane, shivered and tensed and did the same zigzag dance all the drivers before her had done. A stream of headlights tried to blind her, remarkable traffic as she came up on Antigua Plumbing and Hardware, then she curved to the right back toward All Saints Road, people practically walking in the middle of the streets, forcing traffic to move into the other lanes, passed a rum shop with a Heineken front, came up to Texaco, a familiar landmark.
“To the left . . . to the left . . .”
She made it to All Saints Road, took that snaking road through sleeping village after sleeping village, her speed down so she didn’t get thrown by a speed bump, finally came up on Our Lady of Perpetual Help, steered to the left, headed toward Liberta, passed a tranquil police station. Cold air made her shiver. She focused on making her way downhill, the darkness and the ride terrifying. More cars zoomed around her, her eyes straight ahead, focused on getting back into Falmouth. She sped by Rhodes Lane, the spot where she had left a man dead in front of T’s Ice Cream Parlour. Where she had almost been killed because of her mistakes. On top of her fear, from St. John’s to Clarks Hill to Buckleys to Swetes, she had smelled the scent from her young lover rising from her flesh. From Liberta to Falmouth to Cobbs Cross to Falmouth Harbour she felt her young lover between her legs, opening her up, moving her around the bed, going deep, fucking her like he had fifty years of sexual experience.