Bliss (18 page)

Finally trapped on a packed Nassau avenue. Dart jerked and moved. Perspiration puddled at the roots of his mustache. Eyes under crunched brows, he hunted a clear route. A pod of cruise ships idled nearby, snow-white and belittled with garlands. Two horse-drawn carriages idled just in front of the car. At Dart’s jab, he and Eva hopped from the sleek old taxi. Eva thrust two twenties at the polka-dotted driver. Dart was halfway down the block. No price had been discussed, but the Pearl lady, unmoved, slid the bills into a pouch attached to the dash. She’d carried a thousand couples—glowingly furtive in their own minds—on a Sunday to sweltering downtown Nassau and points beyond.

Eva caught up to Dart, and they trotted down Bay Street with its cabarets of crystal statuettes and diamond rings, timepieces and chokers.
From the tide of church traffic and tourist traffic and trolleys and small buses and cars of kids with trunk speakers bumping DMX and Puffy and old Buju Banton, the Queen’s Staircase rose, a limestone flight to a colonialist’s idea of heaven. Sixty-five steps, Eva counted, and each representing a year of Victoria’s reign, she overheard a winded old man say.

“Enough slacking,” Dart snapped, and they rushed down the queen’s stairs, in the direction of the cruise ships, hand in hand, hustling, Dart seemingly in the know about transportation and destination, Eva glad for the wild guidance, for something to move toward other than Sunny and work. Eva was thinking about her last period and how normal it had or hadn’t been, and that she might be nine or ten weeks along, which left no time, really, for decision making, left her thinking that if she was going to go with it for the whole forty weeks, and so go with it for the rest of her life, she needed to get her ass to some prenatal care, get herself someplace where a professional would recite rules to which Eva’d never graduated, rules about what to eat and not eat, what vitamins to take, what books might prove helpful, and what-all alcohol she needed to leave alone. Eva thought of Malinda, and her radio, what had been “recommended,” and that the static-filled song on her radio had gone
You make me feel like an itty-bitty girl, what you do to me
.

At the dock, Dart frantically negotiated with Mr.
Sounder
. The boat belonged to him, and he smiled and took Eva’s money like it was a formality he wished he could overlook. To Eva, though, especially as she watched him move boat-type things around, the pudgy, strong little vessel belonged to Édouard.

Dart walked toward Eva, grabbing at the rail like a toddler. They were out to sea, with only low contours of islands in the distance.

“These guys aren’t helpful,” he said. Dart’s eyes were dark and hyperalert. “I’m asking about finding an Obeahman or an Obeah-woman, and they look at me like I’m being nosy. Or like I’m dumb.”

Or like
, Eva thought,
you’re being an asshole
. “Why not just get there, see what happens. Island’s only so big, right?” Eva kept her eyes on vast blueness.

“Only twenty-five hundred people on the whole thing.” He hurled the fact out like it was an insult.

“Well then.”

“I can find what I need,” Dark said, his words burned at the edges. “But I want a hint.”

That Dart thought he could glean from people he’d never met information about a religion that by its nature was uncommon and based in secrecy and a belief system of which he clearly had only the most rudimentary and desperately found knowledge was beyond Eva.
Who does he think he is?
There was innocence and arrogance in Dart’s desire for help, in his blustery nosing about. Arrogance was to be expected—from Dart because he tended to fall back on his bellowing status as Sunny’s moneyed Lewis and Clark, from Dart because even as he denied it, he reveled in being an ambassador from the enchanting land of hip hop and neo-soul. It had been only three years since Sun came up, but it had been three years of the kind of favor and fawning and abundance and truly high stakes that change people forever—even after a month. The DNA evidence of Dart’s arrogance—
Or maybe
, Eva thought,
his mania
—was his idea of himself unaffected. Dart’s sister was a “diva,” a superstar. She was One to Watch, the Penthouse Suite, cover material, a Very Special Guest. The hottest of the hot were honored by her appearance. No doubt Dart had come by his arrogance honestly. Fine. But innocence? Who wanted to deal with, or even see any kind of, innocence in a grown man?

This must be the craziness
.

Light spray kissed up from the ocean, a gift.

She wondered if she could tell Dart she was pregnant.

He’ll tell me to have it. He’ll tell me that this is the new millennium, and that for all we know the baby I carry will save the world
.

“Eva,” Dart said, flailing around and grabbing for the rail again. “You know I don’t take money from Sun.”

“You take it off the books,” Eva said absently. She was watching sapphire sheets fall back away from the boat.
What kind of Midnight-Train-to-Georgia journey am I on? Going to a “simpler place” And I don’t even have the Pips urging me on. “I’ll be with him,” wails Gladys, and
the Pips pipe in “I know you will,” as if there’s
no
question that she’s doing the right thing. Like, of course she’ll go, even after the guy’s “pawned all his hopes” The Pips don’t
encourage
Gladys. They
chastise
her. To the Pips, Gladys’s allegiance is a given. The song was originally called “Midnight Train to Houston,” anyway. Which means the place doesn’t even matter
.

“Just money to live on,” Dart was saying. He spoke quickly and with white spit on his lips. His words were far behind his thoughts, and he was frustrated. “Just a per diem.”

She faced him. “A per diem for every day of your life for the last almost three years is money.”
Why are we having this conversation?

“Only money for food, basically. And incidentals.”

“So rent is an incidental,” Eva said slowly. She had no patience for Dart’s words running together. “CDs are incidental, a three-hundred-dollar disc player is incidental.”

“When we’re ‘home,’ which is never, I usually stay with Sunny,” Dart said. He stood, but then almost fell. He half-stumbled back onto the bench, but farther away from Eva. “I take money for clothes—clothes good for the weather wherever we’re going. I used to take money to pay for … the doctor, and meds.”

“Okay, so.” Eva faced the water again, faced from where they’d come.

“So if we’re rolling on what I’ve got, we’ll drive around until we find a family that takes in guests.”

“Like a B and B.”
Whatever. Relax
.

“A family that lets an extra room. I talked to the skipper about it.”

“And we don’t know them, the people with the room.”

“Wouldn’t know the owners of a proper B and B, either.”

“True.” She didn’t look his way. She wanted him to stop talking.
I’m here, right? Where you wanted me to be
.

“Cool,” he said, and then bitterness slid out. “Cause;‘ I know how you like to live.”

How I live?
Eva was pissed with Dart for exasperating her.
Fucking up my little gaze-at-the-water tranquillity
. She called herself shallow, then reneged.
It’s sick. My sense of entitlement—to not have babies
already created. I can rationalize. Say, life is complicated. Maybe it is. Maybe I’m hard on myself. But I don’t think so. I’ve become vain. And too dreamy. It’s unbecoming, unwise, and unproductive. Dreaminess is for teenagers. And I don’t remember being dreamy then. Sitting here, staring at the water. Ridiculous. The fuck am I doing right now with all this introspection but doodling my name on a goddamned napkin
.

She turned to Dart. “Everywhere I go,” Eva said, a TV lawyer stating facts already in evidence, “you’re right down the hall. Every restaurant I eat in, you’re at the next table. The clothes you—”

“I just said, Sunny buys clothes for—”

“My point, exactly.”

“I work for the things I—”

“We all work, Dart.”
He can be
, she thought,
such an idiot
.

“I DON’T WANT MONEY,” he said at full volume. She hated when he roared. It was an unfair advantage, the strength of his box. Édouard looked over, but stayed where he was.

Eva chose to keep her own voice to just above the rumble of the motor. “Sun should stand on a sand dune and sing for free.”

“She SHOULD! She was HAPPIER then!” He gestured widely. It would be easy for him to fall into the ocean.

“That happiness came from being twenty.”
Fool! “From
not knowing anything. Not from being broke. Your sister was always trying to make money, get known.”

“It was better before Roadshow. She sang for herself. Out of love.” His sentences seemed popped from a slingshot. His eyes were ahead of his words. He could not catch up with himself.

Eva found herself not only unafraid, but unmoved. “And now?”

“She’s a monkey,” he said in a voice so low and rumbling it could’ve been a part of the engine. “And you grind the organ.”

“Yet,” Eva sang, like it was a most appropriate carol, “we’re your favorite girls in the world.”

Eva didn’t want Dart to be mad at her or himself, didn’t want him to get all worked up. She didn’t want to bring him over to her side, or make him see himself for the hypocrite she believed him to be. Their tiff turned her thoughts to what she was going to do about Sun. Eva
wanted to glean some information from Dart about that. Wanted Sebastian to make whatever moves he was going to make, without her there for him to use as a clue. Eva wanted Sunny to feel her absence. And even if Ron and Seb were planning something with Sun, and Sun’s loyalty to Eva waned, Sun would take her brother into consideration. Eva might be an organ-grinder, but to Dart she was the lesser of at least half a dozen evils. Eva was certain Sun wouldn’t push her brother over whatever edge he was standing on.

Dart moved away from her when she reached into his backpack and pulled out his Discman and headphones. She clamped them on her ears and was lambasted by early Ice-T., some N.W.A, Nice & Smooth, Granddaddy I.U, MC Breed, and Too Short. It was a call to her steeliness—the bass and the bragging. Eva liked being tested by hardest hip hop artists, the most profane and woman-hating. They couldn’t hurt her. They could shout all they wanted. For a few moments, she was strong enough to think about talking to her baby’s father about the committments she didn’t want, the input she neither required nor desired, and the many ways she was not about to become someone who makes decisions based on what she
should
do for the
sake
of anyone or anything.

The boat slowed, approached a port. SMITH BAY, a sign read. Eva had lost track of time, again.

I’m thinking in weeks. That’s how I’m counting
.

“Feels good, huh.”

“Yeah, Édouard. Does.” She liked saying his name the way he pronounced it.
Ed-oo-ar
.

“D’Artagnan is a handful for you. And for us. I tried to tell him there’d be no rental cars ready, on such notice. He says there will be. There are bikes, though. You have no luggage.” Édouard handed her a stamp-size scrap of paper scrawled with a first name and a business’s name.

“Making friends, I see,” Dart said, lumbering up as the boat docked. His shirt soaked with sea spray and sweat.

Édouard put his headphones back on.

Dart picked up his pack. Eva picked up hers and stepped off
the boat with him. They took long steps toward a row of stores with neat blue trim. Their vivid fronts were open to the water and tinkled with chimes. Mobiles with tin dolphins and real scallop shells. Crest-stamped white shirts dangled near long skirts—red, mustard, lime, turquoise—that fluttered in the warm wind.

Dart quickened his pace, moved toward two ladies with empty cloth bags. The women changed their path by a step, so as not to be on a collision course.

At the gangplank, Édouard held a crate of battered peaches, and Eva thought of her breasts in his hands. Dart paid her no mind as she turned and walked back to the boat.

“What’s your nickname?” Eva said.

Édouard balanced the crate on a pole with one hand. “People afraid to use it.”

“So I’m supposed to guess?”

“It’s Porc de Mer, then. My sister gave it to me. When I get my own boat, it has a name.”

“The Sea Pig?”

“For a sea pig. Miss Eva. I like the way you say it.”

I like the way you say it
.

No double entendre. No leer.

He don’t know me, is what it is
.

I usually hate guys like him. Not hate them, but feel sorry for them for having a simple desire and going for it. Édouard will probably get his boat and be happy. He’d come to a convention of music professionals who want their marketing to take over the world—he’d arrive, and maybe he’d party, but he’d laugh that huge laugh
.

By way of greeting, and to offer the two women an escape from Eva’s man, Édouard held up three peaches in one huge hand. Eva turned to the sound of Dart’s voice. He spoke too quickly and too loudly to the women. One was confused. The older one, harassed. She locked looks with her sea pig of a grocer, angry he’d brought nuisance to an isle too tiny and isolated for foolishness.

Dart’s voice rang out like mike feedback. And so Eva ran after, ready to adjust the levels.

1992