“I was no longer sleepy, only tired, and a deep sweet exhaustion swallowed up my grief and my panic. I wanted to fold down into my wing chair by the fireplace and sleep again, safe in the knowledge that there were armed guards around the property and the mysterious stranger couldn’t harm me. But I couldn’t do that.

“No, Little Lord Tarquin was the man of Blackwood Manor now.

“I went downstairs to see to Aunt Queen.

“Fr. Kevin Mayfair was in her room, seated by the bed, talking softly to her. He was wearing his severe and spotless clerical black along with his white Roman collar.

“And when I watched him from the door, I knew for the first time that I found both men and women erotically beautiful. Rebecca in the lace-trimmed bed, Goblin in the warm steamy thunderstorm of the shower. Fr. Kevin Mayfair with that dark curly red hair and those green eyes and not a freckle on his pale face. Men and women.

“I went out back and walked way over to the right to the bungalow in which Jasmine, Ramona, Clem and Lolly lived. Jasmine was in her green-painted rocking chair, just rocking and smoking.

“I was in a daze. I tried not to notice Jasmine’s breasts in her tight shirt. I tried not to look at the front seam of her jeans. When she turned away from me to exhale I saw the light down the line of her throat to her breasts. Beautiful woman. Aged thirty-five. What were my chances? Like, maybe if I sold her a bill of goods that I doubted my manhood???

“Oh, that was a lovely thought. Wonderfully comforting. And where could we do it? Just go over to the shed, go up the steps and do it in Patsy’s bed? I rolled that dream around for a moment. You don’t get HIV from a bed. What if—and then—and so—and I felt the panic when I looked at the dim house—they had forgotten the four o’clock lights.

“ ‘What’s going to happen now?’ I asked.

“ ‘Come sit with me, little boy lost,’ she said. ‘I’ve been asking myself that very question.’ ”

CHAPTER 17

17

“FOR THE NEXT WEEK I was under lock and key, or armed escort.

“I didn’t find out about it until the morning after Pops’ funeral, when I tried to leave my room and discovered I had a security guard with me, pledged to go where I would go.

“I didn’t too terribly mind, since I alone knew how real the mysterious stranger had been and I didn’t want to be shocked by him. But I made a nuisance of myself by warning everyone about the dangers of the island.