But she loved the little girl, liked Ellen, and though she thought Carla's talent overrated, Mike was Jake's best friend....

Mama, Mama... what shall I do? Give me a sign.

A sea gull swooped past, cawing in the moonlight. Not a man-of-war bird like mama's loa, but a seabird nonetheless.

Reluctantly, and full of dread, she turned toward Masthead Point.

***

Carla Brody lay staring at a moonlit patch of the bedroom ceiling. Slanting through the plantation shutters between the bedroom and the porch, the shadows made prison bars, and behind them a ghost—the essence of the moving curtains of chintz—paced silently.

She could not sleep. Too much New Year's Eve champagne. Tomorrow Michael and Jake would have to lift the metal sculpture into the four-wheel-drive and take it, shrouded in its canvas, to the speaker's stand in the plaza at the beach in Prince George Town.

There it would be set on its base, a stone block already waiting. In the morning, before the goombay dancers assembled for their grand parade and the New Year Junkanoo masquerade began, she would trundle up her oxyacetylene tank and weld base and sculpture together.

Then, as if written in granite for the ages, the name of Carla Paxton Brody, immortal sculptress—or charlatan—of Whiskey Cay, would rest throughout eternity, to be pointed out with pride—or laughter—to tourists.

Unless the Prince George village fathers, in their wisdom and their rage, elected to have it torn down then and there....

Three thousand dollars it was costing the town, to be paid to an artist who did not truly know yet what it was supposed to represent.

Suppose the citizenry rebelled? Suppose the Town Council refused?

There was a tab to pay at the grocer's, and the butcher was growing cool. The milkman had lingered yesterday, shy and diffident but determined, until she'd finally scraped up fourteen dollars to pay the previous month's bill.

And if it were all for nothing? And they laughed her off the stand?

She had neglected Thea and Ellen and Mike, to finish on time. By evening every day, her sandpapered eyes had given her a grinding headache.

She'd been rebuffing Mike for a week in bed, she'd been so tired.

She was suddenly frightened, and she wanted him, his tenderness and strength.

They slept beneath a single sheet in the Bahamian night, warm even in winter. He was breathing deeply, an arm thrown over his eyes, but he was always easily aroused. The line of his jaw was carved in Doric strength by shadows, like a marble by Pheidas, and she began to trace it with her finger.

From somewhere out near Masthead Point a dog was baying. The curtains moved. The ghost behind the bars on the ceiling stirred.

Mike's eyes opened slowly. Astonished, she saw that they were full of fear.

And then the screaming from her studio began.

***