At an altitude where the air was crisp like seltzer, and cows outnumbered cars and people, they entered a dirt road and continued uphill through a stand of eucalyptus trees that led them to the house, which was modest in size but well restored.

“Where’s Miss Gita?” Ian asked, as he thought about his own living situation.

“Somewhere in the Mediterranean. She and Sarge gone on a cruise for her birthday. She said she wanted to see Jerusalem.”

“Sarge is her boyfriend?”

“No, man. Sarge is the foreman. He runs the farm … a nice bredda from the area … has his own little coffee farm and all that. Nothing going on between them or nothing like that. I just sent him to keep her company and look after her.”

“Oh … okay … when they coming back?”

“About two weeks.”

They stepped off the verandah into the empty living room, which felt like a gallery. There was art on the walls but no furniture.

“Is so the whole house stay?” Ian asked.

“No, man. Upstairs set up awright. Everything in the fullness of time, nuh. This place was really a mess when I got it, y’know. Me and Sarge rebuilt a whole lot of it by weself.”

Ian looked outside, down the hill.

“You supposed to get a good amounta pussy with a base like this. If these walls could talk, eh?”

“Pussy,” Fire replied. “I don’t know if I coulda recognize one right now. I’m not really in the head space for that right now, anyway.”

“What, you thinking of getting married or something?”

They sat next to each other with their backs against the wall.

“Not now,” Fire told him, “or soon. But I’m at the stage now where I could do that. Have a couple of children and all that. Yeah, man.”

“How old are we now, Fire?”

“Thirty-three and thirty-seven.”

“And we have neither chick nor child.”

“Believe it or not.”

“I’da love get married, y’know, Fire. I want children and all that … but … I guess y’haffe meet the person first, right?”

“But … in the fullness of time, nuh.”

“Y’ever feel like kill somebody yet?”

“What?”

“Okay, lemme put it to you this way. What it woulda take for you to kill somebody?”

“For me to kill somebody right now? Means, motive, and opportunity. I wouldn’t need more than that.”

“You take everything for joke, eeh man.”

Fire punched him playfully. “Y’hungry? Y’want some food? I steamed some snapper.”

“I need to sleep first.”

Fire led him to one of the guest rooms, where he was lulled to sleep by the sound of the voice he’d begun to hear in New York. Kill Margaret. Kill Phil. Kill me.

They had dinner on the upstairs terrace that evening. Kingston’s lights were gems on satin.

“So how you know about this place?” Ian asked.

“I just buck it up one day while I was hiking, and it just stuck in my mind. What it was, I think, was seeing eucalyptus in Jamaica. There’s a guy named Butch who owns some cottages over the hill deh”—he pointed with his fork—“and I was staying in one o’dem. When I told him I’d run into the place he told me it was for sale. Later, when I decided to move back, I found out it never sold yet, and I took it. I bought the farm separately. Y’ever think bout coming home, Ian?”