“To live?” Ian buttoned his shirt against the cold … tucked his legs beneath him.

“Yeah,” Fire said. “To live.”

“No way, sah.”

“Why not?”

He began to shift around. “Bwai, Jamaica just too … I don’t know”—he didn’t want to bring up the Indian thing; he wasn’t sure he’d be understood—“inefficient, everything just so … nothing works … too much crime … everything expensive … food, clothes. And the price of a car is fucking ridiculous. And the people, man, don’t respect artists. As a culture, we don’t respect our own.”

“I hear you,” Fire began slowly. “But if you want to see inefficiency just go to any government office in the States … not even that … go to a bank. Crime? Come on, Ian, you live in New York. I hear what you saying about food, but if you eat local and earn money in U.S. dollars it’s cheap. The pint of freshly squeezed orange juice you pay three dollars for in New York is fifty cents here. Talk about expensive, if you married right now in New York, could you pay a live-in helper to help with the child at home? You can do that here. I can hear you on the car thing. But I don’t have a new car. I have the same old one. And when I want a new one I know who to bribe so that I don’t pay more than a quarter of the duty. And in any case the duty-dem not high like one time. One time it was a hundred percent of the price of the vehicle. So you had to buy the car twice.

“But I won’t lie to you. It took some adjustment. It was hard to leave a place where things work for one where they don’t work. I had to put in a water tank because up here water get lock off at least once a day. Then I had to get a generator because y’know how electricity go down here. Then I had to get a cellular phone because it took longer to get a regular phone. Then I had to get a satellite dish because local TV is trash. Even news. You can’t believe the news. But the thing that bothered me most, though, was getting a gun. But I’d be stupid not to have one in an isolated area.

“And doing business is another story. For example, y’know why I reach so late for you today? I was waiting for a meeting that didn’t happen. There is this bredda named Donovan Mackenzie who works for one of the airlines, and him do some little bandooloo on the side. Basically, him use the airline plane-dem to import goods from Miami for resale. I paid him for a washer and dryer about nine months ago and I still don’t have them yet. Why? Every day is another excuse. But that is just life on this rock.

“I can’t tell you what to do, Ian, but for me Jamaica is the place. I mean I miss London y’know, but when I was there I missed Jamaica. And when the urge take me now, I jump on a plane and go where I feel like go. But this is my base, Ian. This is where I’m rooted. I’m a Jamaican, Ian. Yardie to de bloodclaat core. I love stout more than wine. I love cricket more than baseball. I love rice more than pasta. And I love Bob Marley more than Beethoven or Count Basie. I call women I don’t know ‘darling.’ When a fight start I look to throw a stone quicker than a punch. And I think that the fat on a woman batty and hips is a sexy thing that they shouldn’t try to lose at the gym.”