Sylvia woke up early the next morning after an uneven sleep and lay quietly for a few minutes with her eyes closed, in the position in which she had fallen asleep: prostrate on top of Lewis. As she listened to his heart she wondered how it would sound if she ever told him about Fire. Would it beat faster and faster, then end in a crescendo? Or would it beat slower and slower until it faded into a sizzle like an old 45?

Peeling herself away from Lewis stealthily, she slung a robe around her shoulders and stood in front of a mirror and examined herself: her face, which needed a good ironing … the archipelago of hickeys across her breasts and shoulders … the crusted semen in her belly button. She looked a mess. As she considered her reflection—the Fezza silk robe, the diamond ring she couldn’t have afforded, the background of bedroom as large as her childhood home—and listened to the satiated breathing of a man she didn’t love, tears began to spill over the rims of her eyelids and run down her cheek. She went downstairs to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, gathered the Sunday Times, and went to the den. She reclined on a divan to read the paper, but try as she might she couldn’t get comfortable. After shifting and stirring in vain, she went to lie on the thick Berber rug in the middle of the room and switched on the television.

She soon abandoned the rug for the sectional. When the TV began to bore her she switched on the stereo. She put on a gospel station and went back to the couch and tried to relax, rearranging herself diligently, trying to feel comfortable in her own skin.

chapter twelve

Donovan filed a criminal charge, and the following morning, two detectives came to the house in a battered white Corolla. They parked beneath a tamarind tree, and as Fire watched from an upstairs window, the driver, a meager man in a Lakers vest, slung an M16 across his chest, slipped on a pair of wraparound sunshades, and paused to light a cigarette. Soon the car began to pitch and roll, and his partner, a grossly fat man in a red shell suit, gripped the roof and pulled himself to his feet. He reached into the car for an Uzi and then led the way to the door.

Fire felt the wad of bills in his pocket as he went downstairs to meet his guests. The pendulous moral weight of the bribe—a thousand U.S. dollars—made him feel unbalanced. Of all the adjustments he’d been forced to make since moving back to Jamaica, bribery was the one that bothered him most. It was a form of theft. More important, it outraged his sense of social justice, for bribery, in his opinion, was a tax against the poor.

This is shit, he thought, as he opened the door. What does this say about me … the socialist … the one who all his life has railed against class privilege … the one who refused a Rhodes because it was named for an imperialist … the one who spent three glorious years in Cuba? Ian committed a violent crime, and he’s a violent man … has always been that way. And although I will defend myself—I’m a man of peace. Poor people in Jamaica routinely go to jail for things like this. Why should Ian be any different? Because I am his friend? Because I have money? I was raised to defend the innocent. Not the guilty.