Zachy, the caretaker, was playing cards with his cronies beneath a poui tree aflame with scarlet flowers. The wind blew the fallen blooms across the crabgrass … sifted them across the slatted table where the old men sat with mugs of rum and milk. Zachy waved and flashed a toothless grin when Fire and Ian arrived and returned to his game. His dentures, which he only wore to church, were stuffed in a pocket of his blue Sunday suit.

As he passed inside through a tall, arched door, Ian began to compare himself with Fire. On one level he felt superior, because Fire had not achieved as much as he—had not earned as much money or enjoyed as much fame. On another level he was embarrassed because he had so little now and Fire seemed to have everything. As Fire went outside to cut some roses and birds-of-paradise for his vases, Ian stood in the doorway and looked around. A wooden staircase with scrolled iron banisters curled along the book-lined walls to the bedroom, a cantilevered loft that extended three-quarters of the way to the door. In front of him on a raised platform were a sofa upholstered in saffron chenille and a pair of honey-colored club chairs in braided rattan with arms like the fenders of a forties sedan. The chairs were arranged around a bowlegged table, which sat low on a caramel-colored rug that Fire had purchased years ago while cycling through Morocco. Ian had never owned a space like this, one that was a part of him, an extension of himself. When he could afford it, he had always paid the best designers to beautify his homes. But Fire had worked with Sarge to renovate his home, had built the loft, had helped to lay the floorboards.

“I need to bathe,” Ian said, as his jealousy revealed itself in the form of an itch.

“The bathroom is outside,” Fire told him as he slipped some stems in a stoneware urn, “between the kitchen and Zachy’s cabin. Anything you want is in the cabinet.”

Upstairs, Fire put his knapsack on his writing desk, a drafting table from the twenties, and removed the linen from the tall trunk bed. Glancing at the hamper, he saw that Zachy, old and forgetful now, had not remembered to have the washing done. Luckily, he’d brought a few things from Kingston.

From the mirrored armoire he dressed the bed in tangerine sheets, then leaned out the window and gazed at the sky, preparing to discuss the sketch pad with Ian. Am I reading too much into things? Fire wondered. Still, his instincts told him that the sketch pad and the Donovan incident were related. It would be good to talk with I-nelik now, but he was on the road with Ziggy.

He stood there thinking till Ian returned.

“What you have to eat?” Ian asked as he came up the stairs.

“What you feel like?”

“Like I woulda eat some fish.”

“Look in the armoire you see a walkie-talkie,” Fire said as he dug through his knapsack for underwear. “Call Teego down by Snapper Bay and find out what him catch.”