“Him shouldn’t did say that,” Buju said. “How you fadda coulda be a battyman and bring you? Idiot argument that.”

Fire sucked his teeth and turned away. Buju didn’t know. Didn’t really understand.

As he considered this, there was a jostling in the crowd, and he looked up to see Ian lunge toward Dr. Lewis with a stick. He knocked her to the ground with a chopping blow and her head struck the cobblestones. Then he leaped on her and began to punch her, his fists coming left and right like the horns of a bull that has downed a matador.

“Stop it!” Fire yelled, pulling him away “You outta you fucking mind?”

Dr. Lewis, blood on her face and on her clothes, was doubled over. As two women picked her up Buju ran inside to get some rags to wipe her face.

“Stop it!” Fire said, as Ian kicked and writhed. “Control you fucking self.”

“Awright,” Ian said. “Awright. Just let me go.”

“Let you go and what?”

“And everything will be over.”

“Better be,” Fire said, shoving him to the ground. “Better fucking be.”

He stood there, trembling, hands at the ready, legs wide apart, resisting the urge to stomp him because he was Miss Gita’s son and he wanted her to see him, and she would be coming back soon.

“Is one reason why I doan beat up you bloodclaat, y’know, Ian. Jah know.”

Ian got up slowly, a smirk on his face. “Because you’re a pussy.”

Fire kicked him in the chest, sending him crashing into the crowd, which threw him back to fight.

“So you can fight, pussy,” Ian said, through the pain. “I use to think all you had was words.” Then he stood still and addressed the crowd: “You see this man here, he’s what you call a pussy. Him went to farrin in June and meet a girl, and the girl have a man, and him try deal with the girl and it never work out. The gyal treat him like shit and disrespek him because she tink seh him never have no money. And you know what him do? Insteada deal wid her the right way as a man, you know wha him do? Him write her love letter and tell her how him love her and miss her and how him want her to come to Jamaica so him can eat her pussy and how him gweh go to him bed and masturbate. Now, people, isn’t that the behavior of pussy?”

The laughter in the crowd set off an explosion in Fire and he rushed toward Ian and threw a punch that began as a contraction in his calves and traveled through his thighs along his spine, gathering force before shooting through his shoulders into Ian’s gut. As Ian went down, Fire kneed him in the temple, grabbed him by the collar, and slapped his face back and forth, for all the people whom Ian had used and betrayed and brought so much pain.