Lightning crashed again. Struck a tree he couldn’t see but whose burning bark he smelled. Something dread was about to happen. He could feel it. There was a mystical power in all this flashing of lightning and trembling of trees. As he thought of this, a ton and a half of English steel was brushed aside beneath him as if the wind had found within itself the power of a hurricane. This wasn’t natural. The road to Kingston was treacherous. Especially around the double bend that folks called See Me No More.

He began to think of another night as his foot came off the clutch. So what you going to do? The question was I-nelik’s. They were driving along this very road—they’d just left the Jah-cuzzi—a few miles to the west, near Hope Bay, a little town on the edge of the sea with a train stop and post office. The sharp front end of the E-type Jaguar was chiseling through the darkness. The night had dropped from the setting sun like golden grains of sugar and hardened into caramel on contact with the soil, which was red like molten rock and held the heat of many days. The top was down. I-nelik was gangster-leaned against the door, stiff-arming the pearl white car along the narrow road, which dipped and curled as it shadowed the edges of bays and narrow inlets.

“So what you going to do?” his uncle asked.

He dipped into the bag at his feet. Peeled an orange with his fingers. Offered a piece. “I don’t know, dread. I really don’t know. I believe in destiny, and it’s clear that that woman is not for me. I shoulda did know better. I mean the whole thing wasn’t right from the start. Checking a woman who has a man is really not my style. But this one, man … this one … was just so … I just felt like I’d found the one, y’know. I didn’t know her very well, but there was a sweetness, man …”

“So what you going to do?” the dread interjected. He took off his tam and let the salt breeze take his hair.

“I don’t know …”

“You dealing with anybody?”

“No … not really. I mean, there is Blanche. We not together anymore. We started to work things out, reason things out while I was in England, but …”

“But what?”

“But she’s not the one I really want. I love Blanche, I-nelik … I’d be a liar if I didn’t say that. She and I have too much history. There were some fucked-up times, but I can’t deny the sweetness. But she’s not as dangerous as Sylvia. Well, she is, which is why she isn’t. I fear Blanche. I know what she can do. She’s charming and manipulative. So knowing this I keep my distance. I haven’t seen her since I left for London. We began to speak on the phone, but I haven’t seen her since I came back. Haven’t even spoken to her. She called, but I think Miss Gita cuss her off. I haven’t heard from her in a while. The easiest thing to do right now is to run back into her arms, I-nelik. I know that. If I should see her right now that’s exactly what would happen. Nobody likes to be lonely.”