There was a flash on the edge of his vision, and he looked up to see the lights of a jetliner smearing a path through the maze of stars. From the outline of the landing lights he could tell it was a 737, and from its bearing he could tell that it was headed for the Caymans. His mother flew that route for years.

What would she think of all this? he wondered. One of the things that had always perplexed him, and which he’d begun to consider more seriously as he entered his thirties, was the ways in which his relationship with his mother had affected his relationship with women.

Of all the women he’d been involved with, he wondered, how many of them had been like her? As he thought about that he began to remember the women he’d slept with. In his mind his lovers were gemstones strung together like a necklace. He counted them now for the first time, touching the tip of one finger after another to his lips as he called each name in his head and saw a face that triggered the memory of a time and place that seemed so distant now, so unconnected to this person that he’d become. He stopped counting, surprised, when he’d run out of fingers. One should be able to count on one’s fingers and toes, he said to himself. And I don’t believe I can.

He’d had sex for the first time at the age of fourteen—with Nan. She had come to Jamaica to spend the summer at his mother’s farm as he’d spent the previous summer with her family in London. She was awkward-looking then, pimply faced and knock-kneed, and her new-grown breasts did not have the effect she had anticipated. Instead of drawing attention to themselves, they drew attention to the tabletop flatness of her ass. It was bad sex, he was thinking now. He did not want to do it. He’d only done it because she’d said she’d heard a rumor that his father was gay, and asked him quite frankly, as they built a kite beneath a tamarind tree, if he was too.

“No,” he said.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t seem sure,” she said. “My friend said only gay boys like to paint. If you’re not, then let’s fool around and prove it. You don’t have to use a rubber—Mum put me on the pill because she’s scared I’ll get pregnant.”

So they did it, right there, she bracing herself against the tree, he glancing around to see if anyone would catch them as he pulled her panties to the side and took her from behind. It saddened him that he was glad she couldn’t see his face … the pain there … the anxiety … the disappointment that she was not someone he cared about in a romantic way.

He would feel this way several times in college. He would sleep with women he did not love, but who, he knew, loved him. Why was this? he wondered now.