“Is there anything you want to tell me, Fire?”

In his heart he said, “I love you.” To her face he said, “If we’re meant to be, Sylvia, then nothing can stop it.”

Sylvia grew quiet and did not speak until they arrived at the door of the cab, their clothes wrinkled and flecked with grass.

“It was nice to have met you,” she said.

“It was nice to have met you too,” he replied.

Fire turned and walked away as Sylvia stood with one hand on the car door, smiling, willing him to turn around. Everything else, it seemed—charm, reason, sex—had failed. Turn around, she said to him telepathically. Maybe that will be our sign that we are meant to be. She closed her eyes. Turn around, she continued to say. Turn around. Just turn around and smile at me.

When she opened her eyes he was gone.

chapter nineteen

With the urn tucked between some ropes at his feet, Fire put out to sea in a yellow canoe, the throttle eased back, the motor putt-putting, the prow riding low. Behind him, on the beach, the congregation had put away their dominoes and cups of rum and were holding hands at the water’s edge, their bodies thrown into silhouette by the shimmering flambeaus perched on bamboo poles behind them.

After clearing the headlands and the reef, he gunned the engine and the outboard diesel sank the stern and raised the bow, and the boat sped toward the horizon pointing to the sky like an accuser’s finger.

What will happen to us now? he thought as panic rose within him. When will I see her? Where will it be? And what will I say when I call? According to his beliefs, pursuing her was unwise, because fate, which decided all things, punished those who tried to work against it. Look at what had happened to them before. She was obviously not his destiny, because she was involved; but he’d gone ahead and forced it, bringing pain to himself and everyone around him. Why would things be any different now?

He’d asked himself this question as he walked away from her, and had continued to ask it after he’d dashed around the side of the park and watched her leave, making sure she wouldn’t catch up with him. He was still asking it as he watched the taxi’s taillights disappear around the final bend and he ran to the Land Rover and hurried after her. At the main road he had to guess which way to go. There were two airports and two directions. She could’ve gone to the airport in Kingston by going either east or west. If she was heading to Ken Jones to catch a commuter plane, she would’ve gone west only. West had two possibilities and east only one, so he went west, honking his horn so the vehicles ahead of him would squeeze to the left and let him through. But west was wrong, it seemed. Because he didn’t find them, and the people whom he’d questioned hadn’t seen such a car.