He wanted to talk to her but didn’t know how. Couldn’t decide how to do it without losing his temper or his pride. He searched the room for answers—the arched windows … the rattan chairs … the hardwood floors with the swirling grain …

The mattress stirred. He heard the strike of her match. Felt the heat. And the tidal pull of her lips. She was naked, and the urgency of smoking did not disturb her breasts, which were hard and still like turtles.

A lizard crawled from the windowsill to the peak of the angled ceiling and slid down the pole of the old brass fan whose blades were sheathed in straw. It flicked its tongue and wagged its head, shaking loose a fold of skin, and puffed a red balloon.

Fire watched it closely, enchanted by its beauty; Blanche sucked her teeth and said it was a nuisance. He didn’t answer and she began to taunt it, choked it with rings of smoke till it arched its back and sprang. It fell on her belly with a thwack and did a war dance on her birthmark, a swatch of brown below her navel. She watched it for a while, amused by its bravery, then whipped her body sideways, shimmering the flesh on her hips, and spilled the lizard to the floor.

Fire closed his eyes.

Last night he’d dreamed that they’d wallowed in a muddy ditch in a sunflower field. Her belly was wet with almond oil and her nipples were gummed with molasses. A believer in fate and the wisdom of dreams, he’d been dreaming of molasses for months now. And molasses, he knew, as an intuitive man, was the airborne scent of love. Blanche was not the woman though. He was sure. And denial was a way of preparing for her … whoever she might be.

Blanche watched as he rose, snatched glances as he dressed. He was tall and rangy and his hair was a cluster of twists and curls. His body looked like a pencil sketch, proportioned but not detailed, except in the chest and upper back.

He went to the terrace and sat in a rocker beneath a brace of ferns, which rustled and fluttered like moody hens. The land cruised away below him, drained through an orchard to an old stone fence, then plunged in an avalanche of crabgrass and buttercups to a terraced farm. Beyond the valley, surreal through the mist, was the broad, flat face of Kingston.

He took a mango from a bowl and peeled it with his teeth. What would he say to her? How would he say it? She was singing in the shower now. He imagined her body—the swell of her thighs, the rise of her ass. And, of course, her breasts. When would he say it? Soon, he thought … but not right now.

Resting the fruit on a stack of books, he picked up the poem he’d begun the day before.

I dare not love you as you deserve.
It is not that I don’t know how.
I do understand the language of love,
and were it a different world
I would write you poems etching you
into the tender cliché of Negril’s palmy coast …