He didn’t know where he’d take it. He didn’t understand poetry really. He’d never studied it. He believed in it as an act of faith.

A flock of birds curled into view. Bird. He began to think of Ian now. They used to call him Bird as a boy for his hawkish nose and pelican legs. What will it be like to see him again? He checked his watch. It was eleven. Air Jamaica was leaving at three; and they were always on time. He would be in New York at seven.

Blanche came out and joined him. She was wearing one of his shirts. It was a soft tangerine with a broad camp collar and flaps on the pleated pockets. A few months short of fifty, she moved with the angular vim of a teenager. She leaned against the banister, a Rothmans between her lips.

Age had refined her beauty, had streaked her hair with silver and added lines and accents to the poetry of her face—commas that made him pause at her eyes, dashes that framed her mouth. She had brows like Frida Kahlo, and lips like Chaka Khan.

“New York,” she began. “How long are you going to be there?”

“Just the weekend,” he said.

“Then you go to London. And you’re coming back when?”

“The end o’ August.”

“Three months.”

She glanced at the old Land Rover beneath the orange tree. Mud encrusted its rusting grill. The windshield was down. The top was off.

“You might need more than a duffel and a knapsack, you know.”

He didn’t answer. There were footsteps in the kitchen beneath them. What the hell was Miss Gita doing?

“Miss Gita!” he called out as he leaned over the railing. “How much time ah must tell you to rest yourself?”

Miss Gita limped into view with a tray of coffee, dressed in a fading floral shift, her hair a silver line between her face and a red bandanna. An old woman with brown skin like masala, her parents had come from India in the early nineteen hundreds as indentureds—after slavery.

“Ah was only cutting up some tings,” she said. “Doan mek nuh fuss over dat. And plus is work ah work here. Is not charity.”

“Awright, bring it then.”

He settled back in his chair and listened as she shuffled through the creaking house, which was yellow and white with lattice trim and a shingled roof arranged in peaks. The ground floor was made of masonry, and the second floor of wood.

“What ah should bring for you from New York, Miss Gita?”

He wished she’d say, “My son.” But she’d given up hope. He stared at her face, which had been thrown off balance by a stroke. It was hard to believe she’d been young once, he thought. Young and beautiful. And wanted by men. Poor Miss Gita. She wasn’t a saint; but she’d paid her dues in life. Her blind eye swam out of focus. The good one anchored his gaze.