“Bring a missus,” she replied. “The place need a woman. I don’t like taking order from people who don’t live ere.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said awkwardly. Miss Gita left and he took a sip of coffee. It wasn’t sweet enough.

Blanche refused to drink hers in protest. She filled her mouth with a cigarette instead. She struck a match. It didn’t spark. Her fingers were shaky. Nerves. She fed the Rothmans to the wind.

As she watched him pick up the mango, she marveled anew at his face. Like reggae it was a New World hybrid, a genetic mélange of bloods that carried in their DNA memories of the tribes that fought and fucked on the shores of the Americas—Chinese and Arab, English and Scotch from his father’s side; and from his mother’s, Dutch and Portuguese Sephardic Jew. But the final combination—brown like sun-fired clay, cheeks high and spread apart; nose narrow with a rounded tip; lips wide and fluted—was vibrantly Yoruba and Akan.

Last night was wrong, Blanche said to herself. But she’d been holding back for months now … had even thought she would get through it. But last night, knowing he’d be leaving today just made her desperate. Or was it angry? Three months is a long time for a woman, she thought, especially with a man like this, one who makes love from the inside out—from the core of her soul where she hides her fears, to the taut muscles on the back of her neck. And the way he was eating that mango—the flesh becoming slush and dripping down his arm.

The juice was inking the nib between her legs, making her want to draft an epic on his face. Couldn’t he just screw her? She’d take just that. So what if the love was gone? The first time had been just a screw. And she had no regrets. Seeing him nude that first time had made her think of holidays, of turkey legs slathered with gravy. At first she thought he’d be a rammer, a longhorn bedroom bully, which would’ve been fine. She liked a little roughness at times. But he held her like a dancer, assumed that he would lead, and frigged her with finesse. He understood her needs. Wordplay for him was fore-play. Her thighs were the covers of an open book—a journal lined with fantasies and fears. He read her like a child, slowly, with his nose against the page, using a finger to guide his way. So he knew when to baby her and when to bitch her up.

If he didn’t want to screw her, she thought, couldn’t they just flirt? Flirting was more than his pastime. It was a condition. He couldn’t help himself. He was intelligent and amusing, which was why women fell for him. That’s why she had fallen. In the days when he loved her, his words kissed her ears like butterfly wings. Now they stung like wasps: “I don’t want you anymore. Leave me alone. I don’t care how you feel.”