Kingston Noir (30 page)

With rough pronunciation but very good vocab, he told me that he’d learned to parlez-vous in high school and that he’d chosen Spanish at first but had dropped it because the French class had more girls and that he’d taken weekend classes at Alliance and that’s why his accent was so good and why French films were his favorite because at Alliance that’s all they showed there and did I know why he liked French films so much and NO the answer was not because they were French and YES you could say that he loved all French things but the
real
reason he loved French films so much was that they taught him a lot about those damn French girls and did I know what that was so lemme tell you then French girls were easy and what about American girls well what do you mean what about American girls what have I learned about American girls from movies well from movies I learned that American girls scream for every fucking thing especially when they are in the shower or think red Indians are around—In retrospect I should have known he was a little off. What can I say? I was a little off myself. I threw my head back and laughed. Laid out another line.

Then he asked me about me …

I steered the subject back to film. To my mild surprise, he became quite sober, introspective, charming. Even showed a little wit. He knew a lot about Cassavetes, Peckinpah, and Varda. And a little bit about me. He used a film I’d done many years before with Agnès to shift the conversation back to me. He seemed to have a list of things he wanted cleared up, like why I took the name Arielle Béchard when I’d been born Georgette Michel. And is it true that I’d come to America as a baby after being born in Quebec?

I was getting around to answering some of these questions when he said in English: “You’re cool.”

I said, “Oh yeah?”

He squeezed my thigh. “You know why I brought you here?” he asked. “To freak you out. Yeah man. I wanted to bring you to a way-out place. I wanted you to just lose your head. But you’re cool. You’re just so cool. I like girls that are cool. A lot of girls my age aren’t cool, you know. A lot of people period aren’t cool. But you’re cool. You like my jacket? I wore it for you because it’s cool.”

I told him in French that I wasn’t really cool, that I only seemed cool because he was so easy to be with. To myself I said, I’ve been to this joint many times. I know its sound. I know its mood. Its smell. I’ve been here in Rio. Watts. Kinshasa. France, in the banlieues. In Chicago, on the South Side. Always the rare white woman. Always with colored men.

This discussion with myself made me a little ashamed and self-conscious. I wanted to get away. With each passing second I felt older, whiter. More intoxicated. More broke. The room felt too hot and dark.

I said to him, “Allons-y.”

It was about one in the morning when we left. I figured we were going to his bungalow or my hotel. Most of the other bars and clubs were closed. There were a few men milling about. Standing still with little motorbikes between their legs.

Before Wayne put the car in gear I asked him to roll me a spliff. He asked for the foil. My mouth felt dry and my joints tightened as I watched.

My hair was long in those days, and dark, and as we zoomed along in the 2CV the wind came through the window and splashed it on my face.

So there we were, moving easy down this dark road, lit hills behind us. Every now and then a car came around a corner, stunning our gaping pupils with its high beams, and Wayne would brake or swerve. The little shops and houses were all shut.

After we’d driven a mile or so I saw a billboard with a photo of the island’s leader shaking hands with Fidel. I asked where we were.

Wayne said, “Red Hills Road.” He tossed his head to indicate the hills behind us. “Go past the Stable and down and round you’ll eventually get up there.”

As we passed the billboard I began to think of how the CIA was working hard to sink this island, just like they’d worked to sink me. Sure—some bad choices had been made. Sure—this pressure had been in some ways brought on.

Look, I’m no political theorist. I dropped out of Bard in my junior year. But I know a thing or two. The Jamaican government had made it illegal for women to be paid less than men; had made university free for all; had offered free lunch to kids in elementary school. In other words, they’d been messing around with the fundamental laws of social equilibrium in this hemisphere, so damn them. Damn them the way you damn an actress who harbors the falsely accused, or calls out Israel on Palestine, or publishes op-eds in the
Washington Post
about America’s hypocrisy on apartheid. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you.

But anyway, there we were, moving along this Red Hills Road, heading either to Wayne’s bed or mine, when out of his mouth comes a question. Whose dubs did I like the most?

This isn’t how he said it, but it’s what he wanted to know. I paused before I answered. The truth is that I couldn’t tell the sounds apart. As I thought of what to say he asked: “Aren’t you curious why we turned off Red Hills Road?”

“I didn’t notice.”

He slapped the dashboard and whispered, “I’m going to take you to meet the greatest producer this country has ever known.”

“Where?” I asked.

“At her home.”

“Which is where?”

“In this housing scheme called Hughenden. A decent place. Nurses. Teachers. And civil servants. Nothing to worry about. Folks like that.”

We drove on for a few minutes, slower now, on very small streets, and made a few more turns. I closed my eyes. We were still moving when I opened them. The houses were close. The yards were small. The rooflines were flat. Most porch lights were on.

I leaned my head outside the window. I’d begun to feel really, really scared. And tired, but not sleepy. And sick.

We stopped. Wayne tapped my shoulder then stepped out of the car. I held the seat cushion with both hands and tried to bring my heart rate down. He knocked on a burglar bar. I drew on the spliff.

A curving quarter-mile of fences stretched before me. From my perspective they’d began to warp and shake. A door clunked open. My name called out.

I didn’t move or answer. Wayne approached the gate, stood there sweating in his leather jacket, waiting for me.

I said, “This is just not how these things are done, babe. We’ve got a schedule, you know. But I don’t have to tell you. You know. And … and the poor guy … what’s his name. He wouldn’t like to be ambushed in the night by a journalist or whatever it is I’m supposed to be. Let’s go home, babe. I’m getting kinda sick. You gonna take me home?”

“It’s not a he,” he said. “It’s a she.”

At this point I took mild interest. All the people on our list of subjects were men.

“But she probably isn’t even up,” I said. “Let’s just go home. Tomorrow, I’ll run it by Nigel. The producer decides this kind of thing.”

“But she’s about to let us in,” he said. “Come on, Georgette.”

“What do I even call her?”

I missed what he said.

The small, dark house smelled of ripe bananas and curry. The louvers were all shut. My toes were sweaty on the cool floor tiles. I tracked Wayne by the odor of his jacket and the padding of his boots, then I found myself waking up. It took a few seconds to realize this. Sometimes awareness is slow to seep in.

I opened my eyes. It was still dark. But dark in a peculiar way. And although I was tired, I couldn’t figure out why it was so hard to move. And there was a woman there. I sensed this. She was naked, I felt. Spread-eagled. Tied up.

She was me.

I tried to free myself. I shook my head. The bag was fairly loose around my neck, so maybe I could thrash it off. My legs were pulled so far apart my groin began to hurt. Fuck, I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

I screamed. I tried at least. My lips were taped down.

For the next hour or so I wrenched and pulled. What was outside the darkness? Was there someone standing silently a foot away? Was I even in the house I’d entered with Wayne? And where the hell was Wayne? Was he hurt? Had someone killed him?

When this kind of thing happens, you don’t think about your loved ones. You don’t think about God. You think of being tortured with simple things. A cheese grater on your nipple. A citrus spoon in your eye. An iron pressing your vagina shut.

That’s what happened to me. I kept picturing awful things, and the more I thought about them the more I
knew
they would occur.

I began to breathe so hard and sweat so much that the bag started clinging to my nose. I began to lurch and wrench. Which made things worse. But I couldn’t stop myself. But I
had
to stop myself. And somehow I did.

I can’t say it was anything more than will that made me slow my breathing down. Long in, long out. Long in, long out. No holding. Keep going. This wasn’t yoga class.

With my breathing fairly settled, I was able to concentrate enough to plan. Where was I?

I heard light traffic moving back and forth in the distance. Every now and then, a van or motorbike would pass along the nearby streets. There were daytime voices spilling from a house to the left of me. It was hard for me to follow the conversations. Their accents were rough. But I could pick out words like
starch
and
sheets
. In the background I could hear a radio. Right above me, the branches of a tree scraped the roof. A small fruit fell.

As I struggled to hear all these sounds in isolation I detected another, fainter noise beneath them. At first I couldn’t tell what it was or where it was coming from. A kind of shushing. At one point I thought it was a broom. I slowly realized I was hearing human voices … coming from … no … not the house next door, but from somewhere behind me. Same house. Other room.

A serious whispered conversation was going on. One voice belonged to Wayne. It was snappy. Angry. The other voice was deep. It would go silent for long stretches, then continue in reasoned tones.

A door opened. The voices and footfalls grew louder. Came close. I played dead.

Two pairs of feet entered the room. A hot body sat beside me on the bed, inches from my hip. From the smell of the jacket, I could tell it was Wayne.

“Arielle,” he said, nervously. “Arielle.”

He shook me. I willed my body not to move. At the foot of the bed, a calloused hand began to softly pinch and stroke my toes.

“Go home,” said the other voice, which belonged to the person who had touched my feet. “We not doing this thing. She is all right. But not so well though. Look how her foot is cold.”

The bed lurched and creaked as Wayne jumped up. From the direction of my feet I heard a jangle then a swoosh. A belt had come off.

A scuffle began. Small things fell over. Bottles broke. Wayne and the other person were breathing hard. One of them banged into something big and wooden. Clothes were ripped. Then all of a sudden a great tumbling rushed toward me. I had no time to brace. The air was blown out of my lungs.

Wayne was on top of me. His wet mouth and hot breath were on my face and neck. The other person jumped on top of him. I began to suffocate under the weight of both of them. The mattress fell. The mattress slid and twisted. A fist caught my ribs.

I could tell that Wayne was throwing lots of elbows by the way his weight was being thrashed around. But he couldn’t get away. He was pinned, it seemed. I don’t know what he did, but suddenly space opened up between us and I caught a breath before his chest came down. Then all I heard was
whack, whack, whack-whack-whack-whack-whack.
Just hard and fast and rough like that. And he began to grab onto me like I could give him shelter. And squirm on me like my body had a door that he could open and lock behind him after running in.

I was so focused on Wayne that I didn’t realize the other body had gotten off him, and the weight on me was not as bad as it had been, but it was still awful, so awful, so awful to be tied up and then grabbed onto, especially by someone being flogged. And I kept moaning for him to get off me, and for one of them to untie me, and for both of them to leave the goddamn room, but no one heard me, no one cared. So there I was, still beneath this jerking body, forced to take its spreading weight.

The beating finally slowed then stopped.

“Get the fuck out of here,” said the deep voice. “Fuck around, I’ll beat your ass again.”

Wayne stood up. I could hear him to my right in what I imagined as a corner, sniffling.

The person with the deep voice sat on the bed at my left shoulder. I lay still and kept my eyes closed when the bag was eased off. The tape on my lips was inched off. No skin was lost. The fingers that unbound my wrists and ankles were thin but rough.

“Put on your clothes, miss,” said the deep voice. “We’re leaving.”

I listened to them tramping out. A door opened. More outside noises drifted in. The door was closed again. The Citroën started up and drove away.

I lay there for another five minutes without opening my eyes. The smell of ripe bananas and curry sauntered in. I knew now I was in the house I’d entered the night before.

I looked.

It was a small room of which I had no memory. It had gray walls and white and yellow checkered tiles. There was little furniture—an armoire and a postered bed. The stuff on the dresser was scattered—figurines mostly and papers. This is what I recall.

I became concerned, as I put on my clothes, that there might be other people in the house, so I was careful. Tried to make no sound. I pulled away the gauzy curtains and cranked the louvers open and peaked out.

The day was beautiful. Red crotons marked the boundary of the yard next door. An orange kite was pinned like a brooch to the sky. A bird was roosting in the almond tree. I wanted it to sing.

Anyway, after I finished going through my oh-God-I’m-so-glad-to-be-alive-the-birds-are-chirping moment, common sense returned. “You need to get the hell out of here,” I said to myself. No, I didn’t think this. I said it aloud, softly.

I grabbed my purse and put on my shoes and ran to the door, opened it, and paused. Standing by the gate, inside the driveway, back turned to me, was a slim figure in a Panama hat and a baggy suit.