“Go?” Horace says to her in his heavy German accent, which sounds to her like, “Guh?” “But ze night is still early.”
Margot glances at the clock on the VCR. Palm Star Resort has yet to upgrade to DVD players like all the other five-star hotels on the strip. It’s quarter after eleven. Where did the time go? Earlier in the evening Horace had ordered room service while Margot hid in the bathroom. They ate, and drank a bottle of wine between them. What did they talk about? Margot can’t remember. Whatever their conversation, she was sure of only one thing: it ended the way it always ends.
Margot moves about the spacious room, picking up her stockings and uniform from off the floor. Horace is her oldest client. He comes to Jamaica just for her, always promising to take her back with him to Germany. And always, when he pulls out his wallet to pay her, she catches a glimpse of a smiling, yellow-haired family—a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. She wonders where he would put her if he followed through with his promise to take her with him. What would he tell the smiling woman and two children in the picture? Like Horace, all her clients promise the same thing, as though paying her isn’t enough; as though somehow their fucking has given them a desire to “save” her. They need to justify their infidelity with an act of kindness, a generosity that Margot fights the urge to laughingly decline. If she says yes, it gives them power to know that there’s a woman who depends on them, who needs them. It keeps them coming back.
“I have to meet someone—” Margot says, pushing her leg inside her sheer stocking. It rips and she cusses under her breath.
“Another man?” Horace asks. “Vat is he paying you? I can give more.”
“No. It’s not a man.”
“Then who is more important than me?”
“My mother,” she lies. “I have to meet her somewhere.” She pulls up her skirt and hastily buttons her white shirt over her bra. Horace props himself up on an elbow and watches her. When she’s dressed, she walks over to the bed and kisses him on the forehead. Horace puts his hand at the back of her head and brings her closer. Without warning, he kisses her on the mouth. Margot pulls away a little. “Yuh acting like yuh won’t see me again, sweetness,” she says, holding his hand.
“Okay,” he says finally. “It’s on ze table.” He gestures toward the fat leather wallet sitting on the computer desk. “Take it all.”
Margot hesitates. She counts three hundred. The Germans tend to exchange their money for U.S. dollars. It’s the only currency accepted on the North Coast besides Jamaican dollars. Margot thanks him and hurries along, closing the door softly behind her.
The sight of Margot sleeping with her thumb in her mouth raises something intense inside Verdene. Margot stirs, her eyes barely fluttering awake, though it’s noon. Her limbs are spread-eagled on the bed, sugar-brown skin on yellow sheets. St. Theresa’s church bell rings in on the hill, and Verdene, instead of making a sign of the cross like she learned to do as girl when she went to mass, looks down on the woman she loves and studies her. An open face that wears its emotions. Wounded and sensitive.
She inhales deeply, the love swelling inside her lungs. Afraid she might combust, she exhales. She lowers the tray of breakfast food she cooked for Margot—fried dumplings, ackee, and saltfish, with a side of sliced pear—and glances at the wardrobe that holds two full-length mirrors. Verdene catches a reflection of herself holding the tray. At forty there are still glimpses of youth in the handsome face with sculpted features and eyes that blaze a startling black. She has gone gray early, a patch of silver surrounded by thick black curls. But since being with Margot she has regained a youthfulness that enables her to ease into laughter, fits of playfulness, and a sexuality that oozes from her without effort, without any fuss.
She adjusts the tray on the small night table and reaches for the Holy Bible (just for a little Sunday devotion like Ella taught her), which is kept there like a secret inside the drawer. But the sight of her mother’s picture halts her movement. All the loveliness and life and breath seem to stop at the sight of Ella. Oh, dear Mama. Usually the picture is turned to face the wall when Margot sleeps over. Margot doesn’t like the idea of Verdene’s deceased mother staring at them in bed. Quite frankly, Verdene doesn’t mind. Her whole life she has lived in secrecy. Why be ashamed at this point in her own house—the house her mother left her? Nevertheless, she complies.
Margot’s eyelashes flutter, her eyes opening to glance up at the wide expanse of the room and the sheet falling below her waist. Verdene blushes, as ashamed as a little girl who has just walked in on her mother having sex.