He looked around. Had anyone heard her?
He hugged her close and kissed the top of her head, which smelled like sun and shampoo, ignoring the look they got from the old men passing around cigars by the fountain. She’d lost weight since the move and her shoulder bones poked his side.
“If you hate them so much,” he whispered, “why are you working so hard to kiss their asses?”
She looked up at him with parted lips. He had surprised her. And maybe, he thought, angered her. But her sudden rage had him wondering if his sweet Leslie Day, who could be as vicious as a mother lion when wronged, had another agenda. Why had she had brought him—brought their children—to this island?
“Don’t worry,” she said, the serene smile renewed. “They may look happy. But their island is sinking.” Her voice was heavy with disgust, like she was ready to spit a mouthful of phlegm. “Bet you one hundred big ones this place—all of it—the factory, their mansions, the whole island is underwater by October.”
He felt the absurd urge to crack a joke. Standing in line waiting to have caterpillars combed off his clothes, on a strange island miles from his people—city people, colored people—and Leslie getting all fairy-tale vengeful and shit was too much.
“Big ones?” he said. “One hundred of ’em? You don’t say.”
She looked up at the black sky and he realized she was trying not to cry.
“Leslie, baby,” he stepped out of line, escaped the boundaries of their gender, a tiny revolution that thrilled him. He turned her to face him. She tried not to smile so he knew she felt it too. “We came here to live in a castle. We don’t ever have to leave its walls.”
“I love you, Julius.”
She kissed him. Their teeth clinked. She poked her tongue at his lips. He pulled away but she pulled his face forward like it was a mask she wanted to wear. He heard snickers. Whispering. When she released him, he took a long breath. The cluster of old boys, unlit cigars in their mouths, stared.
Jules thought of Caesar and the kiss that preempted the massacre in the Curia of Pompey. He stopped himself from making a bad joke, whispering in her pearl-studded ear, Et tu, Brute?
The ladies’ line crept forward. Leslie waved. “See you inside!”
The old black butler was skin and bones. As thin as Jules’s pops was when he was dying. He watched the old man brush each man’s shoulders and back, slow and gentle, like he was combing prized thoroughbreds. Jules was two spots away when he saw the folded bill slip from a guest’s hands into the butler’s hand, the exchange punctuated by a subtle nod of the old man’s salt-and-pepper head. Jules had nothing. Hadn’t even brought his wallet, and when it was his turn, the old man’s shaky hands brushing over Jules’s broad shoulders and up and down each of his arms, he couldn’t bear to look the guy in the eyes. He mumbled, “Thank you, sir,” and walked through the white columns and into the chandelier light.
9.
Maddie
The kids clomped down the carpeted steps and into the Foxes’ AC-crisp basement, lunging for the plush sectional—Yo, I get dibs on the end!
Maddie took a seat on a swivel stool at the lagoon-themed bar, complete with a plastic crab-decorated net. She knew not to get too comfortable—Bitsy could announce, any minute, a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven, banishing Maddie and Spencer (or another boy) to a dark bedroom two floors above.
Spencer returned from the kitchen upstairs with a tray of food—Cool Ranch Doritos, ham and cheese Hot Pockets, mini eggrolls with dipping sauce, and a case of kiwi-strawberry Snapple iced tea. Mr. Fox owned Fox Foods, the company that supplied the factory and school cafeterias, and she’d heard about the giant freezers packed with food the Foxes had in their garage.
“Yo,” Spencer said, “my mom put out a shitload of snacks.”
The boys went wild grabbing food.
“Mads.” Spencer threw her a package of Little Debbie oatmeal creme pies. “I know you like these.”
“Thanks, Spence.” He had noticed something about her. This made her want to like him even more.
“Love your mom, dude!” John Anderson said, his mouth crammed with Doritos.
“No,” Rolo said as he went to town on a Hot Pocket, the bright-orange cheese dripping down his Grateful Dead shirt, “I love her more. I’d French kiss her.”
“Shut up,” Spencer warned, but Maddie could see he was trying not to laugh.
“Oh, Marilyn, pucker up, baby…” Gerritt cried and Spencer punched his shoulder.
Someone popped a tape in the VCR.
“Oh, score! This is the fourth tape. How’d you get it?” John said, high-fiving Spencer.
“I have my sources,” Spencer said with a cocky nod.
As the lights dimmed, Maddie felt the boys’ excitement surge as they pushed aside the girls who had clambered onto their laps to cuddle, and leaned toward the bright light of the TV, fists on knees. Dom had told her about Faces of Death. Not like he’d ever actually seen it. Blockbuster kept the tapes in the curtained back room with the pornographic movies, and you had to show ID proving you were over eighteen.
She promised herself she wouldn’t look away. She’d show Spencer, Bitsy, all of them, she was tough, and it would make up for her acting like a terrified mute at the fair.
The volume was cranked so the video narrator’s deep, mournful voice bounced off the photo-adorned basement walls—Spencer and his freckled little brothers and sisters in beachy white, his proud parents behind them, the ocean a perfect blue backdrop. Years of Spencer’s elementary school photos framed side by side. Cute little Spence, she thought, but remembered how, in elementary school, he’d been the kind of boy who yanked your ponytail and ran.
In the first grainy video, a group of bare-chested brown-skinned men crowded around a leashed monkey sitting on a table. The monkey rose on its back legs and bared its fangs, its childlike screams filling the dimly lit basement.
“Oh shit!” Ricky shouted.
“Don’t fuck with me, motherfuckers!” Gerritt squeaked in what Maddie guessed was an impersonation of a monkey.
The men closed in around the table. The monkey. They held sticks and knives.
Gabrielle, a professed animal lover, whimpered, “Turn it off!”
The first blow stunned the monkey. It turned in a slow circle, as if, Maddie thought, searching for help. Then the sticks and knives fell, the screen a blur of movement. Maddie did her best not to look away but then a man in a ripped T-shirt held something dripping and the camera panned in on the limp, headless body.
“Monkey brains!” Spencer shrieked, and the boys erupted in Awwww!
The boys jumped to stand, bumping chests, pounding fists. It reminded Maddie of lacrosse and soccer games, how the boys on the bench couldn’t stop from playing out their feelings big and loud, touching one another. Tender and tough. Just like the night at the fair.