Here Comes the Sun

by Nicole Dennis-Benn

  Verdene runs her fingers through her hair. How strange she had not realized—the way Margot did—Ella’s dominating presence inside the house. There is something wrong with this. It’s as though Verdene doesn’t exist—never existed—of her own free will. Here she is in her mother’s house, surrounded by her mother’s things, and her mother’s inspection. Verdene had already missed a good part of her youth doing what was considered by Ella to be the right thing. Perhaps she was oblivious to this loss because she was too busy trying to bury memories of the past, using their brittle bones to construct a future.

  One by one Verdene takes down her mother’s pictures. Carefully, she lays them on the sofa and wraps them in newspapers and plastic she has kept from the market. She searches for a box to place them in, but when she cannot find one, she puts them inside the small suitcase she brought home. The room appears empty without the pictures, but now there is space for Margot.

  8

  ALPHONSO TELLS MARGOT TO MEET HIM FOR LUNCH AT A RESTAURANT far from the hotel. He drives his Mercedes-Benz while she opts to take a taxi, arriving five minutes later. He doesn’t get up when she approaches the table. There’s chatter around them—a few European tourists eating fried fish and bami for lunch, their backs, shoulders, and faces red from sunburn, their tour buses parked out front, where the drivers smoke cigarettes and kick pebbles in the sand. Third World plays on the sound system: “96 Degrees in the Shade” fills the small, open space like the smell of fried escovitch fish and the salt-tinged breeze from the sea. Alphonso appraises Margot with his eyes as she sits across from him. She had applied another layer of red lipstick before leaving the hotel. She also brushed her hair down with more gel so that every strand stays in place.

  “You look better every time I see you,” he says, ogling her. She smiles with her lips. She has never been out with him or any of her clients this way. A black woman dining with a white man, though Alphonso is just as Jamaican as her, is viewed with suspicion. It might appear as though she’s propositioning him. Margot crosses her legs and leans back in her chair, creating distance. She’s aware of the people around them, especially the staff. She catches the eyes of the man behind the bar serving drinks and sizing her up.

  “Why are we here?” she asks Alphonso.

  “Where else would we meet?”

  “Your villa?”

  “Raquel is there. She and the twins leave later this evening.”

  “Oh.” The sound of his wife’s name makes Margot’s eyes twitch, as though Alphonso has just reached over and plucked one of her eyelashes. Ever since his twins were born, Alphonso seems more distant, intent on getting work done in the office. Lately he sends Blacka, his assistant, to visit the hotel while he and his wife spend their vacations somewhere exotic like Greece. Margot thinks of all the time she has spent with him. Not once has his wife ever called to see where he was late at night. With all the money he spends on her, why would she dare complain or question him, even if she knows? Alphonso reaches for Margot’s hand, but Margot pulls away. “Not here.”

  It’s Alphonso’s turn to lean back in his chair. He pats his chest for a pack of cigarettes and puts one in his mouth out of habit. Margot watches him let out a pillow of smoke that creates a thin veil between them. She wants to ask him the question that has been on her mind lately. The one he planted inside her head and left to sprout wildly like the creeping stems of Running Marys on a rosebush. She has to be sure. The last time she and Alphonso were together, the L-word had slipped off his tongue and landed in Margot’s hair when he lay on top of her. She needs to know how he feels about her and what this means for her prospects at the hotel.

  “I want to ask you something,” she says.

  Alphonso takes another long drag of his cigarette. He exhales. “If it’s about the new hire, it’s a done deal.”

  Margot frowns. “What new hire?”

  “I fired Dwight today. Just hired a more competent person to take his place. Miss Novia Scott-Henry.”

  Margot is sick with shock. She wants to hurl something, anything, at Alphonso’s head. “Did she suck your dick?” she blurts out. Alphonso scans the menu in front of them.

  “The steamed fish and okra looks delicious,” he says, ignoring her outburst. But Margot cannot bring herself to focus on anything. She was only seventeen and fresh out of school when she met Reginald Senior, a wealthy white Jamaican whose people visited Jamaica once for vacation from Canada, fell in love with the country, and stayed. They bought hundreds of acres of land that his father, Alphonso’s grandfather, turned into an all-inclusive resort. Margot was introduced to the hotelier by one of her clients, a man whose name Margot has long forgotten—a business type who liked to brag about his connections. True to his word, the man took Margot to an invitation-only gathering at Reginald Wellington Senior’s colonial mansion on the hill. The property used to be an old plantation, its beauty rivaling Rose Hall Great House. The whole time she had her eyes on the older Wellington, unable to concentrate on her date. Margot made sure to be seen by the man who ran Jamaica, though he was never officially elected as Prime Minister. Margot stayed back after the party was over and waited. When he finally noticed her, Reginald Senior saw the ambition that burned in her eyes—a flame that other men often mistook for lust. He hired her to work at his hotel and taught her everything she needed to know about running it. Everything she’s done since that day, every bitter compromise, every buried regret, was to lead to this point. That job should be hers.

  “Come on, Margot,” Alphonso says, lowering the menu. “Your time will come.”

  “When?”

  The waiter comes up to their table. A young man with skin as smooth as the blackboard where the lunch special is written in chalk. His eyes scan Margot’s face briefly and she looks down, her hand fluttering to her hair to smooth strands that lifted from the light sea breeze. It’s Alphonso the waiter speaks to, as though he’s the only one at the table. “Can I get you a drink, sah?”

  “A Red Stripe for me. What do you want, Margot?” Alphonso asks, bringing her into the conversation.

  “A promotion,” Margot replies, too loudly.

  Alphonso stares at her with his penny-colored eyes. He then fans away the visibly perplexed young waiter. “That’ll be all for now. Just get the lady a glass of water.” The waiter bows and leaves the table. Alphonso leans in as though he wants to climb over the table and smack Margot across the face. “I said, your time will come.”

  Margot laughs. “I’ve been hearing that for years now, Alphonso. I’ve seen other people get promoted. I’ve seen Dwight parade around the place like a jackass, pretending to be in charge. I’m tired of lying in bed with you feeding you ideas that you use without giving me credit. Or listening to you talk about how hard it is to run a hotel that your father still controls from the grave.”

  The waiter comes back with Alphonso’s beer. He only takes Alphonso’s lunch order, since Margot has lost her appetite. She folds her arms across her chest, staring out at the deep blue waves in the farthest distance of the ocean. She should’ve known this would happen. She’s the one with the blinders on. Why would Alphonso give her the position to manage his hotel, and not someone else with connections? Isn’t that what this is about? How many connections you have? Your family name? The reality stirs inside her belly, bellowing like the hunger pangs she refuses to assuage. She excuses herself from the table just as the waiter comes back with Alphonso’s food. “I have to leave,” she says.

  “Was there something you wanted to ask me?” Alphonso says.

  “I forgot.” Margot gets up and pushes her chair under the table.

  “Well, I want to see you tonight.”

  “Alphonso, you know I—”

  “Please. I promise you’ll like the deal I have in store for you.” He winks at her as he puts a forkful of fish into his mouth and chews. Margot stands there for a moment longer, staring at his mouth. Had they been more than they were, she would’ve made a public display of
dabbing the oil residues from each side.

  Margot needs a distraction. She wheels into the street, blind to moving cars and deaf to their horns. She walks in a zigzag pattern, turning the heads of passersby. If they look any closer they might see the knife rammed in her back, its blade deep inside her chest. She stops under a tree to catch her breath and hide from the sun. As air slowly fills her lungs, so does the sharp pain of the moment Alphonso snatched it. “I love you, Margot.” She had heard him right. So what happened? Who is this bitch he has given Margot’s job to?

  Eight years ago Alphonso put himself in charge of his father’s hotel empire. When word got around that the son of Reginald Senior and heir to his hotel empire would be on the property, everyone scattered, fixing what didn’t need fixing, straightening uniforms and hair and papers on desks. The front desk clerks assumed postures. The concierges stood erect like police officers during a Jamaica House event, the housekeepers dusted places that were already glistening with shine. And the gardeners watered flowers and the manicured hedges that were already watered. Alphonso exited from a chauffeured vehicle and Paul, the concierge, gave a slight bow when Alphonso approached the door. “Good day, sah,” he said. But Alphonso didn’t respond.

  Alphonso didn’t take off his dark shades inside the building. He stepped silently past the workers on the compound, who stood around holding on to things in their hands more for comfort than necessity—handkerchiefs, smooth stones for luck, papers soiled by sweaty palms. To them, he was God himself. Like his father—the one who granted them jobs that put food on their dinner tables. But to Alphonso, these people were mud crusted under his heels. At any point he could get rid of them, wipe them clean from the property.

  He fascinated Margot. The hotel staff came to know him as the exact opposite of their beloved boss. He took over the hotel while Reginald Senior was still on his deathbed, fighting prostate cancer. This angered the employees. (“Him couldn’t even wait till him daddy get put dung inna di grave.”) It was feared that he would be the one to destroy everything his father and grandfather ever built. They were right. Alphonso immediately fired old staff without an ounce of remorse. He even fired the Jamaican chefs and hired foreign ones. (“Tourists want to eat their own food on the island. They don’t come to eat Jamaican food wid all dat spice.”) New boys were hired from other parts of the island, as far as Portland, to work in the kitchen under chefs that came from Europe.

  When he saw her that first day, he lifted his shades, appraising her.

  “And who are you?”

  “Margot.”

  “Margot,” Alphonso repeated. He put his hands inside his pockets as he played with her name on his tongue, rolling the r. She spotted a flash of the pink flesh, and a perfect set of white teeth closing together as he swallowed the t. “Marrrrgot.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “My pleasure.” His eyes held a reflection of her face. “You’re very pretty, Margot.” Margot looked away, hoping that he would drop his gaze. By twenty-two, Margot knew what that look meant. She knew how to smell lust rising from men’s pores, enveloping her like the thick musk of sweat from the heat. She smelled it the way women at the market knew how to smell the ripeness of fruits even if they were green on the outside. But a man like Alphonso was a different breed. A different smell. Unlike the men she had been with, including his father, Alphonso was young, green, only a couple years older than her. He reeked of youthful privilege—a privilege that made him unaccustomed to ambition, sacrifice, hunger, hustle. His palms were too soft, teeth too white, nails too polished. She could smell his mother’s milk on his breath. He wasn’t ripened in a way older men were ripened—creased and blemished with old habits that thicken their skin like leather, blunt their edge. This man’s skin was smooth. The girls in River Bank would have loved to catch the attention of a young man like that. Visions of light-skinned, pretty-haired babies would certainly dance in their imaginations. Add cubits to their height among other downtrodden women who could only choose from “ole neggars” who gave them nothing, except picky-head “pickneys” and swollen black eyes. Alphonso was a catch. The type Margot saw in movies with bow ties and tuxedos, plotting murders while seducing unaware damsels caught up by their charm. “Yuh should be grateful fah a man like dat to show interest in yuh,” Delores had said to her years ago when the stranger at the market brought her back to Delores’s stall. A man like that. That was what Alphonso was—a man like that.

  Margot was thinking all this when Alphonso said to her, “Why don’t you come by later, and show me what you’re good at?”

  And so, when the sun went down and the staff went home, he led her to the conference room—the only time she had ever seen the inside of it. She opened the folder in which she kept all her ideas for the hotel. Her hands shook a little as she showed him how she had designed the small surveys so that management could know what guests were responding to. But Alphonso wasn’t interested in that. Instead, he watched her. She felt his eyes on her the whole time. When she finally gathered the courage to look at him, he leaned in and whispered, “I didn’t mean for you to show me all that about the hotel. I wanted you to show me what you’re good at.” Her first instinct was to slap him across the face and walk out the office; but Margot thought of Delores. The thought held her in place as Alphonso’s hands traveled the width of her hips, pressing her into him. There, his lust grew forceful. He bent her over and she let him. It’s fah di bettah. As he entered her, Alphonso breathed into the back of her neck. “Now I know why he kept you around.”

  Margot responded by moving his hands to her breasts. The folder full of her ideas slipped from the desk and fell, papers sailing every which way. After a few minutes Alphonso came. He stood up and wiped himself clean with the handkerchief he carried in his left breast pocket. He tossed it in the bin with the condom. “Jus’ keep this between me and you,” he said.

  But Garfield—the security guard who probably heard movement in the conference room after hours, and who worked for forty years to prove himself in his old age as a noble guardsman who didn’t deserve to be laid off without a pension—busted through the door holding a flashlight and a baton, only to behold the sight of Alphonso zipping up his pants and Margot leaning over the desk, her ass exposed. In exchange for silence, Garfield was given job security. A month later he died of a stroke. The secret didn’t die with him.

  In time she has pushed aside the things about Alphonso that make her cautious. His volcanic explosions when people dare question his authenticity as a Wellington, given his tendency to squander money, unlike his scrupulous predecessors. Already he has squandered the revenue from the coffee farms and rum estates, and has had to sell them. And since his family is currently threatening to take the hotels out his hands, he seeks to pull from every vault his father painstakingly hid from him before he died. When Alphonso came up empty-handed after being denied privilege to any more of his father’s estate, he combusted: “The bastard cared for his three w’s. His wealth, his whores, and his whiskey.” He was drunk. He smashed a rum bottle on the wall and splattered the expensive Persian rug in his villa with the brown liquid. He kept on looking at the wall as though he saw his father’s shadow there, though it was his own.

  Margot’s distracted memories carry her from under the tree to the crafts market in town. She just needs a scrap of kindess before she can recover, formulate her next move. Though Delores is hardly compassionate, Margot looks for her inside the arcade. The instant reprieve from the heat, though small, is something she’s grateful for. She hasn’t visited the stall in a long time. John-John is sitting there hee-hawing about something, and Margot has a feeling that she’s interrupting. Delores lifts her head and notices Margot, and something comes over her face. When John-John sees Margot, he too stops talking and suddenly becomes shy, lowering his head and regarding her through the lashes of his downcast eyes. “Hello, Margot,” he says boyishly.

  “Wha’ppen John-John?”

  “Nutten nah g’wan enuh,” John-John s
ays, bringing Margot’s focus back. He seems glad for the opportunity to talk to her. “Same ole, same ole . . . how about you? Yuh looking good.”

  “Thanks, John-John,” Margot says in a noncommittal voice. She focuses on Delores and the impenetrable veil over her face.

  John-John must sense this, because he picks up his box of crafts and heads to the exit, apologetic when he says to Margot, “I’ll leave you ladies alone.” He bows slightly. “Likkle more, Mama Delores.”

  “Likkle more,” Delores replies.

  John-John stops at the exit as though he has forgotten something. He digs into his box and hands Margot a sculpted doctor bird. “Me did mek dis special fi you.”

  “Thanks, John-John,” Margot says, holding on to the wooden bird as he hurries away.

  Delores is chuckling to herself. “Him always did like yuh,” she says. “Only a idiot in love would give up something fah free when him can sell it to mek good money.” She sucks her teeth and fans herself with an old yellowing newspaper. “Lawd Jesas, what ah buffoon, eh?”

  “I know.” Margot examines the beautiful bird. She traces the contours with her fingers, every ridge meticulously carved. “Poor t’ing.”