Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [58]
“No. You should come with me.”
“Stop playing games,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“Then what’s this all about?”
“Please.” He reached for her hand, but she stepped back.
“Listen, Robby, as soon as daylight hits, I am leaving this place.”
“To go where?”
“Dominican Republic, Montreal, Cuba, anywhere but here.”
Many of her neighbors with the blankets and pillows had dispersed, some making their way back up the hill to her friend Victor’s backyard, the others heading across the road to where a local priest and nuns had set up for the night.
“Please, chérie,” Robby pleaded as he pulled her to him again. “Please, Caroline. I need you to be with me tonight. My place is safe, if any place is safe on a night like this.”
He held her hand to his lips, kissed it, then placed it at his heart, which melted something inside of her. She kissed him on the cheek, embraced him, and whispered in his ear, “So it is now that you are finally inviting me to your home. This is what it takes to bring out the man in you?” Then she smiled and grabbed his hand. Cars were fewer and farther in between now, and those that went by them as they walked were packed with the dead and nearly dead.
They were both exhausted when they entered his dark bedroom. It was unbearably hot like the rest of the city, and the stagnant air grew sour. The moonlit, foul-smelling room revealed the silhouettes of the two bodies lying there, obviously dead, rendering Caroline as still as they were.
Robby gently took her arm and walked her over to each of them.
“This is Tanya,” he said, then reached down and kissed her on the cheek. “And this is Minouche,” he said, doing the same to her.
He motioned for Caroline’s hand, but she was pulling away, stepping back, trying to make her way out of the room, out of her lover’s house, and possibly out of the shaken, broken country.
But Robby would never let her go, because if the devil stirred again, beckoning the land to rattle and shift beneath them, forcing his little part of the house to collapse like a domino, encasing them all in this love, in this death, then they would truly be inseparable—he and his three lovers, bound for eternity.
ROSANNA
BY JOSAPHAT-ROBERT LARGE
Pacot
Radios were forecasting a beautiful Friday morning. Not a cloud in the sky over Port-au-Prince. As for the neighborhood roosters, it seemed as if they’d been waiting for this very morning to launch their songs into the world. A multitude of cock-a-doodle-doos echoed through the neighborhood of Pacot.
Ahhhhh! Rosanna thought, as she slipped into her favorite blue jeans and an airy white cotton shirt. What a wonderful day for a trip.
Rosanna’s aunt Solange had already put the daily work in motion. The servants were all on their feet. The one responsible for sweeping the front yard was wielding his broom like a soldier answering “Taps.” Dusters in their hands, the cleaning team had started the daily routine aimed at eliminating every particle of grime resting on every surface of the property. Melanie, the cook, whose task it was to make coffee, poured spoonfuls of grainy Rebo onto a piece of muslin cloth that she used as a coffee filter. Soon enough, the aroma of coffee spread throughout the house.
“Chérie,” Aunt Solange called to Rosanna from somewhere on the property, “Melanie has already prepared you some sandwiches for the road. How about a cheese omelet before you go?”
Aunt Solange was the proud owner of two large stores in Port-au-Prince’s commercial district. The first one was a boutique with an assortment of expensive European ladies’ dresses. It was there that the elegant demoiselles of Port-au-Prince shopped for their Pierre Cardin, Escada, or Oscar de la Renta gowns, which automatically bestowed a sign of distinction on any woman who aspired to be a part of the city’s high society. In the second store, one could find a selection of luxurious home furnishings from all over the world. That was where the rich people acquired the sofas, beds, decorative lamps, modern refrigerators, and other ornaments that