A Drink Called Paradise Read Online Free Page B

there is so much blue here they can’t resist it, it makes the map look good. He says, Watch the sunset tonight and you will see green fire. Or you used to. He takes another drink. I used to meet women here, he says. No one would bother us.
    Barclay, I say, let me radio.
    Clare, he says. He says Clare perfectly. The radio doesn’t work.
    No? I say.
    I am a man, and I don’t like to say what doesn’t work, and I don’t like to say it to you, who is not subject to me, but the radio doesn’t work. It has no part, the part is gone, I don’t know.
    He drinks.
    You could have told me sooner.
    You had your hope.
    So when is the boat coming?
    It comes when it comes, he says. You should not be so sad.
    I like order. Here I can’t order up or out, I can’t order a thing.
    You are a woman.
    The inflection sounds kind at first, a little pitying, then it’s something I should have thought of, a woman alone with a man.
    He offers me his bottle.
    Thanks, I say, and I go on with my walk.
    Don’t mention it, he says after me so that I know it’s the mention of the brokenness of the radio that he doesn’t want anyone else to hear, not that I shouldn’t consider him generous.
    I shiver as a mist mists the path in swaths, the way a ghost would, then I run away with an anger that is huge, that cracks.

I wake in a dream about my son, who is falling, who falls fast and hard, and I can hear his breath in surprise suck by the air at my ear, and I run to throw myself to be under him, a pillow, when someone knocks me down. I writhe to sit up, to see if my son’s all right.
    Then I rear back and hit hard.
    The part plunging into the air I can’t see, this being a pure night, starless and moonless. I’m not seeing anyway, I am trying to find a scream where it’s made, clutched tight or asleep, when he and his big hot part get tangled in my hit and pull down glass, which shatters on the side of the crate I know is there.
    What can I see? I can’t see anything.
    Get out, you eruption on god’s ass, you problem noise and ghostfucker! That is Barclay, above me. You should think before you creep so.
    Barclay’s beating at the curtain that’s the front door, its flowers smoke against the darkness my eyes try to sort. I stand beside it, wound in more curtain, the sheets here, the dress here, surely even the slid-off shorts of the man who stood over me are flowered and red or yellow. I am so sleepy and shocked I think the red is bleeding into the yellow, or is that because the bleeding should be mine?
    Oh well, says Ngarima from her mat, he will be back and try better. Or someone not so clumsy. You see, she says, as I hear Barclay lower himself beside her, they can’t break a lamp getting in, they can’t fall over things.
    It is a custom we should give up for visitors, says Barclay. Let them have the little girls. Look at her, she’s not one for them.
    Rape, it’s called, I say.
    It’s her fault the lamp is broken, says Ngarima as if I can’t hear, rolling over on her stomach beside him.
    The boat will bring more glass, says Barclay.
    I don’t say, Sorry. I don’t. I’m having trouble breathing. It must be anger, after that punch. I used the karate of my hand, all that I have, this row of fingers, this bluntness untrained except from the movies, I used it where it hurt, and he tangled his legs together in surprise as he flailed backward and broke the lamp.
    I heard him before he broke it, says Ngarima. He was useless, a boy.
    They will always try, says Barclay, then he sleeps, drawing the air out of every corner, the loud, sudden snoring like yet another person in the house.
    Could Barclay himself be the culprit? I resist crawling between the two of them. I consider fleeing to the shed a few yards away. But there’s all that dark between the shed and the house—I could be caught by someone else sneaking up or away. Or is