The Sea Grape Tree Read Online Free

stores that want to sell the same products, salons going belly-up halfway through their lease. I really want to get out of those businesses altogether, but it’s not the time to sell, you know, so I thought I’d make some other investments, like this.”
    â€œWhy here? It’s beautiful, true, but it’s—there’s more than meets the eye to doing business in Jamaica. There’s a ton of government paperwork to begin with, and we have a problem with crime. You know that, I’m sure.”
    â€œHeck, the whole Caribbean has crime, the Virgin Islands, probably the whole Third World, even the US. I mean, look at Detroit, New York—”
    â€œBut we have some serious stuff here.”
    â€œI know it’s risky,” the visitor said, shaking his head. “But I like to take calculated risks, that’s just me. And for some reason, I love the idea of owning a hotel here. Maybe it’s the idea of owning a piece of Jamaica. When I was coming up, we spoke of Jamaicans with respect, you know. To us in the Virgin Islands, Jamaicans stood up for their rights. When they got their independence—”
    â€œIn ’62.”
    â€œI heard about it from my people—they felt that that was what we should have been doing, that we should have fought the Danes, not just sat back and allowed them to sell us to the US in 1917. A lot of Crucians were ticked off that they had no say in the deal. Then when Jamaica and Trinidad got their independence, my grandfather used to say that we should have been getting ours, too. He used to talk about Jamaica like he was talking about the Holy Land. He and my great-grandfather were Marcus Garvey men from way back, when they used to get Garvey’s papers from Jamaica on the docks in Frederiksted. It’s like I’m honoring the old men with this business, you know. And I want to see what it’s like operatin’ in a black-run country that’s independent of Big Brother. You mightn’t understand it, but—”
    â€œIt’s different from doing business in the US, just know it.”
    â€œCameron warned me already.” The man was not to be deterred, it seemed, and Eric, who’d been wondering if Caines had the stamina to endure, realized that the man’s resolve to build a hotel probably outstripped his own, because Caines had a motive greater than money.
    â€œYou’ve done business with Cameron before, right?” Eric asked, tipping one shoulder down to his companion.
    â€œYeah, nice guy. Know him long?”
    â€œHis sister was living on the island out there last year.” Eric’s throat tightened. “Then Cameron came down to find her and we became friends.” Caines didn’t need to know that Eric and Simone had been lovers, that he and Cameron hadn’t talked for a while because Eric wouldn’t let him take Simone off the island against her will, or that he still thought about her at night while he sat on his verandah listening to boleros on Radio Santiago de Cuba.
    â€œCameron and me go back about nine, ten years,” Caines said. “He’s sold me most of my malls in Queens and in the Bronx. I never had no reason to doubt him.” He rubbed the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. “Good man, Cameron, good man.”
    Eric looked sideways at Caines. He seemed solid, sure of himself. One had more reason to trust a man who wasn’t handsome, whose nose was more square than round, whose lips were unusually thin for a black man. And there was something about his eyes, eyes that looked straight at you and burned with intensity at times.
    â€œWhat’s your story?” Caines asked with one brow lifted.
    â€œOh, I had enough of New York. I went there from Shaker Heights, Ohio, right out of high school, worked with a paper company my whole career. But I always wanted to live in a warm climate.” Eric blew out of the side of his mouth.