The Virgin
“I don’t know.” She stared at him through narrowed eyes. “You were talking about another girl in your sleep last night.”
“I was? Who?” Kingsley hadn’t talked in his sleep in years as far as he knew. Not since that year after he moved to Manhattan and was still recovering from his gunshot wound.
“You never said her name. It was ‘she.’ Who is she?”
“I must have been dreaming. I know a lot of girls. They all have names.”
Sabatina grinned. “I’ll use you again tonight maybe. Come back to the club if you want. I can be your Valentine’s Day date.”
“It’s Valentine’s Day?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I don’t remember what year it is.”
Laughing, she bent over and kissed him once more.
“It’s 2004. Valentine’s Day. Now I have to get home before Maman kills me.”
“You live with your parents?” Kingsley asked.
She nodded as she bent to tie the laces of her sandals.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Eighteen,” she said, standing up straight again.
Kingsley’s stomach flipped a few times. Eighteen? She was only eighteen? His last girlfriend had been twenty-seven. Somewhere deep in his psyche, his conscience reminded him it still existed.
“I have a rule. I don’t fuck women under twenty-five.”
“Then you broke your rule.” She laughed again. “It’s good. I like older men.”
She ran a hand through his hair once, and after one more kiss, a kiss he didn’t return, she left him.
Somewhere he had a watch but he didn’t bother checking it. All he did was grab a towel, wrap it around his waist and walk out to the ocean. It must have been early. It looked early. But the temperature had to be in the eighties already. No one else was on his stretch of beach yet so he dropped his towel and dived naked into the clear waters. He swam out a hundred yards and rested on his back in the water. When was the last time he’d taken an actual bath or shower? He couldn’t remember. Who needed a porcelain bathtub when he had the ocean fifty feet from his front door?
As he floated under the morning sun, he tried to forget he’d fucked a girl twenty-one years his junior last night. Twenty-one years. He was old enough to be her father and then some. Then again, he’d lost his virginity when he was twelve or thirteen...twelve maybe. Thirteen? Whichever it was, by that math he couldn’t fuck anyone more than thirteen years younger than him. That was Elle’s age...twenty-six. For a minute he let himself think about her, something he’d been trying to avoid for months. Where had she landed? Had she given up and gone back to Søren? He doubted it. Once a week he called back to his office and spoke to Calliope. No news from her yet. The house was quiet. The city was quiet. The dogs were content and his clubs were thriving in the hands of their capable managers. Everyone missed him, Calliope said. But no one needed him.
And no one back at the house had seen or heard from Elle or Søren since Kingsley had left the country in June. Either they were tucked tenderly in Søren’s bed making up for all that happened between them, or she was still gone and he was still searching. Kingsley refused to admit that he cared which one it was. His part in their domestic drama was done. They were adults. They didn’t need him around to solve their problems for them.
Yet...
Still...
He couldn’t stop wondering.
Reluctantly he swam toward the shore and grabbed his towel off the sand. He didn’t dry off with it. No need in this heat. He’d be mostly dry by the time he reached his beach hut. Back inside, he drank a bottle of water and pulled on a pair of tattered khaki pants and a white shirt. He didn’t bother buttoning it. He put on a pair of sunglasses and walked back out into the heat of the day in search of food and alcohol and anything else that would get him through the day.
A hut on another patch of beach half a mile away sold fish and fruit to visitors. He might eat there. He might keep walking. Didn’t really matter. He wasn’t going to starve. And he had no schedule to keep. If he was honest with himself, he’d admit he was bored. Bored in Paradise. But after five weeks of sleeping on a beach, bathing on a beach, walking on a beach, eating on a beach, having sex on a beach...he’d kill for the sight of a skyscraper or a mansion or a television broadcasting a French football match. He had no idea how Les Bleus were doing this season. As long as they were beating Denmark he could sleep at night. When he called home next time, he’d ask Calliope to check the scores for him. Even in Paradise, a man had needs.
Kingsley turned a corner and smelled fish frying in the near distance. Instead of awakening his appetite, it made his stomach tighten. After all he drank last night, he wasn’t quite ready for solid food yet. Maybe in an hour or two he could eat. For now he would wander and not care where his feet took him.
He started caring very quickly where his feet took him when he realized they had taken him into a heavily touristed area. He would have been happy to go his entire stay in Haiti without setting eyes on any white Americans. So far he’d done fairly well staying away from happy families and/or businessmen trying to find a new way to exploit Haiti’s beauty and resources. Yet everywhere he looked, he saw white faces squinting behind fashionable sunglasses, teenage girls in tiny bikinis, little boys building and destroying each other’s sand castles, and bored mothers and bored fathers trying to pretend they weren’t annoyed when their children interrupted their naps or their reading.