The Virgin

“Is that why you came back here with me?”

“Wi,” she said with a wink.

Kingsley laughed. “I feel so used.”

“You want me to come back and use you again?”

“Why not?” he asked.

“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.

How did people go through life being so bored and so boring without killing themselves? Never be boring was the one and only commandment he followed. All the other commandments he considered mere suggestions.

He hated to admit that maybe if he stayed here in Haiti he would turn boring, too. Sleeping with an eighteen-year-old girl by mistake had been the only not-boring thing he’d done in weeks.

Bored and boring. He did the same things every day, walked the same paths, saw the same faces give or take a few minor variations. He’d caused no trouble, started no fights, blackmailed no politicians and engaged in only the most minor and unimpressive of sexual peccadilloes. If things didn’t get more interesting fast, he’d be forced to go back to Manhattan to find a reason not to shoot himself in the head.

Good thing he hadn’t packed his gun.

A few women and even more teenage girls gave him appreciative stares as he wove through the path of their chaises longues and beach chairs. He saw the rapacious looks in their eyes, their knowing smiles at each other. American women in foreign countries were more ravenous than a pack of sharks in a feeding frenzy. Could they not get laid back in the suburbs where they came from? He glanced at the men with them and rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. No wonder they were staring at him. They really should have left their excess baggage back home.

He passed through a cluster of torchwood and palm trees. Off the path now, the ground grew rockier. He didn’t care. This morning he’d remembered to put on shoes before heading out. Shoes were pleasantly optional on the beach in the morning. And if he wasn’t going to wear boots, he’d rather wear nothing at all.

Boots. He did miss his boots. He missed his boots and his bed. The beach hut wasn’t bad but the bed was no bigger than a full-size. He could only fit two people in it. After island hopping from New Zealand to the Philippines, he’d come to Haiti five weeks ago, rented a hut and settled down. But perhaps it was time to go home. Calliope asked him every week when he was coming home. He still didn’t have an answer for her. If Elle was still on the run, he’d given her an eight-month head start to hide. And perhaps Søren had gotten the hint that Kingsley wouldn’t do his dirty work for him this time. Kingsley turned around. He’d make a call. See what the flight options were for the week. Maybe it was time to go back. Or at least go somewhere else. Martinique? St. Croix? Miami? Manhattan? He would miss Haiti. After all it was beautiful, peaceful, restful.

And boring.

Kingsley heard a scream.

He whipped around, all senses on high alert. The scream had been loud, high-pitched and pained. He raced a few steps deeper into the trees and saw a boy—pasty white and still wearing his baby fat despite being twelve or thirteen—squealing in agony. Another boy next to him dropped a coconut-sized rock on the ground.

“Pick on someone your own size,” Kingsley heard a woman yell at the boy in a strong French accent.

Then a rock whipped through the air and hit the boy again on the back of his Ludacris T-shirt.

“Crazy bitch,” the boy shouted. The woman picked up another rock and threw it at him, hitting him in the thigh.

“Tu n’es qu’une merde, tu ne sais à rien,” she shouted.

“You’re psycho,” his friend yelled, and he picked up a rock as big as a fist. The woman had thrown rocks the size of walnuts which would leave nothing but bruises. This boy was out for blood.

“Do it,” she said. “You murdering little bastards.”

Kingsley stepped between the woman and the boys.