The six of them worked as taximen out of the Kapok Hotel, from an office with a red telephone the passengers would call for a ride. They wore white shirts and black pants, and every morning stood at attention as Ms Moo inspected the shine of their shoes by walking in a hunch down the assembled line of their feet, an indignity at which they bristled. Mr Moo, who had passed away earlier that year, had been lenient in such matters, allowing for shirts of any colour, as well as a complimentary lunch buffet from the hotel kitchen itself. While handing out the day’s tips every night he’d reveal tomorrow’s dish as a means of exciting the taximen’s appetites for the upcoming work. On days there were to be shrimp, he let them know in the titillated whisper of a schoolgirl sharing secrets. “Don’t tell the rest,” he’d say, one at a time, “but tomorrow we are having the shrimp.” At noon a bumbling page with large feet brought the tray down to the kitchenette counter and uncovered it with a magician’s flourish. In the boom days, when the red telephone rang often, the shrimp were large and glistening, done amongst green peppers and a savory, translucent gravy. Later, when there were hardtimes, they grew so infrequent amongst the sea of parboiled rice one had to paddle with the serving spoon in search of them. For all his efforts in explaining to the taximen that times were now hard, and that the shrimp must be rationed, Mr Moo found himself forever thwarted by the sly indifference of a herd of sphinx. Some of the taximen began taking their lunch early, so as to get to the shrimp, leaving those who were too late to harangue Mr Moo with complaints that wore him weary. He adopted a stinginess of character foreign to his nature, growing strict in the rationing, repeatedly leaving the office where he managed the red telephone to instead check in on the lunch tray’s progress in the kitchenette. The taximen developed such strategies as digging for the bottom-most shrimp and leaving a deceptive layer on top. They discovered that the midday heat was in fact detrimental to the health of their engines, and so could be found lounging in the office awaiting the tray’s arrival instead of ferrying passengers. Soon the mounting stress and expense of providing the lunches proved too much, and Mr Moo reduced them first to three days a week, and then none. Such bile was required to fend off further complaints that a patchwork of ulcers eroded his stomach. He became bedridden and thin, retiring to the room he kept above a parlor shop in Woodbrook, where the taximen came often to visit him with gifts of cake. He lost the last dregs of his health in a tug-of-war between his kindly heart and the newly shrewd soul that had been too late in seeing things for what they were. Once he died his family had him interred in a private service on a dry January day and sent his sister to replace him at the hotel office where she was quick in hanging a framed picture of Mr Moo in pride of place in the lounge where once the television had been, like the portrait of a dictator. It was while considering the TV’s sudden removal that Sensei, eldest of the taximen, and who had had the most shrimp, one morning regretfully remarked, “It don’t matter how good you is to people, they go still try to bust your throat.” As if speaking of matters in which he had been otherwise uninvolved.

Hardtimes affected everyone, not just hifalutin Chinese people who owned taxi fleets, Sof argued, and he’d made his venture using his car to transport cement no secret amongst the others. He had an uncle in construction who was overseeing a project in St Helena, just past the Piarco Airport where they picked up most of their passengers, positioning Sof to spend the slower days without many flights ferrying bags of cement from the port downtown and over to the site. It was the sort of simple, menial scheme that someone like Cecil usually scoffed at, preferring his culinary work, but that Sof had clearly thrown himself into with the ardour of a hound following a scent. Soon he could be seen around the weekend karaokes wearing half-buttoned silk shirts and whispering in red women’s ears. In three weeks he had put aside enough extra change to buy himself a gold watch with Roman numerals, sparking Cecil’s interest after all. Cecil waited until they were seated along the railing outside the Arrivals terminal to ask: 

“What it have that they building back so anyway?”

“Water park,” Sof answered.

“Water park?”

“Slides, whirlpool, a bit of everything. Water park is the next it once things good again.”

“Water park for who to go to?”

“What you mean who?”

“So they go leave they house just to wet up themselves?”

“Listen,” said Sof, and stood from the railing. “Let me introduce you to something, Cecil. It have people in this world doing what they call leisure. Leisure people sooner going water park than beach even if they living by Maracas, for example. Them not asking no set of why like how you asking why.”

Cecil mulled over all he was hearing with ponderous strokes of his beard, as if considering an offer. He remembered the speculation in precious minerals, the time Sof had purchased bags of tomato seeds to grow a harvest. Down from the railing, the contrast in Sof’s height was so pronounced that when making his point he had had to peer upwards with his wide, determined face on which the desires were written too plainly all over.

“I see,” said Cecil.

The day was scorched and cloudless, dense with spiraling gnats that left a bitter taste on the tongue if swallowed. Emerging travelers stepped out of the terminal into an ambush of humidity that momentarily struck them in place, then proceeded against the gnats with waving hands before their faces, so that it was as if they were paddling underwater while pursued by the small sharks that were the taximen offering rides. Families waiting for their loved ones to appear were chatting loudly or munching from bags of peanuts from a vendor just gone by, while a game of tag that had swollen to include most of the children present wove in and around their legs. After another unsuccessful foray soliciting from a new volley of passengers, Sof picked back up where he’d left off, although Maurice, who was handsome, had departed with a German couple carrying several heavy bags.

“Take what I telling you. It’ll be some of these same foreigners self who go want to head to the park to splash up once they touch down. That’s why the location so important.” And Sof, who was prone to fits of inspiration, also added: “There’ll be a bus service I organizing too. To take them straight from here once they reach.”

“So your uncle don’t have no trucks for all that cement he need transporting?” Cecil asked, in his slow, laborious way of a man who counted with his fingers.

“You know how much for a truck? See that’s your problem. You have your little wife waiting home, so you don’t have to worry about nothing. My uncle bright, Cecil. Remember he went Canada for a bit.”

“It’s how much cement you have to move?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I don’t know, Sof.”

Sof stepped away from the railing, his mood soured.

“That’s the problem with negro people,” he admonished. “We don’t like to enterprise.”

He explained he wasn’t going to stand there dilly-dallying all morning, that the 10:15 coming in from Toronto was delayed by inclement weather, he had called in before to check, and took his leave with a final glance at his watch to show that he was now a man of his own time.

*

By the middle of most days they could be found in the junctions of Chaguanas arguing their way through traffic, at the panyards of Laventille lending their opinions on the new arrangements, with their hands on their hips in The Bamboo considering second-hand parts, or checking in on batting practice at the Oval, where the new recruits from Guyana were said to be of top form. They drove invariably hard and fast, and took the long route through the Quassay whenever possible so that all of life passing through there had a chance to peek inside the windows to where their charges sat huddled in the backseat, as pink and raw from the heat as newborns. Almost without fail they sat with their seats reclined and with an arm hanging out the window, with the exception of Carlito, who had been in an accident, and now gripped the handbrake in further anticipation. A cyclist on his shoulder had mistimed a turning off of the Churchill Roosevelt Highway on a wet December morning and caused a metallic calamity the likes of which were still rare, and from which he had emerged as if climbing through a portal into the other half of his life.

Driving was life’s most subtle pleasure, and they had come to gaze with a sort of bewilderment at the horde of daily commotion that had only so recently claimed them as amongst its numbers. That hunger could strike them in one place, only for them to satisfy it in another, had made of the entire island a long menu to peruse. Trinidad was brewing with a sense of premonition, that time was either running out or coming to a head, although for what had yet to be determined. In Belmont young men with afros could be spotted beneath streetlights at night reading political pamphlets on recycled paper. Down in La Brea the laborers at the Pitch Lake had joined those of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union in repeated sit-ins that threatened to reshape the national economy. More recently the archdiocese of Port of Spain had been declared a region of concern by the Church of England, for protestors had stormed the St Ann’s cathedral and repainted the faces of saints with brown dyes. Word had it that there was a Soviet presence somewhere afoot. October had seen a large march of Indian textile workers head all the way from Barataria to the front steps of Parliament, and in the time since it was not uncommon to encounter smaller bands disturbing traffic along the highway, as happened to Maurice while driving the Germans back to the hotel. Twenty or thirty of them had clogged the roundabout by the lighthouse, hoisting hand-written placards and banging on a sital drum and the hoods of cars. When a ragged woman with plaited hair thumped on Maurice’s, the Germans in the back clutched at each other’s thighs.

“This is performance?”

“It might as well be, miss,” Maurice answered.

“Ah no! They are upset. But for what?”

He glanced at the woman’s sign.

“It’s wages, miss,” he added, and rolled up the window.

In the opinion of some the march towards revolution was the inevitable answer for which the nation had been searching since the days of independence, and in the opinion of others such restitution was to be found only in the promise of oil. To have no opinion at all betrayed an absence of principle few dared to reveal. The providence of those who already had to keep gaining more, no longer seemed a natural fact of the world, and with the gleam of their vehicles lending them a shine of their own, the taximen appeared part of a new elect, alongside university students, and those employed at First Citizens bank. It was why Carlito was often called upon to intervene in local matters of concern in the leafy village in Central where he lived, and the recently married Cecil was considered by many—in light of the petite negress whose thick hair shone with oils, and who clung to his slow words—to have succeeded beyond his station. Only in Pauly did the ricochet effect of a life in which he could go from eavesdropping on the monetary disputes of perfumed Americans on their way to the Kapok Hotel’s top suites, to those of the sleepless neighbors with whom he shared a tenement wall, become too much to bear, as if knowledge of an above world of light had left him only with a crude awareness of the distance still left to climb.

He was a mean half-black, half-Indian with cunning, spiteful eyes that seemed to look right through people. Amongst the others, his reputation as a cardsharp was not without some merit. He had walked with Mackandal in the times of the marches, and the failure of these efforts was his life’s most important lesson. It was why while others considered the recent black men offering public disquisitions in Woodford Square the newest crop of visionaries, Pauly heard only the latest contribution to a stream of babble. And should anyone mention the ongoing sit-ins at St Mary’s College, after one of the priests had barred a student from the football team on suspicions of the boy being a communist, then it was Pauly who was most likely to point out that there were anyway not enough goals scored in a regular game of football for a team full of communists to share them all.

*

Enterprise, enterprise. At a commission of fifty dollars a transport, with four-five trips per day depending on traffic, and excepting for Wednesdays when the London flight came in, though accounted for on weekends when commission increased by a factor of one-point-five per trip, notwithstanding the cost of petrol for which they would only be reimbursed at one-third the going rate, there was enough money to be made to afford such things as a new stereo, or to fund businesses of one’s own. Sof spun the web of his complicated math around all who would listen, probing for weaknesses as when searching for the shaky hand in a game of cards. But the others were content with schemes of their own: Carlito had his arrangement with a customs officer at the port for cheap shipments of Johnny Walker Scotch he sold out of his trunk, Cecil provided catering for a surreptitious guest house in Maloney that offered Spanish girls for the night, Maurice was often looked after by foreign women, Pauly won at cards, and Sensei had his land to tend to. They knew enough of Sof to know that the scheme beyond the airport must not have been going well for him to be so generous in offering them in. Besides, as Maurice once pointed out between bites of the lunch they now had to purchase themselves, “The Chinee woman go find out.” To which Sof sucked his teeth in disbelief that big, hard-backed men such as them should be so frightened of a woman who still used a telephone directory as a booster when sitting down, and that this was not a kung fu film. Although it could not be denied that Ms Moo was less than happy.

In February she had rearranged the office with the red telephone such that the long metal desk sat width-ways, nearly splitting the room in half, providing a sort of barrier between her dealings on one side and anyone who entered on the other. Now, sometimes when she called them in, it was less to offer a new pick-up than to have them sit on this other end for an impromptu round of questioning. She had suspicions that their petrol receipts were inflated, that one of the taximen was an expert poisoner. The scowl with which she had first arrived following her brother’s death had found a permanent home in the corners of her lips, and in her pinched gaze that occasionally flickered to the point in space above and behind those to whom she spoke, as if they were being snuck up upon, which caused them to glance over their shoulders often. Following a particularly thorough inspection one morning in which she’d had the taximen hike their pants to show the height of their socks, she pulled Cecil aside into her office for further checks by sniffing at his armpits. It took him two days of harboring a private shame before he finally divulged to the others.

“All them tactics the lady playing,” Sof had to say on the matter. “That’s divide and conquer. You never read any Eastern philosophy or what?” He sucked his teeth at the simple oversight. “She probably pick you as the weakest one.”

“She say why is you alone she smelling, Cecil?” Carlito asked.

“No.”

“There must have been a complaint,” said Maurice.

“It didn’t have no complaint!” said Sof. “It’s only basic tactics.”

“Chinee lady getting on stink then,” said Maurice, fingering the gold hoop in his ear.

“I tell she we is not animals,” said Cecil

“That’s the exact thing animals does say,” added Pauly, who had sided with Sof. He had positioned himself as far as possible from Carlito, whom he owed money, and presently flicked out the remaining water from their ice bowl for one of the boys walking by to take it in for a refill. They were in the back yard of Hartford’s Sports Club, around their usual table beneath the bougainvillea, with Sof seated a little higher on the back of the bench and Sensei next to him concentrating into the sentimental depths of his drink without saying much. That was Sensei’s way. He had an air about him of having been in the military, though he never clarified, and was teased by the other taximen for still wearing his white shirt even when he did not have to.

“Now what she want we doing? Smelling down each other?” Sof kept lamenting. “Some people, it’s miles they always want. Cecil, you is the weakest mindset out of all of we, that’s why is you she smell.”

“Chinee lady treating you all bad?” asked someone from a nearby table, a postwoman with her bag of mail still to deliver at her feet.

“She have Cecil thinking he is a yard animal now,” said Sof.

“Watch, any of y’all dream anything?”

They looked to Pauly.

“Had a viper was hiding under my bed,” said Pauly

“A snake you say?”

“About long so.”

“What number that does be?”

“Thirty-five.”

The woman took note with a pad and pencil, then got up to go play her number at the counter inside, leaving the mail, as the boy from before returned with more ice. The taximen’s cars were scattered throughout the nearby blocks, so as to avoid detection out front the bar should Ms Moo happen to pass through the area.

“I will have to get you some books, Cecil, for these things to stop happening to you,” Sof refilled his drink and said. “Sun Tzu. Confucius. Them kind of people. You and I are truly different. You have your little wife so you accustomed to people treating you anyhow. You and Carlito have that in similar. Art of War? Ever hear about that? You have to know your enemy. Ancient wisdom we talking about. Some of the rest of y’all could benefit from this too. One set of gamblers but don’t take no risk on yourselves. Me I tired, yes. One day you go come to find me and I gone. Cecil, you too doltish. If anything people smelling on you it’s that weak mindset. When you leave from here I want you to look up a word what’s called pertinacity. That’s some homework for you…” 

They weathered the rest of Sof’s onslaught as they would an afternoon drizzle, with a mute patience, and their eyes focused on a middle distance. Its only interruption was in Sensei eventually lifting his eyes from his cup with a series of slow blinks, as if having solved the puzzle within.

“We gone and waste a good Chinee man.” He shook his head. “That man used to bow to we, and look what we do.”

*

Nonetheless, the incident agitated Cecil, offending his pride, and lent him an air of restlessness that was slow in fading. Recently he had come to worry that his life was in fact marked by streaks of indecision he had only flattered himself into thinking of as prudence, but that others perceived as a blank canvas on which to impose their wills, such as Ms Moo. Even his new marriage, though not exactly arranged, had to its credit the ministrations of a sociable cousin who had introduced the two at a christening, and helped Cecil in ironing his shirt ahead of their first rendezvous walking around the Savannah. In a flight of ill fancy he suddenly saw himself as an old man parked in the corner of a veranda of a house he did not own, being fed by spoons. This troubled him. He waited for the next available moment at the Arrivals terminal, asked another series of slow, probing questions, and at long last fell into Sof’s scheme for some quick change as Easter approached.

Soon it was the two of them, Sof and Cecil, gone for longer and longer stretches of time, or otherwise seen whispering in furtive corners around the hotel. Cecil got himself a Casio digital watch waterproofed up to two-hundred meters and for Easter hosted a lunch for his neighbors with roasted lamb, as well as a toast with Johnny Walker scotch while he held his wife’s hand. He had released himself into the swift momentum of the enterprise with a fearsome surrender, as if having exhausted himself resisting a river’s current, and Sof, who had softened towards him, now spoke often of his own relief in seeing Cecil take life by the reins, for he could finally respect him as a man.

Then the shocks in his car began to deteriorate from the weight of so much cement, making for a rougher ride, to say nothing of the fine layer of dust forever coating his seats, and that caused his passengers to sneeze. His doubts about the strange bags of cement they collected not at one of the port’s regular loading bays, but at a shaded back entrance with no one else around, magnified, made worse by what seemed to him the inordinate amount they were being paid for so trivial a task. He hardly knew what a waterpark looked like when it was completed, much less when in the works, and had stopped asking questions about the weird monstrosity being built in the lot in St Helena. Far from going away, his usual worries had instead transformed into the suspicion he had become a cog in a diabolical machine too vast to comprehend. Without saying anything too accusing, he let Sof know he was appreciative for the opportunity but would be quitting by the end of that week.

Sof looked a little uncomfortable, nearly twiddling his thumbs.

“It have no quitting.”

“Eh? How it go have no quitting?”

“My uncle go explain.”

The next evening down at the ports they met with his uncle for only the second time since Cecil had started, a lean yellow-eyed man with a patchwork of thinning hair, usually seen perusing the worksite with his hands on his hips. Sof led the way along a gangplank onto a rusty fishing vessel huddled in the shadow of a large ship, and around to the front deck where the uncle was untying ropes from the starboard railing. He had on sandals, three-quarter length cargo pants, and a faded Pele jersey with a rip along the side. Behind him were two others Cecil did not recognize, quiet, fair-skinned men with wax jackets and caps that shielded their eyes. Cecil wondered if they were foreign.

“What’s this my nephew telling me ‘bout concerns?” the uncle asked, without turning from his work.

“Not meaning to cause no commotion, sir,” Cecil nervously offered. “Just can’t do the work no more.”

“What did my nephew tell you when you was getting this work?”

“About it have construction for a water park.”

The uncle flicked Sof a disappointed look, then followed a nod from one of the other men to start the engine up. He knotted the rope with a taut pull, then over at the panel eased one of the levers forward to a steady hum. They sailed past the silhouette of the larger ship and into the expanding night where a salty wind whipped all around them. A handful of scattered stars lit the way ahead until Port of Spain was a thin strip of lights on the horizon behind. Soon the uncle cut the engine off in a black stretch of water so vast they seemed to be floating in a rustling void, and one of the tan men who had a ponytail stepped from the railing. The other had taken to picking at his nails with an easy backwards tilt, as if also considering slipping in for a swim.

“Evening, evening. I understand that you work with Mr Sof.” No: he was from here. “You drive for the Kapok Hotel?”

“Correct is right,” Cecil answered.

“How much a room there going for these days?” the man went on.

“A room?” He racked his memory. “About one hundred a night.”

“Nice, man.”

“Depend on what you looking for.”

“Rooms good?”

“They decent.”

“You’ve been working there a while, Mr Cecil?”

“Four years I want to say.”

“Nice.”

He extended a hand for Cecil to shake, as if in congratulations. His palm was warm and soft, with a moist layer of dew as lubricant. They kept shaking a while.

“And before that you had was a fruit cart, correct?”

“Eh? You know that cart?”

“I used to pass by you on mornings. Right on Saddle Road, not so?”

“Correct, sir.”

“Trinidad is a small society. I never buy anything from you, but my mother would pick up your melon. George, right mummy used to buy melon from him?”

“Yes,” said the other man on the railing.

“You might not remember her.”

Light splashes sounded from the water, of fish, or simply of the boat’s swaying. In the corner of his vision Cecil could see the uncle scolding Sof in hushed whispers over at the panels.

“How much a fruit cart making these days, Mr Cecil?”

“Depends, Sir.”

“How much yours made?”

“Would vary.”

“I see you are being difficult.” Nonetheless, he smiled. “Your wife married a difficult man.”

His eyes were bright and good-humored, buoyed upwards along his face by the fat cheeks of a meat eater. His watch, Cecil noticed, was an unfussy apparatus with an old leather band. They kept shaking hands.

“So where the fruit cart is now that you driving taxi? In the back by you on Merrill Street?”

“Come again, sir?”

“It’s not Merrill Street you living? You and how she name? Upstairs in that corner spot with the cream walls?”

Cecil finally pulled his hand free, in order to hold both of them up with a backwards step. “Sir. It’s no trouble I was trying to cause, sir.”

“You and the wife?” he went on. “Y’all sharing a room? Nice little girl I hear you married. Last April. In St Ann’s Church. Not so? She must be Anglican.”

“It was only some savings I was looking to put together. You don’t have to worry about me. I easy to forget.”

“Right she does do some typing at the municipal center? Lot’s of business in and out around there. Busy. Plenty people around there.”

“And I never trouble up none of the bags or nothing, sir, I come like a deaf-mute. I does forget plenty.”

“What is her name?” the man then asked.

Cecil was wearing black loafers a half-size too large, and that could be slipped off easily in a dash from there to the railing. The jump to the water did not look too far, nor did the swim back to shore, all things considered. His mouth was for some reason salivating with a bitter, metallic saliva he could not swallow in time.

“You and your friend talk too much. What is her name, Mr Cecil?” he said again, with finality.

He stood in a wide stance as if to block passage, wobbling only slightly to keep his balance on the water. The other one who had been at the railing had slipped out of sight.

“Sheryl,” Cecil finally said, then hung his head.

It was done. The stars seemed to dim their expectant gazes in disappointment. The boat shuddered to life as the uncle started the engine back up and turned them around towards the shore. Brushing past Cecil the man offered him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“Trinidad turning into a big place now, Mr Cecil. We will make room for everyone.”

The ride back was made choppier by the boat’s small hops across the water; Port of Spain swelled to size on their approach like an expanding constellation. Back on the shore, once they’d parted ways from the rest, Cecil grabbed Sof by the back of his neck and marched him along to the carpark like a dog by the collar.

“It’s what kind of thing you get me involved with here boy, Sof?”

“Be realistic nah, man.”

“Is what you tell them about me, Sof?”

“Don’t be stupid nah, man.” He shrugged him off. “Is how long you want to drive taxi, boy Cecil boy? Them kind of people putting up shops.”

“You’re a real jackass.”

They sucked their teeth one after the other in retaliation.

“Remember, is not even you I wanted was to help,” Sof added. “Is really Pauly I would have rather prefer.”

Checking the time Cecil saw he was late for that night’s pickup at the airport too. He flung his car door open, lightly hitting Sof’s, started the engine with a loud rev, and in two minutes was gone in a hurry down the highway.

Even on land the rocking of that black water seemed to have made its way into his churning bowels. He followed the road’s directions as if being dragged downwards, getting to the Arrivals curbside half an hour after the scheduled time and seeing the passenger waiting with an expectant look—a tall black man of slight build, with a beard swallowing his face and a morose gaze magnified by glasses.

“Sir. Watch I reach, over here, Sir.” Cecil hopped out and lunged for his suitcases. “Dr Francis, correct? I real sorry there.”

“It’s alright,” the man said while massaging his forehead. He made his way through the backseat door being held open for him and had to quickly dart his feet inside for how quickly Cecil slammed it closed. Cecil loaded his suitcases into the trunk then skipped back around to settle in the driver’s seat..

“The wait wasn’t too bad, right?” he asked once he’d released the brakes. The car lurched forward with a start-stop shudder. “Sorry. The clutch does trouble up. Dr Francis, the wait, it wasn’t too bad?”

Francis buckled his seatbelt. “Nothing to hurt your head about.”

He had that practiced way of speech from time spent in England that made it hard for Cecil to tell if he was being humoured or scolded.

From the airport he set them off on the backroads going south towards Cunupia, fiddling around as he asked Francis’ preferences in air-conditioning, whether the flight had had any turbulence. By now the stars had been joined by a harsh moon that lent the roads a silvery touch of glow. He drove upright, and with an unusual two hands on the wheel, as if gripping a horse, for which the other taximen would have teased him. By the time he realized he had struck up a conversation with Francis about someone he had returned to Trinidad to find, they were on a winding stretch of road.

“That’s a nice story, man. Nice.”

“There are no guarantees, but I am doing it as a favor to my mother.”

“Very nice story.”

Glints of moonlight would occasionally catch on Francis’ glasses, such that he seemed a large cat sitting in wait in the back seat. “Fourteen years,” he reflected. He sneezed.

“Dr Francis,” Cecil said, “do me a favour, please. Don’t call in to the taxi service and say ‘bout how I was late to pick you up.”

“I told you, it’s okay,” said Francis, sneezing again.

“I hear what you saying, you know, but people does be saying things.”

He was finding it suddenly absurd to still be driving along when just about any road travelled too far might return him to that colourless sea. All the world seemed treacherously electric, as if the slightest contact with anything beyond the car’s lane would jolt them into a careening unreality where no laws remained. He had the urge to race to Sheryl and lock the doors. From the backseat, Francis’ sneezes were sounding off like repeated pops. Cecil wondered where they were even going.

“Oh God, Dr Francis, I don’t want to endanger you!” he yelled, pulling the car over. “I not feeling too good to drive right now, truth be told.”

He found a patch of dirt on the road’s shoulder buffeted by a thicket of trees and switched the engine off before opening his door and stumbling out.

Francis was quick to snap to attention. “Hello! What’s this? What are you doing to me here?” he yelled through a window down halfway. But Cecil was over at the bushes dry-heaving with his hands on his knees.

“Don’t worry, Dr Francis,” he sputtered, “it’s not rob I come here to rob you.” He fell to all-fours, calling to the Virgin Mary. “Oh gosh, oh gosh, what I really do? What I really do just now?”

For as many minutes as he remained there, not another car went by. They might have been on any other country road where the trees stood imperious and the screams of night insects saturated the dark. Cecil heard the back seat door open and close. 

“You alright?”

He clenched handfuls of dirt and gave another cry to the sky.

“Dr Francis, honestly I not too good. You have anything for palpitations?”

“I’m not that kind of doctor.”

“What kind you is then?”

“Anthropology.”

“Oh.” Finally one vehicle went by, a rattling truck transporting layers of sleeping chickens. “You does drive, Dr Francis?”

“Yes. What? Why?”

“It’s best that you drive, sir,” Cecil whimpered. “I can’t make. I want you to reach where you going before it’s too late.”

“I am not accustomed to driving here.”

“It easy, man. Come, help me up here. I feeling weak.”

Cecil tottered up halfway himself, then draped the rest of his weight onto Francis once he drew closer. Francis helped carry him back to the car where Cecil opened the back door and flung himself lengthways across the seat, his hand across his eyes. Francis looked at where he lay prone like a great baby and realized he was serious. He went around and got in on the driver’s side.

“It easy, Dr Francis. Watch, take the keys. Wiggle the wheel as you turn the ignition. Good, correct. Just so.”

They pulled off from the shoulder and onto the road, picking up speed after he shifted gears.

“Where am I even supposed to go?” Francis asked, finally annoyed.

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you the turns to make. It not too far to drive.”

Cecil straightened a little as they got going, gazing out the window like a sightseer. He had only ever been back there when polishing the seats on weekends.

“The Chinee lady does treat we bad, Dr Francis. She feel is we who kill she brother.”

He had him go straight at the next junction by the gas station, followed by a right where a Tree Cutting Services sign was tacked beneath a streetlight.

“What it have playing on the radio, Dr Francis? I need something to calm my nerves.”

Francis fiddled on the radio to a station playing funk. Cecil eased himself further upright and buckled his seatbelt.

“Is woman you say you come back here for, Dr Francis?”

“Something of the sort.”

“Yeh man. That’s good.” He inhaled a bit of the air. “Dr Francis? I don’t want to lie to you. I not too sure what anthropology is.”

“If you could let me concentrate, please.”

But Cecil seemed to have been overcome by the inattentive listlessness of a drunkard, or a Greek oracle.

“Woman does be good to you man,” he said. “You have to treat them nice. Take what I am telling you.”