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it pulls away.
    I GO INTO the bar. Chico is sitting by himself in a corner, flipping through the pages of a magazine. I make my way towards him. He looks up just as I get there.
    â€œFucked. My uncle wasn’t there. Of all the rotten luck! What about you? How did you get on with your bourgeoise?”
    â€œNext time I’m going to make her pay me.”
    â€œGood,” Chico says calmly. “I’ll be able to get some new shoes.”
    More customers arrive. The nine o’clock crowd is leaving the Rex Theatre, next door. There’s a new song on the radio.
    â€œI don’t get people like that,” says Chico. “He seemed like a nice guy . . .”
    The announcer has just said the singer’s name: Dodo.
    â€œDodo! I don’t know any Dodo. Where’s he from, I wonder?”
    â€œFor sure Denz would know.”
    â€œNot me. I’m going home.”

Even Nice Girls Do It
    AT THE LAST MINUTE , Christina changes her mind and decides to stay home and rest. She hasn’t felt well all afternoon. She knows she’s probably only coming down with the flu, but she doesn’t want to go out feeling like this. She feels cold deep down into her bones (and she’s in a tropical country). Ever since she arrived in Port-au-Prince, her greatest fear has been contracting malaria. She knows what she’s going to do. She’s going to make herself a nice hot toddy (rum, lemon, sugar) and curl up in bed with the new John le Carré. She likes his dry, refined sense of humour. This is how she intends to spend the evening. Harry can go to the Widmaiers’ without her.
    â€œYou’re sure you don’t mind if I don’t go, sweetie?”
    â€œI’d rather you came with me, but if you’re not feeling well, my dear . . . I’ll just show up for form’s sake and come home as soon as possible.”
    She knows Harry has no intention of leaving the party until the “last interesting woman” has departed, which means the woman with the roundest ass and the thickest lips. Suffice to say that Harry has a weakness for the young Haitian women who invariably show up at the Widmaiers’ parties. But Christina is not a jealous woman, and Harry isn’t a fool. He likes coming home. If he fantasizes about black women that’s his business. In a way, it has nothing to do with her. Christina, it should be pointed out, is a brunette, born to New York Jewish parents. She loves Woody Allen, and her favourite writer (apart from le Carré) is Philip Roth. Which means she appreciates humour and cultivates an air of desperation towards life. She has followed Harry here and has landed a job teaching contemporary literature at the Union School. Harry works at the American Embassy as the cultural attaché. He’s the lean type (but well muscled) with a prominent brow, which makes him look vaguely like a serial killer. His eyes, however, are bright, and he has the lips of a gourmand. He’s difficult to define. As for Christina, she’s a tad on the dry side, thin-lipped, tight-bummed, but very intelligent and a veritable dynamo of energy. It amuses her that men find her attractive. At parties she is never at a loss for admirers. But she much prefers intellectual conversation to primitive sex. Which is not easy to explain to a man with a hard-on. And so she avoids the usual parties as much as possible, since they are, let’s face it, nothing but pretexts for drinking and cruising. Which became clear the night a drunk pinched June’s bottom. June is their seventeen-year-old daughter, born in Manhattan. The name June doesn’t suit her. Harry named her after a Henry Miller character he found particularly disturbing. A sort of femme fatale who evoked every hell Miller could concoct. And every paradise. Harry’s daughter is nothing like that. She’s a classic beauty. Nicely rounded, as the saying sometimes goes. Adored by her professors. So