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own daughter. The kinda nasty things he said to her, talking about how she is a dirty white bastard, and all kinds of sickness. And then what he did to her—touch her, force himself on her, and told her, told her to her face that he was doing it because I gave him this sickness and he wasn’t going to let anybody that I love ever have a peaceful life.”
    She stopped talking at that point and just stared out the door to the parking lot like she was waiting for someone to walk in. When she start to talk again, it was like she was talking to herself.
    “I have never told anybody this thing. Never. But that is what he did. That was the last thing he did before he left. He left me a note. He said he was going to kill himself and that I shouldn’t look for him. He said that he had destroyed his life, destroyed the only person who ever loved him, and now he had destroyed the life of an innocent child. Mr. Brown, I can’t tell you how hard it is for me to look at my daughter knowing that I brought this thing into her life. I brought this darkness into her life. She is positive. She might live a longer life than me. She might. But what kinda life is that?
    “So tell me, am I so sick to start to worry about him, to wonder where he is, to wonder if he really is going to kill himself, to wonder who going to look after him when he gets sick? I can’t tell anybody this thing. How can I tell anybody that I still love this man? Maybe it is not love, maybe it is something like a sickness that makes me think that me and him are now tied up in a way and we can’t be separated. Me and him and my daughter. All I know is that I need to find him, and I want you to help me find him.”
    “Deloris say you want me to kill him,” I said, the word coming out with difficulty because my throat was dry-dry.
    “I never said that. I just said to her that he has done some things that no woman can forgive. I told her me and my daughter was sick because of him. I told her I needed you to help me find him. I never said I want to help him. I couldn’t explain that to another woman. She heard what I said, and maybe the way she understood me, she conclude that is kill I want to kill the man. But that is not what I said.”
    It was enough for me. I agreed to find him. But deep inside me, what she said about him, about loving him, about being tied to him, that thing made me sick to my stomach. Not because I thought it was a sickness in her, but because I was jealous.
    This was her flaw, and yet it was a flaw that pushed her further away from me. Right there, I wanted to find the man. Right there, I had a desire to do something evil to that man.
    I could have started right away. In truth, I could have found that man in no time at all. But I have to say that after this lunch with her, I turned into a different man. I was behaving in ways that I knew was sinful and not right, but I walked into it same way, every step telling myself, man, you have to do better.
    When we step out into the sunlight outside the restaurant, the woman selling orange just say casual, “Nice man, nice man. My Lord, buy the lady a orange, nuh. She look like she could eat a sweet orange.”
    Now, “My Lord” is what a man would normally call me, but some of them young girls start behave like man these days.
    Cynthia smile. “My Lord,” she say. “Buy me a orange, nuh.”
    And the way she say that, I know I was in trouble.
    I pretend it was the glare making me rush for my shades. And when I walked that woman to the taxi place … imagining her naked body, sweating, moving over me, her breasts, her strong thighs, her batty— Jesus … Pushing through the crowd until I found one of my connections and give him some money, plus more, and tell him to take her to where she want to go as she protesting that she could just catch the bus, and all the noise around us, the traffic, the people chatting, the woman selling this and that, the bus and truck, the car horn, despite her protest,