Jamaica Dreaming (Caribbean Heat) (4 page)

“You’re right,” a woman yelled from the shadows near the tree. Others nodded.

It was a good audience, lively. They gave Julissa a good vibe. “I’m dedicating my first song to her, to Ananda Dean. I hope you can hear me where you are, baby.” She allowed the clapping to turn into white noise, went inside herself for the song, gathered it up and pushed it out of her in a clear river of sound.

Her voice quavered but not so much that she thought anyone would notice as she sang the first few lines of Esperanza Spalding’s
Black Gold
. She waved at the little girl in the white dress as she sang. Had anybody told Ananda she was golden while she lived? A breeze touched her face as the song’s final notes faded away.

This time the clapping was loud and sustained. Julissa waited a couple minutes before she spoke. “That’s right, people,” she said into her mike. “That’s what we’ve got to tell our children every day, so they know it deep inside themselves, so they grow strong and tall and proud.”

She gave Troy a signal and he played a few bars of her next song,
Angelitos Negros
. She’d discovered Roberta Flack’s version of the song on You Tube just a couple months ago. All eyes were riveted on her. She wondered how many understood what she was singing. The song came from an old movie. That one’s for you, too, Ananda, she said silently, as she sang the last stanza.

Next, Julissa sang a jazz rendition of Bob Marley’s reggae song, “
Satisfy My Soul
.” It was an arrangement she and her regular composer, Eric Matthews, had been working on before The Event. Eric had emailed what he’d done to Troy three weeks ago and she and the pianist spent an hour working on it yesterday. It was the first time she was singing the song in public. The notes played along her flesh, sank into her being. People’s expressions turned eager as they recognized the reggae classic.

As Julissa’s honeyed voice soared into the night–sky, people drew closer to the stage, drawn like moths to a flickering flame, but Sebastian stayed where he was. He’d done it. He’d found this woman whose voice, and face and body had anchored her to his soul, and he had brought her to his island. Now, as he watched her on the stage, he saw what everyone else saw. A beautiful, dark–skinned woman with a halo of natural hair, weaving a musical spell over an enthralled audience. This was the Julissa Morgan he knew, but he saw another quality that had been missing the first time he’d seen her in concert – a vulnerability that lent her a fragile, subtle beauty. Beside the weight she’d lost and her air of faint fragility, she showed no other sign of her accident. Her face and arms had been untouched. She glanced his way and her breath seemed to catch, or did he just imagine it? She’d nailed it with Esperanza Spalding’s
Black Gold
. If she’d sung nothing else, the people would still have loved her for that one.

She segued from one of her own songs, a beautiful ballad that reminded Sebastian of Ella Fitzgerald, into the adaptation of Jimmy Cliff’s
Many Rivers to Cross
that he’d seen her do in Chicago. Unable to help himself, he drifted closer to the stage. Not even Jimmy had ever put so much raw emotion into those words.

Her voice sounded as if it would break. Her eyes were closed, her expression tortured. She hadn’t put that level of feeling into it the first time he’d seen her. He wondered if she was thinking of her accident and all she’d gone through during her recovery.

When the song was over, she took a sip of water from the glass Lori had deposited near one of the speakers.

The last song of the evening was “High Moon,” her signature song, the only one to reach as far as Number 5 on the Billboard jazz chart. The crowd grew still listening to her sweet voice and the haunting words of the song, a dying woman’s farewell to her lover.

“A long, cold night is coming and I’ve got to go, got to leave you, my love.” Her eyes caught his and slid away. “Silver moon floats high into the sky, I’ve been running toward you all my days but there’s no use in running now. Hold me, my love. I feel so cold. My bones have turned to ice. The moon is so beautiful, and so alone. You can’t follow me, my love.”

Afterward, she switched gears yet again and swung into a cover of George Benson’s
Masquerade
, followed by a mix of some of her own songs
Africa, Suffer the Children
and
I’m Stepping
. That was supposed to be her last song but the people yelled for an encore and she gave them another fifteen minutes with more of her own songs as well as some classics.

As the notes of her final song died and, with the audience’s applause ringing in her ears, Julissa’s eyes sought Sebastian Chung’s. She’d been hyper–aware of his tall form lounging near the back of the crowd but somehow seeming to loom over everybody, his eyes intent on her face, his expression unreadable until he smiled and then she felt a rush of gratitude and pleasure that startled her.

The applause went on and on. They wouldn’t let her go. Sebastian was as proud of her as if they were already lovers and she belonged to him. She already did, in a way. Even if she refused him, scarring his heart forever, a part of him would always carry the memory of her.

Julissa bowed to the audience, to Troy and, to the audience, again. Delighted with how the concert had turned out, Carly fairly bounded on to the stage to take the mike and close things off.

When she left the stage, people surged around Julissa, congratulating her on her performance.

Sebastian watched for a while before striding up to steer her away. He wondered where Lori had got to, but he couldn’t see the young woman anywhere.

“You were magnificent,” he told Julissa, his hand cupping her elbow.

“I had a great audience,” she replied. Her voice was a trifle huskier than before her performance and he signaled to a waiter with a tray full of drinks.

She picked a fruit punch and sipped it slowly. She looked pensive, but happy and he figured she was still feeling the rush of performing.

“It would be my honor to show you around tomorrow,” he said, quietly.

“Oh.” She raised her eyes to his. “You must be very busy, surely.”

“I want to.”

Her eyes searched his face. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him and hoped his expression gave away nothing of the turmoil inside him. He wanted to close his eyes and breathe deeply, to hold the smell of her inside him, but, instead, he feigned nonchalance.

“Do I know you? It’s like at the back of my mind,” she asked, her voice slightly breathy. Sebastian wondered if he was having the same effect on her that she had on him.

“I caught a couple of your performances when I was in Chicago more than a year ago. Before your accident.” Her face closed down and he could have kicked himself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have ––.”

“No, please, don’t worry about it.” She grimaced. “Of course you know. It was in the papers.” She gave the empty glass to a passing waiter. “Lori must be looking for me. She’s taking me back to the hotel.”

Sebastian had been planning to offer to drive her back, himself, but he saw that it would be wrong to make that suggestion now. Go easy, he reminded himself. Take it slow. She’s here for three weeks. But, when you really looked at it, three weeks was nothing. He wanted a lifetime.

“Yes, of course. I’ll help you look for her.”

“No, it’s all right. I can find her.” Suddenly, she looked like a bird poised for flight.

Sebastian stepped back, gave her space. It was all going wrong. How could he have been so stupid to mention the accident!

“Can I…. I mean, about tomorrow, I’d really like to show you the island. Well, we can start with Kingston. Can I call in the morning to fix the time?”

“Umm, all right, yes.” Her smile came and went so quickly he almost thought he’d imagined it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…. Yes, please. I’d like that.”

She gave him a little wave and melted into the crowd. Sebastian didn’t move. He’d thought he’d spoilt everything, but it was okay. She’d said ‘yes.’ It took everything in him not to give a victory pump in the air.

Sebastian saw her first. Julissa emerged on the path leading from the hotel’s reception area to the villas in a purple top that left her shoulders bare, green linen pants, and strappy white sandals. She glanced up from tucking something into the beach–bag over her shoulder, saw him, and smiled. His heart sloshed around in his chest. Keep it cool, he told himself, sternly. The last thing he wanted was to frighten her off. He sensed that the accident had changed something in her, something that went deeper than the damage to her bones and flesh.

“Good morning,” he said, holding his hands out to her. After a slight hesitation, she put hers in his and the touch of her fingers was like honey melting in his soul. “Did you sleep well?”

“Never better.” But some vague anxiety lurked in her eyes though she looked radiant. Her hair was pulled back and loosely braided into one large coil which hung down her back. A pair of big, silver and white sunglasses sat on top of her head.

“Let me take that.” He released one hand to grab the beach bag. “All set?”

She nodded.

He led the way to a blue Toyota Rav 4, opened the passenger door, threw her bag in the backseat, and held the door open while she got inside. In seconds they had left the hotel behind and were out on the open road. Sebastian docked his iPhone and pushed the stereo button. Jimmy Cliff’s
Better Days Are Coming
poured out of the SUV’s sound system. He glanced at her to see if she had any objection, but she was looking out her window. They flashed past tall coconut trees towering over small houses, fields of bananas and, in the distance, terraced fields of coffee.

He shifted into low gear, slowing, as they passed through Irish Town. Except for the music there was silence between them. He tried to come up with something to say that didn’t sound inane or trite but what he really wanted to ask her was to give him a chance.

She broke the silence first, her voice soft and puzzled. “I didn’t really expect you to be Chinese, you know. Even with your name.” She touched his arm lightly and he almost stopped breathing. “I hope that doesn’t offend you.”

“No, of course not. There aren’t that many of us so foreigners forget we’re here.”

“Were your parents born on the island or did they migrate here?”

Sebastian grinned to himself. It was a question he got a lot from Americans. He shifted gears again, speeding up as they left Irish Town behind.

“My great–great–grandfather was how the Chungs got here. He came over from Hong Kong in 1854. He was one of the first Chinese laborers to be recruited by the white plantation owners to come work for them after the slaves were freed.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure. You see, the former slaves didn’t want to work on the estates and a lot of them migrated to Panama to work on the railroads so that was how the plantation owners came up with importing Chinese laborers.”

“Wow.” She paused to absorb this. “Did they bring women over too?”

Sebastian swallowed a chuckle. She was good. It was a subtle way of asking if he was mixed. Most people came right out and asked but Julissa had a lot more tact.

“Yes, they did. Wei Xuan, my great–great–grandfather, married Huping Ling, a woman who came over on a later boat. She had three boys for him before she died in a cholera outbreak.”

“Huh.” She paused to absorb this. “So, the Chinese men never inter–married?”

“Previous generations didn’t so much, but my grandfather and my father did.”

“You’re mixed.” She said it as if she were confirming a theory.

“Very much so. My mother is also multi–racial – half Afro–Jamaican on her mom’s side and half–Scottish from her father’s side.”

“In the US being bi–racial or multi–racial can set kids up for a hard time with bullies and ignorant people. Is it different here?”

“A lot of the kids I went to school with were mixed, but the mix was usually black with white,” he explained. “There were only a few other kids of Chinese descent in the school and none in my class. They didn’t know what to make of me. I wasn’t black. I wasn’t white. I didn’t really look Chinese, either. They called the Chinese kids names like ‘Ching–Chong’ or ‘Chiney–eye.’ Me, they called, ‘Pepperpot,’ shortened eventually to just Pep. Do you know what pepperpot is?”

She shook her head.

“A thick, highly–seasoned Caribbean stew with practically every vegetable and root crop in it.”

Julissa chuckled. “So, are you highly seasoned?”

“Very. I wouldn’t suggest you taste me without a glass of water nearby.” He grinned at her and Julissa felt the air get suddenly thin as her heart lurched in her chest. She fixed her gaze on the view outside and tried to ignore the effect this man was having on her. It was ridiculous but she felt like a nervous schoolgirl every time he turned those midnight–black eyes on her.

As if realizing the tension in the car needed to be dialed down a notch, Sebastian started pointing out places of interest as he drove. When he told her they’d be passing the Bob Marley Museum she said she wanted to see it so he pulled into the parking lot and they spent more than an hour going through the exhibits. It was after one o’clock when they left so he took her to the Crowne Plaza Hotel for lunch. The place was a local favorite and he’d not called before to reserve a table as he usually did, but he gave the maitre’d a hundred in US dollars and got shown to a window table with a superb view. The “Reserved” sign was quickly whisked away. Sebastian spared a mental apology for whoever he’d displaced but, surely, if it was a man, he’d approve once he got a look at Julissa.