Nothing Like Love (12 page)

“For how long?”

Anand zipped the bag roughly. “Until this scandal die down. Until I organize the wedding and thing with Nanny.” He eyed his son, scowling. “You behave like a real scamp, boy.”

Krishna folded his arms over his chest. “And what make you think Auntie Kay go want me to stay with she?” he asked.

Anand froze. “Eh!” he said, eye twitching. “It ain’t matter if she want you or she ain’t want you—she getting you.”

“Why?”

“Because she costing me a damn fortune, that’s why.” He sucked his teeth, stroked his moustache. “And stop asking me so many questions!”

Maya, Krishna’s mother, stood in the doorway covering her mouth with her hand, her round eyes brimming with tears.

Krishna sighed. “Pa, is not really a scandal if you marry we.” He leaned against the windowpane and shrugged. “We was going to marry next year anyway.”

Anand stared at Krishna, aghast. He dropped the bag of clothes to the floor and pointed a trembling finger at Krishna. “Listen good: you and Vimla Narine ain’t marrying. No sneaky girl like she go ever take the Govind name.”

Krishna stood up straight. He looked to his mother for help, but she averted her eyes. “She is a good girl, Pa. A smart girl, too,” he said, turning back to Anand.

“Too smart for she own good, creeping away in the night and fooling she parents.” Anand left the room and returned with the Ramayana in his arms. He set the holy epic on Krishna’s desk. “Too smart ain’t good, Krishna.” He slipped out of the
room again and reappeared with the Puranas. “Medium is all right,” he said, placing this text on top of the Ramayana.

“So you want me to leave she?” Krishna sighed. “Pa, why you bringing those books here?” He followed Anand to the door, throwing Maya an exasperated look.

Anand re-entered the room, holding the Bhagavad Gita to his heart and nearly colliding with Krishna. He added the book to the growing pile of texts. “You ain’t leaving she, Son. I sending you away from she.” Anand smoothed a hand over the Bhagavad Gita’s cover. “And these books are for you to study while you in Tobago.”

Krishna shook his head. “Impossible.”

Anand paused mid-step on his way out the door again. He turned on his heel and arched a bushy eyebrow at Krishna. “Impossible?” He wagged his finger at his son, a sardonic smile playing on his lips. “You and Vimla marrying is impossible. Studying these scriptures?” He smiled. “Possible.” And then he was gone again.

Krishna sat on the edge of the bed and raked his hands through his hair. He waited for Anand to reappear, an objection burning on his tongue.

“Because when you go to Tobago,” Anand continued, one Vedic text tucked beneath each arm, “is only studying for you.” He added the Vedic texts to the others. “No beach, no liming with friends, no nothing except”—he gestured to the pile he’d made on Krishna’s desk—“studying. Oh—” Anand hurried out again before Krishna could open his mouth. “I forgot the Mahabarata!” he called from across the hall. “The Mahabarata is about virtue and following one’s path of duty.” He shuffled through the doorway and pushed the book into his son’s arms.
“As you know, the Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabarata, so you can read that text twice. A bonus!” Anand’s eyes were wild. “And guess who stars in these scriptures? Hmm?”

“Shri Krishna,” Krishna mumbled, offloading the text onto the others.

Anand placed a palm on his son’s cheek. “And what is your name?”

Krishna sighed and looked imploringly at his mother again.

Maya shook her bedraggled mane of grey fly-aways. “You drive your father mad,” she sobbed. Then she pressed her fingers against her lips anew.

Dutchie reappeared at Krishna’s shoulder. “Boss,” he said, “you lost?”

Startled, Krishna dropped his hands from the wheel. “What?” He gazed at the sea, but it was useless pretending to differentiate this stretch of blue from the one
The Reverie
had bobbled over a minute ago. Krishna shrugged. “I going the same direction you was,” he said.

Dutchie gave Krishna a knowing smile. “Relax! Tobago over there.” He pointed straight ahead, but all Krishna saw was the sky balancing on the sea. “I mean you lost up here.” Dutchie tapped the side of his head. He whipped a few loose locks over his shoulder. “She must be pretty. What she name?”

“What?” Krishna blushed, feeling foolish.

Dutchie furrowed his brow at Krishna. “What happened to you, Boss? You going deaf?” He lowered his face three inches and bore his black onyx eyes into Krishna’s. “WHAT IS THE GYUL’S NAME?”

Krishna shoved his hands in his pocket and appeared oblivious. “Whose name?”

“Don’t play the ass,” Dutchie said. “Tell me the girl that have you looking so lost, or I go make you sit with George and pat he peel up back all the way to Tobago.”

Krishna shook his head, laughing. “All right!” He squinted against the sun. “She name Vimla.”

Mischief twinkled in Dutchie’s black eyes. “What? I can’t hear you over the engine noise, you squeaking like a little mouse!”

Krishna stared at Dutchie, incredulous. “It seem like
you
going deaf!” He filled his lungs and yelled. “The girl’s name is VIMLA NARINE!”

Stillness fell over the boat. Krishna looked at Dutchie. Dutchie looked back at Krishna, grinning. He had killed the engine just as Krishna yelled Vimla’s name. The other passengers on the lower level of the boat turned to stare. Krishna blushed again, deeper this time.

Dutchie clapped his hands. “Thank you for your attention,” he said, turning his back on Krishna and taking three strides to the glass bottom of the boat. “We have arrived at the Coral Gardens. Have a seat.”

A froth of bubbles gathered in the corners of the glass as
The Reverie
drifted quietly over the waves. Through the blue-green water a sprawl of colourful coral came into view. Dutchie peered over the heads of his passengers, one foot on the bench, and named the plant life oscillating in the deep.

Krishna admired the rambling orange elkhorn coral and the intricate yellow network of brain coral. A parrot fish glided by in a whir of colours, a school of bright-blue chromis flitted like a single entity through a forest of antler-like
staghorn coral. George cried, “An angelfish!” And everyone leaned to the left to watch a hungry angelfish feeding off the algae stuck to the bottom of the boat.

Krishna could not hide his enthusiasm. Soon he began to point marine life out to Dutchie. “Is that star coral? Look, a grouper. That fish hideous, boy! And watch over there—is a manta ray! Watch how he flying under the water.” And to Dutchie’s delight, Krishna was right each time.

When Dutchie announced that they were in a good spot for snorkelling, the eager passengers abandoned the benches and pulled on their snorkelling gear and life jackets. The mother of the young boy asked Dutchie to help her adjust the straps on her life jacket. Dutchie tugged at the straps around the front, jostling the woman’s large breasts and trying to hide his pleasure behind a curtain of dreadlocks.

“Mommy, you need a bigger life jacket,” her son said, peering through his binoculars at Dutchie and his mother.

The woman reached out and hushed her son with a hand to his shoulder again. “This one’s fine—right, Captain?” She gazed into Dutchie’s face, her lips curved in a salacious smile. “I just need to shimmy a bit.” And shimmy she did.

Krishna chuckled as Dutchie’s expression dissolved into flagrant desire. The woman helped her son down the ladder into the water, and she slipped in after him, as lithe as a mermaid. Dutchie motioned to Krishna to join him at the bow. “You vexed, Boss?”

Krishna shrugged. “What I go vex for?”

Dutchie nodded. “Good. So tell me”—he wiped the beads of perspiration from his hairline—“why you really going Tobago?”

Krishna shrugged, staring after the snorkellers. “My father sending me Tobago to study.”

Dutchie’s eyes bulged. “To study!” And then they crinkled at the corners as he laughed, one hand on his chest. “Is only one thing you studying while you in Tobago and that’s Vimla. Let me guess.” He leaned his forearms on the railing. “You left she back in Trinidad.”

Krishna rubbed the stubble at his chin. “Yeah.” It was hard to hear someone else say it: he had abandoned her.

Dutchie cupped his hands around his mouth. “George, don’t swim too far out. I don’t feel like playing hero today!” He turned back to Krishna. “That man need a wife.” When Krishna gave him a half-hearted smile, Dutchie retrieved the bottle of rum punch from his cooler. He scooped ice into a cup and filled it to the brim with the pink drink. “Here.” He passed the drink to Krishna.

Krishna waved the cup away. “No, thanks. I don’t drink, man.”

Dutchie shrugged, taking a swig of the drink himself. “You could swim at least?”

Krishna smiled. “Like a barracuda.”

Dutchie stepped back and made a sweeping gesture toward the water. “Well, let we see, Mr. Barracuda.”

Krishna looked down at his starched shirt and hesitated.

Dutchie sucked his teeth. “Listen, right now, you ain’t in Trinidad and you ain’t in Tobago. You floating somewhere in the middle.” He downed his drink and tossed the cup back into the cooler then let the lid fall closed with a bang. “While you in limbo, enjoy yourself, Boss. This moment wouldn’t come again and it wouldn’t last forever.”

Krishna thought of his father’s oppressive demands, of the smirk that peeked from beneath his silver moustache when he’d handed Krishna his ticket for
The Reverie
Tobago Tour. Krishna thought of what waited for him in Tobago: an un familiar aunt’s dwelling and long, lonely days of studying in a place without friends, without Vimla. Suddenly he didn’t want to be in either place. Suddenly the tiny belt of sea between the islands felt like home.

Abandoning his inhibitions, Krishna stripped off his shirt, rolled his pant legs above his knees and sprang off the edge of
The Reverie
. He whooped as he soared through the air, flailing like a fledgling, his face turned to the sun. He dropped into the sea in a chaos of sprays and limbs and then gathered grace and glided deeper. A school of creole wrasse zipped by him, their violet bodies grazing his fingertips as he reached and propelled himself forward. He felt weightless. The sea gurgled in his ears. As he took in the jewel-toned fish and assortment of peculiar-shaped coral, he had the odd sensation of discovering another world. In the dizzying moments just before his last breath ran out, Krishna understood that the sea would become a part of his life. He pushed down in the water and rose toward the sunlight, bursting through the surface with a splash.

“Yes, Mr. Barracuda!” Dutchie cheered from the boat.

Krishna flipped on his back, cradled by the sea, and smiled at the cloudless sky.

T
he sun was just setting when they arrived at Maracas Bay, a swirl of cherry and pineapple Solo drifting lazily on the horizon, tinting the water pink and gold. Hilly mountains, draped in tangled foliage, rose up around the deep inlet, nestling kilometres of sandy shore between them. A pair of birds glided like black shadows across the glittering water, landing in a snarl of leafy mangrove trees that lined the mountain’s edge and hunched with age toward the rising surf. And everywhere, tall palms stretched to the heavens, vacillating in the salty breeze.

Vimla stood at the shore, mesmerized by the dark-green surf as it crept toward her toes and ebbed in frothy white foam. She hiked the bottom of her floral print dress up and tied it in a knot at her knees then slipped free of her sandals and marched to the water’s edge. Small rolling
waves surged over her feet, loosening the sand beneath them, so that when the water retreated again, she nearly lost her footing. Vimla giggled quietly to herself, and then, realizing there was no one she needed to be quiet for, hooted wildly at the dying day. The sea roared back and sprayed her from the waist down.

Minty slapped across the shore behind Vimla as she withdrew the silver pins that held her hair in a bun at her nape. She pressed the pins between her lips and twisted her silky tresses into an even tighter coil than before. “Look at Faizal,” she mumbled.

Vimla snatched the pins from Minty’s mouth and flung them into the water.

“Vimi!”

Vimla pulled Minty’s hands away from her hair. “Shake your head. Stop wiggling. Just do it!”

Minty tossed her head and let her hair spill down her back like a waterfall. “You did that just like your mother. Pretty.”

Minty turned away quickly to hide the glow on her hot cheeks. “Look at—”

“I see him. That is one vexed little matchstick of a man.” Vimla giggled.

Faizal Mohammed sat darkly on his prayer rug in the sand with his lanky arms wrapped around the knobs of his knees.

“How you get him to bring we here—and keep he big mouth shut about it? You promised to tell me when we reach the beach.”

Minty paused; a shadow crossed her face and faded away. She dipped into her pocket and retrieved a thick gold chain. It
dangled from her index finger and Vimla steadied the twirling initials with her pinky.
F.M
. She shook her head. “Where you find Faizal’s chain, Minty?”