The scratch on my leg had started to bubble, like a blister. It was festering. That word alone made me think about things. Festering in the north is one thing. It describes emotion, being inhibited, having issues with your parents. Festering in the tropics was … well another thing entirely. It was my fault. It involved a cat. Bobby was there, and Bobby was drunk. I had peeled off my sock and was rubbing tequila on my leg, and it was terrible. He was worried.
How in the hell did you let a cat do that?
I was teasing it.
Teasing it with what?
A feather.
Christ. Long legs. Really long legs. I don’t know man. It’s not a cat. Not really. What the hell man. You should see a doctor.
It’s a cat. It’s her cat. I don’t know. It’s not a big deal and it’s just a scratch.
I was getting worried. It seemed like it was possibly a big deal and the scratch was the length of my calf. At the least, it would be a terrible scar.
It’s not a cat, Bobbby says, its a Leopard.
It’s not a Leopard. It’s a Serval.
Macey was a mess. A hot, wet mess, pretty much all the time. Sex and poetry. Shellfish and money. And that’s how the past month had gone. A bit of tequila. Some poetry. Some sand and sea. Some sex, more sex, messy drunken sex, some grass, some music and then a sunset. Sometimes swimming. Sometimes almost drowning, catamarans were never out of the question. I had lost track of days and they became weeks. She had a villa, she had a phone, she had a cat, with long legs, and Bellere’ was always there. Bellere’ was always conscious, and she was a caretaker, even though she was younger than either of us.
I wasn’t broke, but I had little money. Saint Thomas at the time had been a stop, between a friend and Belize. A few hundred dollars made their way between my belt and other’s hands and I was not in a place to live as if I was king.
Macey and I fell in over a moment in the street. I saw her and she was looking at me already. I walked up to her and took her arm. And we were both, terribly, obviously, a mess.
Saint Thomas was a place that seemed ripe for total upheaval. I had been stumbling around as a reporter for a few years and did a terrible job of it. I was perhaps, running away. But I had seen a few countries that had fallen apart. And perhaps then, I started to see them everywhere. I started to see them in myself. I saw them in Saint Thomas. I saw them in Macey. I saw them in a sunrise over paradise.
Thursday, wasn’t a day that mattered. Friday. Not a day that mattered. Saturday. Not a day that mattered, it was an amateurs’ day. Hell, I don’t think I’d remembered a Saturday for 4 years. But, Sunday, well, Sunday was a day that mattered. Sunday was the day the streets were empty. Churches were full. And I’d prowl, sometimes in a old Jeep. Sometimes I’d prowl on a Honda motorcycle, riding slow, and looking in windows in first gear, smoking a joint, and wondering who if anyone was still free. And like so many people, I wondered if I was free. And I had a suspicion that I wasn’t. I was working on something, but I didn’t know what.
The next Monday, it was 7a.m. I was drinking vodka, and I was drinking cocoanut milk, and Bobby was asleep on my couch, and I was watching the kids going to school in the neighborhood, and I just wanted to fucking sleep. I hadn’t slept in 4 days. Moko had apparently bought a large batch of cocaine that had floated in, for a small amount of money and had sold all he needed to. As such, he had been running about town, showing everyone a good time, and no one was immune, there were a pile of asshole Americans, up and down the beaches, high as the andes on blow, and literally no one cared. They bought more pina coladas, and Sher, one of the cops was obviously in on it. I had been ignoring it. I wasn’t really into it, but like all the assholes on the beaches, I had been running with it for days; what else was there to do aside the doing.
At 10am Bobby woke up, and went in the bathroom and locked the door. Sher came over. Sher wanted to ask me about Macey. Sher wanted to know everything about Macey. Sher was too friendly. My cousin was a cop, and I knew exactly how every person who ever wanted to be a cop thought about life based upon one cop, because I saw his entire life up to that point, and at every point up to then, he was always a fucking asshole, aside from that being not fair, I knew that, in my heard for the rest of my life, that I knew a cop. And a cop was never telling you what they actually wanted. And asking about a rich, perpetually stoned girl, under the pretense of sharing a joint together as friends, wasn’t good then, and certainly wasn’t good in St.Thomas.
I went to see a doctor on Tuesday. The doctor gave me some pills for pain, some pills for an infection and advised me to stay away from wild cats. I didn’t want to be around wild cats. Cats are their own. They belong to no one. Trees belonged to no one. Air belonged to no one. Macey belonged to no one. But Saint John and Thomas belonged to America. And there was nothing to do about any of it. I was terribly unhappy and