Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud

Author:Ingrid Persaud [Persaud, Ingrid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

As I got off the subway at Columbus Circle the sun went straight in my eyes. If you see how peaceful and nice the place was looking. Central Park was dazzling white, covered in snow; the sky clear blue. Everything was pretty pretty to make up for the place being damn cold. This is not my first winter and I know that a beautiful clear sky meant no cloud cover to keep the city warm. Give it another hour and here will be completely different. Traffic will build up and the cab drivers will start honking horn. All that snow on the ground will turn brown from people hustling to reach to work on time.

Mr. Chetan said he couldn’t handle winters. I took a selfie and wrote: “freezing my ass off.” Whenever I send him a message my mind automatically jumps to Mammy. Only for a couple seconds. She’s never seen snow. Maybe by now she has. Who knows. We don’t talk. Letters come now and then. No point in writing back. She made her bed, I made mine, and now it’s too weird to even begin to talk.

I didn’t come Midtown to lime. Work is on a construction project quite down by Wall Street. Honestly, if I reach Thirty-fourth Street I reach far and by the time work’s done I’m escaping before the mad rush. But Chips asked for a breakfast meeting at a diner—corner of Ninth Avenue and Fiftieth Street. If it wasn’t for this new fella on the site, Trevor, I wouldn’t even know Chips was born.

Trevor joined the crew on the Wall Street site when Dennis took on extras to finish the job. He’s a good bit older. Late forties maybe? We’re painting this massive reception area but Trevor’s easy to spot. His bald head’s always plastered down with a mash-up, faded red cap with “Mount Gay Rum” on it. We were joking and I told him to get a new cap before this one falls apart completely.

—Yo, Trini. Watch your mouth. It don’t have a shop in the world selling this cap. Not even them big, expensive stores on Fifth Avenue have this. The onliest way to get one is if you sail in a race Mount Gay’s sponsoring.

—You could sail?

—If I could sail? Man, in Dominica I had my own boat, Sayamanda. You ever went sailing?

—No.

—Come Dominica and I go show you. My boat could catch some good speed. Check it out.

He took out his iPhone. Even through the cracked screen Trevor’s photos posing with his fancy boat were sick. I can’t even guess how much a boat like that costs.

—So Trevor, what you doing fighting up here?

—Hurricane Maria. Flattened Dominica. Better to wait it out over here than to catch ass back home. Things rough for the small business man like me.

I was in New York when that hurricane passed and Uncle Hari was involved in some fundraising. Trevor said people lost everything. But he’s always laughing and smiling with everybody. Nice man.

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