Read Online Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab by Shani Mootoo - Free Book Online

problems. He loves me. And I love him. It’s just that there is no mystery for us anymore. I don’t think Angus could survive without me, and I can’t bear the thought of him being alone, but I can’t bear, either, the thought of not being with Eric. I hope you will agree to meet him.”
    I didn’t respond, and Zain didn’t bother to ask me again—she simply arranged a meeting some days later on a trip she and I, just a little cool with each other now, took. It was not until we were a few minutes away from the Coal Pot Café in Salybia–Toco that she informed me Eric would meet us there.
    There must have been something more to him than I was able to see, perhaps something only revealed in private. Tome that day he appeared less handsome, less grand, than she had reported. He was clearly uncomfortable and I guessed that he was meeting me only to please Zain. Still, I did not find him particularly attentive to Zain and, to my discomfort, she asked him several times if he was all right. Over lunch he asked me, “So, you are related to Dr. Mahale?” I said Dr. Mahale was my father. “Yes, I know that,” he replied. I could see Zain waiting for an expansion of the subject. I, too, waited, and when Eric said nothing more, I ventured, This is such a beautiful area of Trinidad; I haven’t been to the beaches up here in almost two decades, and I am so happy to be here.
    It was a poor attempt to make small talk. I asked if he came here often. Eric said only, “No.” I asked where he lived. “Up by the yacht club,” he said.
    Zain jumped in, reminding me that Eric lived on his boat.
    I tried again. “So, do you call that home?”
    “If home is where you rest your head at night, then I suppose so.”
    I asked how he made a living.
    “So you are her guardian, now?” he asked with barely veiled hostility.
    Zain laughed, her embarrassment apparent, and playfully punched his arm. She said, “But why you being so coy, boy?”
    He said, half laughing, “This can’t be for real, man: this is an interrogation.”
    Eric offered me no more, and I gave up. He talked with Zain about the drive from the yacht club to Salybia–Toco, asked her if she had heard from someone whose name I didn’t catch. Later, at the beach, I sat on the sand and allowed myself to be mesmerized by the terrifying ragtag tumble of waves and currents from the Atlantic Sea while Zain and Eric walked hand in hand down the length of the dune. On returning Zain dropped to the sand beside me, but Eric stood facing the sea, arms crossed on his chest. I decided to try one last time, for Zain’s sake. I stood up and joined him and asked if he ever brought his boat here. He answered with one word: Never.
    Zain got up and went to the water’s edge. Eric and I stood in silence for some minutes. Then he left in his car.
    He is not always like that, Zain told me. She couldn’t understand what was going on with him. On the way back to her house she brooded, and I, peeved but intent on not revealing my disappointment in her choice of a person with whom she might cheat on dear Angus, intent, too, on not showing my own feeling of betrayal, or my fears about why Eric was so rude to me, laid my head back and dozed.
    The second time I met Eric involved, to my dismay, similar deceptions. Zain had taken me to her gym, after which we were to go out for lunch. I hadn’t bothered to ask where we would go as I no longer knew restaurants on the island. But my heart fell when I saw that we were heading to the yacht club. Halfway through our lunch at High Tide Restaurant, Eric strolled in and joined us. He was wellknown there, and obviously liked the attention the restaurant staff paid him. This time he was closely attentive to me. Perhaps Zain had taken him to task about the way he had acted before. I was not fooled, especially as the topic he chose to engage in with me was my personal workout at the gym. Just as such a topic between a man and a woman was less about the