Read Online The Sea Grape Tree by Gillian Royes - Free Book Online Page A

know you would ask some good questions, get us thinking. That’s what partners supposed to do, right?”
    â€œYeah, but not surprise you with a new bottom line, man.”
    Even though Shad didn’t understand what bottom line meant and he wasn’t going to ask, he knew that Danny had eased up in his anger, because the grooves on his forehead weren’t as deep and his accent was starting to sound more Caribbean.
    Shad leaned in. “I know you have an answer for the water, though. What you think is the best way to get it out there?”
    â€œCisterns,” Danny answered with a firm mouth.
    â€œCisterns?”
    â€œAlmost every house in the Virgin Islands have them, because we don’t have rivers like you guys.” Danny rested his elbows on the bar and put his broad fingertips together in a peak. “See, you have a house with a pitched roof and gutters. The gutters lead the rainwater down a pipe that drains into a big underground tank—that’s the cistern—and every time it rains, the cistern fills up—”
    â€œAnd we can collect the rainwater.”
    â€œExactly.” The investor nodded.
    â€œWe just have to build a tank under the ground.”
    â€œAnd we have to put in pipes and a pump to bring it up to the surface. But it’ll be even more expensive to put roofs on the buildings for the rain to collect on.”
    Shad ran his fingers across his scalp. “We could use zinc, right? Zinc is cheap; all our houses have zinc roofs. I could get the men in the village to help put them up over the ruins. We could give them a little goat-head soup and make it into a party. We could put that up in one day, put up some beams and nail the zinc to them.”
    â€œAnd we could run the gutters around the zinc when that’s finished.”
    So it was, on that night at the end of January, that Shad and Danny solved a problem and became friends, one man respecting the other’s ideas. And just when Shad was beginning to feel comfortable enough with his new friend to talk about Beth and the wedding problem, the arrival of a third party shifted everything, the way it ­always did.
    â€œGood night,” Janet purred, depositing a large handbag on the counter. She flashed a smile at Danny that showed the gold tooth on her incisor to full advantage.
    The dressmaker took Danny’s outstretched hand and clambered onto the stool beside him, wriggling her hips around until she was comfortable. She was wearing a red dress with a neckline that framed her breasts and made her skin look more coppery than usual. Her arms were gleaming like she’d rubbed them with some kind of oil and she was smelling musky sweet—a scheming woman on a hot night.
    â€œI want whatever he’s having,” she said with a simper that would have made Beth roll up her eyes. Shad turned to the fridge and sighed.
    â€œI remember you,” Danny said behind him. “You came to my welcome party, right?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œYou had on a white—”
    â€œWe talked for a few minutes, but you was so popular . . .”
    â€œI’m sorry, I don’t remember your name. There were a lot of people—”
    â€œJanet.”
    When Shad placed the drink in front of the woman, she raised her eyes over the rim of the glass and gave the bartender a look that told him to back off. She turned again to Danny, the hoop earrings swinging as she eyed him up and down.
    â€œSo, what you think of Largo, Mistah America?”
    â€œIt’s great,” Danny said. “I want to see the rest of the area, though.”
    â€œIt sound like you need somebody to show you around,” she replied, batting her eyelashes. Shad tried not to suck his teeth.
    â€œI do, yes,” Danny said. He kept rubbing the glass with his thumbs, sliding them up and down.
    Shad folded his arms. “I can show you around during my lunchtime,” he said,