King of Swords

She always made him take his baths too hot, deliberately, so the water would scald him and the metal would heat up and burn his feet. She'd had a special tap and boiler installed, just for him to fill his tub. He was forbidden from using the main tub. That was for her alone. Normally she'd shower, but whenever she was seeing her lover, she'd have a bath and it would be a real occasion. She'd be in there at least two hours. She'd put candles at the end of her tub and sweet-scented oils in the water; she'd turn off the lights and play tapes of the sea washing up on the beach.

He heard the familiar sound of his mother coming down the stairs, the clippety-ro, dippcty-cop trotting pony rhythm of her feet on the boards, followed by the sound of the two gold lockets she wore around her neck bumping together with a sbhbh-put, shbbb-put as she approached the door.

Thankfully the thunder had stopped a while ago and with it his twitch, so he had no problem putting on his game face - the game being that of the dutiful, loving and admiring twenty-nine-year-old son, happy to see his mother who was coming to give him his bath.

She entered quickly, all 4 feet 9 inches of her, opening and closing the door so fast he could've sworn she'd walked right through it like a ghost. No smile, no nod, no hello, as usual.

Eva Desamours was more striking than she was beautiful.

Her skin was dark and rich, unlined and unmarked, bar a single pockmark beneath her left eye; her forehead was wide, her cheekbones high and prominent, while the lower half of her face tapered down acutely to a pointed, well-defined

chin, accentuating her prominent downturned mouth whose full lips — dark brown with a hint of purple — for ever reminded Carmine of a drying grape whenever she pursed them. He never looked her in the eye because he was scared to. Marginally slanted and unblinking, cold, near motionless and very very black, her eyes fixed on the world with a merciless detachment, as if she already knew its fate and didn't care to change it. She was also completely bald whether naturally or by choice, Carmine had neither plucked up the courage to ask nor been able to work out. She wore an array of wigs styled in a straight black bob that fitted her so well they looked like her real hair.

Eva had a man. They'd been together for as long as he could remember. It was a casual relationship. Either he'd come visit once or twice a month, or she would disappear on long weekends. Carmine had never met him nor seen him nor heard his voice. Nor did he know his name. Eva just called him imon type' — her guy. He'd sometimes heard the two of them going at it - loud, raucous and rapturous, her cries duetting with his bull-like snorts and gasps to the accompaniment of quaking floorboards.

'Take your clothes off and get in your bath. I haven't got long,' she snapped. They spoke English to each other and had done ever since they'd come to Miami, twenty years ago. Carmine had learnt his English from the black kids in his neighbourhood, and he'd picked up Spanish from the Cuban kids he'd hung out with. He was often mistaken for Cuban, something he never corrected because to admit to being Haitian in Miami was tantamount to tattooing 'loser'

on your forehead.

He took off his robe and hung it on the hooks by the towel rack. He felt his skin rise in goosebumps even though the bathroom was warm. Sometimes she came straight out and told him what was bugging her but usually she liked to wait, hold on to it, let it brew and ferment and build some

more in her head, circling him all the while before getting to the point. It was always worse when she prolonged it because he could always sense her fury, always knew what was coming. He could virtually see the rage massing behind her brow, those dark and very deadly legions of anger she had total command over, which she could unleash or withdraw at the drop of a hat.

Wait,' she said as he was about to step into the water.

'Turn around.' He did as she asked. He'd never been ashamed of standing naked before her. She'd seen him naked every day of his life since the day of his father's murder.

'What's that?' She was pointing at the cauliflower-shaped bruise in the middle of his abdomen.

'Someone hit me,' Carmine said.

'Who?'

'A cop.'

'Why?'

'I don't know,' Carmine said. He hadn't told her about the waitress. She'd been intended for the other Deck he was building, the one his mother didn't know about.

'Did you provoke him?'

'Of course not.'

'Where did this happen?'

'Out near Coconut Grove.'

Were you working?'

'Yeah.'

'Did he see you working?'

'No. It wasn't like that.'

'And his name? What is his name?'

'He didn't tell me that.” Carmine chuckled at the stupidity of the question. She gave him one of her fierce black-eyed looks, the kind that could cut through walls.

'Was he in uniform?'

'Plainclothes.'

She came up close to him and touched the heart of the

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