Mr. Clarinet

She'd arrived at the house at seven-thirty, rolling into the courtyard in a dusty Honda Civic whose windscreen looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a year. Max was eating the breakfast Rubie, the maid, had cooked for him. He'd wanted eggs over easy, sunny side down, but when he'd tried explaining it to her, she must have misinterpreted his hybrid of slowed-down English, sound effects, and sign language, because he'd ended up with an omelet served up on cassava tortillas. Still, it was delicious and filling. He'd washed it down with extra-strong black coffee and a tall glass of a juice she'd called chadec—grapefruit without the tartness.

"Heavy night?" Chantale asked.

"You could say that."

"You go to La Coupole?"

"How would you know?"

"Plenty of bars round your way."

"Have you been there?"

"No," she laughed. "They'd mistake me for a hooker."

"I don't know about that," Max said. "You're way too classy."

There: he'd made his first move on her—no deep breath, no summoning dormant strength, no scrabbling around for the right words; he'd just opened his mouth and exactly the right thing had come out, smooth and simple; the sort of ambiguous compliment that didn't stray beyond platonic flattery. He'd slotted straight back into velvet predator mode like he'd never given it up. Things went either way from here—either she'd pick up on his words and bat them back to him with a spin of her own, or she'd let him know no way was it going any further.

Chantale gripped the wheel a little too tight with both hands and looked straight ahead.

"I don't think your countrymen know the difference out here," she said bitterly.

She wasn't going for it. It wasn't a direct rebuff, but she wasn't yielding. Max heard a corrosive anger in her words, the sort of defense mechanism you build after a heartbreak. Maybe she'd recognized his play because she'd fallen for it before—and been burned.

"He must've hurt you pretty bad, Chantale," Max said.

"He did," she replied curtly, speaking to the windscreen, cutting off the conversation's circulation by turning on the radio and turning it up loud.

They took a sharp left turn around the side of the mountain they were driving down and as they cleared it, Max saw Port-au-Prince spread out before him, a few miles below, spilling out from the coastline like a splurge of dried vomit waiting for the sea to wash it away.

* * *

There was a heavy U.S. military presence in central Port-au-Prince, a cordon of humvees, machine gun–mounted jeeps, and footsoldiers in body armor massed opposite and all around the National Palace, where the current president—Aristide's successor and close associate, a former baker and rumored alcoholic called Préval—lived and ran his country as far as his puppet strings would stretch.

According to Huxley, who'd filled Max in, the current Haitian constitution forbade a president from serving consecutive terms, but did allow him or her to serve alternate ones. Préval was considered by many to be little more than Aristide's gofer, keeping the seat warm and ready for his master's inevitable return. Democracy was still a fluid thing.

"Damn Americans!" Chantale said as they passed a jeep full of marines. "No offense."

"None taken. Don't you agree with what's happening?"

"I did at first, until I realized invading this place was nothing but a preelection publicity stunt on Clinton's part. He'd messed up in Somalia, the U.S. was humiliated, his credibility hurt. What do you do? Pick on a near-defenseless black country and invade it in the name of 'democracy' and 'freedom,'" Chantale said bitterly, and then she laughed. "You know how they sent Jimmy Carter in to negotiate peace with the junta, after they'd refused to stand down?"

"Yeah, I saw that…." Max said. In prison, he thought. "Mr. Human Rights himself. I hated that asshole. He ruined Miami."

"The Mariel boatlift?"

"Yeah. It used to be an OK place, full of retired Jewish folk and right-wing Cubans plotting to kill Castro. It was real quiet, real conservative, low crime, peaceful. Then Castro sent his criminals and psychos over in the boats, mixed in with all the decent, law-abiding refugees who just wanted to start a new life, and thanks to El Jimbo we were fucked without a guidebook. It was hell bein' a cop back then, let me tell ya. We didn't know what hit us. One minute Miami's a nice place to bring up your kids, the next it's Murder Capital, USA."

"Guess you voted for Reagan?"

"Every single Miami cop did in 1980. Those that didn't were sick or weren't registered." Max smiled.

"I used to be a Democrat. I voted for Clinton in '92, Dukakis before. Never again," Chantale said. "Did you hear what happened in the so-called peace talks between Carter and General Cedras—the head of the junta?"

"No. Tell me."