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Book by Channer Colin
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Extrait :
Meet Fire—Jamaican-born, charming, poetic, and talented—a man who vows never to play “love-is-blind” games again. Then he meets Sylvia, a beautiful magazine editor who keeps her passions under lock and key. Together they must choose between the love in their lives and the love of their lives. From the galleries of Soho to the brownstones of Brooklyn, from the nightclubs of London to the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, Colin Channer takes us on a wild, soul-searching ride as Fire and Sylvia try to connect, disconnect, and reconnect amid conflicting desires and wounds from the past. But through intricate love triangles and crushing personal tragedies, Fire, Sylvia, and their friends must learn that some things in life are worth fighting for. If not, you’re simply waiting in vain.
On the day he met Sylvia, Fire woke up in Blanche's arms with a numbness in his soul. It was his ninetieth day of celibacy, and the night before had almost been his last, for Blanche had tied his wrists in his sleep and mounted him.
He wanted to talk to her but didn't know how. Couldn't decide how to do it without losing his temper or his pride. He searched the room for answers--the arched windows . . . the rattan chairs . . . the hardwood floors with the swirling grain . . .
The mattress stirred. He heard the strike of her match. Felt the heat. And the tidal pull of her lips. She was naked, and the urgency of smoking did not disturb her breasts, hard and still like turtles.
A lizard crawled from the windowsill to the peak of the angled ceiling and slid down the pole of the old brass fan whose blades were sheathed in straw. It flicked its tongue and wagged its head, shook loose a fold of skin and puffed a red balloon.
Fire watched it closely, enchanted by its beauty; Blanche sucked her teeth and said it was a nuisance. He didn't answer, and she began to taunt it, choking it with rings of smoke till it arched its back and sprang. It fell on her belly with a thwack and did a war dance on her birthmark, a swatch of brown below her navel. She watched it for a while, amused by its bravery, then whipped her body sideways, shimmering the flesh on her hips, and spilled the lizard to the floor.
Fire closed his eyes.
Last night he'd dreamed that they'd wallowed in a muddy ditch in a sunflower field. Her belly was wet with almond oil and her nipples were gummed with molasses. A believer in fate and the wisdom of dreams, he'd been dreaming of molasses for months now. Blanche was not the woman, though. He was sure. And denial was a way of preparing for her . . . whoever she might be.
Blanche watched as he rose, snatched glances as he dressed. He was tall and rangy. His hair was a cluster of twists and curls. His body looked like a pencil sketch, proportioned but not detailed, except in the chest and upper back.
He went to the terrace and sat in a rocker beneath a brace of ferns, which rustled and fluttered like moody hens. The land cruised away below him, drained through an orchard to an old stone fence, then plunged in an avalanche of crabgrass and buttercups to a terraced farm. Beyond the valley, surreal through the mist, was the broad, flat face of Kingston.
He took a mango from a bowl and peeled it with his teeth. What would he say to her? How would he say it? She was singing in the shower now. He imagined her body--the swell of her thighs, the rise of her ass. And, of course, her breasts. When would he say it? Soon, he thought . . . but not right now.
Resting the fruit on a stack of books, he picked up the poem he'd begun the day before.
I dare not love you as you deserve.
It is not that I don't know how.
I do understand the language of love,
and were it a different world
I would write you poems etching you
into the tender cliche of Negril's palmy coast . . .
He didn't know where he'd take it. He didn't understand poetry really. He'd never studied it. He believed in it as an act of faith.
Bird. He began to think of Ian now. They used to call him Bird for his hawkish nose and pelican legs. What will it be like to see him again? He checked his watch. It was eleven. Air Jamaica was leaving at three; they were always on time. He would be in New York at seven.
Blanche came out and joined him. She was wearing one of his shirts. It was a soft tangerine with a broad camp collar and flaps on the pleated pockets. A few months short of fifty, she moved with the angular vim of a teenager. She leaned against the banister, a Rothman's between her lips.
Age had refined her beauty, streaking her hair silver and adding lines and accents to the poetry of her face--commas that made him pause at her eyes, dashes that framed her mouth. She had brows like Frida Kahlo, and lips like Chaka Khan.
"New York," she began. "How long are you going to be there?"
"Just the weekend," he said.
"Then you go to London. And you're coming back when?"
"The end o' August."
"Three months."
As she watched him pick up the mango, she marveled anew at his face. Like reggae, it was a New World hybrid, a genetic melange of bloods that carried in their DNA memories of the tribes that fought and fucked on the shores of the Americas--Chinese and Arab, English and Scotch from his father's side; Dutch and Portuguese Sephardic Jew from his mother's. But the final combination--brown like sun-fired clay; cheeks high and spread apart; nose narrow with a rounded tip; lips wide and fluted--was a vibrant African presence, Yoruba and Akan.
Last night was wrong, she said to herself. But she'd been holding back for months
now . . . had even thought she would get through it. But last night, knowing
he'd be leaving today just made her desperate. Or was it angry? Three months
is a long time for a woman, she thought, especially with a man like this, one who makes love from the inside out--from the core of her soul where she hides her fears, to the taut muscles on the back of her neck. And the way he was eating that mango--the flesh becoming slush and dripping down his arm.
The juice was inking the nib between her legs, making her want to draft an epic on his face. Couldn't he just screw her? She'd take just that. So what if the love was gone? The first time had been just a screw. And she had no regrets. Seeing him nude that first time had made her think of holidays, of turkey legs slathered with gravy. At first she thought he'd be a rammer, a longhorn bedroom bully, which would've been fine. She liked a little roughness at times. But he held her like a dancer, assumed that he would lead, and frigged her with finesse. He understood her needs. Wordplay for him was foreplay. Her thighs were the covers of an open book--a journal lined with fantasies and fears. He read her like a child read, slowly, with his nose against the page, using a finger to guide his way. So he knew when to baby her and when to bitch her up.
If he didn't want to screw her, she thought, couldn't they just flirt? Flirting was more than his pastime. It was an addiction. He couldn't help himself. He was intelligent and amusing, which was why women fell for him. That's why she had fallen. In the days when he loved her, his wordskissed her ears like butterfly wings. Now they stung like wasps: "I don't want you anymore. Leave me alone. I don't care how you feel."
She forced a smile. He didn't respond, but she knew he wanted her. She could feel it. What to do? What to say? She wanted to be the mango so he could suck her down to the seed.
"Kiss me."
The words were hers. He tried to resist. Thought he had, until his tongue was a honey stick in hot tea. Soon he was melting into memory . . . into their first kiss ten years ago in Cuba.
She was standing on a street corner in Old Havana, a map in her hand, using her own brand of filleted Spanish to explain to a group of curious onlookers that the Yanquis didn't hate them, that the Yanquis in fact pitied them and really hated the French, whom they found repugnant and smug. She didn't know how to say "smug" in Spanish.
"Apuesto," he said from the back, "pulcro." Their eyes met.
"Excuse me," she said, as the crowd trailed away, "do you speak English?"
"No," he replied. "Do you?" She was wearing a lavender dress and sandals. He was wearing an Exodus T-shirt and Red Army boots. He liked her voice. She spoke with a flourish, as if her words were meant to be drawn in calligraphy.
They drifted into a walk, cruised the cobblestoned streets, brushed against each other as they passed under arbors of billowing clothes. She took photographs of the crumbling houses . . . posed on the hoods of vintage cars. It was her first visit to Cuba, she told him. She was forty, and taught English and Near Eastern studies at Columbia. Her father was Jamaican, her mother from Iran. She'd been raised outside Toronto.
They had lunch in a paladar. Over gallina vieja and yellow rice she learned that he'd been living in Cuba for three years, had gone there to study with the famous muralist Francisco Irtubbe after receiving a fine arts degree at Yale. He was twenty-four and Jamaican, and his favorite uncle, I-nelik, had toured and recorded with the Wailers.
She asked if he was a communist and he told her no. Said he was a socialist. Then they began to talk about art and she said there wasn't any money in murals. Money isn't all, he replied. What is? she asked. Love, he said. . . . All you need is love. She said that was a crock of shit. He liked her directness. It was hard to find that in women his own age.
He offered her a drink when they left the restaurant. She looked at him . . . cocked her head . . . seemed unsure. He smiled, as I-nelik had taught him, and led her home without discussion.
They sipped mojitos in the courtyard, a moldering square of tiles around an almond tree, and shared a macanudo (cigar) and talked and listened and argued, entangling their minds in a wrestling match which she won with ease, for she was wiser and more wordly. She'd lived in five countries, including Morocco and India, and spoke Arabic, Farsi, French, and Hindi.
They went inside when the night brought rain. Setting cans to catch the leaks in the parlor, they talked some more, leaning against each other on the swaybacked sofa with their feet propped up on a milk crate.
At some point--he could never remember when, because it had been so unexpected--she'd pointed to the record changer, a hefty old thing from Albania, and asked if he had any jazz. The questions felt like a test, a requirement for entry to her finishing school. He knew this by the way she smiled when he asked her, like a bartender at a good ...
Présentation de l'éditeur :
He wanted to talk to her but didn't know how. Couldn't decide how to do it without losing his temper or his pride. He searched the room for answers--the arched windows . . . the rattan chairs . . . the hardwood floors with the swirling grain . . .
The mattress stirred. He heard the strike of her match. Felt the heat. And the tidal pull of her lips. She was naked, and the urgency of smoking did not disturb her breasts, hard and still like turtles.
A lizard crawled from the windowsill to the peak of the angled ceiling and slid down the pole of the old brass fan whose blades were sheathed in straw. It flicked its tongue and wagged its head, shook loose a fold of skin and puffed a red balloon.
Fire watched it closely, enchanted by its beauty; Blanche sucked her teeth and said it was a nuisance. He didn't answer, and she began to taunt it, choking it with rings of smoke till it arched its back and sprang. It fell on her belly with a thwack and did a war dance on her birthmark, a swatch of brown below her navel. She watched it for a while, amused by its bravery, then whipped her body sideways, shimmering the flesh on her hips, and spilled the lizard to the floor.
Fire closed his eyes.
Last night he'd dreamed that they'd wallowed in a muddy ditch in a sunflower field. Her belly was wet with almond oil and her nipples were gummed with molasses. A believer in fate and the wisdom of dreams, he'd been dreaming of molasses for months now. Blanche was not the woman, though. He was sure. And denial was a way of preparing for her . . . whoever she might be.
Blanche watched as he rose, snatched glances as he dressed. He was tall and rangy. His hair was a cluster of twists and curls. His body looked like a pencil sketch, proportioned but not detailed, except in the chest and upper back.
He went to the terrace and sat in a rocker beneath a brace of ferns, which rustled and fluttered like moody hens. The land cruised away below him, drained through an orchard to an old stone fence, then plunged in an avalanche of crabgrass and buttercups to a terraced farm. Beyond the valley, surreal through the mist, was the broad, flat face of Kingston.
He took a mango from a bowl and peeled it with his teeth. What would he say to her? How would he say it? She was singing in the shower now. He imagined her body--the swell of her thighs, the rise of her ass. And, of course, her breasts. When would he say it? Soon, he thought . . . but not right now.
Resting the fruit on a stack of books, he picked up the poem he'd begun the day before.
I dare not love you as you deserve.
It is not that I don't know how.
I do understand the language of love,
and were it a different world
I would write you poems etching you
into the tender cliche of Negril's palmy coast . . .
He didn't know where he'd take it. He didn't understand poetry really. He'd never studied it. He believed in it as an act of faith.
Bird. He began to think of Ian now. They used to call him Bird for his hawkish nose and pelican legs. What will it be like to see him again? He checked his watch. It was eleven. Air Jamaica was leaving at three; they were always on time. He would be in New York at seven.
Blanche came out and joined him. She was wearing one of his shirts. It was a soft tangerine with a broad camp collar and flaps on the pleated pockets. A few months short of fifty, she moved with the angular vim of a teenager. She leaned against the banister, a Rothman's between her lips.
Age had refined her beauty, streaking her hair silver and adding lines and accents to the poetry of her face--commas that made him pause at her eyes, dashes that framed her mouth. She had brows like Frida Kahlo, and lips like Chaka Khan.
"New York," she began. "How long are you going to be there?"
"Just the weekend," he said.
"Then you go to London. And you're coming back when?"
"The end o' August."
"Three months."
As she watched him pick up the mango, she marveled anew at his face. Like reggae, it was a New World hybrid, a genetic melange of bloods that carried in their DNA memories of the tribes that fought and fucked on the shores of the Americas--Chinese and Arab, English and Scotch from his father's side; Dutch and Portuguese Sephardic Jew from his mother's. But the final combination--brown like sun-fired clay; cheeks high and spread apart; nose narrow with a rounded tip; lips wide and fluted--was a vibrant African presence, Yoruba and Akan.
Last night was wrong, she said to herself. But she'd been holding back for months
now . . . had even thought she would get through it. But last night, knowing
he'd be leaving today just made her desperate. Or was it angry? Three months
is a long time for a woman, she thought, especially with a man like this, one who makes love from the inside out--from the core of her soul where she hides her fears, to the taut muscles on the back of her neck. And the way he was eating that mango--the flesh becoming slush and dripping down his arm.
The juice was inking the nib between her legs, making her want to draft an epic on his face. Couldn't he just screw her? She'd take just that. So what if the love was gone? The first time had been just a screw. And she had no regrets. Seeing him nude that first time had made her think of holidays, of turkey legs slathered with gravy. At first she thought he'd be a rammer, a longhorn bedroom bully, which would've been fine. She liked a little roughness at times. But he held her like a dancer, assumed that he would lead, and frigged her with finesse. He understood her needs. Wordplay for him was foreplay. Her thighs were the covers of an open book--a journal lined with fantasies and fears. He read her like a child read, slowly, with his nose against the page, using a finger to guide his way. So he knew when to baby her and when to bitch her up.
If he didn't want to screw her, she thought, couldn't they just flirt? Flirting was more than his pastime. It was an addiction. He couldn't help himself. He was intelligent and amusing, which was why women fell for him. That's why she had fallen. In the days when he loved her, his wordskissed her ears like butterfly wings. Now they stung like wasps: "I don't want you anymore. Leave me alone. I don't care how you feel."
She forced a smile. He didn't respond, but she knew he wanted her. She could feel it. What to do? What to say? She wanted to be the mango so he could suck her down to the seed.
"Kiss me."
The words were hers. He tried to resist. Thought he had, until his tongue was a honey stick in hot tea. Soon he was melting into memory . . . into their first kiss ten years ago in Cuba.
She was standing on a street corner in Old Havana, a map in her hand, using her own brand of filleted Spanish to explain to a group of curious onlookers that the Yanquis didn't hate them, that the Yanquis in fact pitied them and really hated the French, whom they found repugnant and smug. She didn't know how to say "smug" in Spanish.
"Apuesto," he said from the back, "pulcro." Their eyes met.
"Excuse me," she said, as the crowd trailed away, "do you speak English?"
"No," he replied. "Do you?" She was wearing a lavender dress and sandals. He was wearing an Exodus T-shirt and Red Army boots. He liked her voice. She spoke with a flourish, as if her words were meant to be drawn in calligraphy.
They drifted into a walk, cruised the cobblestoned streets, brushed against each other as they passed under arbors of billowing clothes. She took photographs of the crumbling houses . . . posed on the hoods of vintage cars. It was her first visit to Cuba, she told him. She was forty, and taught English and Near Eastern studies at Columbia. Her father was Jamaican, her mother from Iran. She'd been raised outside Toronto.
They had lunch in a paladar. Over gallina vieja and yellow rice she learned that he'd been living in Cuba for three years, had gone there to study with the famous muralist Francisco Irtubbe after receiving a fine arts degree at Yale. He was twenty-four and Jamaican, and his favorite uncle, I-nelik, had toured and recorded with the Wailers.
She asked if he was a communist and he told her no. Said he was a socialist. Then they began to talk about art and she said there wasn't any money in murals. Money isn't all, he replied. What is? she asked. Love, he said. . . . All you need is love. She said that was a crock of shit. He liked her directness. It was hard to find that in women his own age.
He offered her a drink when they left the restaurant. She looked at him . . . cocked her head . . . seemed unsure. He smiled, as I-nelik had taught him, and led her home without discussion.
They sipped mojitos in the courtyard, a moldering square of tiles around an almond tree, and shared a macanudo (cigar) and talked and listened and argued, entangling their minds in a wrestling match which she won with ease, for she was wiser and more wordly. She'd lived in five countries, including Morocco and India, and spoke Arabic, Farsi, French, and Hindi.
They went inside when the night brought rain. Setting cans to catch the leaks in the parlor, they talked some more, leaning against each other on the swaybacked sofa with their feet propped up on a milk crate.
At some point--he could never remember when, because it had been so unexpected--she'd pointed to the record changer, a hefty old thing from Albania, and asked if he had any jazz. The questions felt like a test, a requirement for entry to her finishing school. He knew this by the way she smiled when he asked her, like a bartender at a good ...
Meet Fire—Jamaican-born, charming, poetic, and talented—a man who vows never to play “love-is-blind” games again. Then he meets Sylvia, a beautiful magazine editor who keeps her passions under lock and key. Together they must choose between the love in their lives and the love of their lives. From the galleries of Soho to the brownstones of Brooklyn, from the nightclubs of London to the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, Colin Channer takes us on a wild, soul-searching ride as Fire and Sylvia try to connect, disconnect, and reconnect amid conflicting desires and wounds from the past. But through intricate love triangles and crushing personal tragedies, Fire, Sylvia, and their friends must learn that some things in life are worth fighting for. If not, you’re simply waiting in vain.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
- ÉditeurBallantine Books Inc.
- Date d'édition2003
- ISBN 10 0345430123
- ISBN 13 9780345430120
- ReliureBroché
- Nombre de pages416
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Waiting in Vain: A Novel
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(2003)
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Waiting in Vain: A Novel
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(2003)
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ISBN 13 : 9780345430120
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Waiting in Vain: A Novel
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Waiting in Vain: A Novel
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