Instruments Of Darkness (41 page)

    'Sorry,' I said, which he took to mean I'd misheard him.

    'My monny. You tek your fee, and expenses for de wife. You have some left?'

    'I owe you one hundred thousand CFA.'

    'You owe me? You no haff it? Where dit go?'

    'I'm broke.'

    'This no very good business you in.'

    'You don't need to tell me.'

    The sun shone on the back of B.B.'s head. He was thinking, and held a piece of melon up so that it glowed red in the light. The garden boy's machete whipped the grass outside. A banana palm flexed and flapped. B.B. sucked the flesh off the rind and bunched up the napkins in his fist, wiped his mouth and said: 'I haff small problem in Korhogo.'

    I sat back in the hot afternoon. I had no wish to listen to B.B.'s problems. Big or small, they were always about money and the talk of money now brought on a metallic taste in my mouth, not unlike blood, and I found myself thinking of Kate Kershaw, alone under the Brazilian sky with a straw hat and sunglasses, measuring her life in cigarette stubs, waiting for a hopeful glance, watching the pretty people, feeling hungry.