He’d thought often those past few weeks of the play he’d read many years ago, the title of which was his namesake. His mother had named him Julius after the white-skinned emperor. A name that had earned him a whole lot of shit from his childhood friends in Brooklyn with their plain names—Willy, Don, Michael, John—until he’d had the sense at eleven to shorten it to Jules.
He’d finally read the play in ninth grade, sitting on the cool tile of the private-school library, the tuition for which his mother’s lady, Mrs. Van der Meer, paid, against his pops’s prideful protests. Once Jules had gotten used to Shakespeare’s playful language, he’d savored the drama—the men’s bravado, betrayal, and their longing for battle like it was a woman they wanted to fuck. The love and hate between so-called brothers had reminded him of the times he’d fought boys in his neighborhood, black boys like him who had called him white boy and house nigger because his mother worked for rich whites, and because he went to a posh private school filled with them, and because what the hell kind of name was Julius anyway. A rich-white-boy name.
He’d been disappointed by the play’s final act, his newly fuzzed cheeks burning. To be named after a man fool enough to be murdered by his own men—his best boys, even. Jules had nightmares for weeks after. He dreamt he was locked in a house, a knife in his hand, knowing he’d have to kill someone, twist a blade into flesh, in order to protect his parents. He woke each time with his pulse thrumming in his ears and the metallic tang of blood on his tongue. One night he’d come to in his mother’s arms, his tank top and briefs soaked with sweat. He was thirteen and spilled out of her arms. You’re safe, she’d said, and the nightmares stopped.
He wondered if he was the fool now.
Someone was speaking. A voice muffled under the brring, brring of the strongman game where a beefy guy heaved and slammed a mallet again and again.
“Hey, man!” It was the kid behind the cotton-candy machine. He couldn’t be older than Brooks. “You going to pay or what?”
“Chill out, man.” Jules was surprised by the growl in his own voice.
He handed him three dollars. The kid’s arm was inked with a black panther, jaws wide and dripping—with what? Blood? As their fingers touched, Jules thought he felt the kid pull away, flinch, and the old feeling came over him, that back-of-the-neck prickle. He lifted Eva into his arms so fast the cotton candy hit him in the face.
Eva leaned over and nibbled at the sticky mess on his cheek, laughing the hiccupping giggle he adored. He was just tired, he told himself. Adjusting to a new place and all.
He spotted Leslie ahead and a chill of relief spread over the back of his soggy shirt. They were so close—he could see the warm glow of her amber necklace, an anniversary gift they’d picked out together at an African dance festival in the city last year. He knew he looked a mess, his shirt wrinkled, his skin shiny with sweat, and that Leslie was sure to comment on it in her quiet but piercing way. Well, someone is perspiring.
He picked up his pace, swerving through the crowd, mumbling “excuse me, excuse me.” His wife had stopped to peck cheeks with a woman as slender and blond as she was. The women on this island were beautiful, no doubt. Long-necked lilies. High-society-thin, tennis-toned, and tastefully tanned. Leslie look-alikes. Next, Leslie kissed a sallow old man in uniform, laughing at something he said with that coquettish tilt of her head. This stopped Jules for a moment and he stood there, confused, until Eva pulled him forward. “C’mon, Daddy!” Hadn’t Leslie gone on and on about her hatred for the military, and especially the head honchos at Grudder Aviation, who, like Leslie’s dead father, Admiral Marshall, were navy? What had Leslie called them? Squids. But here she was, practically rubbing up on some old-timer in uniform.
Leslie was like his mother, he reminded himself. Bighearted. Forgiving. Born with a gift for seeing the good in the world. Unlike his pops, who’d been an untrusting son of a bitch right up to the day he died.
Then he saw the mob of boys implode, the two in the middle bumping chests like horned animals ready to gore.
“Trouble, baby,” Jules said aloud.
Eva was standing in a circle of children around the balloon-animal guy, her voice one of many, “Me! Me next! My turn!”
Jules lifted her and she screamed, “My balloon doggie!”
“We’ll get you one tomorrow, sweetheart. We’ve got to find Brooks and Mommy and go home now, ’kay?”
“Home?” she asked. “Back to the city?”
The hopeful tilt of her chin made Jules’s throat close. He wished he could say yes.
“No, silly.” He nuzzled her cheek with his stubbled chin. “Back to the Castle. Remember the big beautiful castle? We can’t live there without our princess.”
He shouldered forward through the mob howling at two men arm wrestling on a small stage, their shirtsleeves rolled. He didn’t bother with excuse me. He knew shit was about to blow up with those boys. He needed to get Brooks the hell out of there.
A roar rose—Ohhhhhh—and he turned to look back at the two gangs ready to scrap. It wasn’t the preppy kids in their letter jackets that spooked him—it was the others. The darker-skinned kids (Hispanic? Italian?) all death metal in tight black tees showing off hours of manual labor and lifting at the gym. They reminded him of kids from his old ’hood, the ones his pops called “undesirables”—the PRs and blacks who sold drugs from their stoops and leeched off their mas and grandmas instead of getting jobs.
He told himself, again, Stop. Don’t let the ghosts of Leslie’s parents or some orchid-pinned fat lady or a mob of bored kids ruin your new home.
He reached Leslie, reminding himself to smile and nod as he shook the wrinkled hands of one uniformed gramps after another, Leslie saying something about the old men being on the board at Grudder. Then another roar—Awww—rose from the growing horde watching the kids’ face-off, and he felt that familiar joint-softening fear, the best and only gift his father had left him.
“I’m taking Brooks back to the house,” he whispered to Leslie.
He touched her arm. She was smooth and dry under his clammy palm. He wished they were at the cottage. In bed. The lemony scent of the star-shaped linden tree blossoms wafting over them.
“What? Why? You can’t leave.” Leslie looked over at Brooks, who was paying for an ice-cream cone.
“I don’t want to get into it here, babe. I’m taking him.”
Brooks held the cone in front of Eva. She stood on her toes to the lick the curled peak of the vanilla-chocolate swirl.
Jules leaned over to catch his breath. Leslie began rubbing circles into his back, then pulled away when she felt his soaked shirt.
“What’s wrong with you?” she whispered. “Stand up, love. People will think…”
Her eyes darted left and right while she smiled placidly.