They gave him a pat on the back and a pink slip with two years severance. Thomas was shocked, upset and extremely pissed-off. He felt that he’d been released without cause. So he hired a feisty labour lawyer (“Hi, I’m Cheryl, but just call me Cheri.”) and in short time she had negotiated another year of pay and a full three years of benefits. Sweet – bittersweet.

Two weeks after Thomas was punted from the Company he was sitting at home feeling sorry for himself when he heard the phone. To his surprise and great relief, it was a job offer. At the time he hadn’t yet started to look for work, he didn’t even have a resume. But word had gotten out on the industry grapevine that he was available and the reputation that he’d built had paid off. A company that sells turn-key radar display systems had just procured a contract for the job in MoBay. It was a fit for Thomas’s background and experience – so he accepted the job offer.

The contract couldn’t have come in at a better time. Thomas was ecstatic. This would show those pricks back at the Company. Even better, the first storm of the winter had just encased Ottawa in two feet of snow and the job was in sunny Jamaica. He was ecstatic.

It was only after he’d hung up the phone that he thought of Eugenia. ****, I’ve done it again, he thought.

He broke the news to her that afternoon when she got home from a photo shoot. She was cool to the idea, very cool. The MoBay job meant that he’d be away from home for six weeks. Thomas thought that perhaps Eugenia would come down and visit him while he was on the job. He thought that she would be happy for him that he’d landed a job so soon after having been dumped. He was wrong on both counts.

After he got to Jamaica he called Eugenia almost every day. She was lonely. She missed him and she missed her friends and family back on the coast. Thomas thought that she was just going through a rough patch; he figured she would eventually adapt. She’d snagged a few freelance jobs and had made a couple of new friends. Things would get better.

But with each successive phone call he could feel her slipping away.

It was bitterly cold in Ottawa. It didn’t help that when they Skyped Thomas would be sitting outside on his deck in the shade of waving palm fronds with the sounds of birds chirping in the background. The fact that he was either bare chested or wearing a tank top just added insult to injury.

In the end, Eugenia became his ex-fiancée after he’d been in Jamaica for a month. Late one night she phoned him. She was crying. They talked. She cried some more and they talked some more. Thomas said he would quit the job and return home immediately. Eugenia said no, she’d made up her mind; she was going back to Vancouver. By the end of the call both of them were crying. They said their final goodbyes.

Thomas missed Eugenia dearly – but it was over.

In the cold, hard light of the next morning Thomas added yet another entry to his growing mental list of ‘Really Big ****-Ups That I’ve Made’.

Tanisha sat at Thomas’s table, barely visible in the dim pulses of light given off by the stage strobes. The chiffon slid off her thigh, as if trained to do so, revealing a set of lithe muscular legs that appeared as if they could power her down a hundred meter track in less than ten seconds.

Tanisha was twenty-four years old. She had two children, both boys. The first was born when she was sixteen and the other just after she turned eighteen. Each boy had a different father. Tanisha often spoke fondly of her ‘babies’; their pictures displayed on the tiny screen of her Digicel whenever she checked it, which was often. Thomas was under the impression that Tanisha’s boys stayed with her mother, but she was evasive on that subject. Tanisha had fine facial features, which was somewhat unusual for a native Jamaican. She had a high, proud forehead and sported a natty crop of short dreads. Once, when Thomas had asked her how long she was going to keep growing her dreads, she’d replied, “Until me old, old, old.”

Tanisha draped her arms around Thomas’s shoulders and pressed her chest against his. She nuzzled his ear again and said, “Me can make you ‘appy baby.”

The fragrance of night jasmine laced with Tanisha’s pheromones wafted into his nostrils. His head swam, he felt his grip loosening. Night jasmine, Cestrum nocternum, whose tiny blossoms open to reveal its delicate petals and release its heady aromas only after the heat of the day has given way to night breezes. Tanisha was Thomas’s own personal night blossom.

“No, no, not tonight Tash – it’s not that kind of boredom – I need to get the hell out of MoBay,” he said.

She leaned back and looked at him. She saw something there and, before his eyes, Tanisha the exotic night blossom morphed from a jasmine scented siren into Tash, the pretty Jamaican girl who had shown him around the Orange Street Market the previous Saturday afternoon.

“Yah mon, me bored too,” she said, crinkling her nose and eyes, “Me need a cheeange.”

Without thinking it through entirely, Thomas blurted, “So why don’t we take off someplace? Maybe take a little road trip together?”

Tanisha sat bolt upright and replied, “You teake me to New York?”

“No baby, I’m thinking somewhere in Jamaica.”

She regarded him for a long moment. From the big bank of speakers a fragment of Gangsta ricocheted off the wall, “. . Bullet! – Bullet! – Bullet! . .”

“Meaybe,” Tash replied. “Me bin ‘tinkin’ ‘bout goin’ to Negril to see mi bruddah.”

Negril. The fabled, laid-back beach community located on the western tip of the island. During his stay in MoBay Thomas had heard much about Negril; the long stretch of spectacular beach, its crystalline waters, the anything-goes culture.

Of course, Negril!