Dusk descended on Andromeda Avenue. The crickets, whistling toads and the clinking of ice in short, fat glasses of white rum and water were the only sounds heard on Danny Singh’s verandah. The three men sitting there drinking with Danny were suddenly silent because he’d just told them that he was going to stop eating until he died. Matthew Howard rolled his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. He was the first to break the silence.

“Well, Danny, what can I tell you? You’re weird enough to do something stupid like that. But, before you do it, hire a woman and get your place cleaned up, man!”

Matthew had gone inside Danny’s house minutes before to get ice. The floor was covered with old yellowed newspapers. Random words and bold headlines from the

Gleaner andObserver jumped out at him wherever he stepped –Murdered, Gunman, Body Found, Utilities Increase, Tourism, Chef Graduate Places in International Food Competition. There was an ancient black and white television from the days when Danny’s parents were alive and lived in the house and one plaid armchair of indeterminate colour in front of it. Matthew opened the fridge and found old Chinese food takeout containers and Red Stripe beer. It hadn’t been cleaned in years.

Danny jumped up in anger. “You don’t have to believe me! I’m going to do it! I’m going to stop eating. This is the last time you’re going to be sitting in my house drinking out my liquor. Now get out, all of you!” His rheumy eyes danced wildly over the men.

Earl Stanley and Kurt Moser were shocked. They weren’t as well acquainted with Danny and they stood up, readying themselves to leave. Matthew, still sitting, leaned back and settled himself more comfortably in his chair.

“Nobody is going anywhere,” he said gruffly. “Sit back down,” he motioned to Earl and Kurt. “Danny, the only person leaving is you. Before you go, get us some more ice.”

Danny got up, grabbed the ice bucket, went inside and put some ice in it. When he returned, he tossed the bucket at Matthew, went inside and slammed the door.

“Danny is like that. Weird! A hermit!” said Matthew to the other two men who were still wearing expressions of shock and amazement.

“Maybe we should leave. We can’t stay on the man’s verandah like this drinking out his liquor,” said Kurt.

“Listen, I’ve known Danny for years, and him weird. Weird!” said Matthew emphasising the second ‘weird’ and shouting it so Danny no doubt heard. Then, more quietly, he continued, “don’t worry about Danny. Now and then he carries on like this. By tomorrow or even a month’s time, he’ll be back to normal.” After a moment’s silence, they resumed their conversation, about politics and history, who was responsible for ruining the island, who was still ruining the island, why it would never advance, and that it was as bad as Haiti if not worse.

Danny closed his windows to drown out the sound of the men’s laughter and inconsiderately loud voices. Once they started drinking, it was impossible to get rid of them and although he drank as much as they did, if not more, he liked to turn in early. He undid his belt buckle and his jeans dropped to his feet. His 5’7” frame had always been thin but he now weighed 120 pounds. He walked over to a dusty mirror and peered at himself. His light brown skin was sallow and the bags under his eyes black. He’d coined the term Indian Afro-Saxon to describe himself to the students he’d met in America when he’d studied business administration there a lifetime ago. Foreigners simply could not believe that the slim brown teenager with slightly wavy hair and hazel eyes was a Jamaican. Looking at himself now, any trace of the young man he’d been had disappeared completely, replaced by the visual of a man in his sixties. It was all over. He’d eaten the last cardboard box of steamed white rice and sweet and sour chicken he could afford two days ago and he’d been existing on white rum alone.

He was hungry and tired, and he hadn’t intended on opening the door for Matthew Howard and his cronies, but Matthew had seen him watching TV and banged on the door and the window with his friends, shouting, “Danny, we can see you sitting there, you ole hermit! Open the damn door!”

Next time, he wouldn’t open the door. He wouldn’t even look in the direction of the window. It was too hot to close the windows, especially since they were screened to keep out lizards and flies and he had no curtains. Next time he wouldn’t raise his head. They could knock and shout until the Second Coming but, next time, he wouldn’t open the door. That was one good quality about himself. He nodded in satisfaction as he lay down on the sagging mattress and eased himself into a supine position; he was stubborn and once he made up his mind, he stuck to it. His own mother had described him as one stubborn son-of-a-bitch when he’d refused to run the jewellery store his father had owned, when he wouldn’t be bullied into leaving his family home (“Why should I find my own place when I’m comfortable here?” he’d argued like a broken record) and when he ignored all her pleas to get a job.

And why shouldn’t I decide when it’s my time? he thought. I’m ready now. “I’m not going to miss this life,” he said aloud. “I’m done with it.”

*

Studying had not been Danny’s priority in university. His small apartment in Miami was the hub for drinking sessions and late night parties, and it was all paid for by his father’s thriving jewellery business back in Jamaica. His friends had gathered there almost every night so it was a miracle he’d graduated. As soon as he’d finished his degree, he’d returned to the island as dictated to help his father run Singh Singh Jewellers. It had started with one store in 1902, by Danny’s grandfather who had come from India and married a brown-skinned Jamaican woman of mixed heritage. It had been expected that he would have sent back to India for a wife. Cut off entirely from his Indian family, he settled in Jamaica with his new wife and with one primary concern: to make money. Danny’s father, Mannie Singh, short for Maniraj, inherited his father’s concern, so much so that people called him Money Singh. He was tight with his money. His workers used to say “even prayer that you can get for free, Money Singh not giving it to you.” Mannie grew Singh Singh Jewellers until stores sprang up all over the island, from Kingston and north into Ocho Rios, west to Montego Bay and south to Sav-la-Mar. People said Mannie was one coolie man that had money to stone dog. He invested in real estate, buying property all over the island, renting two of his luxury villas to wealthy tourists and he had stocks and bonds in lucrative investments.

But just as his grandfather and his father Mannie Singh were determined to make money, Danny was as determined to spend it. As a child, he’d gotten everything he’d wanted. His parents lived below their means, residing in the same three-bedroom concrete house on Andromeda Avenue until they died. Danny was expected to work in the business and to one day take over all the stores. While Mannie Singh was alive, Danny worked dutifully, albeit grudgingly, waking up every morning at 7:00 to visit the main store in Tropical Plaza every morning and accompanying his father on drives around the island to check on the other stores. People said the instant Mannie Singh died was the instant Danny Singh stopped working. And that’s exactly what he did.

Danny let other people run the jewellery stores until they robbed him blind. There was nothing his mother said that could convince him to go to work. “Danny, me one cyah run the store, you know. I need you to come in today,” she would say. Danny would nod as if he would comply but he never showed up. His mother complained to anyone who would listen that Danny was bent on squandering her hard-earned inheritance and she was deathly afraid she would die in abject poverty. She went to the jewellery store every day, her brows knitted into furrows as deep as ditches, and tried to run the store but she had no business sense and when she looked at the books, she said it was all Greek to her. When she died of a stroke five years after her husband, people said she died from worry.

Danny still got up early every day and left his house at 7:00 in the morning. Hunched over the steering wheel of his white Lada, he would drive from his house on Andromeda Avenue in uptown Kingston to downtown or to Palisadoes by the airport where he had a view of the sea on both sides of the road. On this route he would buy the

Gleaner and theObserver and read them cover to cover on the side of the road, sitting in his car with the doors locked and the windows slightly open to get a whiff of sea breeze. Then he’d drive to Tropical Plaza and make an appearance at Singh Singh’s, collect a salary on the last Friday of every month and drive to a bar in Half-Way-Tree where he would sit awhile. Slowly he’d make his way uptown, one bar at a time, through Constant Spring, Grants Pen and finally home to Andromeda Avenue. He was as constant in the bars he haunted, to the white rum he drank, a regular, where he was greeted as an old friend the instant his small frame shadowed the doorways.

It was on one of these jaunts that Danny met Kim Williams and her four girlfriends on the road one day as he emerged red-eyed from a local bar. They were wearing grey tunics which identified them as Queen’s High School girls. They giggled as he stumbled past them. “Sir, beg you a lunch money?” one of them asked.

“Why aren’t you in school?” he’d answered gruffly. “It’s 12 o’clock. Why aren’t you in school?”

“School cyah help me,” said Kim, arms akimbo, her scrawny hip jutting suggestively forward and her eyes roaming over Danny’s body.

“Don’t be a fool!” Danny told her angrily. “School is the only way to avoid all this.” He swept his hand in front of him indicating the hot dusty streets, the decrepit buildings that had lost their newness to vandalism and decay, beggars loitering near storefronts and higglers sitting spread-eagled by cheaply made plastic wares. The girls’ eyes had followed his and when he’d said, “I’ll take you to lunch at a real restaurant,” they’d all piled into his Lada and gone to the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant off Hope Road.

Over the years they became his Fabulous Five, his special girls. The first time Danny gave Kim a piece of jewellery, a delicate gold chain with a thin lion for her astrological sign, Leo, Kim had asked him if he wanted her to come to his place. “No, not really,” Danny answered.

“You don’t want to come to my place?” she asked again in disbelief.

“Come to your place for what?” Danny wiped his mouth with his napkin. Kim was silent, looking down.

“You gave me the chain. What do you want in return?”

“Why do I have to get something in return? I’m giving you a gift because I want to.”

“No man gives a gift without expecting something in return. What do you want?”

“Friendship.” Danny signalled to the waiter for the bill, pulled out his wallet and laid the notes on the table. Kim was silent. “Oh, on second thought. I do want something. Do well in school. That’s what I want in return,” said Danny in afterthought.

Kim eyed him in disbelief. “Mi nuh believe dat,” she said, then in standard English, “I don’t believe you want nothing in return.”

“Don’t believe it, then. But I’m not coming to your house and you’re not coming to mine. So take the chain if you want it. If not, give it back to me. But when someone gives you a gift, learn how to say thank you.”

Kim got much more from Danny: diamond stud earrings, a thick silver ring with an amber stone, a tennis bracelet and several more gold chains, in addition to having her school fees paid and a computer course that taught her how to use Power Point and Excel.

Danny was true to his word. He never made a romantic or sexual advance toward her or the other girls, nor did he ever indicate he wanted to be her boyfriend. At times, Kim felt guilty when she did have a boyfriend because if Danny called to take her to lunch, she dropped all plans and went. During lunch he let her do most of the talking and when he did speak, it was about a time long past, of the kings and queens of England, of beheadings and famous sayings. It was as if he wanted to pour his knowledge into her. The four other girls also benefited from Singh Singh’s stock of jewellery. They were, Danny told them, his special girls, The Fabulous Five, and all he wanted from them was the promise that they would do well in school and get good jobs. Over time, the Fabulous Five came to Andromeda Avenue where they brought or made Danny dinner and tried to get him to eat something other than white rice and sweet and sour chicken, but they all left after nightfall and went back to their own families and lives.

Matthew Howard once asked him, “What do you want with those young girls?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, you old fart,” Danny replied obnoxiously.

“I have no interest in scrawny school girls, thank you.”

“They are not school girls. Kim is in university studying business management and Sandra is doing hospitality and…”

“Don’t bore me with the details of your downtown girls. I just think it’s weird. It’s just like you Danny, weird.”

“A man like you wouldn’t understand.”

“Here’s what I really don’t understand. How you don’t get a job?”

Danny laughed. “I could get a job easily. If I wanted to. But why would I want to get a job? Listen, my girls would have ended up as waitresses or people’s maids, maybe as cashiers in a supermarket. I made sure they wouldn’t.”

“Don’t tell me you pay for their university education.”

Danny smiled smugly. “Awright. I won’t tell you.”

“Well, I would really like to be in your situation, seeing how times hard and t’ing,” said Matthew, draining his rum and coke.

“Why should I get a job? My father worked hard enough for both of us. When I need money, I sell one of my properties and the money lasts several years. I could get a job if I wanted to, but why would I want to?” Danny slammed his glass on the table and called the waiter for another.

“But what when you sell off all the property and the money run out? What then?”

Danny laughed. “Don’t be an idiot. The money cyah run out. You don’t know they called my father Money Singh? I have ’bout 15 more property to sell. Hah!”

“Yup,” nodded Matthew, his eyes half-closed. “I would really like to be in your position right now. He looked at his empty glass and called for another. “Well, Danny, the next three rounds are on you.”

*

Matthew saw Danny’s car in the driveway and knocked on the door. After banging on it for two minutes, he walked around to the side of the house and peered in. Danny was sitting in the armchair watching the news. A glass of what had to be white rum was in his hand. “Danny, open the door! Open the f—king door, Danny! I don’t have all night to stand here. Stop act like you don’t hear me. You look like hell. Like a corpse. Like death itself.” Matthew saw Danny flinch ever so slightly. “I come bearing gifts. I have 25-year-old Scotch here.”

Danny did not turn around. Matthew watched him for a few minutes and then he turned and walked across the street to his own home. “F—king weird,” he muttered under his breath. “Weird. Nobody weird like Danny!”

Two weeks later, when the sun was high overhead and Matthew was leaving for work, Danny’s elderly neighbour, Mrs Ferguson, accosted Matthew, her walking stick in the air and her high thin voice trembling with fear. “I think you should come and look for Danny. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him and when I go outside to water the lawn, I smell a bad, bad smell.”

“Alright, alright,” said Matthew looking at her thin veined hand, spotted with age. “I’ll have a look after I get back from a job. He hasn’t been in the mood for company.”

“No, I think you should come now. Something not right over there.”

“Alright.” Matthew sighed. “I’ll come now.”

As he approached the house, the smell assaulted him. “Go on home Mrs Ferguson, I will deal with this. He walked towards the screened window, which was completely covered with flies, some dead on the screen and others buzzing around it and trying to get in. Matthew took out his cell and called the police.

“Look here, Constable Gordon, don’t give me no excuse ’bout you don’t have car and t’ing. You have to get here now! You haffi find car and come! Looks like Danny Singh dead in him house and the smell is terrible. The flies knocking themselves senseless on the screen trying to get in.”

“What is happening over there?” Mrs Ferguson’s thin, reedy voice came from over her garden fence, startling Matthew.

“Nothing yet, Mrs Ferguson. Just stay put. The police are on their way.”

Matthew was surprised to hear the sirens 15 minutes later. By then he’d called Earl Stanley and Kurt Moser to help him break down the door. The three men stood and waited for the police to jump out of their vehicle. One of the officers took out his gun and fired at the lock. The door opened and a sickening smell of death and putrefaction wafted from the walls. In the living room, Danny Singh’s stiffened corpse lay on the floor, legs in the air. His body was swollen and black. It looked as if it would burst and spew its contents right then.

“Lawd,” groaned Matthew, taking out his handkerchief and holding it over his mouth. “Lawd God.”

“Why is he so black?” asked Earl Stanley, holding his arm over his mouth and nose. Danny’s torso was completely blackened, as if burnt, and the blood had pooled from his legs to his torso.

Kurt Moser, backing away and going out through the door, said, “I’ll wait outside. I’ll call the coroner.”

The coroner determined that the autopsy had to be done right there on the verandah in the bright sunlight. “The body will fall apart if we try to move it,” he announced. “This man hasn’t eaten in weeks,” he told Matthew, who was asked to identify the body. “Look! His lungs are black. This man was a smoker. Look at his liver. He was a serious drinker. I see this all the time but his stomach is completely empty and the insides are eaten away by the gastric juices.”

“He said he was going to stop eating. I guess he was serious.”

“Now why would a man do a thing like dat?” asked the coroner, peering into the body.

“With Danny, who knows why he did anything the way he did,” said Matthew.

They all glanced up when a taxi pulled up to the front of the house. Kim, dressed for work in an off-white linen suit and high-heeled shoes, ran from the car. Matthew strode quickly to the gate and closed it behind him, placing his hands firmly on her shoulders to hold her back.

“Where is my Danny?” she screamed. “I need to see my Danny.”

“I strongly advise you not to look,” said Matthew. “You don’t need to see.”

“I have to look at my Danny,” Kim sobbed.

“You’re not going to recognise him and you’re going to be horrified by what you see.”

“I don’t care! You can’t tell me what to do!” Kim shrugged herself out of Matthew’s hold and pushed open the gate. She ran defiantly with her shoulders thrown back, her jaw set and her body swaying unsteadily in the very high heels she wore. The stench hit her as she walked up the driveway. She covered her mouth and walked up the stairs to the porch. A scream of horror came out of her mouth and she backed away, stumbling down the stairs, and ran down the driveway towards the gate. Matthew caught her as she collapsed. “That’s not my Danny,” she moaned.

“Told ya,” said Matthew. “I don’t know why you went and looked.”

“I had to! I had to!” she sobbed. “What happened?”

“That’s a good question,” said Matthew.

“He hadn’t returned my calls,” Kim whimpered. “He said he was going to stop eating. I didn’t believe him. Why would he do such a thing? He wasn’t poor. He wasn’t broke. He had so many friends.”

“Maybe he was broke.”

“But he just lent me money for a down payment on a house. How could he be broke?” Kim was weeping miserably.

“Maybe that’s why he was broke,” said Matthew. He knew he was coming across as callous, but it was only mimicking the way he felt, bitter and uneasy. He walked away and left Kim standing in shock, still crying, and when he saw her into the taxi and it drove off, he wondered if her tears were falling because Danny’s money well had dried up.

After she left, Earl Stanley said, “Why him do it, Matthew? I know him was different from all of us but why?”

As they watched the coroner and his assistant carry Danny’s body to the hearse, Matthew replied, “I guess he just decided to. But one thing about Danny is that him was always a bit strange and him never want to work, not one day in his life. I believe him money done. And if there is one thing I know about money is that it don’t last forever. It can done. And when the money done, him decide him done too.”

Matthew went back into his own home to shower the deathly smell of Danny from his hair and clothing. He called all the cronies to inform them that another of their crew had kicked the bucket. Then he thought of the funeral arrangements. Since Danny had no real family to speak of, Matthew would pay a girl to clean out Danny’s house. Earl and Kurt would handle the food and he would take care of the liquor.

*

“What a bizarre way to die,” said Earl, after the funeral service when they were back at Danny’s house, where the crowd spilled from the living room and verandah to the garden beyond.

“What a bizarre man! No one really knew him. He didn’t want anyone to know him. And he didn’t really seem to like people except for those girls,” said Matthew.

“And you’re sure he wasn’t a sugar daddy or a pervert?” asked Kurt.

“No. He wasn’t. He was a puzzle. How can so much generosity and mean-spiritedness exist in one person?”

The men shrugged and murmured in agreement.

“I didn’t know why I even bothered with him sometimes. We met regularly and the sessions always started in a friendly way. Danny would bring out that same broken-down table on the verandah and bring out enough liquor and peanuts to stock a bar.”

Kurt and Earl nodded in agreement.

“And the sessions always ended in the same way. After great conversation and advice and reminiscing, Danny would switch abruptly and say, ‘It’s time for you assh—es to leave now. Get out and don’t come back. He was bizarre,” said Matthew. “And I’ll never forget dat smell. Like two dead dog in the street.”

The men were silent for a while. They looked out at the garden where they’d spent so many nights, where Danny would feed the birds in the evenings and entertain the men before becoming irate. Around them there was a lull in the conversations of the gathering.

Earl held up his glass. “Well, let’s have a drink to Danny. Wherever he is, I hope the money never runs out.” The wind fluttered the leaves of the banana and coconut trees near the verandah.

“To Danny,” they chorused and drained their glasses.