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Mardi is a suspense sex mystery. She stops before a poster stapled to the trunk of a palm tree. It reads: Each of us is born with a share of the family jewels. Everyone except Mardi, she thinks. She dresses in a blonde French twist and a tropical-green suit. Her satin girdle swishes against the tropical-green gabardine of her pencil skirt. This is the image she’s going for, contained, repressed. In other words, irresistible. She stares off in the distance as she moves across the island, taking, taking. A man with dark hair witnesses her persistent filching, mostly money, but also emeralds from the local mine, and an occasional tube of lipstick. He thinks he’s the only one to see this, and so he falls in love with her. Mardi struggles against his fake American accent. The man wants to give Mardi his family jewels, so he turns his back to her, hoping she’ll reach out and grab them. Mardi considers the family jewels, their pink, sweaty glistening, but she doesn’t budge. She can tell the difference between fake unawares and true macho vulnerability. She’s determined this man will never see what he’s already seen, beneath her tropical-green suit, the raw red thrumming as her hand glides toward bounty she was unborn for. |
