Free The Boiling Season by Christopher Hebert

I cannot allow—”
    Mme Freeman looked up at him over her sunglasses, fatigued and annoyed. “I don’t understand what the point of all of this is. Am I to assume by all of these safety precautions that you feel some uncontrollable urge to do me harm?”
    M. Guinee was horrified. “Of course not, madame.”
    â€œAnd I think you’ll agree I’m quite harmless myself,” she said. “So let’s get on with it. We’re wasting time.” She yanked the door from his grip, letting it slam shut between them.
    M. Guinee never mentioned what they spoke of during the drive. It was the first time Mme Freeman had seen the countryside, and I imagine she was struck—and perhaps even shocked—by the sight of the peasants and their roadside shacks. Nor did M. Guinee provide me with the details of the tour he gave Mme Freeman upon their arrival at Habitation Louvois, but I suspect it was much like mine—descending down the drive to the swollen jungle below; cutting a swath through the weeds and thistle as they circled the manor house; her wonder upon stepping inside; the pools and fountains on the grounds; down the winding paths and stone steps to the villa; a brief walk into the preserve, to the point where the trails, long overgrown, finally disappeared.
    Every tree, every structure, even the laundry room and stables, Mme Freeman declared “magnificent.” And yet, while M. Guinee acknowledged that she seemed awed by everything she saw, he said her awe was always tempered by a calm practicality. Businesswoman that she was, she appeared to be calculating what it all might be worth.
    Of course, M. Guinee had been right about her. Even before they got back into the car to return to the Hotel Erdrich, Mme Freeman announced that by this time tomorrow the estate would be hers.
    In retrospect, the fact that Mme Freeman, a wealthy white woman—a foreigner—would buy land in a black republic seldom acquainted with peace surprised me less than M. Guinee’s confession that he had told her about it in the first place. Why volunteer such a secret? For that matter, why had he even shared it with me?
    I asked him that on the day I received his note and went to see him.
    â€œThe moment I saw you in the lobby and came over to shake your hand,” he said, “I knew I would tell you.”
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œI remember seeing you in that chair,” he said. “I must have watched you for a week before I finally spoke to you.”
    â€œI cannot imagine what you saw that was so interesting.”
    â€œThere was a stillness about you,” he said. “It seemed you were waiting for something. And by that, I don’t mean the Senator.”
    I tried to remember that day in the chair in the lobby, but there had been so many others just like it, so many days notable only for their blankness. I had always wished to belong in such a setting, where handshakes and nods determined the fates of countless lives. But once I actually arrived there, I felt most of all an inclination to disappear. Were anyone to notice me, I knew I would be called out as an impostor. And so I often did everything I could to clear my mind of even my own presence, hoping to become as inconspicuous as an amber ashtray on a crowded table.
    Still, I did not doubt M. Guinee’s recollection. In fact, it seemed not unreasonable to suppose that there were numerous ways in which M. Guinee knew me better than I knew myself. So many of the people in my life—Paul, Senator Marcus, even my father—seemed to be endowed with a remarkable clarity about what they believed and who they believed themselves to be. I was all too well aware that the same could not be said of me. Maybe that was what M. Guinee saw, that I was waiting for that clarity of purpose to be delivered to me.
    And now it had.
    Whatever it was that he saw in me, M. Guinee evidently saw it in Mme Freeman too. The only