Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Wellington to screw.
    Margot returns to her seat at the front desk with Kensington. She can barely concentrate on checking people into the hotel.
    â€œWhat yuh t’ink dey saying?” Kensington asks her. She’s whispering.
    â€œIt’s none of our business,” Margot snaps.
    â€œYou an’ him not friend?” Kensington asks.
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?” Margot whips around to face a brazened Kensington. The girl shrugs. “You know . . . him laugh up, laugh up wid yuh sometimes. So I thought oonuh was friends.”
    The girl looks down at the surface of the desk in front of her, drawing heart-shaped patterns with her finger. She’s rail-thin with a height on her, always fidgeting with the waistband of her uniform skirt, which is too wide, though it hangs well above her knees. Had it not been for her high color, Kensington wouldn’t be considered beautiful. Or even be considered for the job. The girl was hired as a part-time secretary last summer after graduating from high school, but ended up staying longer. Now she thinks she has a right to make assessments about Margot and Alphonso’s relationship.
    â€œJust continue to do yuh work, Kensington,” Margot says, in the authoritative voice she uses when wielding her seniority.
    â€œHow do you do it?” Kensington’s tiny voice pierces the uncomfortable silence that follows Margot’s order.
    â€œHow do I do what?” Margot asks.
    Behind Kensington’s head the palm trees blow wavelike in a breeze that brings the smell of the sea inside the open lobby. Margot is grateful for this breeze, for it cools her boiling blood as she watches Kensington stringing her words together.
    â€œPeople are talking. Russ, Gretta, an’ all ah dem.”
    Margot cuts her off before she can list every one of the lower staff—the maids, the cooks, the groundsmen—people who begrudge her because she sends Kensington to buy her patty and cocoa-bread at lunchtime from Stitch so that she doesn’t have to pass by them and get into their idle gossip about management.
    â€œDo me a favor, Kensington?” Margot says, her voice as bittersweet as molasses.
    â€œWhat’s that?” the girl asks, looking at Margot with hopeful eyes that incense Margot even more. She resists the urge to slap the girl. Instead, Margot issues a warning. Or more like a sound piece of advice. “If yuh want to stay here for a long time, then mind yuh own business,” she says.
    With that Margot cuts her eyes and turns to the window behind them. Alphonso is unpredictable, so she imagines the executive office watching him closely like a ticking bomb. Suddenly the door flies open and Alphonso marches out.
    â€œGimme that manila folder over there!” he demands, pointing to the hidden file cabinet where there are over a hundred manila folders—all of which are going to be entered into a secure computer system to keep records of the hotel finances and guest information. Murphy is bringing the computers in tomorrow. All five Gateway computers are being shipped from America. Kensington springs up to find the folder Alphonso is referring to. She hesitates when she sees that all of them are identical. Asking Alphonso to clarify would reveal her incompetence.
    He’s drumming his fingers on the counter and glances at his gold Rolex. His platinum wedding band glistens on his cream hand. “Am I going to wait here all day?”
    Margot steps in seamlessly, subtly. It’s she who moves to give Alphonso the folder. She has been fingering it all along, knowing he would need it in this meeting. It has all the budget information she helped him compile. As she gives Alphonso the folder, their hands touch. They pause, suspended like two birds holding the ends of the same worm. Margot clears her throat and takes her hand away. She smoothes her skirt over her thighs as though she has been caught with it inched up to