I rushed and searched around the bathroom, didn't find her earring on the floor or inside the tub. So I hurried upstairs to the kitchen and living room, didn't see it there, didn't expect to, then took the last flight of carpeted stairs back up to my master bedroom, turned the lights on, saw sheets that spoke of sex and violence, smelled the perfume of her sex, smelled Karl's cologne, smelled the scent of unrequited love, inhaled the aroma of madness and lust. Her diamond earring was on top of my colorful sheets, teardrop shaped, classy, expensive, lying there like sorrow crystallized, positioned as if it had been sexed off her body. The scents. All of our scents remained. Scents took me back to what had happened not too long ago. In a flash, in my mind's eye, I saw Karl behind Jewell, stroking her with his anger, that earring flying free as she moaned. Then I felt her angered hands on my skin. Grabbing me. Pulling me. In that moment the world was out of control, emotions had outweighed reason and we had all gone crazy.

I saw Jewell's desperation, saw her giving her husband's brother fellatio, desperate to swallow his ejaculatory fluid as if it was the magical cure for love, heartache, and all that might possibly ail her.

Then I saw someone else. Someone I never wanted to see again.

I saw me when I was at Hampton, after all had been said and done, begging my lover not to leave me. I wanted more than he wanted to give me. Maybe I had wanted too much too fast. I had a lot of love for him. My heart was filled with love for him, overflowing to the point that sanity had abandoned me.

I picked up Jewell's earring, held her crystallized tear in the palm of my right hand, stared at the diamond and contemplated telling her I couldn't find it, that simple act being my small revenge for the things she had done in retaliation for the things I had done as I sought pleasure, but I couldn't do that, didn't want to leave anything open between us, and I held her earring, hurried downstairs, expected her to be looking in my drawers, on my computer, violating my space, but I found her leaning against the wall where I left her, still fidgeting, struggling to get the blood circulating in her extremities. Pictures of me and my mother over the years, always in colorful costumes, me and my mother at Trinidad's Carnival, the best Carnival in the whole world, surrounded Jewell. I gave her that recovered diamond, our flesh grazing.

She stared at me, hair pulled back, wet and disheveled, sweat covering her reddened face, her sundress so dank it continued sticking to her skin, water dripping from its edges, leaving a puddle at her feet.

She whispered, "We are like sculptors. What you said, take heed to your own lexis."

With a trembling lip, a faltering voice, she had given me Anais's words.

I stared at Jewell, offended by the revered words she had thrown back at me.

Her pain radiated, came in waves. As did my empathy. But my empathy was not that great. This moment of forced solidarity changed nothing. In her memoirs, her world colored by her emotions, I was her antagonist. In this chapter of my memoirs, on this page of my uncensored diary, she was the Wicked Witch. She was my antagonist. A role she scowled at me and auditioned for the first time she saw me with Karl. A role she had won the moment she was bold enough to step up to me and spit in my face.

I hated Jewell Stewark.

I found her insufferable, detested her pain, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and confusion.

The things I hated about her were the things I hated about myself.

It was still raining, the storm once again cruel, malicious winds humming, but I didn't care; there was no more hospitality here, the kindness meter that had been filled with coins of foolishness had expired. If the streets were flooded and Georgia's red dirt had muddied the roads, she could drive as far as her Jaguar could take her, or call AAA and let them send a boat, and if AAA didn't show up I didn't give a damn if she had to swim the filthy currents of the Chattahoochee back to her precious Cascade Road.

I just wanted the bitch gone.

Women had confrontations with wives. Women had confrontations with girlfriends.

This had been like having confrontations with both at the same time.

First, as I reached by her, opened the door that led to my garage, my cellular rang.

The theme from Sex and the City. My mother. Her timing imperfect as usual.

Before I could turn the cellular off and push the button to open the garage door...

Upstairs...

My doorbell rang.

Logan.

My every fear told me it was Logan.

He was all I needed to make this insanity complete.

I heard his Range Rover outside my garage.

I knew he was back. Men like Logan never left. Men like Logan never moved on.

Men like Logan had to win.

FORTY-THREE.

Logan had been the harbinger of this horrific storm.

This was his doing, his negative energy surrounding and disrupting my world.

His Range Rover would be parked in front of my townhome, covered in Georgia rain.

The anger and insults he had given me, I heard him inside my head, his voice a low hum.

Pro bono whore.

I hurried to the kitchen, picked up my mother's long-bladed knife.

I tried to control my breathing, tiptoed to the front door, spied through the peephole.

He was here. He had arrived.

I saw his face. Rain falling, I saw his wet face. Framed in gloom I saw emotions unleashed.

It wasn't Logan.

It wasn't the manifestation of that subconscious fear.

It was Mark and Karl. Both. That was just as shocking as if it had been Logan.

Jewell's husband and her reluctant lover. The man who loved her and the man she loved.

My identical sins.

I took a deep breath. Prepared for the next level of madness.

Then I unlocked the deadbolt and the security lock, opened the door to the restless storm.

I smelled the dampness of the city, the dampness of trees, of kudzu, of Georgia red dirt. In the distance thunder clapped and lightning flashed, the downpour still intense.

But they had weathered the storm to come and reclaim what was theirs.

They were noble men, driving through thunder, lightning, rivers, and fallen trees to retrieve The Jewell of the South.

As if the storm gods had told them some unspeakable tragedy had befallen their mad queen.

Their expressions were pissed and alarmed all at once. In this moment, with those angered and fearful expressions, with the amalgamation of mixed emotions, they looked the same, they were the same. This was their pattern. Mark stood in front of Karl, the older twin in front of the younger, as if he was paving the way, leading his younger brother out of the womb, winds blowing hard enough to bend the trees, winds howling like the forces of labor, rain pouring behind them like broken water.

Karl's Jeep Wrangler was in my driveway behind Mark's truck. Jewell's Jaguar was in front, all three vehicles bumper-to-bumper.

My identical sins stared at me, startled at the threadbare version of me that stood before them. The twins were frozen and wordless. I was irritated, soaking wet, sweaty, hair pulled back, my wicked ponytail about to come undone.

But that was not what inspired the terrified look on their faces.

Their eyes had moved from my irate expression to the long-bladed knife I held in my hand. A wicked knife that could be used to kill a queen. Their eyes widened, mouths opened in horror.

Both looked like they were face-to-face with the reincarnation of Lizzie Borden.

I stepped away from the door, allowed them to come inside my home, water dripping on my marbled foyer. Mark's eyes were on mine. I had waited for him on Cascade. Waited and he never came. Karl's expression was downcast, unable to make eye contact.

In a nervous voice Mark asked, "Where...?"

Before he could form his trembling sentence, before his shaky voice could ask where I had buried his wife's body, Jewell was limping up the stairs. At the same moment six eyes looked in the same direction, watching her enter this space through the marbleized wooden door that led to the basement.

Her sundress soaking wet, dripping water, keys in her hand, her hair wet, her makeup and mascara a mess, running down her face as if she was melting, a demon rising from the bowels of hell.

She looked angered, embarrassed, wounded, this relationship of theirs exposed to a stranger.

Even now, in her state of disarray, she was striking in her anguish.

No one said anything.

There was something ludicrous about this moment.

The silence persisted, chilled us, moved between us, dared us to speak.

I stood between two virile Bajan men, between images that inspired visual orgasms. Men who had given me invigorating smiles. And integration of friendship, sex, worship, desire, culture, conversation, companionship, lust, fantasy, entitlement, and now, knowingly or unknowingly, truth.

Maybe Jewell was right. Maybe Logan was right. Maybe I was a whore. Maybe I was delusional. Maybe all we had done was committed fornication. Maybe all we did was fucked.

I had put pretty clothes on the plea sure-seeking experience, given it a sensual soundtrack, a spiritual melody, given it laughter, peppered with deep kisses, helped create a chorus of escalating moans, and ending the act of lust-driven copulation with orgasms for all, its afterglow painted by lustful smiles. Since I left Logan, I hadn't smiled that much, laughed that much, but in the end, maybe every place I had been with my identical sins was no more than being at a brothel, a five-star brothel we had created at the W, a brothel we had moved to hotels and apartments in Greensboro, a brothel that held me under the red spotlight as its center attraction. The Delusional Whore. Maybe they had dumped come in my mouth and body not with love and affection, but had given me their release the way sewage was given to the sea. This had become complicated. In the blink of an eye it had become complicated.

All of a sudden I felt a wave of sadness. I felt sad because I found them sad.

A little pathetic even.

Everything became trivial.

I looked at Karl and knew he'd never want more from me, as I wouldn't expect more from him. Next I gazed at Mark, my heart heavy for him, and wondered why he stayed where he was when he wasn't happy. I wondered where all of their self-respect had gone.

The things I wondered about them, I wondered about myself.

It was in my face.

Mirrors were all around me. All around us. Each one jumped out at me, stood in front of us all. Mirrors reflected this moment and, as always, in its reflection, the truth remained brutal and unkind.

What ever energy existed between us, it crackled in the air.

Crackled loud enough for Jewell to hear its sound.

She witnessed our familiarity. She looked at us and saw how close we had become. It was there in our glances, in our body language, the adventures we had shared, the intimacy, the memory of the text messages she had read. And my confession to her. This thing we had created stood before her, too real.

There were emotions between us. Emotions she felt. Emotions that told her I was not a whore.

Jewell lowered her head, her body still shaking, madness and emotions overcoming her.

She opened her mouth to say something, but what ever was on her heart was too heavy to find wings to carry the words beyond her bosom, and in the end, she released a long sigh, a stream of air that left her body as if she was exhaling smoke, and she held her wet hair and lowered her head.

All the things she had confessed to me as Mother Nature clapped thunder in the darkness, I remembered her every word, her every pain as we shared a porcelain tub as refugees from the storm.

Mark and Karl were twins. Jewell and I had been twins.

So close our bodies had touched, connected by desires, making us feel like Siamese twins.

Through her confessions she acknowledged her needs and weaknesses.

I had acknowledged my own vulnerability, a weakness driven not by Karl or Mark, for they were only the representatives at this moment. My weakness remained rooted in my fears and desires.

Jewell raised her head. Mark said her name, his baritone voice low yet strong, the tone of a gentle husband. She said nothing. Mark asked what happened here. His wife said nothing.

But she looked toward Karl. His lingam the instrument that had moved against her desire and created enchanting sounds. In her eyes I saw the memory of Negril, Barbados, saw her in my bedroom defiling my bed, imagined there had been many more times over the years, her number of moments with Karl minimized in order to keep her closer to sainthood, I saw through what she didn't say and saw the stolen moments she hadn't revealed. She scowled at Karl. The look of deep love and deeper hate.

Water dripped from her dress as she limped by Mark. By Karl. By me.

She limped out the front door, left Karl as he had left her, left Mark the same way, left the identical sins dripping water on my tiled floor. Jewell Stewark dropped her sandals on the landing outside the front door, hurried to put them on, ignored Mark's calling out to her, then limped down the stairs, those sandals slapping against her wet feet as she struggled to run, as she limped into the darkness and the downpour.

Rain washed away her footprints. The same rain would hide her tears.

The things she had left behind remained.

Her come on my sheets. Her sweat on my towels.

The husband who loved her. The man she loved.

The segments of her life that she had revealed, that portion of her life, of her spoken diary continued spinning, her words, the images those words created, running an infinite loop in my mind.

Mark looked at me, his emotions heavy, his heart being pulled in two directions.

He looked at me and said, "She's my wife."