The Book of Water (26 page)

“What’s it for?” she asks finally.

“To watch. Whadya think?”

“Why should we watch what other people are doing? Isn’t
that
improper?”

“They’re actors. They get paid to be watched.”

“Why?”

For a moment, he’s at a loss for words. “Look, um, the
vid . . . those boxes . . . they show all the daily series, and you can hear all the big groups play, and see the sports, y’know?” His voice trails off. She doesn’t have a clue, though he can see she’s trying hard to get one. He has a sudden vision of his mama, alone in her little cinder block house with the box going all day long, the steady reassuring background noise of her life. “It tells you stories,” he says finally, “and keeps you company.”

“Oh,” she says wonderingly. “Stories.”

She lifts her hand toward the window, as if to reach through the bars to touch the dancing images. N’Doch grabs her wrist.

“Unh-unh. Might bite.”

She recoils, stares at him, then back at the screens as if she expects the vid characters to leap out at her, teeth gnashing.

“I mean, you might set off the alarm, that’s all.” He sees he’s freaked her a little, but since she doesn’t know what’s what, it won’t hurt to have her thinking twice before she goes around laying her hands on things. “Let’s move, okay? You’ll see plenty more vids around. Everyone’s got ’em.”

She follows, but her brain’s obviously on overdrive. “Master Djawara did not keep one of these companions.”

N’Doch laughs. “Papa D. thinks the box is evil.”

“He does?” She stops to stare back at the shop again. “Why? Is it
black
magic?”

He motions the apparition to pull her along faster. He’s impatient now, tired of having to explain things all the time. He wants to get on with finding Lealé. “Depends on who you ask.”

“If it was black magic, the Church wouldn’t let it be shown out like that, in public daylight.”

He likes that phrase, “public daylight.” As if there was any other kind. “The church ain’t got nothing to say about it. This here’s the Land of the Prophet.”

“You mean, like Isaiah or Ezekiel?”

“Mohammed. You never heard of Mohammed?” He grins, ’cause he’s never been devout, only so much as he’s needed to get by the imams. “You a pagan, girl.”

Instead of the laugh he expected, he gets a frown. She turns pensive. “Brother Guillemo says so, too. He called me a witch.”

“You keep time-traveling and running around with dragons, what d’you expect the brother to think?”

“I know,” she agrees seriously.

“Hey.” He shoves her gently. “It’s a joke. You really oughta lighten up, girl. I mean, this is some old guy way back when, right? You’re here, in 2013. Whadda you care what he thinks?”

She shakes her head. “He’s there now, even as we speak. He haunts my dreams. He’ll be there, still after me, when I go back.”

N’Doch can see that this Guillemo guy is a real bad thing in her life. “How do you know you gotta go back?”

She blinks at him, opens her mouth, then shuts it again.

“Bingo. Never thought of that, didja?”

She licks her lips, then purses them. “No, of course I will go back. I must go back, when the Quest is fulfilled. I am sure of that. But . . .” She tosses him a sidelong little glance, impish almost, the closest thing to humor he’s seen in her so far. “Perhaps in a country where there is so much magic all around, it is not so terrible to be called a witch.”

W
hen he finally locates Water Street, and the address that Papa Dja has given him, it’s a narrow side lane, rutted and unpaved, with the usual walled yards and cinder block boxes at the back. No names on the gates, only faded numbers, but the street is pretty clean, not much litter around. N’Doch rings the bell at Number 913.

The gate is solid sheet metal, scarred as if someone had been beating on it with a sledge. A little sliding panel is set at eye level. N’Doch rings for several minutes without result.

“Gotta be patient,” he assures the girl. “Just gotta wait ’em out.”

The apparition is scuffing his feet in the dust, his hands shoved deep into the stretched-out pockets of his shorts. N’Doch remembers these shorts now, except they were
his
shorts, not Jéjé’s, and were particularly prized for being the match to a pair worn by his favorite pop star at the time. And that’s what weirds him out. The time was ten years ago and he hasn’t seen those shorts since. Or the pop star.

“She ain’t in there,” says the apparition.

“I said, you gotta be patient. People don’t just come racing out to see who’s knocking. They might be watching their show. They might feel safer not being home.”

The apparition shrugs. “There’s someone in there, yeah. But it ain’t her.”

N’Doch’s fists ball up on his hips. “How the hell do you know?”

The girl looks right and left. The street is empty. She lays a warning hand on his arm. “Surely you’ve seen by now . . . if she says she knows, she knows.”

Damn! He’s forgotten again. Of all the shapes the dragon
could have pulled out of his mind, it had to be this one? N’Doch guesses he should be grateful she’s not walking around looking like his mother. Or Sedou. This last notion leaves a hollow ache in his gut that he’d rather not have to deal with. He resolves to stop thinking of the apparition as his brother Jéjé. He reaches to ring again. “Gotta at least find out if she lives here.”

The little panel jerks open on squealing tracks, just a crack. “Who is it?” demands a voice.

It’s a woman’s voice, despite its gruffness. N’Doch assumes his best public persona, the one that always charms the ladies. “We’re looking for my grandpapa’s dear old friend, Mme. Lealé Kaimah. Is she at home?”

“Yeah? Who’s this grandfather?”

“He is M. Djawara N’Djai.”

“And who are you?”

“I am his grandson, N’Doch N’Djai.”

A pair of crow-footed dark eyes scrutinize him through the narrow crack. “Lealé doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Excuse me, but my grandpapa received a postcard from her just last month giving this as her address.”

A short pause on the other side of the gate. “What do you want with her?”

N’Doch lets a whiff of the bush spice up his performance. “We’re just into town, my family and I. First time, y’know? Papa Dja asked us to look Mme. Lealé up, see how she’s been all these years.”

“Huh,” scoffed the voice. “Looking to sponge off her, more likely, now she’s found something steady for herself.”

N’Doch lets his shoulders droop. This woman wants abject humility. “No, no, Madame. In fact, my grandpapa was not even sure that his old friend was still living until he received her card.”

The voice chuckles. “Oh, she’s living, all right.”

“Then I may report to him that she’s well?”

“You can go see for yourself. I guess you sure are new in town, ’cause it’s no mystery to anyone local where Lealé’s living these days. You know where’s the Marché Ziguinchor?”

“No, but I’ll find it, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, well, you go down there. Ask for the house of the Mahatma Glory Magdalena.”

“The what?”

But the panel slams shut as N’Doch leans toward it. He almost rings again, but he’s pretty sure he’s gotten all he’s gonna get out of this woman.

“I think she means ‘who,’” notes the girl. “The Magdalene was . . .”

“I know, I know.” He doesn’t, but he’s tired of being informed all the time. He stands chewing his lip for a moment. “The Ziguinchor. What’s Papa Dja doing knowing someone who lives there?”

“Then you do know it?”

“Oh, yeah. But I wasn’t about to tell her that.”

“Why? What is it?”

“A part of town where rich people play, but not the kind like Baraga. He’s bought himself some respectability, at least. The Zig is where the rich and famous go when the old money won’t have ’em around.” He doesn’t know how to say it to the girl, but he’s wondering if Papa Dja’s old pal has made her success working in a pleasure house.

“Is it far?”

He shakes his head, but he’s thinking that the Zig is the sort of place he’d rather go by himself, not dragging some white girl and a kid after him. He’ll have to turn down offers for them right and left, and somebody might get argumentative. But he’s got nowhere he can stash them meanwhile, so he’ll have to risk it. Better in the morning than later on. At least a tourist will be less of a novelty there. He’s never seen the Zig by daylight. It’s the one part of town that doesn’t even get started until after dark.

He leads them back to the main drag, and all the rush and bustle on the boulevard. They’re just crossing to the shade on the north side when he hears sirens coming. His first thought is,
Run!
But he can’t, with all this new responsibility. He hurries the girl and the kid onto the sidewalk, against the charred wall of a boarded-up house. The crowd stops and lines up along the curb to stare at the oncoming vehicles.

The girl moves in close, looking up at him wide-eyed. “What is it?”

N’Doch bites back an impatient reply. Probably she saw him tense up, and it worried her. It’s not her fault she doesn’t know anything, but he’s just not cut out to be a tour guide. “Somebody famous.”

“A powerful lord?”

N’Doch laughs. “You’re thinking, like your daddy, hunh?”

“No, N’Doch. My father wasn’t very powerful. I used to think he was, but that’s because I was a little girl. Now I see that he wasn’t as powerful as he wanted to be, and that’s why he allied himself with Brother Guillemo. To get more powerful.”

He blinks at her. This story of hers is beginning to sound interesting. Maybe there’s a song or two in it. “Well, that’s the way of it, isn’t it? Power and money.” He stands up tall to see over the heads of the men in front of him. The lead pair of motorcycles have just run the signal at the intersection, their headlights flashing. Behind them are four more, rolling along two by two, a stone’s throw ahead of the limo. Behind the limo, more flashing lights and the sirens of the rear guard. N’Doch lets out a low whistle. What blows his mind is not the numbers or the noise, but the style and splash.

The six lead cycles are bright cherry red. All their chrome parts are polished gold. The riders are uniformed in opaque black helmets and glossy black boots, and skintight gold bodysuits set with bits of mirror, so that each is shaped by darkness top and bottom and by edgy, dancing sparkle in between. The limo itself is mirrored gold all over, even the windows, and entirely anonymous. No logo, no flag, no banners, none of the usual personal advertising. Not even an initial.

“Who is it? Who?” the crowd murmurs.

The hot air is full of guesses and pronouncements. Even N’Doch finds his cool ebbing away. The sirens fill his ears and set his blood pounding. The bright heavy sun, rising toward the midday heat, pales to insignificance before such brilliance, such blinding spectacle. He imagines the frosty interior of the limo. He smells the soft leather of its seats, the sensual perfume of the woman next to him as he rides
across town to the studio to shoot his latest music vid. Maybe it’s two women, and they’re chatting softly while he, aloof, gazes through the gold-tinted window at the people who’ve lined the streets to stare at him with fascination and envy. And then a new thought enters his fantasy: Will he remember where he’s come from, when that day arrives? Will he remember that it was him once, lining the streets? He’d like to think he would, but . . . hey, why should he? Nobody else does, once they’ve made it.

The limo slides silently past. Behind it are another six cycles, roaring and flashing. When they’ve all gone by, the street seems vastly empty. The crowd mutters and complains.

The girl is entranced. She cranes her neck after the tail-lights, clapping her hands in glee. “Oh, a golden carriage, oh wonderful! Is it a king?”

“You think everyone rich is a king? We don’t have kings here, you get it?” Like the crowd, N’Doch is left aroused and dissatisfied. “Don’t know who it was, anyway. A publicity stunt of some sort, maybe. Who’d go to all that trouble and expense, otherwise; without telling you who they are?”

He’s aware now of a low keening sound in that place between his ears where the dragon music has staked its claim. He looks around, realizing he’s lost track of the apparition. He spots the kid balled up in the corner of a gated doorway, shoulders hunched, his hands pressed hard to his ears. “Oops,” says N’Doch.

He slips through the dispersing throng to catch hold of the kid and help him to his feet. The girl is there instantly, wrapping her arms around the boy-thing, crooning to him soothingly. This time, N’Doch thinks, it’s she who’s forgotten the kid’s really a dragon.

“Musta been the sirens,” he offers. “Hurt his . . . her ears.” He assumes it’s pain. What’s a dragon got to be afraid of?

“No,” the girl replies. “Well, yes—mine, too . . . but not only. Mostly, it was the badness, she says.”

He finds himself staring at them, this alien white girl with her arms around
his
dragon. “So why can’t she say that to me?”

The girl looks up at him. “But she does. She will. She wants to. But you have to listen.”