The Garden of Last Days
Read The Garden of Last Days Online
Authors: Andre Dubus III
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
About the Book
One early September night in Florida, a young mother brings her daughter to work.
April’s usual babysitter, Jean, has had a panic attack that has landed her in the hospital. April doesn’t really know anyone else, so she decides it’s best to have her three-year-old daughter close by, watching children’s videos in the office while she works. But April is a stripper at the Puma Club for Men. And tonight she has an unusual client, a foreigner both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Lots of it, all cash. His name is Bassam. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club for holding hands with his favorite stripper, and he’s drunk and angry and lonely.
From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, searing, passionate, page-turning narrative, a big-hearted and painful novel about sex and parenthood, honour and masculinity. Set
in
the seamy underside of American life at the moment before the world changed,
The Garden of Last
Days has all the psychological tension of Andre Dubus’s bestselling
House of Sand and Fog
.
About the Author
Andre Dubus III is the author of
Bluesman
,
The Cage Keeper and Other Stories
and the bestselling
House of Sand and Fog
. He lives with his family north of Boston.
Also by Andre Dubus III
Bluesman
The Cage Keeper and Other Stories
House of Sand and Fog
FOR LARRY BROWN
LATE SUMMER, ’01
THURSDAY
APRIL DROVE NORTH
on Washington Boulevard in the late-afternoon heat. She passed housing developments behind acacia and cedar trees, Spanish moss hanging from their limbs like strings of dead spiders. Between her legs was the black coffee she’d bought at the Mobil station on the way out of town and it was too hot to drink, the sun still shining bright over the Gulf and blinding her from the side like something she should’ve seen coming, like Jean getting laid up and now there’s no one to watch Franny and no calling in sick at the Puma. And little Franny was strapped in her car seat in the back, tired and happy with no idea how different tonight will be, how strange it could be.
But even in September, Thursday was a big money night, seven to eight hundred take-home, and that’s what April concentrated on as she drove, Franny’s chin starting to loll against her chest—April made herself think of that fat roll of tens and twenties she’d have at
closing, how she’d fold it into the front pocket of her jeans then go to the house mom’s office off the dressing room and give Tina a hundred before she found Franny in her pj’s on Tina’s brown vinyl couch, and she’d try not to think of the walls above Tina’s desk covered with dancers’ schedules and audition Polaroids of naked women, some of them under postcards from girls who came and went. In the corner were a small TV and VCR where once Louis kept playing a porno starring Bobbie Blue, who used to dance at the Puma as Denise, though the name her mother gave her was Megan.
But Tina would be sure no tapes like that were around. She’d let Franny watch Disney videos as long as she wanted. Bring her chicken fingers and fries from the kitchen. Play cards with her or give her the back of an old schedule she could draw on with a Puma pen. And if the noise from the club got too loud—the rock and roll numbers the DJ blasted, the constant clink of bottles and glasses from the bar, all the men’s hooting and hollering, Tina would turn up
Aladdin
or
Cinderella
or
The Little Mermaid
and pull the sliding door halfway shut so she could keep the right girls on rotation at the right time because it was all just a show, April told herself now, it was just a different kind of show business and Franny’d have to be backstage just this one time and she’d be fine. She was only three and she wouldn’t know what she was seeing and she’d be fine.
April passed the industrial park, acres of one-story buildings behind hurricane fences, barbed wire coiled along the top, the sky an endless coral haze. She checked Franny in the rearview mirror. There was a ring of grape around her mouth from the Slush Puppie she’d let her have at the Mobil. April had put sunblock all over her in Jean’s garden. Jean, with her heavy body and aging face, she always looked embarrassed to take April’s rent and had never taken a penny all these months to babysit Franny. But nothing’s for free and you should never count on anything that is and April wanted to know how she could have fallen so easily into thinking that Jean and her kindness was a sure thing she could trust? How could she not have found at least one backup babysitter in all the months she’d been here, just in case? And
Jean sounding so guilty on the phone from the hospital. Two days of tests. A bunch of tests for her heart.
Up ahead on the southbound side of the boulevard was the neon sign for the Puma Club. Thirty feet high and always on, it was two silhouettes of naked women, one standing, the other sitting with a knee drawn up to her breast. Just seeing it, something hot and hard gathered in April’s stomach because even when she’d auditioned for Louis back in March, when she’d done her routine to a ZZ Top song out on the floor of the empty club at eight in the morning, she hadn’t brought Franny inside with her; instead she’d parked the Sable under the trees and she’d locked her into the car with coloring books and crayons, a chocolate milk and two powdered doughnuts. She’d checked the doors twice and told Franny through the glass to lie down on her belly and eat and draw, and as she walked toward the club she’d tried to ignore the muffled cry of her daughter calling her from the car. April told herself it was in the shade and was hard to see unless you were looking for it, that it was all locked up anyway and what else could she do? Leave her alone back in the motel? They’d been here only three weeks and knew no one. She’d be done in less than thirty minutes anyway, though it turned out to be forty-five, and when she’d run to the car and unlocked it, it was full of heated air and Franny was sweating and it looked like she’d cried awhile. April had wiped her face and made her drink the rest of her chocolate milk, though it was warm, and she swore she’d never do anything even close to that ever again and took them to a lunch and matinee they couldn’t afford.
April slowed for the illegal U-turn through the median strip, a patch of gravel she steered onto too fast, rocking her Sable, splashing hot coffee through her jeans onto her thigh.
“Shit.”
She turned and checked Franny. Her chin had swung to her other shoulder but she was still asleep. April edged up to the southbound boulevard and waited for a Winnebago to lumber by. Her thigh burned. She reached for the box of tissues and pressed one on the spill. Barely cool air blew in her face and at this moment she hated this car and her ex-husband for buying it, she hated Jean and her weak heart, she hated
Tina the house mom for being the one to watch over her Franny, she even hated Florida and its Gulf Coast that Stephanie up north had told her she’d love; but more than anything, she hated herself, April Marie Connors, for doing what she was about to do, for breaking the one rule she swore she’d never break, pulling out onto the macadam, then driving into the crushed-shell lot of the Puma Club for Men, her daughter Franny right there in the car with her.