The Garden of Last Days (22 page)

“My scar?”

“Yes.”

“No one’s ever touched that but me, Mike.” It was true, not even Glenn. Her mouth was dry. She could feel her heart beating in her head. She nodded at the cash. “That’s not enough.”

A hard knocking at the door. “Fifteen minutes. Everything cool?”

“Yep.”

“Spring? Everything cool?”

“Yes, Andy!” The club noise thrummed on the other side of the walls, Andy’s massive weight squeaking on the floorboards as he lumbered back to the VIP.

“You think he is here for protecting you, but he is not.”

“You’ve never seen him throw anybody out.”

“He only has power if I care what happens to me; he is not here to stop me from hurting you. I could have done that one thousand times. He is here only to punish me
after
for hurting you.”

“That stops most people, Mike.”

“Only you kufar.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the full ashtray, exhaled out his nostrils twin trails of smoke. “You are in love with living, and you have no God.”

“Some of us have a God.”

“Then why do you worship your prophet? He was not the son. There is only one Allah and He had no son. These are your gods.” He picked up his cash, handed all of it to her. “Here, take your gods. As much as you wish. I do not care.”

“I don’t believe you don’t care.” She took the stack of hundreds, her fingers trembling slightly.

“You see how you shake? You are in the presence of your gods. But I can burn your gods. You have seen me burn your gods.”

“Why?” She didn’t want to take time to count it out; he could change his mind any second, the way he had about Retro. She separated a half or three-quarters of an inch from the rest, handing it back to him, folding the money and dropping it onto her skirt and blouse on the floor behind her. Two or three thousand for sure. It was hard not to smile at him. “That’s why you don’t care about money, Mike. You have enough of it.”

“My name is not Mike.”

“I know.”

“My name is Bassam.”

“That’s a nice name.”

“Come here.”

She stepped closer, a flutter inside her.

“Sit, please.”

“Just the scar, okay?”

“Yes.”

She sat beside him. He put two fingers to her shoulder and gently pushed her back. Both her feet were on the floor, her knees together, and this was an uncomfortable position to be in but she didn’t want to lift her leg and give him a look at what he hadn’t paid for.

He was staring at her pubic hair, the short horizontal scar beneath it. She thought of Franny yesterday at Siesta Key, letting the white sand sift through her fingers over and over again. Now his fingers passed over the knotted line of skin they’d pulled her from three and half years ago, how they botched the sewing job, Glenn sitting beside her, useless.

“It is very small.”

She didn’t speak. She hoped he’d forgotten the rest of their deal, that she didn’t have to tell him anything. His face looked years younger now, and he was touching her so gently she was close to crying
and didn’t know why and she wished he’d just wanted her to flash him some pink, but not this. How could she let him?

“Tell me, please.”

“What?” Her throat felt thick and doughy. If she kept talking she’d cry.

“Tell me why you do these things.”

He was barely touching her, running his fingertip back and forth over her healed skin, a dull itch snaking its way into her belly. Her eyes began to fill up. She wanted to slap his hand away and stand, but in a few more minutes Andy would come knocking on the door and even if this one wanted to buy her again she’d leave. She’d take all the money he’d given her and leave.

“I am waiting.” Now he pressed two fingers along the scar like a doctor trying to rule something out.

She took a breath. “For my kid, okay? I do it for her.”

He glanced up at her, shook his head. “No.”

“Yes.” She was angry and she didn’t care if he got angry back or not. She had his money and Andy would be here soon and this rich little foreigner could go fuck with somebody else.

He was smiling at her, his eyes bright. “You do it for this.” He tapped her scar, scratched lightly the hair over it.

“What?”

“You do it for skin—what is this way you say?—for flesh.”

“Flesh?”

“Yes, for your love of it. Even if you had no children you would sell your flesh.”

“I don’t sell my flesh. I dance.”

“Are you dancing now?”

“That’s enough.” She sat up and scooted away from him, his hand grazing her thigh.

“I have paid you.
I
say when it is enough.”

“You think so?” She knew she sounded as angry as she felt but this one was small and drunk and she still had her heels on, could lean back and kick one right into him if she had to.

He sat up, took the bottle of Rémy, poured some into his snifter. “You do it because you think it is allowed.” He picked up his glass and swirled the cognac.

He stared into it like there was something in there only he could see. “But it is not. Not for you. Not for any of you.”

IN BACK OF
the club, a single bulb shone brightly over a screen door and through it was a pale fluorescent light lost in steam. Outside a couple of oak pallets leaned against an oil drum next to a Dumpster, the air smelling like hot Frialator oil and detergent. He pulled right up to the bumper of a Sable, then backed over broken shells past all the employees’ cars into the wire grass under some black mangroves. He flicked off his lights and cut the engine down.

His wrist was throbbing again, a thick pulsing that gave him an ache as high as his shoulder and neck. He tore the seal off the Tylenol bottle, got it open, and shook four or five into his hand, chasing them down with beer. It’d be better if he still had that pint of Turkey but the rest of this twelve-pack would have to do, and damnit, had he left the empty bottle in the driveway? Deena shouldn’t see that. It made him look bad.

He thought of Deena and Cole, how since he’d been gone he didn’t
think of them as separate, how in his mind he saw them together, mother and son, son and mother, her holding him in her arms, feeding him, changing him, bouncing him on her lap. Woman and boy, his family. That’s what he wanted back, though he wasn’t sure about Deena by herself, was he? If she weren’t his son’s mother, if she didn’t go with that picture, did he really want her? And if he did, why was he sitting here waiting for Marianne?

He sipped his beer. The club music got louder, the front door probably open around the corner. He could hear one or two men laughing. Car or truck doors slamming, engines starting up. In the kitchen an old man pulled from the machine a dripping and steaming rack of glasses. Another man stepped into view. He was dressed in a fry cook uniform, a bottle of beer in one hand, an apron in the other. He stopped the dishwasher and started pointing here and there, giving some kind of instruction. Then he turned and dropped his apron in a bucket and stepped outside. He rested his beer on the lid of the Dumpster and lit up. He had a wide body and hardly any hair left. Probably AJ’s old man’s age, wherever he was. Whoever he was. Even now, when he’d sit with Mama out on her small concrete patio overlooking the walled lawn of bahia grass and her Virgin Mary statue and the goldfish pond nobody sat around, she still never told him.

“That old question again?” she’d say. “Just a ten-day mistake, honey. I’ve told you that. Eddie raised you. Think of him.”

Eddie
. Skinny, drunk, no-’count Eddie.

The cook finished off his beer and tossed the empty into the Dumpster. They stopped serving food at midnight. Wouldn’t be long now.

The first thing that pulled him to Marianne was not her hips and hair, that sweet trusting face, but the music she’d moved to: “I’m Not in Love.” It was big on the oldies radio when he was a kid working for Eddie, and seeing her dance to it made him think of the younger AJ, sad all the time. Hungry for girls who never seemed to see he was there. This half-naked woman smiling at him the whole damn song long. And it was like watching what he’d wished for back then come
for him now, and he felt sure he loved her even before she’d finished her act and changed her clothes and made her way to his table.

The fry cook said something through the screen to the old man, then turned and walked into the row of parked cars, climbing into a new Chevy sedan. AJ watched him back up, his headlights sweeping the other cars and AJ’s truck and the mangroves before he disappeared around the corner of the club. Maybe he saw him for a second. Maybe he didn’t. AJ didn’t care; he wanted to be seen. By his old man he’d never met. By Marianne in some honest light. Would she still look at him like he was a good man? Would his daddy? What would he see if he ever saw him anyway?

JEAN’S FOOT PRESSED
hard onto the brake pedal, her car jerking to a stop at the entrance to a parking lot full of men. Her headlights shone on them all. Young ones, older ones. Some leaning against the hoods of their cars or trucks, others milling about in twos or threes in the center of the crushed-shell lot, a few turning to squint into the glare of her headlights. Two men on motorcycles rumbled up to her left, one of them—his face a mask of whiskers and drunkenness—peered in at her like she might be an item for sale. A large invisible hand was pushing against her chest and she had to take short breaths. Sweat broke out across her forehead and the back of her neck, the palms of her hands gripping the wheel, and she couldn’t, she just couldn’t.

She put the Caddy in reverse and backed away into the blare of a horn, the swerve of bright lights, angry shouting from a young man in a convertible already speeding south, the motorcycles too. She was
gulping air, her eyes burned with tears, and she despised herself for driving away but still she couldn’t breathe. She pressed both window buttons to let in more air but what came rushing in was a warm blast of humidity smelling of engine exhaust and street dirt and it whipped her hair.

She drove faster. She tried breathing through her nose. The windows rolled shut and she didn’t remember making them do that. She turned up the radio but now there was no jazz, just the voice of the disc jockey, low and melodious, and she made herself listen to it, not the words, just their sound—sonorous, rooted in great knowledge and articulation, a voice of reason in an unreasonable world.

The weight against her chest began to lighten and she was able to get a noseful of air all the way down into her lungs. The man’s voice said
contralto
and
Hampton
. It said many more things, but it was the sound she heard, not the words.
Everything is as it should be
, it seemed to say.
This is how it was and this is how it will be. You simply need to listen, dear listener. Sit and do nothing
.

AJ STOOD PISSING
against the trees. He was drunk and tired and when he shook himself off with his good hand he dripped onto his pants and couldn’t get the zipper up. One girl had left already. A short Chinese he never did like. She had stubby legs, flat breasts, and dull eyes. He’d sat behind the wheel and watched her drive away in her Camry. So many new cars. All the lying whores driving nice rides because of sorry sonsabitches like him. Now he stood in the black shadows of the mangroves. He could hear the music coming from inside, some country song, and he knew that girl in the white cowboy hat and boots was up there now. And who was Marianne dancing for?