The Garden of Last Days (35 page)

Earlier, as he leaned against the Neon and smoked and watched all these kufar, these men whose nothingness will never be over, he watched April run from one vehicle to the next and the sound she made confused him for it was nearly the same as his own mother for Khalid and how can this kafir love and fear losing in the same way as a good wife and mother under the Creator in the birthplace of Muhammad? How can this be?

Again, the confusion and weakness. How could it be possible her cries were difficult for him to bear? How could it be possible he wanted to help this April who calls herself Spring? In his fingertips he feels still the hair above her qus, but it is the long hair of her head he wishes to touch. He wishes to hold her face and kiss her lips. He
wishes to look into her proud eyes. For this is as close as he will ever be to a woman from this earth, and was it close enough?

On the cell phone, in the small black room when he sent her for champagne and cognac, he told Imad not to worry, he would return later than planned but he would return.

But Bassam, where are you?

The den of Shaytan
.

Where?

This club for men
.

Why, Bassam? We must be prepared
.

I may have been followed, Imad. I came here to appear normal
.

Bassam, you’ve been drinking. You must stop and be very careful on your return
.

Yes, Insha’Allah
.

Please hurry, Bassam. Hurry, and do not waste time
.

But he
has
wasted time. And money. So much of it. It is this alcohol. He has become too fond of it. The feeling of freedom it gives to him, of floating above all that is here he cannot control. And it makes him more brave to talk to an uncovered kafir woman in a place of evil that holds him. When he approached her in the shadows, her body so close to his own, his heart was speeding and it was difficult to look at her face and into her eyes and request time with her alone. It was something he could not have done if he had not been drunk. Again the wisdom of the Provider and the Sustainer as taught by the imams he had ignored. They know these vodkas and beer and cognacs and champagnes, they are the colors of water and earth but they have been made in the fires of Jahannam. They only cloud men’s minds and weaken their discipline and turn their hearts to caring only for the flesh that does not last.

That first time in Fort Lauderdale. The Egyptian feared they were being monitored, the same white minivan parked across the street of
their motel for days, and he instructed them to leave the apartment laughing and smoking cigarettes, to walk directly to the outdoor beer café on the beach. They took a table near the street. They ordered glasses of beer from a thin waiter, a piercing in his ear. The first sip with Imad and Tariq, their first as well, it was sweet and bitter and the Egyptian said: “You look like girls. You call too much attention to yourselves. Here,” and he drank down the entire glass and raised it for more. Imad followed first, the foam of the beer clinging to his whiskers. Then Tariq and Bassam, and it tasted better going down quickly, his stomach full but his thirst remaining, and as he lowered his glass only to see the waiter returning with four new ones on his tray, the Egyptian scanning the cars in the street, there was the understanding that for him and his brothers this taste of the haram could only make them wiser, stronger, though Tariq was laughing and Imad looked at the Egyptian and would not touch his second until Amir swallowed his own.

Perhaps it
had
made them wiser, but what good is wisdom if your resolve to use it is weakened by the same liquid that leads you to it?

Bassam accelerates onto I-75 south. He glances at his gauges, calculates he has enough fuel for 160 or so kilometers. At the Everglades Parkway, there is only one station halfway across, and he will fill again the tank and he will buy cigarettes and Coca-Cola to keep him alert. But he has not relieved himself and needs to now. He drives into the sleeping city of Sarasota, its banks and boutiques closed and dark, its traffic lights pulsing yellow. In courtyards and rotundas there are thorn trees and palm trees and he would be hidden there, but no, he will look for a fuel station or an alleyway for there are only three days remaining and he will not relieve himself upon a tree like one from home. He will not desecrate any trees from home.

IN HER KING-SIZE
bed, her cat Matisse sleeping on a pillow not far from her face, Jean dreamed she and Harry were making love in a nightclub in front of a jazz band. He was still dead and she knew it, but he didn’t look dead. He looked like the Harry he’d always been except every few seconds he would stop and withdraw himself and look down between her legs. A spotlight from the ceiling would shine on her there, though it was a light with sound, a motorcycle engine, and it was hard to hear the music over it and that bothered her more than anything. Not Harry stopping to have a light shine on her crotch, but the engine so loud she couldn’t hear the piano and trumpet and brushing cymbals. Then Franny was on the stage, holding her mother’s hand, both of them dressed for the beach.

Jean opened her eyes to the knocking, her dream already fading, Matisse leaping off her bed.

“Ma’am?”
It was a man’s voice, the knocking hard and insistent. Her first thought was the hospital, that they’d come for her whether she wanted to be there or not. But this was no way to wake her, her old heart jumping as she pulled her robe from its hook and stuffed one arm into its sleeve, then the other. On her bedside table, the time glowed green: 3:47.

“Ma’am?”

She moved quickly down the darkened hallway, tying the robe closed at her waist. The flood lamp above the kitchen door had come on and standing there in its harsh light was a policeman and April. Her hair needed brushing and her eyeliner was smeared, her cheeks damp. Clutched to her chest was Franny’s backpack, and Jean couldn’t get the door opened fast enough.

“What? Where’s Franny? What is it?”

“What are you
doing
here? I thought you were sick. I thought you were
sick
!” April was crying, her shoulders heaving, the tall policeman’s arm around her now as he walked her into Jean’s house where she stood in her robe and heard the news—that her fears were not a neurotic condition after all but a prophecy that what you dread the most is precisely what comes for you in the dark in the form of a soft-spoken policeman and this young woman you’ve never really liked and now despise; her long hair hanging over her weeping face, her wrinkled blouse and short skirt, her bare legs and high heels and painted nails, and more despicable than anything was the way she hugged her daughter’s backpack as some sort of evidence that she’d only done her best—Jean despised her, all of her, and how cruel that he nodded and told Jean he could leave her now that he knew she was not alone. How cruel.

Then he was gone, the floodlight switching off and the two women standing there in the dark kitchen, April sobbing. Saying nothing. Just sobbing. And to step forward and hold her would be the humane thing to do. The good and loving thing to do. But Jean didn’t move.
She couldn’t. She crossed her arms over her breasts and hugged herself as if she were cold, Franny’s face mercilessly in her head now, the way she’d turned to wave at her yesterday before her trip to the beach. That almost secretive smile they shared. “Oh April, I’m so mad at you I can’t even—”

—the back pack hit the floor and April’s arms were around Jean’s neck, her crying loud and piercing in her ear, her breasts against Jean’s crossed arms she had no choice but to uncross and drop to her sides, April’s hair smelling of cigar smoke and sweat and men’s cologne: Jean wanted to push her away, but she was close to crying too, though she fought it, Franny’s backpack pressing hard against her bare shins.

ALL THESE TYLENOLS
had finally shucked their skins and dissolved into his bloodstream, his wrist and arm just dull memories of pain now. Things had calmed and steadied: the night, the girl, his plans for the morning. He drove south in the darkness down Gulf of Mexico Drive, sipping hot coffee, his knee pressed tight to the wheel. Off to his left were the homes of the rich. To his right, their private beaches of sugar sand, then the endless salt water they claimed too. Miles out there were the twinkling lights of an oil freighter or commercial fishing vessel, he wasn’t sure which. There was a lot about the water he didn’t know, except that in hurricane season it could rise up and whip into homes and sweep away whatever it is you thought you could never do without. He’d have to get a boat that wasn’t too big, one he could haul and keep inland, him and Cole and Deena safe in their hurricaneproof house. He kept glancing at the
little girl in his rearview, kids like dogs, how quiet they went when it was time to feed. At the gas station he’d bought her a cookie and it was gone before he even got to the Gulf and turned south for Lido Key. Now she sat there looking straight ahead, sucking hard on the straw sunk into her Slush Puppie.

“You want a spoon?”

She looked at the back of his head and nodded. He fitted his coffee cup in its holder, pressed his knee tighter to the wheel, and with his good hand lifted the console cover between his seat and the passenger’s. He punched on the overhead light. There were credit applications and a flash of loose coins, ketchup packets, a torn work glove, three or four roofing nails, and a bottle opener, the truck swerving toward the beach. He grabbed the wheel and let the cover slam shut. His heart was thumping and that hurt his hand somehow and he pulled over onto the narrow shoulder and put the truck in park.

“I want a spoon.”

“Hold on.”

He checked his side mirror, saw the red glow of his brake lights, then the black air. If the county pulled up he’d say he and his daughter were on their way home from a family outing up north, Montgomery or Savannah, and they’d been driving all night.

Daughter. It’d be sweet if she were his, wouldn’t it?

He lifted the console lid and kept it up with his elbow while his fingers pushed aside the glove for the white plastic spoon that’d been there at least a year, probably from Deena’s hand, the ketchup packets too. Always hording shit like that. Sometimes he admired that about her, how she hated to waste anything. But other times, seeing her stash condiments and plastic utensils, it made him feel like she doubted his ability to provide, that there’d come a hard time when they actually
needed
this shit.

Like now.

He let the lid drop, wiped the spoon on his shoulder. He reached back with it and watched her in the mirror pull the straw out and
wedge the spoon in. She lifted too much blended ice and put it in her mouth all at once, her eyes widening before she spit it out onto Cole’s tray top.

“Too much, huh?”

She looked from it, then back to the melting puddle in front of her, her eyes welling up.

“It’s okay, that ain’t nothing. Don’t worry about that.” He grabbed his bandanna and dropped it onto the tray. But she began to whimper and he reached across himself for the door handle and slid out of the truck into the moist air and the Gulf-smell of dried seaweed and old oil, the road dark and empty to the south and north. He pulled open the access door, the cab lamp lighting up this crying little girl, her blond hair hanging over one eye and wet cheek, cookie crumbs in the corners of her mouth and on the front of her pink pajamas, her lips purple. “I want Mama. I want
Ma
ma.”