The Garden of Last Days Read online

  She jerked her black stilettos out of her locker and pushed in one foot at a time and leaned over to cinch the straps. There were just men’s voices now. Two of them laughed, she could hear them clearly as Renée came whisking into the dressing room naked, clutching her ice queen costume and a fistful of cash. Franny’s crying was louder now and April couldn’t get the metal pin in the hole of the strap and her Melissa Etheridge song had started and Tina stuck her head out her office doorway. “Get out there, Spring!”

  “Mama! Mama!” It was almost too much. April’s face was hot, her chest tight with trapped air, and she took a breath and found the hole and didn’t bother threading the strap any farther. She moved by Renée standing there in heels and silver glitter and pathetic white frosted eyeliner, counting her money. Franny kept calling her, and out in the club a man called for her, too, then another, and Tina looked hard down at her jeans as April passed the office and didn’t look in, her daughter’s cry the only sound she heard as she stepped into the darkness of the hallway heading for the blue glow of the backstage hall and the three carpeted steps she climbed. She told herself her daughter would be fine. She would. She’d be fine. She waited behind the main curtain for her cue, for Etheridge’s voice she heard now, but shit, how was she going to get her jeans off past her stilettos without taking them off first? And Louis didn’t allow bare feet on the stage—everything else but not the feet. And when she got her jeans off, it’d be her underwear she pulled down for them. Not Spring’s, but April’s. Etheridge started singing about coming through the window, and men were calling for her now, calling for Spring, and she put on her nightworld smile, parted the curtain, and stepped into the amber glow of the stage.

  A few regulars let out a yell. A few more clapped. She smiled and smiled and her hips started to do what they did. She swung her head back and looked hard down into the darkness of the tables, smiling like nothing would ever make her happier than what she was doing right now. Men sat back with their drinks and bottles of beer. They stared at her face, her crotch, her breasts. A college kid in a white cap smiled up at her but he couldn’t look her in the eye, and that’s the one she’d come back to, that’s the one she’d unsnap her jeans for first, the one that made her feel this was her show, that she controlled them and always would, that she’d be fine—this was her show and she’d be just fine. She and Franny both.

  BASSAM WATCHES HIMSELF drive the Neon along the water in the setting sun. At the place called Mario’s-on-the-Gulf, he sat among the kufar and ate a small basket of onion rings and drank one glass of beer and two vodkas over ice. Living so haram all these months, he has become fond of this feeling the drinking gives him, as if he is a spirit floating loosely behind his own skin. Inside the open envelope beside him are 160 one-hundred-dollar bills. Some of them are new, some are old, and the kafir woman at the bank insisted for his own security he accept a check, but no, he preferred cash.

  She was young and plump, but even with a blemish upon her chin she was pretty the way these mushrikoon are pretty, showing their bare arms and legs, their throats, their painted faces. This is what has surprised him most—that the kufar are largely asleep in the evil they do.

  He steers away from the sun and passes a small park, its palm and thorn trees which remind him of home. But nothing else does. In the sun’s last rays, its light the color of fires against shops and restaurants, he passes men and women sitting at outdoor tables, laughing and smoking and drinking. He passes a young couple walking side by side holding hands. The man is young and thin and wears a baseball Nike hat like Karim in Khamis Mushayt who is lost but does not believe it. The woman is blond, an American whore, but still Bassam looks twice more at her in his rearview mirror, his heart pushing hungrily inside his chest, his mouth suddenly dry for he knows where he is going.

  Do not forget, Bassam, it was the Egyptian, the man who hates all women, not simply the kufar, who took you there. It was Amir, certain they were being followed, who drove you. Would he have done this if they had not permitted him to fly alone and afterward, in his joy, he had not asked all his questions about the weight limits of the single-engine? Was there a hold for cargo and a release to dump it? The instructor had narrowed his eyes upon them, and Amir had seen his mistake and as he drove away from the airfield he continued looking into the rear mirrors of the Neon and he ordered you to light a cigarette and blow smoke out the window, to turn on the radio and move your head. Amir, who never smiles, who always watches the money and wears too much cologne and never smokes, he drove them both into the parking area of this club for men. He rose quickly out of the auto and studied the road, but there was no one. Still, he said, “We go in, but say a supplication of place. Say it now.”

  Bassam is still surprised by his cell phone call this morning from the northern city, not that there is additional money to wire back to Dubai, but that he has asked him to do it, Bassam al-Jizani, the one he has monitored so closely here. It has been their primary task all these months: Do not draw attention. Live like the kufar when you are among them. Smoke cigarettes in public. Drink alcohol moderately. Wear short pants on hot days and never carry the Book upon your person. Never speak of the Creator or all we know is holy. The polytheists will see it. It will strike fear into the mushrikoon and bring suspicion upon you.

  But Bassam, living like the kufar has weakened you and, you must admit this, it began immediately, that one night in Dubai before flying west, the taxi driver as old as your father and uncles, laughing at you and Imad and Tariq in his rear seat, the dark happiness in his eyes as he drove slowly by the hotels, their bright electric signs and then, like stumbling upon a hill of insects in the sand, so very many uncovered women in the side walking areas and in the street, calling to you.

  Your breathing seemed to stop, and the driver laughed more loudly and slowed the taxi. “These Russians call them night butterflies.” And he explained to you and your brothers from Asir things you did not wish to know. These whores from Uzbekistan and Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, and Azerbaijan, the first uncovered women you had ever seen, and not simply the arms but their legs as well, their bellies and half of their nuhood, their faces painted heavily, cheap jewelry hanging from their ears, their lips dark and glistening.

  “Don’t look, brothers,” said Imad. “Do not look at these jinn.”

  But you did, Bassam. You looked at their nuhood and their backsides, you heard their talk and their laughter and you watched them walk in their high shoes, and surely this was the first of many temptations from Shaytan himself. But you were steadfast. In your rented room, you three performed your ablutions at the bath sink and you determined the qiblah and prayed the Isha prayer and you tried to ignore the noise outside the walls, the passing autos and their radio music, the shout of a man, the laughter of uncovered women who in the kingdom would be stoned to death.

  Here it has only grown worse. All these months, in every leased room, Amir has kept the windows covered. He has pulled down shades and drawn curtains. He has lit incense in mabakhir and placed the Qur’an on a small table on the east wall they faced daily for the five prayers, and Bassam would make himself forget the young women beyond that wall, driving their topless autos in the sun, walking so uncovered into and out of shops and malls, sitting on blankets on sand reading books and magazines and talking and laughing, their long blond hair, their bare legs and feet, their uncovered faces looking directly at whomever they wished to, including him. He made himself think of the companions reserved for him and his brothers in Jannah, Insha’Allah, not these dirty kufar who would laughingly pull him between their legs straight to the eternal fire.

  Yet now he drives north when he should be driving west. He told Imad and Tariq he would be back before the final prayer, Allah willing. And tomorrow is too important and the first business is to wire this money to Dubai. Already he has spent some of it, though he did not leave the young bartender anything extra, something which pleased Bassam as he walked away from Mario’s-on-the-Gulf, this fe
eling of hardening himself once more, of turning his back on these people who should fear him but do not.

  Soon this will change, Allah willing. Very soon.

  And as the tall yellow sign of naked whores rises up ahead, Bassam looks in the rearview mirror and sees the empty road behind him. But how does he know he has not brought suspicion upon himself with all the money he pulled from his pocket at the bar? He should do as the Egyptian did, should he not? Go into the evil place one last time where he will appear harmless? Where he will appear as just another man? Normal in his hunger for what these whores will show him? A normal man?

  This Neon is inexpensive and plain and slow because Amir leased it, and Bassam parks it beside a pickup truck. He silences the engine. From the bank envelope he pulls the 160 hundred-dollar bills. He divides the stack into two thick halves, folding each one, pushing one into his front right pocket, the other into his left. He needs cigarettes and remembers the machine in the pink entrance. Pink, a color he fears for it is the color of seduction and the color of lies, and he takes his cell phone and pushes it under the money in his left pocket.

  The woman who had danced for him once before. Her long dark hair and eyes that looked straight into him as he watched her. If the Egyptian had not been beside him, holding his cranberry juice, enduring the filth of their visit here, already beyond this world, then Bassam would have paid her for private time. He would have paid for her as any kafir would. It’s only right that he do that now, that he deflect suspicion and appear this way, one last time.

  He closes his eyes, the keys in his sweating hand. O Lord, I ask You the best of this place, and ask You to protect me from its evils. You are more dear than all Your creation. O Lord, protect me from them as You wish.

  AT FIRST SHE’D thought it was a toothache.

  April had taken Franny to the beach, and Jean, in her loose sundress, had uncoiled the hose from under the stairs and was watering the ixora and allamanda, showering them with a fine spray. She’d had a particularly sweet morning with Franny, and she was thinking of her as she turned the water away from the red star clusters of the ixora to the bougainvillea hanging like an undone necklace from the trunk of the palm.

  This morning she’d made herself and Franny silver-dollar pancakes, cooking them in melted butter on the griddle while she sipped her coffee and peeled a kiwi for garnish. Franny sat at the peninsula on two gardening books on her stool near the window, and today she drew with a dull purple crayon, talking with that impossibly high voice of hers. Even now, after six months, Jean couldn’t stop staring at her, this tiny three-year-old human being with her curly hair that was already darkening to her mother’s color, her round cheeks and surprisingly graceful neck. Her deep green eyes. Whenever Franny listened, she’d sit completely still and raise her chin and tilt her face up. And the child got excited to do the most mundane chores, like feed the cat or rinse the dishes for the machine or squat on the floor and hold the dustpan with both hands while Jean swept into it.

  The first few weeks of taking care of her, it had been that, Franny leaping with unguarded hope and wonder into every suggestion Jean made, which pierced Jean where she believed she’d long ago stopped feeling much at all. This morning was one of those times, though Jean couldn’t point to any one thing that did it: the early-morning light coming over the east wall into the window across Franny’s face and arms; or that voice as she talked to Jean without a break, telling her dream of starfish and Teletubbies and a garden like theirs that could fly—the fact she referred to Jean’s garden as theirs; maybe it was the warm-yeast smell of the buttermilk pancakes steaming on the griddle, the taste of chicory coffee with cream and too much sugar, the bright, nearly translucent green of the kiwi she sliced—all this life, she didn’t know; all she did know is that in that moment she felt so full, so blessed, that her eyes welled up and she had to turn to the griddle so Franny wouldn’t see her because how do you explain joy making you cry? How could she explain it even to herself? This opening up inside her that seemed to fill from the bottom with unspeakable love for this child and everything under her own nose in this one and only day given her?

  Just before eleven, April walked down the outside stairs in her robe and flip-flops, carrying her coffee in a tall mug. It was a sound and image Jean had come to dread for they signaled the end of her morning with Franny, and nearly always it was the same: she’d hear the screen door above swing open and shut, then the dull thwock-thwock of her tenant’s flip-flops on the outside steps. Through the window she’d see April’s feet and bare calves, the hem of her robe. Some mornings April would pause and lean over the railing and peer into one of the front windows of Jean’s house. But even if she saw Franny drawing, or painting, or watching some PBS, she would keep going down and out into the garden and sit in one of the Adirondack chairs in the shade of the mango. She’d sit there and sip her morning coffee in Jean’s walled garden where no one could see her.

  The first week or so of looking after Franny, if she wasn’t near the window Jean would call her over and point out her mother. But the little girl always dropped whatever she was doing and ran outside and that would be it; Jean’s time with her would be over. She’d stand there at her door and watch Franny climb up onto April’s lap where Jean couldn’t see her anymore. Standing there watching them, her time had never felt shorter; she could feel each slipping moment; she was seventy-one years old and came from a family line where no one made it past seventy-four. Not her mother or father. Not a grandparent, aunt, or uncle. And she was a large woman who labored heavily. Sweated a lot. Got dizzy. In her lonelier, weaker moments she saw the terrible unfairness of this: she had so little time left and she was finding this feeling only now? Did April know how fortunate she was to be given it so young? This was a question rooted in envy, Jean knew, and she was ashamed of herself for even asking it.

  But then one Friday morning, just as April was raising her mug to her lips, Franny ran out and jumped into her mother’s lap and the coffee spilled and she pushed her daughter away from it and stood quickly, swatting at her robe, Franny sitting on the ground, her hair in her face, silent only a second before she let out a howl, then began crying. April picked her up right away. Jean ran cold water over a dish towel and rushed outside, April holding Franny close, explaining how hot the coffee was and how she didn’t want her to get burned and that’s why Mama pushed you away. That’s why.

  April’s long dark hair was tied up loosely in the back. In the tiny crow’s feet of her eyes was just the trace of the foundation she wore to her work. April began humming softly and Jean reached over and patted Franny’s small back, felt the pencil-sized ribs under her fingers, her shaky breath, but it was as if she were standing between two people in an intimate conversation and she pulled her hand away. Stood there feeling useless, the wet dish towel in her hand.

  After that she stopped telling Franny her mother was in the garden. She told herself she did this to give April some morning solitude, to protect her daughter from hot coffee, but she knew she was really doing it to prolong her time with Franny.

  They’d both been gone only a few minutes today when the pain began in her jaw. A bad molar? But then it was in her left upper arm, and this seemed strange to her at the time because she was spraying the hibiscus with her right so why would that one hurt? She shook it in the air, the flesh there waggling the way it did. The pain didn’t go away but she shrugged it off and turned the hose to the frangipani along the wall. She could still see the two girls as they’d looked when they’d left, Franny in her bathing suit under a Cinderella halter, her curly hair held back with a sun visor. She wore flip-flops like her mother, who held her hand and looked so young and lovely in her khaki shorts and purple T-shirt, her sunglasses and smiling face, her long shining hair. She carried a woven bag that held their towels and sand toys and probably a snack and water, and seeing her you’d never know she spent her nights doing what she did. Jean began to worry about her again. Both of them. What kind of lif
e were they going to have, after all?

  At the gate they’d turned and waved at her, and that image was still behind her eyes when the pain increased and a sharp pinch shot up her arm into her shoulder and jaw. She was not ignorant of these things. Now a weight began to press on her chest and a cold sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip. She let go of the nozzle and hose, dropping them into the tangled red of the ixora. She walked carefully through the shade of the mango, her eyes on the door ahead of her. Her door. A French door she’d hired a man to put in so she could better see her garden and let in the light. Now she saw the door so clearly, clearer than when she’d spent two days painting it; it no longer looked lovely to her but more like a cold and distant piece of machinery she would have to learn to operate to get help, and all the love she’d felt that morning with Franny had now turned upside down inside her and become a terrible crushing weight on her chest.

  This was surely it. She would die as Harold had. Alone in his office back in Oak Park, Chopin’s nocturnes on the record player. She saw him as she’d seen him. Slumped in his favorite diamond-tufted chair, his nearly handsome face pointed downward and blue. Blue. His tongue stuck out stiffly and she’d felt a vague mortal disgust and sudden and permanent grief, but now it was her turn and she refused to go; she wanted to stay, stay with her two girls, who were not hers but should have been. Her survivors.