The Garden of Last Days Read online

  She said something.

  “What?” He turned his ear to her and now he felt her nose against his temple, her warm breath.

  “My daughter’s sleeping in Tina’s office, Lonnie. Can you keep an eye on her? Tina’s upstairs.”

  He nodded, straightened, watched her go. Daughter. She was hurrying through the tables, not bothering to work them a bit on her way to the Champagne Room, and she held something in her hand. A cold cave opened up in his gut—Wendy, yes, and maybe Retro or Sadie or Marianne, if she ever got asked—but not the one woman in this club who really seemed to be above everything she did here. Tell me that’s not a rubber in her hand. Tell me Spring did not go back to her locker for a fucking skin.

  He stood there between full tables, knew he was blocking the view of customers behind him but he didn’t move. Watched her rush into the blue light of the VIP bar, smile at Paco, and hand the bartender the cash she held in her hand—not a rubber, but money, Lonnie. Money.

  He felt the cave close up and his lungs filled with smoky Puma Club air. One of the Portofino boys yelled louder than anyone had all night and Lonnie turned to say something to him but onstage Sadie was spinning her breasts in perfect clockwise circles, one hand in the air spinning an imaginary lasso, so let him yell. Let them all yell. Yell themselves right over the line where he’d be waiting.

  He climbed back up to the Amazon Bar, but he could only think of the one waiting for Spring. The little high roller who had her all to himself in his little black plywood room.

  HE SHOULD NOT have come. They are in the final phase, and he should not have come.

  But he cannot leave. Not yet.

  On the worn carpet lies her top she removed for him. Her bottom robe lies across the table where she dropped it beside her empty glass, the pail of ice, his ashtray and glass, empty as well. He picks up this clothing and he folds it and places it beside him. He should not drink further. He should stop. Why then did he send her for more? Because he wants her to drink. He wants her to drink so she will speak truthfully to him, so she will forget for a moment her work. For just this hour or maybe two. It is not anything the Egyptian is required to know. Or Imad or Tariq, his brothers, waiting for him on the other coast.

  But this kufar music, even through the walls it charges like a wild animal. Why did Khalid like it so much? His eyes upon the highway, he would turn the volume until the ashes in the tray shook, his head bouncing to it, laughing as he gave the engine all its fuel, Bassam afraid and grasping the door handle but laughing as well.

  This David Lee Roth, if there was time Bassam would find him and kill him. For he worries. At his death Khalid was living like the kufar. He had not yet turned back to holiness and the Book. He had not visited the imam many evenings between the last two prayers, he had not sat upon the carpet looking into the sheikh’s eyes that shone with wisdom and the light of iman as he revealed the nothingness inside them, the nothingness that made them race on the Road of Death and sneak away to Mount Souda to smoke tobacco and play music, some of the boys using their cell phones to call girls and talk and talk and talk.

  The imam pointed in the direction of the air base of the Americans, the air base Ahmed al-Jizani helped to build, the air base their own king permitted in the Land of the Two Holy Places. “It is what they want. The further you fall from our faith, the stronger they become. The ways of the West, it is how Shaytan spreads confusion among the believers.”

  And Khalid’s body was washed and wrapped in white and laid down on his right side facing Makkah.

  Bassam began smoking more. He and Imad drove friends to Mount Souda and made fires. They sat around the flames, Tariq playing the oud, and they smoked cigarettes and talked of nothing but gossip—the mall in Abha where girls entered with a male guardian only to separate and meet their friends, their heads covered, their laughter, their eyes you could see seeing you. The chat rooms where you could have for hours a written conversation. The music allowed in other countries that made your heart beat more quickly and made you want to dance, something that was permitted outside the kingdom in nightclubs where men and women could go freely. And beer. Tariq wanted to taste beer. To taste the drunkenness he heard you could find in it. Your head becoming someone else’s.

  Bassam lay beside the fire. He listened to his friends and all their longing for more nothingness he was only beginning to feel was nothing. He lay there upon the hard ground and he watched the sparks rise to the stars in the blue-blackness above. A baboon began its howling cry. There he was under the moonlight in a thorn tree, his head tilted upward. That is me. I am just a baboon in a thorn tree. I am nothing. All of us. We are nothing.

  Until the imam. Until the fasting whose thirst and hunger bring you closer to the Creator, the All-Knowing Sustainer and Provider, the teachings of their boyhood, that all beliefs other than our own are void and it is the plan of the Ahl al-shirk to separate us from our faith, to occupy us with their armies, to send us away from the One True God and Jannah. How could Bassam have forgotten his own king permitting the kufar onto the birthplace of the Prophet, peace be upon him? How could he have forgotten as a boy of fourteen years, the roaring sound of the American jets taking off to bomb their Muslim brothers in Iraq and Kuwait? It was the sound of Shaytan laughing at them. The air shook and you could not hear the mu-adhin’s call to prayer. You could not hear the prayers of the imam inside the mosque built by Ahmed al-Jizani, only the jet engines of the kufar attacking our faith.

  But remember too the American officers walking through the souq. Their uniforms pressed, their shoes dusty from the street. They talked too loudly and laughed too often. They pointed at goatskins of olive oil and made jokes. One picked up precious incense you burn for guests in your home, musk and myrrh and amber, and held it to his nose as if to judge its worthiness. You watched him, Bassam. You watched him, hungry and thirsty as you were from the fast of Ramadan and you saw inked into his arm the false idol cross that is haram, and you looked up and down the crowded street but there were no mu’taween to report to, and you cannot lie, there was something about these men you wanted to become. Tall and strong and afraid of nothing. Warriors. Above the rules. Living by rules from another world.

  Khalid. That evening during Ramadan. There was a cold wind from the mountains and he came home without his coat. He’d missed the nightly Iftar to break the fast, and many uncles and cousins were in the outer building with Ahmed al-Jizani, who called Khalid inside to eat.

  Where is your coat?

  I don’t have it.

  Where is it?

  I gave it to the man in the souq.

  Why?

  He was cold. He did not have a coat.

  But now you have no coat.

  Yes, that is true. Khalid sat down and their father was smiling and in his eyes was the wet light of pride.

  In only three days, Insha’Allah, they will shine brighter than ever before for the highest place in Jannah is reserved for the shahid, but also for the man who helps widows and the poor. The Prophet has said this, peace be upon him, and so Bassam will see Khalid again, yes? He must have faith that he will see him very soon. Allah willing, Insha’Allah.

  “MRS. HANSON?” THE young nurse hurried into the room. She pressed a button on the monitor, and the beeping stopped. Jean moved past her to the short chest of drawers in the corner and pulled out her sundress.

  “I’m going home.”

  A second nurse appeared in the doorway, tall and older, her hair pulled back in a tight French braid. “What seems to be the trouble?” Again, speaking too loudly, enunciating her words too damn clearly.

  “No trouble,” Jean said. She untied her johnny and let it drop to the floor. “I have to get home and I’m leaving.” She found her bra in the drawer and put it on, hooking it together in front, then pulling it around and cupping her breasts into each one. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that in front of anyone else—years. With Harry, years ago.

  “Mrs. Hanson,” th
e young nurse said. “You should really stay and rest.”

  “Thank you, but I have to go.”

  The other nurse was in the room now, leaning against the wall, her arms folded. “If something happens to you, we’re not responsible. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” She stuck her arms into the sleeves of her dress and didn’t bother reaching up in back to struggle with the button. Franny did that for her sometimes, her tiny fingers against Jean’s bare neck.

  “I can’t let you leave without signing a release.”

  “Fine.” Her soiled tennis shoes were side by side on the floor and she pushed one foot in, then the other, sitting on the bed to tie them. She was breathing hard and sweating a bit, but it felt good to breathe, to move.

  “Mrs. Hanson?” the young nurse said. “Your insurance probably won’t pay for this now. You should know that.”

  For once her voice wasn’t too loud or condescending. She simply sounded concerned, and Jean touched her hand briefly. “I have more money than I know what to do with, dear. Money’s not my problem.”

  The nurse nodded and smiled, looking mildly embarrassed. “I hope someone’s picking you up, though. You can’t drive with the medication I gave you.”

  Jean glanced down at the bedsheet, the two pills lost in its folds somewhere. “I have to take a cab anyway. I appreciate your concern, dear. I really do.”

  Jean sat in the rear of the cab as the driver drove too fast up Tamiami. He was an older man, maybe ten years younger than she, and he wore a bandanna around his head, a short gray ponytail in back. He chewed gum and had turned on the radio as soon as they’d gotten under way, a jazz station. It sounded like Chet Baker. Harry had loved jazz, and if she recognized any of its music it was solely because of him.

  How strange to be sitting in the back of a moving taxicab with nothing—no purse, no driver’s license or credit cards, no cash, no car keys. She could be anyone going anywhere and when she got there who knows what would become of her? Her dress was still unbuttoned at the back of her neck and she let it stay that way; tonight her entire life felt unbuttoned. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever done anything like she’d done just now, disobeyed people in charge of her, unhitched their tethers and just did what she damn well pleased.

  Again, there was the resurfacing thought that she’d lived such a safe and small life, her years before Harry taken up with caring full-time for her ailing father, who, like her husband, had left her comfortable and in need of nothing. Until she met Harry at a symphony fund-raiser when she was thirty-six, she’d filled her time serving on boards conserving trees and wildlife in far reaches of the country, establishing a fund for the widows of policemen and firefighters, building a new wing onto the Children’s Hospital; she went to lunches with friends, read classic works from Proust to García Márquez; she spent occasional Sunday afternoons at the Chicago Museum of Art taking in what she could, though she was drawn largely to the Impressionists, especially Monet.

  Baker’s voice was high and melodious as a woman’s. It was sweet to hear as they drove along the black water. On the other side of it, a quarter or half mile, were the lights of the houses on Siesta Key. Palm trees leaned out over lawns and lighted docks where boats were tied. Beyond these was the public beach where April took Franny nearly every day to play in sugar sand and swim in the Gulf. Franny had asked Jean many times to come with them and April had smiled and echoed her daughter’s invitation but Jean had always declined, certain that April was just being polite and would rather she not come.

  “Sir, when we get there, you’ll have to wait while I run inside for my wallet.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror at her, a flash of concern in his eyes.

  “I took an ambulance. Didn’t have time to grab anything.”

  He turned down the radio. “You all right?”

  “Oh, I believe so. They told me themselves I hadn’t had a heart attack.”

  “Heart attack?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have chest pain?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “It go up your arm and all that?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “You sure you didn’t have a heart attack?”

  “It was a different kind of attack. I get them sometimes.”

  Now on the radio were strings and a tenor saxophone, Charlie Parker, it sounded like. As they drove north the cabbie was studying her in his rearview mirror, and Siesta Key ran itself out into the black Gulf just before the southern tip of Lido Key, Rex’s Marina there, its parking lot crowded with luxury cars, the entire nautical structure beyond lit up in a soft turquoise light. She and Harry had eaten there years earlier. She remembered the bottle of Pinot Grigio they’d shared, his shrimp scampi, her fettucine Alfredo.

  “What’s one of those like?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your attacks. Mind if I ask what they’re like?”

  “Oh. It’s silly really. Every little detail gets big as a barn and it feels like they’ll all just fall down on you and crush you to death.”

  He nodded. His curiosity seemed satisfied, and he slowed at the traffic light and turned right onto Buena Vista without signaling with his blinker. He flicked the radio back up, the horns and drums of a band of men from sixty years ago. Jean pressed her window button and let in the warm air. She could smell boat fuel and the Gulf and grilling meat from somewhere. She was suddenly famished, but eating would have to wait: she began to see herself driving to the place where April worked, walking in and finding that house mom, packing Franny up and taking her home. Home.

  APRIL HELD BOTH snifters in her left hand. She stuck the foreigner’s change into her G-string, grabbed the chilled neck of the opened Moët, and made her way through the hazy lights of the VIP. Business had picked up a bit and she had to scoot by the new girl dancing badly for one of Sadie’s regulars. There were other girls dancing for other men and April hurried past them all, the Rémy Martins sloshing gently in their snifters, the Moët cold against her leg.

  Her customer sat forward on the sofa talking fast and loud on a cell phone he pressed to his ear with two fingers. In his other hand was a smoldering cigarette, its ash an inch long. His cash lay on the table. Two or three thousand easy. He barely looked at her as she placed the cognacs and change in front of him, and he shook his head and said something in a language that wasn’t French or Italian or Greek, she knew that much. She stepped back out for the champagne she’d had to put on the floor to get the door open, and because he was so preoccupied she cut down the hall and pulled the front door shut too, the music not so loud now, the air more muted than before.

  He was still on the phone when she closed the door behind her. He nodded at whatever was being said on the other end, his eyes on her crotch and belly as she carried the full bottle, filled his flute and hers, and wedged it into the ice. Her skirt and blouse were neatly folded and lay across his arm of the couch. She didn’t like customers touching her costume like that, especially this one, and she wanted them back on her side of the sofa. He glanced up at her face. She smiled and sat on the edge of the cushion and took a long, cool drink of her Moët & Chandon.

  He spoke more quietly on his phone now. So many of the sounds of his language came from his throat. April thought of Morocco, Algiers, Lebanon—places like that. He reached for his Rémy. She watched the bubbles of his champagne rise to the surface. There was her boss, Fuad, at the Subway shop in New Hampshire where she wore latex gloves all day and made sandwiches for businessmen and construction workers and a few women from the Empire across the highway. He was big and bald and would find an excuse to come behind the counter and pretend to look for something, pressing himself against her whenever he could. He knew she had Franny and was divorced, something she told him in her interview because he’d asked.

  “Why did you leave this father?”

  “I didn’t say I left him.”

  “But what man would leave you?” He look
ed long at her, at her eyes, her hair, her breasts. He hired her at $7.50 an hour to work from ten to six-thirty every day while her baby stayed with her mother, who made it known she’d already raised her kids and wasn’t up to raising another. This is just temporary, April, right? And the strippers from the Empire never liked to be called that but there was this nice one who had to be thirty-five with the curves of a twenty-year-old—high fake breasts, firm legs, and long blond hair, fake too. Whenever she came in to eat, usually at five o’clock before her shift across the highway, she smiled at April. She’d order turkey, lettuce, and tomato on a low-fat wrap with mustard—no mayo. She wore expensive gold rings and bracelets and she’d reach into a Gucci handbag to pay, always tipping April three dollars for a five-dollar meal. One afternoon in October she looked into her eyes as she handed her the money.

  “I hope you know how pretty you are.”

  April smiled. She knew it and didn’t know it. Not since Glenn and having the baby, and hearing it from this generous woman wearing so much gold, a woman it was hard not to stare at, felt good and she thanked her and went to making her sandwich. Fuad came out of his office then. He always did when the woman was there. He smelled like breath mints and he squeezed behind April to talk to the woman over the counter, his big body blocking April’s route to the lighted bins of sliced turkey and shredded lettuce.

  “Hallo, Summer. Very nice to see you again.”

  Summer chatted with him, smiling and brushing her hair back off her shoulder. April squeezed past Fuad to make the sandwich. He didn’t move and she felt him against her ass, him and the keys and coins in his pocket. She made the sandwich quickly. Soon Summer sat at her table by the window, Fuad rubbed by April on his way to the office, and April left the prep area and served her turkey wrap.