Oasis of Night (37 page)

“I came to pick you up.” He grabbed my extra suitcase. “The car's over this way. I had to close the cafe down for a little while. We're short on staff, and there's nobody to watch the place. Did I tell you Dave Chan quit? Yeah. He went off to enlist in the army, can you believe that?” Chris threw my bags in the back seat of his battered Dodge and we got in. The car started up with a roar, rattling like a battleship; Chris shoved it into gear with difficulty and no small amount of swearing.

God, it was good to see him. Good old Chris, with his warm brown eyes, his ready smile, and the easygoing manner that belied a world of hurt. I wouldn't soon forget the way Julie Fayre had nearly killed us both, or that her crimes had sent her to the gallows. It had taken Chris a long time to find his way back and maybe the scars Julie had inflicted might never fade. It always amazed me how decent people seem to bear the brunt of so much violence in this world.

“You're not saying very much.” Chris cast a sidelong glance at me. “Something on your mind, Jack?”

I shook my head. “Naw. It's nothing.”

He reached across the front seat and took hold of my hand, interlacing his fingers with mine. “You can talk to me. You know that.”

I felt the hot press of tears against my lids and willed them not to fall. I looked out the window, pretending interest in the passing vista. “I sure missed this place.” I could just make out the harbor from where we were: the sun was setting over the Southside Hills, burning scarlet and crimson into the land, and the Narrows were a deep, blood red. “It's not the same in Egypt. The sunset, I mean. Oh sure, you've got the Nile—”

This is what I want, as well as you.

“—and the sunset in the desert is pretty damn spectacular, I have to admit—”

That is all we are, Jack: loose ends.

“But it's nothing like this. I never realized before how beautiful this place is. You know, you travel for miles and miles and you think you're looking for something—”

Jack, let us bathe together now, and then we will love each other slowly.

I was voiceless, the unsaid words fluttering in my throat like netted birds. What was the matter with me? Why did I always end up here, in this same lonely place? Why did I keep making these same mistakes?

“Everybody makes mistakes.” Chris glanced over at me as we stopped at Rawlins Cross to wait for the light. “It's not just you.” He laughed bitterly. “At least Sam didn't try to frame you for murder like Julie did with me.”

“Sorry, Chris. I must have been thinking out loud again.”

“Naw, it's okay.” The light turned; he put the car into gear. “I don't think about her that much anymore.” We bumped down over Prescott Street and across Duckworth, navigating a set of streetcar tracks as we turned onto Water. The light from the setting sun lit up the windows on the north side, bathing my Heartache Cafe in a deep orange glow. “There you are, Jack. Home sweet home, huh?”

I sighed, and something loosened inside my chest. “Aw, Chris, it's good to be back.”

He took my bags up to my room above the cafe and turned down my bed. He'd kept the place clean while I was gone; there were fresh towels in the bathroom, and the trio of little houseplants on the chest of drawers was doing fine. Obviously Chris had kept them watered while I'd been away.

“You need anything, Jack?” He lingered in the doorway, one hand on the lintel, the other jingling his keys.

“No… no, I'm fine, Chris.” I smiled. “See?” Maybe I'd go for a walk, wander around a bit until I got my bearings. “You go on. I'll see you in the morning.”

I waited till I heard the downstairs door click shut behind him. Then I lay down on the bed and cried myself to sleep.

 

 

“H
EY
, J
ACK
.”
Chris waved to me from the end of the bar. A tall, thin man with the kind of beaky nose that always reminded me of a bird was currently our only customer. He had come in earlier in the evening, ordered a double scotch, neat, and preceded to sit there, hunched over like a sack of old clothes. It was a good thing, I thought, we weren't relying on him as our only source of revenue. I left the cash register and went down to where Chris was. The tall man looked up from his drink and I saw, with what amounted to a sort of mental twinge, that he hadn't even touched his scotch.

“Yeah, Chris, what is it?”

He drew me away from the bar, turned his back, and cupped a hand over his mouth. It was like something out of a spy movie, and I couldn't help laughing. “This isn't funny, Jack. There's something strange about that guy. He's been sitting here all night. It's kind of screwy, don't you think?”

“I dunno, Chris. Look, it's pouring rain outside. The poor guy probably just wants a place to get dry.” I glanced over Chris's shoulder at the man. He was rummaging through his pockets, picking out little pieces of paper and laying them on the bar. It kind of reminded me of this old guy I once knew back in Philly, Hairy Jim we used to call him, on account of his long, unkempt beard. Hairy Jim was one of these guys you see in just about every city in the world. Nobody knew what he did for a living or how he managed to survive, all on his own. He had no home and spent most of his time hanging around the docks or begging for change in front of the big department stores downtown. Hairy Jim claimed he could tell your fortune, and the way he did this was by printing symbols on tiny pieces of paper and then laying the bits of paper out in a certain order. I never asked him to tell my fortune—I knew pretty well how my life was going to go—but a few of the guys, Frankie Missalo included, said that Jim had told them stuff about themselves he had no way of knowing. That gave me all the reason I needed to avoid him. Maybe the present wasn't too hot, but it was where I was, and I was satisfied to stay there. I didn't need to borrow trouble by peering into the future and trying to figure out what was going to happen past the next day or so. No sir, you could have that hocus pocus; I didn't want any part of it.

“Yeah, Jack, it's been raining all day. That don't mean I got to like it. And it don't mean he can use the cafe like it was the YMCA or something.”

I tried not to laugh, but I couldn't help it. “Tell me the truth, Chris. You're just pissed off because of the crummy weather. Is that it? Or is, ah, Sergeant Picco making you work for it?”

“I never saw so much goddamn rain.” Chris shook his head, slung the towel over his shoulder, and walked back down to the end of the bar. I heard him asking the thin man if he wanted anything else, but I wasn't paying much attention. The weather was pissing me off, too. When I bought the Heartache, I'd been assured by the real estate agent that the building was sound in every way. But as soon as the heavy September rains began, the whole place started leaking like a basket. At first, we tried to stem the damage by placing buckets under all the drips, but this was only a temporary measure. Pretty soon, little leaks turned into bigger ones, and before we knew it, we had serious water damage. I could only imagine what all the moisture was doing to the electrical system. Yeah, sometimes it's better not to think about things.

I was doing a pretty good job of not thinking about Sam Halim. In the six weeks since I'd come back from Egypt, I'd dreamed about him every night and hardly thought about him at all, except every five minutes. I kept going back to the way he had looked at his wife's funeral: his face sad and drawn, his lean body bent low under the weight of his grief. Sam was tough; he wasn't the kind of guy who cried over every little thing. You could probably set Sam on fire and he wouldn't even flinch. But this—the murder of his wife—had to strike at the very core of the man. If ever Sam Halim needed a friend, he needed one now; if he had asked me, I would have stayed in Egypt, but Sam never asked me. He didn't seem to care one way or the other, and I understood that. I wasn't expecting any heartfelt declaration of love from the man, not at a time like that, but he hadn't even come to the airport to see me off. It was like he was embarrassed by me, and couldn't wait to get me out of the country so he could forget all about me, forget what had occurred between us, whatever that was.

Yeah, I was doing a real good job of not thinking about Sam. I thought about him when I inhaled; I thought about him when I exhaled. I would wake up in the night and roll over, reaching out for him, wanting to touch him, confused when all I found on the other side of the bed was empty air. And all those nice, shiny bottles lined up on the bar, they were doing a real good job of not calling to me. I had already started bargaining with myself, the kind of bargaining you do when you know you're one step away from falling right back into that abyss. I just wanted something to dull the pain.

I had just come out of my office with a handful of last month's receipts when Chris came around the end of the bar again, even more agitated than he had been earlier. “Now there's two of them.”

“Chris, I don't have time for this. Leave the man alone. It's not like the Heartache is full of customers tonight.” A headache was starting, one of those huge, throbbing ones that sit behind your eyes, banging away like the big drum in a Salvation Army band.

“No, Jack, another guy just came in. And you're not going to believe this.” Chris was about as excited as I'd ever seen him, which is saying something. Like most of New Orleans, he's as calm and easygoing as they come. “Just take a look at who's sitting with our friend over there.”

“Chris, I'm serious. I got a lot of work to do. Hey, look, if you don't like working here—”

“Jack.” He caught hold of my arm and pulled me around so I was looking directly at the two men who were now seated at the end of the bar. At first, all I could see was the thin man, sitting so his body blocked my view of the other guy. But then he bent over to pick up something from the floor, and all the sudden I was questioning my sanity. The other man—the man who had just come in—was none other than Jonah Octavian.

I was around the bar in a literal eye blink and had Octavian's lapels crushed in my hands. “What the hell is this, some kind of a joke? You know as well as I do what happened in Egypt. How'd you end up here, Octavian? You got nine lives like a goddamn cat?”

“Please.” He freed his lapels from my grip. “I have no idea who you are or what you're talking about. If I had known what sort of establishment this was—”

“Who are you?” I started for the phone, picked up the receiver. “You got five seconds to gimme an answer I can understand, or I'm gonna call the cops.”

Octavian got up; his companion followed suit. “I don't know what is the matter with you, sir, but I think it best I be on my way.” He tossed some coins down on the bar and started for the door.

“Oh no, you don't.” I got there first and barred his way. “Not until you tell me who you are and how you ended up here.”

“Get out of my way.” He reached for the door, and I brought my fist down on his arm.

“You're not going anywhere,” I said. Chris was standing behind the bar, by the phone. “Chris, get your boyfriend on the horn. Tell him to get over here and bring a couple of constables.”

“Jack, maybe—”

“Call the cops, goddammit!” I took my eyes off Octavian for no more than a second or two, but it was enough. He shoved my arm away, ducked around me and out the door, his friend hard on his heels. I took out after them, but they'd obviously mapped out their escape route in advance, since they were nowhere to be seen. I turned left from the Heartache's front door and cut through a laneway that joined Water with Duckworth, just in time to see a flapping raincoat as its owner passed a taxi stand. “Octavian!” I pounded down the pavement, leaping over a cardboard box full of garbage and sloshing my way through a puddle big enough to swallow a tank, but it was no use. I was tired and Octavian was gone. “Fuck.” I wanted to yell it at the top of my lungs, but I didn't have the energy. I turned slowly and splashed my way back home in the pouring rain.

 

 

T
HE
H
EARTACHE
Cafe was quiet, so quiet I could hear the raindrops pounding on the roof. It felt like I'd been lying here for centuries with a cold cloth over my eyes, trying to concentrate on breathing and marking time until the pills I'd taken made a dent in my headache. Chris had already locked up and gone home, and even the two bums who sat outside the front door every night had taken themselves away. What I'd seen didn't make any sense to me. Jonah Octavian was dead. I'd seen Andros Scala kill him in Egypt, kill him as if he were no more than a bug to be crushed underfoot, discarded and forgotten about. I don't know much about ghosts or the spirit world, but I know dead men don't drink whiskey. Dead men don't drink whiskey, and they don't sit at the end of my bar. If you grab a dead man, he slips right through your fingers—but Octavian was as real as anybody. It made no sense.

So if it wasn't Octavian, who was it? The list of likely candidates was pretty short. Octavian was dead, Mukbar was dead, Tareenah Halim was dead, and even Pasha Nubar wasn't alive to tell any tales. The only explanation was a double, but even that sounded like a plot device from some hokey pulp novel.

Far out on Chain Rock, I could hear the slow rumble of the foghorn, and I imagined the dark, sleek shapes of German submarines moving silently underneath the Narrows. I knew the kind of things Sam Halim was up against, back in Egypt, but was there anything at stake for me? Sam had all but said it was over between us, so why was I holding on to something that now existed only in memory? If I held on because I still loved him—because I would always love him—then it made sense. But if I was holding on because I was hoping he'd come back to me, hoping he still loved me? That was just screwy. I lay for hours, trying to make it come out right. Dawn was lightening the windows before I finally closed my eyes. I dreamed I was in Egypt.