The Garden of Last Days (49 page)

A knocking.

“Tariq? Bassam?”

Tariq opens the door for Imad. On the television now this country’s map, a smiling kafir in his suit explaining the weather.

Imad stands beside Tariq. Again, with no beard and those smooth cheeks, he looks so much younger, the boy Bassam knew in school. The large one respected only because he was large.

“Which number is this? I could not find it on my TV.”

“Look,” Tariq says. The smiling kafir in his suit points to boxes, each named the week’s day, each with a picture of the sun shining.

Tuesday it shines brightest, and Bassam supplicates:
All praise is for Allah by whose favor good works are accomplished
. The kafir in his suit, he smiles through the screen at them in this last hotel room. “Beautiful,” he says. “The week will be beautiful.”

THE MEDICAL UNIT
was one cell with six steel bunks, three lined up across from each other along concrete walls. The floor was concrete too, a slab painted gray though the walls were cream-colored and fluorescent light shone down from fifteen or sixteen feet up. When they brought him in, an old wino was sitting on the toilet grunting and making noises and the entire room smelled. There were four other men in the unit, two of them sitting on the edge of a bunk playing checkers. One was skinny and black with gray in his whiskers, the other bald and white, his right arm in a canvas sling, his gut pushing at the seams of his county-jail orange; there was a black-haired Asian stretched out on his mattress reading a paperback, his hair long and straight against his pillow, and he glanced up as one of the deputies handed AJ a small plastic bin that held a plastic cup, a bar of soap, toothbrush, and tube of paste rattling around at the bottom. Before pulling the iron door closed, one of the deputies
told AJ his first appearance before the judge would be at 0900 hours tomorrow.

He lay down on the bunk, his eyes aching with fatigue, but the fifth man in the unit was looking right at him. He had blond hair and pale freckled skin. His whiskers were brown and soft-looking but his eyes were a sad, wired blue and he got up from his bunk and hobbled over. He stood looking down at AJ like they knew each other.

“You see me on the news?”

“ ’Scuse me?”

“I was the one in the Benz, man. You didn’t see it? Out on fuckin’ Longboat Key? Man, you shoulda seen it. It was on Channel 5. They had the helicopter cam on me the whole time and you know those fuckin’ nail strips they throw out on the road ahead a you?—well I didn’t give a shit, I drove that fucker sparkin’ flames like Robbie Kneivel, man, I drove that Mercedes on the
rims
. I seen that tennis place and I put it right through the fence onto the court and I run off for the water ’cause I don’t give a shit, I’ll swim with the fuckin’ shark and jellyfish ’fore I let ’em bust my ass ’cause I wire rides every day and this is only the fourth time they got me and they wouldn’ta if I didn’t break my ankle. But man, you—”

“You done?” AJ sat up. “ ’Cause I’m hurt here and I could use some rest so would you please just shut the fuck
up
?”

“Hear that, O’Brien?” It was the bald man in the sling. “The man said to zip it.”

The kid swung around and squinted at the two men as if they were in a bright light. They ignored him completely and he turned back to AJ, his lips parted before he closed them, his face settling into something hard. “Fine, but only ’cause you said please. I just thought maybe you seen it ’cause there’s no TV in the fuckin’ med U.” He limped back to his bunk, and AJ lay down. He felt a little badly about shutting the kid up like that but not enough to apologize. At the hospital they’d given him some pills for the pain and they’d worked for a while but now they were wearing off and his lower arm felt encased against blades cutting into bone.

After his pat-down he’d handed over his wallet and truck keys and wedding band and signed for them. A deputy asked him a bunch of health questions, and maybe he should’ve used his one free call to get hold of Deena instead of Mama. But what if the calls were recorded? What could he say to her anyway? And he didn’t want Mama to worry and now he was glad he’d called her; her voice had sounded small on the phone, old and weak. She kept asking him, “What’d you do, Alan? I don’t understand, honey. What exactly did you
do
?”

He told her the truth, that it was a misunderstanding, that he’d taken care of a neglected child, that’s all. Soon they’d be thanking him for what he did. Then, in case the call
was
recorded, he told her the bucket had come loose and fell on him this morning. “It broke my wrist, Mama. When you call to come visit, you tell them I’m in the medical unit, okay?”

She had more questions: Was he hurt badly? How long would he be in there? Should she find him a lawyer? But his time was over and they led him up one floor where he was fingerprinted and photographed again, where he had to strip and step into a cool shower, holding his cast out of the spray while with one hand he washed with lice-killing soap that smelled like melted plastic and bleach. The whole time a deputy stood there, his arms crossed, watching AJ dry himself with a thin towel, then step clumsily into county jail cotton.

But the shower had revived him, and as two deputies led him to an elevator and the third floor, he began to feel hopeful Deena had said nothing about his hand. Why would she? They were just looking for the child. And they found her, hadn’t they? They must’ve, right?

A cool sweat beaded out on his forehead. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore his arm. There were Marianne’s naked breasts in the warm orange light of the VIP room, her hand in his. He was telling her where he would take them, to the best outdoor table at Mario’son-the-Gulf, and her face changed and she went cold and distant on him; there was Deena and her ice pack, her wide crying face; there was Cole sleeping in the glow of the night-light, and the little girl crying in the kitchen of the Puma; there was holding her and singing to
her on the dark beach, laying her down asleep in a new car. And now there was the breath-squeezing fear rising up in him that he may be here for quite a while, that he would get to know these men far better than he would like, and Marianne’s breasts again, her small hand in his that for some reason he couldn’t let go of, that for some damn reason he just had to
squeeze
.

SATURDAY

MIKE THE FOREIGNER
sat at her kitchen peninsula burning money. Between his lips was a glowing cigarette and he squinted at his own smoke as he kept reaching into Franny’s backpack for bills and held one at a time over the flame. The hundred-dollar note flared up before he dropped it curling into black ash on the floor, and Retro was down there on her hands and knees scooping up the ashes and trying to stuff them into her garter, her brown thighs streaked gray.
Motherfucker, mother
fucker. Franny was curled on the living room floor watching a movie. She began sucking her thumb. The air was thick with smoke and Mike the foreigner and Retro were gone and the kitchen was on fire, flames licking the ceiling, and April yelled to Franny to get out. Get
out
!

April was curled on the couch under a sheet. The TV was on and muted, a cartoon of robots zapping one another. In the gray light that must be very early morning the remote control lay on a carton of fried rice, the coffee table covered with cartons because Lonnie had bought too much.

The apartment was too quiet. Empty. She put a picture in her head.
Franny sleeping now. Asleep in a room of stuffed animals and natural light and when she wakes up a kind woman will speak kindly to her and tell her kind lies about her mother wanting her to be where she is. She’ll make her a big breakfast and treat her only kindly
.

Yesterday she would have murdered another human being just to see Franny for five minutes, just for Franny to see her. But they wouldn’t let her, and it’d taken Sergeant Toomey and Lonnie to get her inside the car. That newswoman, pretty with small features, blocking April’s way into the garden, sticking the microphone in her face.
Is it true you took your three-year-old daughter to the Puma Club for Men?
There were the aiming cameras and Lonnie stepping in front of them while April ran into Jean’s yard.
Is it true your daughter’s been placed in foster care?

She held her breath and listened. There was the mechanical purr of the air-conditioning ducts somewhere in the walls or ceiling. No outside noise of any kind. They were gone, on to the next story of bad people doing bad things.

Alan James Carey. Had she dreamed his face? No, seen it. There on the TV on the late news she shouldn’t have watched. She and Lonnie at the garden gate in the sun, her eyeliner smeared, her face cold and hard as her mother’s. Then
his
face, Alan James Carey, a mug shot of a low forehead and deep eyes, his ears sticking out. Resentful-looking. Angry. One of Marianne’s, and Oh God she’d danced for him. She’d danced for him before in the VIP. That resentment staring at her crotch, her belly, her breasts. And the newscaster said he “maintains” he’d taken Franny to protect her from men at the club. To
protect
her.

April turned off the cartoon and jerked the sheet away. In the bathroom
she peed and brushed her teeth and tried not to think of anything but Monday morning when the investigators would come. She washed her hands and face with soap and hot water. Her ponytail had come loose and she pulled it back tight again and walked down the hall to her bedroom where she would start. It was just after seven. Later she would ask Jean for a ride to get her car. But the terrible things she said to her. She didn’t even mean them. She needed to apologize, right now, right after she made coffee.

The pot was still half-f from last night. She poured some into a cup ringed with dried coffee. Lonnie’s maybe. He’d been so sweet to her, too sweet; it felt a little suffocating. She rinsed his cup and put it in the microwave and pressed the button, the picture of her and Franny staring at her from the fridge. She pulled it from its magnet. Their first week here. Living in the motel. This photo booth at a drugstore in Bradenton. They were both laughing and looked happy; there were a lot of places for rent and she knew she was close to finding one. She had enough money for a few more weeks anyway. Spending all that time with Franny had felt like a vacation. They’d spend their mornings at the pool, then go back to their room and she’d make them sandwiches from the cooler. They’d carry them back outside and eat at one of the tables under an umbrella. On the other side of the fence, cars sped by on the highway, the sunlight flashing off their windshields, and she and Franny would count all the red ones, then the blue, then the black.

After lunch they went looking at apartments, driving and driving because even with a map April didn’t know where she was. Franny napped or listened to her Raffi tape on the stereo. She snacked on crackers and a juice and looked out at the world going by. Some of the places were on the water, all glass and steel and carpet and cost way too much. Others were in neighborhoods of squat houses behind chain-link fences, guard dogs snoozing in their shacks, car radios blaring. And April didn’t even go inside to look. But she wasn’t worried. She bought three newspapers every morning, and there were so many apartments listed. She’d find one.

Late in the afternoons they went shopping only for the things they needed. Just enough food for the next day so it wouldn’t go bad or get soggy in the cooler. And she applied for jobs. Waitressing mainly. She’d walk into the air-conditioned restaurants holding Franny’s hand. She’d smile at the hostess and ask for the manager, then fill out an application at a table where Franny drew in her coloring book. There were so many places, though, and only a few could be busy. One manager, young and tanned with gelled hair, held her application without reading it, then nodded in the direction of Franny. “You have someone to watch her? I need somebody I can count on.”

She could see her life. Training on lunches for next to nothing. Working months before she was in line to get a Friday or Saturday night shift and probably not even both. How would she pay her bills? How would she pay someone to watch Franny? And Stephanie holding her, rocking her, crying herself because she hadn’t warned her about taking drinks from McGuiness.
But you walk away, honey, and they win. You’re out of work and broke and they win. You got to get back in the game, sweetie. You got to use them till you’re set, then you walk. Then you walk and let them kiss your gorgeous ass on the way out. And Louis is nothing like McGuiness. Louis is a big stupid teddy bear with a boat. Use him, honey. Use
him.