Afterparty (15 page)

“You said you were never going back there. You said it was your own private Mordor.”

“We’re not arguing about this,” she said.

We stared each other down. She didn’t flinch. I put a hand to the back of her neck and kissed her, hard.

The kiss surprised her. Me too.

She shook her head in mock dizziness. “Hurry it up,” she said, and walked back to our table.

I lifted the pen again. “So! Rovil…”

He sensed something in my tone. “No,” he said. “No, no, no.”

“It’s not a lot,” I said.

“I can’t keep giving you money. You’re the rich one!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know you lost your investment when Little Sprout collapsed,” he said. “But after Mikala died, didn’t her estate—”

“That money’s gone.”

“Gone? How?”

“You’d be surprised how much a drink costs in this town.” I said it to embarrass him and shut down that line of questioning. Nice people didn’t like to hear about an addict’s life.

The tactic worked a little too well. The call went silent. “Rovil?”

After a moment, he said, “Lyda, are you using again?”

“What? What the fuck, Rovil. No. That’s in the past.”

“I want to help you. I do. But if you’re spending it on other things—”

“I’m not.”

“Then what is it?”

“I can’t tell you. Not right now.” I glanced back at the Ollie and the smugglers. We could bail out. Find some other, cheaper way, and eventually cross the border.

Except that Edo was landing in New York in three days.

“Fine. Forget the money,” I said. “I need something else.” I told him what I wanted him to do.

Rovil made sputtering noises. “Lyda, I have a high-level job, I can’t just—”

“Sure you can. How many sick days have you taken this year?”

“None! But that’s because—”

“Then you’re due. Look, you’re in this, too. This is the One-Ten. You and I, we agreed to keep it off the market. Don’t you want to know who’s doing this?”

He took a heavy breath.

“Thanks, kid.”

I walked back to the table, and Ollie registered the look on my face. “Everything okay?” she asked.

“No worries,” I said. “Are we done here?”

The younger of the cigarette smugglers looked up at me and said, “Half now.”

Before I could answer, Ollie said, “Nope.”

The two men turned their attention back to her.

“We’re not going down like that Pakistani family that got stranded in the middle of the St. Lawrence,” she said.

“That wasn’t us!” the younger one said.

What Pakistani family? I thought.

“We’ll give you ten percent now,” Ollie said calmly. “Then forty percent when the rowboat arrives. The rest when we get to the other side.” She shrugged. “It’s either that, or I go to the Hell’s Angels.”

I thought, Would she really contact the Hell’s Angels? Then: There are still Hell’s Angels?

The young one started to speak again. The silver-haired man stopped him and said, “Twenty-five percent now.”

Ollie seemed to weigh the offer. Then she reached into her jacket pocket and passed an envelope under the table.

The man in the baseball cap kept it below the rim of the table and peeked inside. “Okay then.”

Before the meeting at the marina I’d given Ollie everything I had left in HashCash, less than a thousand bucks. She added everything she’d had hidden in the duffel, for a grand total of $5,500 Canadian. That was before we took the hit on the Yuan conversion. There was no second envelope. She’d just handed them our last dime.

Ollie said to them, “You have some numbers for me, now?”

The older man took out a ballpoint pen and wrote something on the back of a beer coaster. Ollie looked at it, nodded, then put it in her jacket. “See you boys tomorrow.”

*   *   *

Bobby was waiting for us in his Nissan. We’d left him outside like a tied-up dog, figuring a panicky schizo might frighten off the drug smugglers. Or rather, another panicky schizo. “Can we eat now?” he said. “I’m
starving
.”

“Get us back into the city first,” I said. “This place gives me the willies.” Ollie got in the back of the car. Before I climbed in after her, I scanned the parking lot, but there was still no sign of Dr. Gloria. The angel must have been really pissed at me. What happened to “Lo, I will be with you always”?

Once we were rolling I used the burner pen to find a curry restaurant that was still open. I put in our order, then told Bobby to step on it. I was beginning to like having a chauffeur. I should have sworn off driving years ago.

A few minutes into the ride, Ollie said to me quietly, “We don’t have the money, do we?”

I could have kissed her again for that “we.”

“Not unless there’s more in that duffel bag of yours,” I said. More than once I’d entertained the fantasy that she was Agent Skarsten, International Spy, with a secret cache of passports and stacks of bills in foreign currencies. But of course that was crazy. If Ollie had had that kind of dough she wouldn’t have spent years living above a Thai restaurant, wouldn’t have ended up in a public hospital like Guelph Western. And she sure as hell wouldn’t be hanging with me.

I’d never been rich. I’d grown up seesawing between middle class and poor, depending on whether my dad had found work or my mom was home from the hospital. But Mikala came from money, and money followed her for the rest of her days. When we were “broke” and I didn’t know how we’d afford our first apartment together, a trust fund would mature and a shower of money would descend just in time for the rent. We were invited to parties on yachts—yachts! And when Little Sprout needed an angel investor, a friend of a friend of Mikala’s father appeared, and suddenly we were being financed by the loud and large Edo Anderssen Vik.

When Mikala died, her family fought the settlement of the estate. Why give their daughter’s money to the white bitch she was going to divorce anyway? (All right, her parents never said “white bitch” to my face, but I liked to imagine they said it amongst themselves, because reverse-racism was the kind of racism my people liked best, and because “white bitch” was infinitely preferable to just plain “bitch,” because that would have meant that they hated me because of
me
.) I managed to hold on to the estate, but only because we were still married when she died. In the absence of a will, everything went to the surviving spouse. I gave it all away the same week the check cleared. There were plenty of times I’d wished I’d kept some of it, but this was the first time I’d ever thought so while sober.

Ollie said, “If they’d asked for more than twenty-five down, they would have walked out on us.”

“So tomorrow we may be dead, but today we still have a reservation.”

Ollie looked at me.

“See what I did there?” I said. “That was an Indian joke.”

“Oh, I got it,” she said. We were going to meet the smugglers in Cornwall, which was five hours east of Toronto, just across the St. Lawrence River from upstate New York.

I said, “What happens if we don’t show up with the money?”

“Best case, they shrug their shoulders and leave,” Ollie said. “Worst case is … worse.”

“I have to get over there,” I said.

“We could knock over a bank,” Ollie said.

“I am
not
driving the getaway car!” Bobby said. It wasn’t clear that he knew Ollie was joking.

We reached the curry place a half hour later. Bobby ran inside to pick up our order.

“He’s a good kid,” Ollie said.

“For someone who lives inside a Happy Meal toy.”

“He’s worried about you.”

“Bobby?”

“He thinks you’re sad. He asked me if I thought you would hurt yourself.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “How bad is it that somebody at Bobby’s level of functioning is worried about
me
?” Ollie didn’t answer. I asked, “So what did you tell him?”

“I said you’ve been sad as long as I’ve known you.”

“Sad?
Sad?
I’m not
weepy
. Jesus Christ.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m just not
happy
. There’s a difference.”

Bobby came back with three white bags, and the inside of the car blossomed with spicy steam. I hadn’t been hungry, but suddenly I was famished. I told him to drive fast. Bobby found a parking spot amazingly close to his apartment, and we practically jogged up the stairs.

Bobby was in front, carrying the bags. The apartment door was ajar, and he nudged it open with his knee. I didn’t think anything of the door being unlocked, but Ollie, behind me, grabbed my shoulder. Again I was too slow. The person inside the room saw me.

“Lyda Rose,” Hootan said. He sat on the couch. On the floor at his feet, a chubby white boy sat cross-legged, looking worriedly at his toes. He wore nothing but bulky headphones, green sweatpants, and a fluffy white fleece vest.

I couldn’t figure out how the white boy fit in with Hootan, and then I realized he was Bobby’s roommate. Poor kid. Hootan must have dragged him out of his room and made him a hostage.

Hootan pulled his hand out of sweatshirt pocket. He seemed pleased to be bringing the pistol into the open, and even happier to be aiming it at me.

“Fayza would like to see you,” he said.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We rode in silence. Hootan didn’t talk to me, didn’t even turn on the Honda’s Real Engine Sound™. Every time a light flashed through the rear windshield, I thought:
Gloria
. But no. And no Ollie, either. Back in the apartment, Hootan had pointed to her and Bobby and said, “If you follow, I will shoot her.” Ollie
growled
. I’d never heard her make a sound like that, and never seen that kind of hate on her face.

Hootan drove toward the Millie neighborhood. I’d started to sweat. Couldn’t help it. The human palm has three thousand sweat glands per square inch, and every one of them has a mind of its own. I’d told Fayza I would have the results by Saturday—two days ago. She’d clearly run out of patience.

A few blocks before Tyndall Avenue, Hootan pulled in at a flat-roofed, one-story building. The wooden sign out front said “Elegant Lady Salon” in pink script. The windows and front door were protected by iron grates.

Hootan drove around back and parked next to a late model Garand S3. “Go in,” he said.

His headlights illuminated the back door of the shop. The windows facing the back lot were shuttered.

My body went into Full Norepinephrine Clench: tight chest, closed throat, cinched asshole. I couldn’t move.

“Fine,” Hootan said. He got out of the car, moved around to my door, and yanked it open.

“Okay, okay,” I said. I pulled myself out of his Honda, then made my way up the short steps to the door. My stomach and knees felt like glass. Images flashed in my brain: Pastor Rudy, hogtied on the floor with a metal spike in his neck. Skinny Luke, with a garbage bag over his head.

“For Christ’s sake,” I said under my breath. “Get your ass over here.”

Dr. Gloria, however, refused to appear. I looked back, and Hootan was watching me. He made a shooing gesture.

The door was unlocked. I pushed inside and slammed the door shut behind me. If I couldn’t have calm, I thought, at least I could use anger.

The back room was dark and narrow, crowded with dimly seen supplies. A short hallway led to the front of the salon, where the lights were on. I stood for a long moment, listening, but I heard nothing but a faint mechanical sound. I walked forward.

The salon proper looked as garish and migraine-inducing as a Bollywood set: pink swivel chairs, lime green tile floors, neon orange trim. Every stylist station was done up like a Hollywood makeup table, with a big mirror surrounded by lights. Fayza sat in one of the swivel chairs, reading a magazine. Behind her, snipping at the back of Fayza’s head with a pair of narrow scissors, was a dark-haired girl who looked to be in her twenties. She wore a beaded emerald dress that looked like traditional Afghan costume, but on her feet were chunky black combat boots. Her glittery head scarf and bangle earrings looked more Gypsy than Muslim to me, but what did I know?

Fayza looked up from her magazine and saw me in the mirror. “Lyda, thank you for meeting me at such a late hour.”

I forced a smile that felt like a crack in my skull. “Odd time for a haircut.”

“You wouldn’t believe my schedule,” she said. She turned to face me, and the stylist stepped back. Fayza frowned at me. “I cannot decide if you die.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it.

“You have such lovely red hair,” she continued. “It looks natural, but you know what tricks women can play.”

Oh.
If you dye.
I choked out a reply. “I used to get highlights. Not lately.”

She nodded. “When you get older you have to hide the gray with lowlights—a sad reversal. Look at Aaqila’s hair. So dark.”

The girl, Aaqila, didn’t answer. Her head was slightly bowed, and she looked at me through black bangs. She was tall, well over six feet in those boots, with pale skin, full lips, a pointed chin. She was beautiful, but her strong, narrow nose pushed her out of TV-pretty-land into more interesting territory.

“You have too much volume,” Fayza said to me. “You look like a wild woman. When was the last time you were in a decent salon?”

It had been years since I’d been in a
decent
salon. I hadn’t cut my hair at all since before entering the hospital. “Is it that bad?” I asked.

“Aaqila, do you have time for a walk-in?”

The girl shrugged as if to say, Why not? She gestured toward an alcove where two shampoo stations were set up.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m good.”

Aaqila took me by the elbow. When I didn’t move, the girl slid her hand down to my wrist and pressed; the pain was sharp, as if small bones were ready to snap, and I dropped to one knee. Good God she was strong. And she still held the scissors in her other hand.

“Please,” Fayza said to me. “You need this.”

I lowered myself into the shampoo chair. The back reclined so that my head hung over the sink. I was acutely aware of each step of this simple process: the tightness in my hips; the creak of the vinyl padding as my ass settled into the seat; the cold ceramic against my neck. I stared at the ceiling, my throat bared.