Jihadi (10 page)

On
One Life to Live
, Clint Lord stared at his wife Victoria’s back, having asked her something. Victoria was always turning away from Clint.

Thelonius couldn’t remember what Clint had asked Victoria, but he must have heard the question, because he’d been watching the TV when the question had caused her to turn away. Whatever the question was, Victoria answered it by saying she’d had enough.

Not a drop of antifreeze on that asphalt.

Thelonius rubbed the back of his neck, looked away from the TV set, stood on tiptoe again and stared through the sliver of window available to him, just to double-check. What might well have been a Monarch butterfly settled calmly onto a large, cold-looking maple leaf that had landed near him. The sun hid itself behind a weasel-shaped cloud driven by October wind.

Late in the year for butterflies. Remember what that freak in the cell said about butterflies.

It fluttered away. The day brightened again. Beneath the front end of the minivan, there was, of course, no green pool.

Thelonius felt the raw panic rising again in his gut, tamped it down. The voice said:
Machine, kid. Machine. Machine. It poisoned Child. Disable it. Disable it now. Otherwise it will come after you. PLOOF. THWOCK. KA-THOK
.

And still no green pool.

Stress response CONSCIOUS. Stress response CONSCIOUS. BREATHE, DAMMIT.

Thelonius stood, shouted at the top of his lungs: ‘IF IT ISN’T TOO MUCH
GODDAMN
TROUBLE, CAN I SEE MY
GODDAMN
CAT NOW,
GODDAMMIT
?’

No answer.

The voice in his head, not his own, continued:
Machine. Not your wife. Go back. Kill it
.

‘I WANT TO SEE CHILD,’ he bellowed, then collapsed, arms wide, legs stiff, hyperventilating, onto an orange plastic chair.

On
One Life to Live
, Clint had just noticed that he was all alone in the restaurant. He had been lost in some rant, had turned to confront her, found only her empty place at the table. Clint closed his eyes. Thelonius closed his eyes, too. Melanie Del Rey’s slim hand cupped his shoulder from behind.

‘Did you kill a child?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Don’t beg, please. Dogs beg. Did you love Child?’

He nodded his head Yes.

Melanie Del Rey pursed her lips and nodded with great compassion, as though agreeing with something he had yet to say.

‘I see. Poor boy. Poor boy.’

Her hand was on his cheek.

‘Poor boy. His kidneys were hard as stones. I am sorry. Preparing the remains for you.’

The feeling of her hand withdrawing. The sound of the television beginning to vibrate against its fastenings. Smooth orange plastic beneath him.

Thelonius stood and approached
One Life to Live
.

Even Clint, lost and all alone in the restaurant, noticed Thelonius’s approach. He tensed, stared out from behind the glass. By now, Clint’s restaurant table was shaking, and the condiments upon it had tumbled to the floor.

The table within the television writhed and stuttered like a patient in electroshock. It fell over on its side, forcing Clint to back away in alarm and revealing a familiar geometric pattern. On the
high-mounted screen, expanding along the restaurant floor against the surface of a hideous orange-and-black carpet, that spreading puddle of blood outlined what remained of the little dead-eyed girl.

Thelonius sat back down against the smooth orange plastic of the chair, buried his face in his hands, wept his face wet. His mother loved him very much. His grandmother promised him that.

The voice that was not Thelonius’s own said:
You know why it did not want that cat in the house, kid. Go back. Cut its head off. You know.

The problem was: Thelonius did know. Toxoplasmosis.

‘Christ,’ Thelonius said.

Collateral damage, kid. Couldn’t be helped
.

‘Christ help me.’

Clint, trembling within the trembling television, wheeled, pointed at Thelonius and shouted: DO NOT CALL ON ANOTHER GOD THAN GOD!

Thelonius was on his feet again, seizing the sides of the boxy TV set with both of his hands, hoping to rip it from the wall, but instead he began to vibrate with it. Shaking, almost gone, he turned his head to look for Melanie Del Rey to alert her to the problem, but she was nowhere to be found.

Fatima was considering a problem.

This problem kept her from making a bigger fuss about Noura’s cooking, or honouring Ummi’s various spoken and silent cues. Ummi had moved on to the topic of seasonings. Fatima stared up at the plaster of the tiny, cramped second-floor apartment the three of them shared. There were indeed cracks in that ceiling. Insects
occasionally emerged from those cracks. An argument between the man and wife who lived upstairs, its words occasionally audible, had taken an ugly turn. It was something about vinegar.

As Ummi went into a lengthy overview of the dozen or two best ways to ensure that rice was cooked to the proper consistency – not too sticky, not undercooked, either – Fatima considered her problem: She needed the phone not to ring.

The challenge of somehow keeping her mobile phone from going off, without actually turning it off or silencing it, kept returning to the upper regions of Fatima’s mind. This dilemma crowded all other goals off the stage. The desire to locate – to afford! – a better place to live; the desire to tell Ummi she could quit her job at the shop; the desire to look, at least, as though she were paying attention to that lecture about rice. All that receded into the background. Only the problem of the phone stood in the spotlight.

A few dozen friends and relatives constituted the universe of possible familiar numbers. They would be calling to console themselves about Wafa’s passing, but that was an etiquette matter, easy enough to manage by ignoring recognizable callers. The larger challenge lay in the unfamiliar and blocked numbers.

Her new boss, Murad Murad, had made frequent mention of his loathing of voicemail, had warned Fatima to be ready to receive phone calls after hours in the event of an ‘interrogation emergency’. This sounded like an improvisation intended to impress her, and she doubted there was any such thing as an interrogation emergency. Murad Murad might well be the kind of supervisor, however, who would call her on her first evening home after work, supposedly in order to confirm that she was following his instructions about availability, but actually to attempt, pathetically, to flirt with her again.

Although such a call turned her stomach, taking it connected to the successful completion of her first week on the job, and to the
collection of her first paycheque – half the amount necessary to pay the back-rent due on Wafa’s place in D—. The husband and his mother, with whom they were not close, had abandoned the house. It was large and well outside of the city. The landlord had agreed to hold it for a month … if and only if the debt were paid this week. So calls from Murad Murad had to be taken. Yet how was she to be certain, when the unfamiliar number rang through on her cell phone, that the voice of the imam would not greet her?

She had no idea what number the imam would be calling from, either. Further discussion with him seemed unwise.

So. If the phone were to ring, and if it were not some identifiable aunt or uncle eager to hear her sob, if she should receive a call from a blocked number or one she did not recognize, should she ignore the call, or press ‘answer’? If she ignored it, she placed her new job in jeopardy. If she took it, she ran the risk of becoming entangled again in the question of what she had or had not witnessed at the embassy.

The matter was out of her hands now.

Silently, Fatima sought protection from God against the telephone ringing.

Following this silent prayer, there was the familiar sound of Ummi weeping, and the unlikely sight of Noura’s comforting arm around Ummi, whose head sagged and whose shoulders shook.

Noura made a cartoon face of exaggerated disbelief for Fatima’s benefit.

‘You didn’t even
lis
ten to her,’ Noura said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You don’t
lis
ten. She wants you to promise you had nothing to do with that business at the
em
bassy. And she’s not the only one, Fatima.
Ev
erybody wants you to promise.’

‘Everybody.’ Fatima drew a deep breath. The Intimate Companions again.

‘Mother, do you really imagine I would …?’

Before Fatima could continue, however, the cell phone chimed. It was an unfamiliar number.

The guilty dead guy writing this finds himself wishing she had never taken that call, but that was not the Plan.

Melanie Del Rey, secure now in the conviction she had seen and heard it all, more wary than ever of displays of emotion likely to disrupt the order of her Facility, stood in the waiting room, arms akimbo, staring at Thelonius.

He had perched himself on an orange plastic chair, which he had removed from its row and placed in an unauthorized spot. He was attempting to bear-hug the television on the wall. He wept and shivered. He kept repeating the words ‘Not a machine’.

She called the police.