The Exile Kiss (22 page)

"Bathroom only works on Tuesdays and Thursdays anyway," muttered Frenchy. "What's in it for me?"
I took that to mean what was in it for him if he ac-cepted the terminal. "Well, my friend, we're prepared to loan you some money if you'll do us the favor of letting us install our first datalink here in your club. One thousand kiam in cash, right here and now, and you don't have to do a thing for it. Just sign the order form, and tomorrow a wirecutter will come in and set up the unit on the end of j your bar. You won't have to lift a finger."
"A thousand kiam?" he said. He leaned close to me and stared into my eyes. He was breathing heavily in my face, and it wasn't a pleasant experience.
"A thousand. Cash. Right now. And the beauty part, FVenchy, is that we won't ask you to repay it. We're gonna split the take from the datalink with you sixty-five to thirty-five. We'll collect the loan payments out of your thirty-five percent. You won't even miss the money. And when it's all paid back, we'll loan you another thousand, in cash, up front, to do with as you will."
He rubbed his beard some more and squinted his eyes, trying to see what the catch was. "You're going to split the take with me every month?" he said.
"Thirty-five percent is yours," I said.
"So these loans are more—"
"They're more like a gift!" said Jacques. I turned to look at him.
There was .silence in the club for a few moments. From the corner of my eye, I saw Theoni sitting very close to the customer with the jeweled brooch. She slipped her hand along his thigh, and he looked very un-comfortable. "Where are you from, then, honey?" she said, sipping her cocktail.
"Achaea," he said. He lifted her hand out of his lap.
Frenchy heaved his huge body up and grabbed two glasses from across the bar. He poured them half full of whiskey, and set one in front of Jacques and the other in front of me. Then he took Jacques's bottle of beer and sniffed it.
"Pipi de chat,"
he said scornfully. "Drink with
me. I shrugged and picked up the glass of whiskey. Frenchy and I tinked glasses and I downed it. Jacques was having more trouble with his. He wasn't much of a drinker.
"Marid," said Frenchy, suddenly serious, "what hap-pens to me and my bar if I decline your generous offer? What if I refuse? This is my club, after all, and I say what goes and what doesn't go in here. I don't want a datalink. What is Papa gonna think about that?"
I frowned and shook my head. "How long we known each other, Frenchy?"
He just stared at me.
"Take the datalink," I said in a calm voice.
He was big enough to break me in half, but he knew this was a critical moment. He knew that throwing me out of his club was not the appropriate response. With a long, sad sigh he stood up. "All right, Marid," he said at last, "sign me up. But don't think I don't know what this means."
I grinned at him. "It's not so bad, Frenchy. Here. Here's your thousand kiam." I reached into the pocket of
my gallebeya
and took out a sealed envelope.
Frenchy snatched it from me and turned away. He stalked back toward his office without saying another word. "This afternoon," I told Jacques, "you can offer the same thousand kiam to Big Al and the others, but they get theirs when the datalink terminal is actually installed. All right?"
Jacques nodded. He shoved the unfinished glass of whiskey away from him. "And I get a commission on each terminal?"
"One hundred kiam," I said. I was sure that Jacques would do a fine job selling the project to our friends and neighbors, especially with the inducement of a hundred kiam commission per sale, and with the weighty endorse-ment of Friedlander Bey. Papa's influence would make Jacques's job that much easier.
"I'll do my best, Marid," he said. He sounded a little more confident now. He slowly drank the rest of the Ec-uadorian beer in his bottle.
A little while later, the customer from Achaea stood up and opened his briefcase. He took out a slender, .wrapped package. "This is for you," he told Theoni. "Don't open it until after I'm gone." He bent and kissed her on the cheek, then went back outside into the warm sunshine.
Theoni began to tear the wrapping paper. She opened the package and found a. leather-bound book. As she flipped it open, my belt phone rang. I undipped it and said hello.
"Is this Marid Audran speaking?" said a hoarse voice.
"It is," I said.
"This is Dr. Sadiq Abd ar-Razzaq." It was the imam who'd signed our death warrants. I was startled. Theoni jumped to her feet and pointed after the gen-tleman from Achaea. "Do you know who that
was?"
she cried, tears streaming down her face. "That was
my fa-ther!"
Dalia, Jacques, and I glanced over at Theoni. Things like that happened all the time in the Budayeen. It was nothing to get excited about.
"I would like to discuss how you intend to clear your name," said Abd ar-Razzaq. "I will not stand for the breaking of any Muslim law. I will grant you a hearing tomorrow at two o'clock." He hung up before I could respond. I slid the sample datalink terminal in the suitcase down to Jacques, and he closed the lid and went on his way. "Well," I told Dalia, "I've talked with everybody I can think of who might be involved in the Khalid Maxwell case. So I've made the first circuit around the village."
She looked at me and cleaned off the counter with a bar rag. She didn't have any idea what I was talking about.

13

I lay in bed reading another Lutfy Gad novel until it was about three o'clock in the morning. My stomach was upset, there was a loud ringing in my ears, and I realized after a while that I was swearing so much that the bedclothes were soaked. I was in the opening round of a full-fledged anxiety attack.

Well, heroes aren't supposed to go to pieces. Look at al-Qaddani, Gad's unstoppable detective. He never wor-ried himself into helplessness. He never stayed up all night wishing he could run away somewhere and start over again. After a couple of hours of nervous trembling, I decided to get my life back in order, and immediately. I slid out of the drenched bed and crossed my bedroom, where I found my tan plastic pillcase.

It was crammed full of helpful medications, and I had to think for a few seconds about my selection. Tranquiliz-ers, I decided at last. I was trying to end my old habits of recreational drug use, but this was a situation where my favorite pills and caps were legitimately indicated. I went with Paxium, taking twelve of the lavender pills and four of the yellow ones. That should take the edge off my anxiety, I told myself.
I went back to bed, flopped the pillows over, and read another couple of chapters. I waited for the Paxium to hit,

and I admit that after half an hour or so, I did feel just the tiniest, most insignificant hint of euphoria. It was laid on top of my mental distress like the sugar frosting on a petit four. Underneath it, I was still eating my guts out with apprehension.

I got up again and padded barefoot to the closet. I opened the pillcase and dug out eight tabs of Sonneine, my favorite painkiller. I wasn't actually in severe pain, but I figured the opiate warmth would blot out the remainder of my anxiety. I swallowed the chalky tablets with a gulp of warm mineral water.

By the time al-Qaddani had been captured by the Is-raeli villain and received his obligatory once-per-novel beating, I was feeling much better. The anxiety was only an abstract memory, and I was filled with a wonderful confidence that later that day I'd be able to overpower Dr. Sadiq Abd ar-Razzaq with the force of my personality.

I felt so good, in fact, that I wanted to share my joy with someone. Not Kmuzu, however, who would certainly report my late night binge to Friedlander Bey. No, in-stead I dressed myself quickly and slipped out of my apartment. I went quietly through the dark corridors from the west wing of Papa's palace to the east wing. I stood outside Indihar's door and rapped softly a few times. I didn't want to wake the kids.

I waited a minute, then knocked more loudly. Finally I heard movement, and the door was opened by Senalda, the Valencian maid I'd hired to help Indihar. "Senor Audran," she said sleepily. She rubbed her eyes and glared at me. She wasn't happy about being awakened so early in the morning.

"I'm sorry, Senalda," I said, "but it's urgent that I speak to my wife."

The maid stared at me for a couple of seconds but didn't say anything. She turned and went back into the dark apartment. I waited by the door. In a little while, Indihar came, wrapped in a satin robe. Her expression was grim. "Husband," she said.

I yawned. "I need to talk with you, Indihar. I'm sorry about the hour, but it's very important."

She ran a hand through her hair and nodded. "It bet-ter be, Maghrebi. The children will be awake in a couple of hours, and I won't have time to take a nap after that." She stepped aside, allowing me to brush by her, into the parlor.
By now, I felt terrific. I felt invincible. Fifteen minutes before, I decided to go to Indihar and have her say I was brave and true and strong, because I needed to hear that from someone. Now, though, the Sonneine was telling me everything I needed to know, and I only wanted to discuss my misgivings concerning strategy. I knew I could trust Indihar. I wasn't even concerned that she'd be angry with me for getting her out of her nice, warm bed.
I sat down on one of the couches, and waited for her to sit opposite me. She spent a few seconds rubbing her face with her long, delicate fingers. "Indihar," I said, "you're my wife."
She stopped massaging her forehead and glanced up at me. "I told you before," she said through clenched teeth, "I won't jam with you. If you woke me up in the middle of the night in some drunken—"
"No, that's not it at all. I need to get your honest opinion about something."
She stared at me without saying anything. She didn't look mollified.
"You may have noticed," I said, "that lately Papa has been putting more and more responsibility on my shoul-ders. And that I've had to use some of his methods, even though I personally deplore them."
Indihar shook her head. "I saw the way you sent bin Turki back to Najran on his... assignment. It didn't seem to me that you had any problem at all ordering some stranger's death. Not so long ago, you would have been appalled, and you would've left it to Youssef or Tariq to take care of that loose end."
I shrugged. "It was necessary. We have hundreds of friends and associates who depend on us, and we can't let anyone get away with attacking us. If we did, we'd lose our influence and power, and our friends would lose our protection."
"Us. We. You've subconsciously begun to identify with Friedlander Bey. He's won you over completely now, hasn't he? Whatever happened to your outrage?"
I was starting to get depressed, despite the Sonneine. That meant that I needed to take more Sonneine, but I couldn't. Not in front of Indihar. "I'm going to have to find out who actually murdered Khalid Maxwell, and then I'm going to have to see that he's dealt with the same way as that sergeant in Najran."
Indihar smiled without warmth. "You've also adopted a cute way of speaking around the truth. He'll have to be 'dealt with,' instead of 'killed.' It's like you have your con-science on a goddamn daddy, and you just never chip it in."
I stood up and let out a deep breath. "Thanks, In-dihar. I'm glad we had this talk. You can go back to sleep now." I turned and left her apartment, closing the door behind me. I felt bad. I walked silently down the corridor past my mother's apartment. I turned into the gloomy passageway in the main part of the house, and a dark figure slipped from the shadows and came up to me. At first I was frightened—it was always possible that a very clever assassin might de-feat the human guards and electronic alarms—but then I saw that it was Youssef, Papa's butler and assistant.
"Good evening, Shaykh Marid," he said.
"Youssef," I said warily.
"I just happened to be awake, and I heard you moving about. Is there something you need?'
We continued walking toward the west wing. "No, not really, Youssef. Thank you. You just happened to be awake?"
He looked at me solemnly. "I'm a very light sleeper," he said.
"Ah. Well, I just had something I wanted to discuss with my wife."
"And did Umm Jirji satisfy you with her reply?"
I grunted. "Not exactly."
"Well then, maybe I could be of some help."
I started to decline his offer, but then I thought that maybe Youssef was the perfect person to talk to about my feelings. "Indihar mentioned that I've changed quite a bit in the last year or so."
"She is quite correct, Shaykh Marid."
"She is not altogether happy about what I seem to have become."
Youssef shrugged in the dim light. "I would not expect her to understand," he said. "It is a very complex situa-tion, one that only persons in administrative roles can un-derstand. That is, Friedlander Bey, you, Tariq, and myself. To everyone else, we are monsters." - "I am a monster in my own mind, Youssef," I said sadly. "I want my old liberty back. I don't want to play an administrative role. I want to be young and poor and free and happy."
"That will never happen, my friend, so you must stop teasing your imagination with the possibility. You've been given the honor of caring for many people, and you owe them all your best efforts. That means concentration un-broken by self-doubt."
I shook my head. Youssef wasn't quite grasping my point. "I have a lot of power now," I said slowly. "How can I know if I'm using that power properly? For instance, I dispatched a young man to terminate a ruffian who bru-talized Friedlander Bey in Najran. Now, the holy Qur'an provides for revenge, but only at the same level as the original injury. The sergeant could be severely beaten without feelings of guilt, but to end his life — "
Youssef raised a hand and cut me off. "Ah," he said, smiling, "you misunderstand both The Wise Mention of God and your own position. What you say about revenge is certainly true, for the average man who has only his own life and the lives of his immediate family to worry about. But just as they say that with privilege comes re-sponsibility, the opposite is also true. That is, with in-creased responsibility comes increased privilege. So we here in this house are above certain plain interpretations of Allah's commands. In order to maintain the peace of the Budayeen and the city, we must often act quickly and surely. If we are brutalized, as you put it, we don't have to wait for a death to occur before we end the threat against us. We maintain the well-being of our friends and associ-ates by prompt action, and we may go on from there secure in the knowledge that we have not transgressed the
intent
of the teachings of the Holy Prophet."
"May the blessings of Allah be on him and peace," I said. I kept my expression studiously blank, but I was howling on the inside. I hadn't heard such a ridiculous piece of sophistry since the days when the old shaykh who lived in a box in our alley in Algiers tried to prove that the entire Earth was flat because the city of Mecca was flat. Which it isn't.
"I'm concerned that you're still showing such reluc-tance, Shaykh Marid," said" Youssef.
I waved my hand. "It's nothing. I've always dithered a little before doing what had to be done. But you and Friedlander Bey well know that I've always completed my tasks. Is it necessary that I relish them?"
Youssef gave a short laugh. "No, indeed. As a matter of fact, it is good that you don't. If you did, you'd run the risk of ending up like Shaykh Reda."
"Allah forbid," I murmured. We'd come to my door, and I left Youssef to seek out his own bed once again. I went inside, but I didn't feel like going to^leep. My mind was still unsettled. I paused only long enough to take an-other four Sonneine and a couple of tri-phets for energy. Then I slowly opened my door again, careful not to wake Kmuzu, and peered into the hall. I didn't see Youssef anywhere. I slipped out again, made my way downstairs, and sat behind the wheel of my electric sedan.
I needed a drink with a lot of laughing people around it. I drove myself to the Budayeen, indulging myself in the peculiar and pleasant loneliness you feel so early in the morning, with no one else on the road. Don't talk to me about driving under the influence—I know, it's stupid and I should be caught and made an example of. I just figured that with all the really terrible things hanging over my head, something like a traffic accident wouldn't dare hap-pen to me. That was the artificial confidence of the drugs again.
Anyway, I arrived outside the eastern gate without in-cident, and parked my car near the cab stand on the Bou-levard il-Jameel. My clmVwas: closed—had been for an
hour or more—and many of the others were likewise dark. But there were plenty of after-hours bars and twenty-four-hour cafe's. A lot of the dancers went over to the Brig when they got off work. You'd think that after drinking with customers for eight hours, they'd have had .enough, but that wasn't the way it worked. They liked to sit together at the bar, throw back shots of schnapps, and talk-about the idiot guys they'd had to talk to all night.
The Brig was a dark, cool bar hard by the southern wall of the Budayeen on Seventh Street. I headed there. In the back of my mind was the faint hope that I'd run into someone. Someone like Yasmin.
It was smoky and loud in the Brig, and they'd covered the lights with blue gels, so everyone looked dead. There wasn't an open stool along the bar, so I sat in a booth against the opposite wall. Kamal ibn ash-Shaalan, the owner, who also worked behind the bar, saw me and came over. He made a couple of feeble swipes at the tabletop with a rag soaked in stale beer. "Where y'at tonight, Marid?" he said in his hoarse voice.
"Aw right," I said. "Gin and bingara with a little Rose's lime juice in it, okay?"
"You bet. You lookin' for company this evening?"
"I'll find it for myself, Kamal." He shrugged and walked away to make my drink.
Maybe ten seconds later, a drunk pre-op deb sat down across from me. The name she'd chosen for herself was Tansy, but at work everyone was supposed to call her Nafka. Nobody wanted to tell her what "nafka" meant in Yiddish. "Buy me a drink, mister?" she said. "I could come sit beside you and start your day off with a bang."
She didn't remember who I was. She thought I was just any old mark. "Not tonight, honey," I said. "I'm wait-ing for someone."
She smiled While-U-Wait." "No, I don't think I'd be surprised. I'm just not inter-ested. Sorry."
Tansy stood up and wobbled a little. She closed one eye in a slow wink. "I know what
your
problem is, mis-ter." She giggled to herself and headed back to the bar.
Well, no, she didn't know what my problem was. I didn't have much time to think about it, though, because I s'aw Yasmin stagger out of the ladies' room in the dark recesses of the club. She looked like she'd downed plenty of drinks at work, and then had a few here, too. I stood up and called her name. Her head swung around in slow motion, like an apatosaurus searching for another clump of weeds to munch. "Whozat?" she said. She lurched toward me.
"It's Marid."
"Marid!" She grinned sloppily and dropped into the booth like a sack of onions. She reached under the table and fiddled under my
gallebeya.
"I've missed you, Marid! You still got that thing under there?" "Yasmin, listen — "
"I'm real tired tonight, Marid. Would you take me back to my apartment? I'm land of drunk." "I noticed. Look, I really just wanted to talk with you about — "
She got up again and stood beside me, bending down to wrap her arms around my neck. She started tickling my ear with her tongue. "You used to like this, Marid, re-member?"
"I never liked that. You're thinking of someone else."
Yasmin slid her hand down my chest. "C'mon, Marid, I want to go home. I live back on Fourteenth Street now."
"All right," I said. When Yasmin got drunk and got an idea in her head, there was no way you could talk your way out of doing what she wanted. I got up, put my arm around her shoulders, made sure she had her purse, and half-led, half-dragged her out of the Brig. It took us half an hour to walk the seven blocks back on the Street.
We finally reached her building and I found her keys in her purse. I opened her front door and led her over to her bed. "Thanks, Marid," she said in a singsong voice. I took her shoes off for her and then turned to go. "Marid?" "What is it?" I was getting sleepy again. I wanted to get home and sneak back into my apartment before Yous-sef or Tariq or Kmuzu found out I was gone, and in-formed Friedlander Bey.
Yasmin called me again. "Rub my neck a little?"
I sighed. "All right, but just a little." Well, I started rubbing her neck, and while I was doing that she was slipping down her short black skirt. Then she reached up and tried to throw my
gallebeya
over my head. "Yasmin, you're drunk," I said.
"Do it to me, will ya?" she said. "I don't get a hang- - over that way." It wasn't the most sensual invitation I'd ever had. She kissed me deep and long, and she hadn't lost any speed in that department. And she knew what to do with her hands, too. In a little while, we were jamming hard and hungry. I think she was asleep before I finished. Then I had a weary climax and crashed right beside her.
How do I describe the beginning of the new day? I slept fitfully, half on and half off Yasmin's bare mattress. I dreamed vivid, crazy dreams as the remainders of the opiates and the speed disappeared from my bloodstream. I woke up once about ten o'clock in the morning, a foul taste in my mouth, a dull throbbing behind my forehead. I couldn't remember where I was, and I gazed around Yas-min's apartment, hopeful of finding a clue. Finally, I ex-amined her graceful back, slender waist, and luscious hips. What was I doing in bed with Yasmin? She hated me. Then I recalled the end of the night before. I yawned and turned away from her, and was almost instantly asleep again. I dreamed that my mother was shouting at me. I dream that a lot. On the surface, my mom and I have patched up all our differences, and the guilts and resent-ments have been put away forever. The dreams told me :hat most of that progress had been only cosmetic, and ;hat deep within, I still had awkward, unsettled emotions where my mother was concerned.
My mother's voice rose in both pitch and volume, but I couldn't quite make out what she was mad about this time. I saw her face turn red and ugly, and she shook her fist at me. With her harsh words echoing painfully in my ears, I ducked as she began beating my head and shoul-ders.
I woke up. It was Yasmin who was screaming, and who was also punching me in my sleep. Yasmin had started out ds a rather large and well-built young man, so that even after her sexchange operation, she was still a formidable opponent. In addition, she had the element of surprise on her side.
"Get out of here! Get out of here!" she cried.
I rolled off the mattress onto the cold floor. I glanced at my watch: it was now about noon. I didn't understand what Yasmin's problem was.
"You're slime, Audran!" she shouted. "You're slug vomit, taking advantage of me in the shape I was in!" Despite all the many times we'd made love in the past, however long we'd actually lived together, I felt crookedly, her eyelids half-closed. "You'd be surprised what I could accomplish, embar-rassed to be naked in her presence. I dodged out of range of her fists, then stood kind of hunched over, trying to hide my nude vulnerability. "I didn't take advantage of you, Yasmin," I said. The throbbing behind my forehead started up again, but worse this time. "I ran into you a few hours ago at the Brig. You begged me to make sure you got home all right. I was trying to leave when you started begging me to jam you. You climbed all over me. You wouldn't let me leave."