When Gravity Fails (19 page)

“You’re crazy if you do,” said Dalia. Dalia was as close to being a true conservative as you could find on the Street. “Look what it does to people.”

“What
does
it do to people?” shouted Yasmin, outraged, tapping her own moddy.

“Oops, sorry,” said Dalia, and she went to mop up some imaginary spilled beer at the far, far end of the bar.

“Think of all the things we could do together,” said Yasmin dreamily.

“Maybe it’s not good enough for you the way it is,” I said, a little hurt.

Her expression fell. “Hey, Marîd, it’s not that. It’s just—”

“This is
your
problem,” said Frenchy, “it’s none of my business. I’m going in the back and count tonight’s money. Won’t take me very long.” He disappeared through a ratty gold-colored cloth that served as a flimsy barrier to the dressing room and his office.

“It’s permanent,” I said. “Once it’s done, it’s done. There’s no backing out.”

“Have you ever heard me say that I wanted to have my wires yanked?” asked Yasmin.

“No,” I admitted. It was just the
irrevocableness
of it that prickled my skin.

“I haven’t regretted it for an instant, and neither has anybody else I know who’s had it done.”

I wet my lips. “You don’t understand,” I said. I couldn’t finish my argument; I couldn’t put into words what she didn’t understand.

“You’re just afraid,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. That was a good starting point.

“The Half-Hajj has
his
brain wired, and he’s not even a quarter of the man you are.”

“And all it got him was Sonny’s blood all over everything. I don’t need moddies to make me act crazy, I can do that on my own.”

Suddenly she got a faraway, inspired look in her eyes. I knew something fascinating had occurred to her, and I knew it most likely meant bad news for me. “Oh, Allah and the Virgin Mary in a motel room,” she said softly. That had been a favorite blasphemy of her father’s, I think. “This is working out just like the hexagram said.”

“The hexagram.” I had put that
I
Ching
business out of my mind almost before Yasmin had finished explaining it to me.

“Remember what it said?” she asked. “About not being afraid to cross the great water?”

“Yeah. What great water?”

“The great water is some major change in your life. Getting your brain wired, for instance.”

“Uh huh. And it said to meet the great man. I did that. Twice.”

“It said to wait three days before beginning, and three days before completing.”

I counted up quickly: tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday. Monday, when I was going to have this thing done, would be after three days. “Oh, hell,” I muttered.

“And it said that nobody would believe you, and it said that you had to keep up your confidence during adversity, and it said that you didn’t serve kings and princes but higher principles. That’s my Marîd.” And she kissed me; I felt ill. There was absolutely no way I could get out of the surgery now, unless I started running and began a new life in some new country, shoving goats and sheep around and eating a few figs every couple of days to stay alive like the other
fellahîn.

“I’m a hero, Yasmin,” I said, “and we heroes sometimes have secret business to attend to. Got to go.” I kissed her three or four times, squeezed her right silicone tit for luck, and stood up. On the way out of Frenchy’s I patted Indihar’s ass, and she turned and grinned at me. I waved good-night to Dalia. Blanca I pretended didn’t even exist.

I walked down the Street to the Silver Palm, just to see what people were doing and what was going on. Mahmoud and Jacques were sitting at a table, having coffee and sopping up
hummus
with pita bread. The Half-Hajj was absent, probably out kicking gigantic heterosexual stonecutters around for the hell of it. I sat down with my friends. “May your and so forth, and so forth,” said Mahmoud. He was never one to worry about formalities.

“Yours too,” I said.

“Getting yourself wired, I hear,” said Jacques. “A crucial decision. A major undertaking. I’m sure you’ve considered both sides of the matter?”

I was a little astonished. “News travels fast, doesn’t it?”

Mahmoud raised his eyebrows. “That’s what news is for,” he said, around a mouthful of bread and
hummus.

“Permit me to buy you some coffee,” said Jacques.

“Praise Allah,” I said, “but I feel like something stronger.”

“Just as well,” said Jacques to Mahmoud. “Marîd has more money than the two of us together. He’s on Papa’s payroll now.”

I didn’t like the sound of that rumor at all. I went to the bar and ordered my gin, bingara, and Rose’s. Behind the bar, Heidi grimaced, but she didn’t say anything. She was pretty—hell, she was one of the most beautiful real women I’d ever met. She always fitted into her well-chosen clothing the way some of the debs and changes wished they could, with their store-bought bodies. Heidi had wonderful blue eyes and soft, pale bangs. I don’t know why, but bangs on young women always make me jittery. I think it’s the hebephile in me; if I examine myself closely enough, I find hints of every objectionable quality known to man. I’d always wanted to get to know Heidi
really
well, but I guess I wasn’t her type. Maybe her type was available on a moddy, and after I got my brain wired . . .

While I was waiting for her to mix my drink, another voice spoke up about twenty feet away, beyond a group of Korean men and women who would soon learn, no doubt, that they were in the wrong part of town. “Vodka martini, dry. Pre-war Wolfschmidt’s if you’ve got it, shaken and not stirred. With a twist of lemon peel.”

Well, now, I said to myself. I waited until Heidi came back with my drink. I paid her and swirled the liquor and ice in tight, counterclockwise circles. Heidi brought my change; I tipped her a kiam, and she started some polite conversation. I interrupted her rather rudely; I was more interested in the vodka martini.

I picked up my glass and stepped back from the bar, just enough to get a good look at James Bond. He was just as I remembered him from the brief encounter in Chili’s place, and from Ian Fleming’s novels: black hair parted on one side, a heavy lock of it falling in an unruly comma over the right eye, the scar running down the right cheek. He had straight, black brows and a long, straight nose. His upper lip was short and his mouth, though relaxed, somehow gave the impression of cruelty. He looked ruthless. He had paid a great deal of money to a team of surgeons to make him look ruthless. He glanced at me and smiled; I wondered if he recalled our previous meeting. His gray-blue eyes crinkled a bit at their edges as he observed me; I had the distinct feeling that I was, in fact, being observed. He was wearing a plain cotton shirt and tropical worsted trousers, no doubt of British manufacture, with black leather sandals suitable to the climate. He paid for his martini and came toward me, one hand extended. “Nice to see you again, old man,” he said.

I shook hands with him. “I don’t believe I’ve been granted the honor of making the gentleman’s acquaintance,” I said in Arabic.

Bond answered me in flawless French. “Another bar, another circumstance. It was of no great consequence. Everything turned out satisfactorily in the end.” It had been satisfactory for him, at least. At the moment, the dead Russian had no opinion at all.

“May Allah forgive me, my friends are waiting,” I said.

Bond smiled his famous half-smile. He gave me back an Arabic saying—in perfect local Arabic. “What has died has passed,” he said, shrugging, meaning either that bygones were bygones, or that it would be good policy for me to begin forgetting all the recently dead; I wasn’t sure which interpretation Bond intended. I nodded, disconcerted more by his facility with my language. Then I remembered that he was wearing a James Bond moddy, probably with an Arabic-language daddy chipped in. I took my drink to the table where Mahmoud and Jacques were sitting, and chose a chair from which I could keep an eye on the bar and its single entrance. By the time I’d seated myself, Bond had downed his martini and was going out into the cobbled Street. I felt a chilly wave of indecision: what was I supposed to do? Could I hope to bring him down now, before I had my brain wired? I was unarmed. What possible good could come of attacking Bond prematurely? Yet surely Friedlander Bey would consider this an opportunity lost, one that might well mean the death of someone else, someone dear to me. . . .

I decided to follow. I left my drink untasted on the table and gave my friends no explanation. I got out of my chair and went to the open doorway of the Silver Palm, just in time to see Bond turn left into a side street. I crept along carefully behind. Evidently I wasn’t careful enough, because when I stopped at the corner and peered cautiously around, James Bond was gone. There were no other streets parallel to the Street for him to have turned onto; he must have entered one of the low, whitewashed, flat-roofed dwellings on the block. That was
some
information, at least. I turned around again to walk back to the Silver Palm, when a flare of pain detonated behind my left ear. I crumpled to my knees, and a strong, tanned hand grabbed the light material of my
gallebeya
and dragged me back to my feet. I muttered some curses and raised my fist. The edge of his hand chopped at the point of my shoulder, and my arm dropped, numb and useless.

James Bond laughed softly. “Every time you see a well-setup European in one of your grimy, quaint rumshops, you think you can come along behind and relieve him of his pocketbook. Well, my friend, sometimes you choose to rob the wrong European.” He slapped me across the face, not very hard, threw me away from himself against the rough face of the wall behind me, and stared at me as if I owed him an explanation or apology. I decided he was right.

“A hundred thousand pardons,
effendi,”
I murmured. Somewhere in my mind arose the thought that this James Bond was handling himself a good sight better than he had when he let me escort him out of Chiri’s a couple of weeks ago. Tonight, his goddamn black comma of hair wasn’t even out of place. He wasn’t even breathing hard. There was some logical explanation for all that, too; I’d let Papa or Jacques or the
I
Ching
figure it out: my head was throbbing too hard and my ears were chiming.

“And you needn’t bother with that
‘effendi’
bunk,” he said grimly. “That’s a Turkish flattery, and I still have more than one grudge against the Turks. You’re no Turk, anyway, by the looks of you.” His slightly cruel mouth gave me a slightly vicious sneer and he walked by me as if I were no threat at all to his safety or his wallet. That, in point of fact, was the plain truth. I had just had my second run-in with the man who called himself James Bond. At the moment, we each had a score of one, out of a possible two; I was in no hurry at all to play the rubber match. He seemed to have learned a lot since our last meeting, or for some reason of his own he had allowed me to chuck him so easily out of Chili’s. I knew I was badly outclassed here.

As I walked slowly and painfully back to the Silver Palm, I came to an important decision: I was going to tell Papa that I wouldn’t help him. It wasn’t merely a matter of being afraid to have my brain wired; hell, even with it goosed from here to the Prophet’s Birthday, I was no competition for these killers. I couldn’t even follow James Bond down one goddamn block in my own neighborhood without getting my ass kicked around. I didn’t have a single doubt that Bond could have dealt more harshly with me, if he’d chosen to. He thought I was just a robber, a common Arab thief, and he merely treated me the way he treated all common Arab thieves. It must have been a daily occurrence for him.

No, there was nothing that could persuade me otherwise. I didn’t need the three days to think about it—Papa and his wonderful scheme could just go to hell.

I went back to the Silver Palm and threw down my drink in two great gulps. Over the protestations of Mahmoud and Jacques, I said that I had to be going. I kissed Heidi on the cheek and whispered a
licentious suggestion in her ear, the same suggestion I always whispered; and she replied with the same amused rejection. I walked thoughtfully back to Frenchy’s to explain to Yasmin that I was not going to be a hero, that I was not going to serve higher principles than kings and princes and all the rest of that foolishness. Yasmin would be disappointed in me, and I probably wouldn’t get into her pants for a week; but that was better than getting my throat slashed and having my ashes strewn over the sewage treatment plant.

I would have a lot of explaining to do to everybody. I would have a lot of apologizing to do, too. Everyone from Selima to Chiri to Sergeant Hajjar to Friedlander Bey himself would be after my balls, but I had made my decision. I was my own man, and I wouldn’t be pressured into accepting a terrifying fate, however morally right and public-spirited they all made it sound. The drink at the Silver Palm, the two at Frenchy’s, a couple of tri-phets, four sunnies, and eight Paxium all agreed with me. Before I found my way back to Frenchy’s, the night was warm and safe and wholly on my side, and everybody who was urging me to wire my brain was stuffed down deep in a dark pit into which I planned never again to peek. They could all jam each other silly, for all I cared. I had my own life to lead.

11

Friday was a day of rest and recuperation. My body had been bruised and beaten by a lot of people lately, some of whom had been friends and acquaintances, some of whom I was just chafing to catch in a dark alley real soon. One of the best things about the Budayeen is the prevalence of dark alleys. They were planned purposefully, I think. Somewhere in somebody’s sacred scripture it says, “And there shall be caused to be built dark alleys wherein the mockers and the unrighteous shall in their turn have their heads laid open and in like wise their fat lips busted; and even this shall be pleasing in the sight of Heaven.” I couldn’t quote you exactly where that verse comes from. I might have dreamt it up early Friday morning.