“Where’d you get them, Fuad?” I said.
“Take a look.” He grinned. His teeth were bad too.
I fished one of the chains out of the box and tried to examine it closely, but the light was too dim in the club. I turned the price tag around. It said two hundred and fifty kiam. “Sure, Fuad,” I said dubiously. “The tourists and locals we get in here complain about paying eight kiam for a drink. I think you’re gonna have some sales resistance.”
“Well, I’m not selling them for that much.”
“How much are you selling them for?”
Il-Manhous closed his eyes, pretending to concentrate. Then he looked at me as if he were begging a favor. “Fifty kiam?”
I looked back into the box and pushed the chains around myself. Then I shook my head.
“Okay,” said Fuad, “ten kiam, but yaa late efll won’t make any profit that way.”
“Maybe you could sell them for ten,” I admitted. “The price tags are from some of the best shops in town.”
Fuad grabbed the box away from me. “So they’re worth more than ten, huh?”
I laughed. “See,” I said to Kmuzu, “the chains are cheap plated metal. Probably not worth fifty fiqs. Fuad here goes into some exclusive boutique and steals some tags with the shop’s classy name on them and a price in three figures. Then he ties the tags to his junk jewelry and hawks it to drunken tourists. He figures they might not notice what they’re buying, especially out of the bright sunlight.”
“That’s why I wanted to ask you if it’d be okay to come in during the night shift,” said Fuad. “It’s even darker in here at night. I’d probably do a whole lot better.”
“Nah,” I said. “If Indihar wants to let you hustle tourists during the day, that’s up to her. I’d rather not have you doing it at night when I might be here.”
“Beyond the Budayeen, yaa Sidi,” Kmuzu pronounced ominously, “they’d cut his hands off if they caught him doing that.”
Fuad looked horrified. “You wouldn’t let them do anything like that to me, would you, Marid?”
I shrugged. “ ‘As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise.’ That’s right from the blessed Qur’an. You could look it up.”
Fuad clutched the box to his sunken chest. “You wait till you need something from me, Marid!” he cried. Then he stumbled toward the door, knocking over a chair and bumping into Pualani on the way.
“He’ll get over it,” I said to Kmuzu. “He’ll be back in here tomorrow. Won’t even remember what you told him.”
“That’s too bad,” said Kmuzu gravely. “Someday he’ll try to sell one of those chains to the wrong person. He may regret it for the rest of his life.”
“Yeah, but that’s what makes him Fuad. Anyway, I need to talk to Indihar before the shift changes. You mind if I leave you alone for a couple of minutes?”
“Not at all, yaa Sidi.” He stared at me blankly for a moment. It always unsettled me when he did that.
“I’ll have somebody bring you another iced tea,” I said. Then I got up and went to the bar.
Indihar was rinsing glasses. I’d told her that she didn’t have to come into work until she felt better, but she said she’d rather work than sit home with her kids and feel bad. She needed to make money to pay the babysitter, and she still had a lot of expenses from the funeral. All the girls were tiptoeing around her, not knowing what to say to her or how to act. It made for a pretty glum ambience in the club.
“Need something, Marid?” she said. Her eyes were red and sunken. She looked away from me, back at the glasses in the sink.
“Another iced tea for Kmuzu, that’s all,” I said.
“All right.” She bent to the refrigerator under the bar and brought up a pitcher of iced tea. She poured a glassful and continued to pay no attention to me.
I looked down the bar. There were three new girls working the day shift. I could only remember one of their names. “Brandi,” I said, “take this to that tall guy in the back.”
“You mean that kaffir?” she said. She was short, with fat arms and plump thighs, with large breast implants and brushy hair whose blondness had been artificially encouraged. She had tattoos on both arms, above her right breast, on her left shoulder blade, peeking out of her G-string, on both ankles, and on her ass. I think she was embarrassed by them, because she always wore a fringy black shawl when she sat with customers at the bar, and when she danced she wore bright red platform shoes and high white socks. “Want me to collect from him?”
I shook my head. “He’s my driver. He drinks for free.”
Brandi nodded and carried the iced tea away. I stayed at the bar, idly spinning one of the round cork coasters. “Indihar,” I said at last.
She gave me a weary look. “I said I didn’t want to hear you say you were sorry.”
I raised a hand. “I’m not gonna say that. I just think you should accept some help now. For your kids’ sake, if not your own. I would’ve been happy to pay for a tomb in your in-laws’ cemetery. Chiri’d be glad to lend you all the money—”
Indihar let out an exasperated breath and wiped her hands on a bar towel. “That’s something else I don’t want to hear. Jirji and I never borrowed money. I’m not gonna start now.”
“Sure, okay, but the situation is different. How much pension are you getting from the police department?”
She threw the towel down disgustedly. “A third of Jirji’s salary. That’s all. And they’re giving me some kind of song and dance about a delay. They don’t think I can start collecting the pension for at least six months. We were barely keeping our noses above water before. I don’t know how I’ll make it now. I guess I’ll have to look for someplace cheaper to live.”
My first thought was that any place cheaper than the apartment in Haffe al-Khala wouldn’t be fit to raise children in. “Maybe,” I said. “Look, Indihar, I think you’ve earned a paid vacation. Why don’t you just let me pay you for two or three weeks in advance, and you can stay home with Zahra and Hakim and Little Jirji. Or you could use the time to make some extra money, maybe—”
Brandi came back to the bar and plopped down beside me with a contemptuous look on her face. “Motherfucker didn’t give me a tip,” she said.
I looked at her. She probably wasn’t any smarter than Fuad. “I told you, Kmuzu drinks for free. I don’t want you hustling him.”
“Who is he, your special friend?” Brandi asked with a crooked smile.
I looked at Indihar. “How badly you want this bitch to keep working here?” I said.
Brandi hopped off the stool and headed toward the dressing room. “All right, all right,” she said, “forget I said anything.”
“Marid,” said Indihar in a low, carefully controlled voice, “leave me alone. No loans, no deals, no presents. Okay? Just have enough respect for me to let me work everything out my own way.”
I couldn’t argue with her anymore. “Whatever you want,” I said. I turned away and went back to Kmuzu’s table. I truly wished Indihar had let me help her somehow. I’d gained a tremendous amount of admiration for her. She was a fine, intelligent woman, and kind of on the beautiful side too.
I had a couple of drinks and killed some time, and then it was eight o’clock. Chiri and the night crew came in, and I watched Indihar count out the register, pay the day shift girls, and leave without saying another word to anyone. I went to the bar to say hello to Chiri. “I think Indihar’s trying too hard to be brave,” I told her.
She sat on her stool behind the bar and surveyed the seven or eight customers. “Yesterday she was telling me about her twelfth birthday,” Chiri said in a distant voice. “She said she’d known Jirji all her life. They both grew up in the same little village. She always liked Jirji, and when her parents told her that they’d arranged with the Shaknahyis for the two kids to be married, Indihar was happy.”