If his other daughters could hear Pa saying thank you — “He never says thank you to me.” “Me neither, dear.” “He’s never said anything to me except ‘Close your legs.’” Mahmoud thanks Camille because he does not love her.
Camille watches him slowly mount the stairs until he disappears into the darkness of the landing. Then she leaves, although she knows it’s a sin to leave an old man alone in that big house all night even if he does insist. “Am I the only one who cares?” she wonders.
But he is not alone. There is someone else who cares enough to keep him company through the long lonely night.
Mahmoud awakens smiling a few hours later to the sound of an Arabic comedy routine. A husband and wife chiding each other about faithfulness. Then they break into a love song. He had this record and many others brought over from Beirut. He and Giselle used to sit side by side on the sofa and never tire of laughing at the same jokes. Then she would dance for him and he for her. But only when the children were out. And only sometimes. But what precious times….
His smile dies upon his lips when the impossibility of what he is hearing hits him. What, is he dead? Is there a thief in the house? Playing his scratchy old records? Why?
He puts on his velvet robe, ties the cord around his waist and creeps down the stairs. He is dead. He must be. There is Giselle.
Beyond the archway, the front room is aglow with candle-light and three shades of Mediterranean blue. Swirling and swaying and quarter-turning, hips beckoning, fingers twining in air, wrists caressing one another above her head, the pearls of her veil swinging to the rhythm of the reeds, the drums and the wailing voices of the love song.
Mahmoud is filled with desire and his heart hurts, stirring again after such a long period of inactivity, never having been particularly athletic. She has seen him and now she is luring him into the dance. Ohhh. He travels through the archway, he does not know how. She bends forward in her circle of firelight, the blue silk wafts open at her breasts in shadow — come closer, the better to see me, Habibi. Her eyes are full of fun above the veil and her fingers tickle the emptiness between her and her beloved, closer, closer. “Giselle,” he whispers, reaching out to her. She giggles and he laughs too, not knowing what’s funny, “Giselle,” he whispers, “Habibti.”
But she slips out of the ring of light and vanishes. He calls her but she does not answer. He picks up a candelabrum, knowing better than to turn on electric lights when seeking a vision, and searches the ground floor; the cellar. He goes back up to the front room. He blows out the candles and turns on the electric chandelier because he can feel she is gone. The record has ended, there’s just the repetitive sigh at its centre — he removes the needle and returns to his bedroom. He opens his wife’s oak wardrobe where all her fine clothes still hang among mothballs. There at the back is the shimmering blue with its whispering veil. He must have been dreaming. But what about the candles? The record? Losing my mind. Or else it was an impostor. I don’t care. He reaches out to touch the silk, which is impossible to feel if there is a lifetime of work on your hands. He touches it but does not feel it — just as he saw what he could not have seen. I don’t care what you were, come back to me Please Please Please Ohhh.
It’s his last thrill and his last sting of love, as fresh and painful as youth transplanted over time and an ocean. There is nothing left for him now except to die, but that will take a while because he is a creature of habit, and he has got into the habit of being alive.
Thief in the Night
It wouldn’t matter to Frances if Ginger were a cruel man. She would do the same thing. Kindness or cruelty, it’s all by chance and what’s worse anyway? It’s easier to endure cruelty so maybe kindness is worse. The only question is, how do you get a nice man to do a bad thing?
She stops drinking. She wants all her wits about her for what lies ahead. Frances without liquor is a bit scary to her customers. No more cutie-pie patter or kisses for gin, she takes cash up front and services them cold-bloodedly with the communion glove. Dripping with her grandmother’s jewels, she no longer bothers to change out of her coal-smeared Guide uniform, and at the piano she plays Chopin while speaking blues lyrics in a loud monotone despite a chorus of boos. When she strips, she doesn’t sing or shimmy, she undresses like an automaton and bellows in a leaden voice, “‘IRENE GOODNIGHT. IRENE GOOD-NIGHT GOOD-NIGHT IRENE GOOD-NIGHT IRENE I’LL REAM YOU IN MY DREAMS.’” She’s no fun any more, soon they’ll look elsewhere. It’s almost as though Frances despises her customers when she’s sober, and what could be more insulting, because what right has she?
Frances wants three thousand bucks for Lily before retiring as a dive diva so she ups her price. This does not go down well either — some men try to dine and dash while others take the insult out on her face. Boutros has broken one man’s wrist and crushed another’s cheekbone, but Frances doesn’t care if her clients hit her, she just cares if she’s raped — she doesn’t want anything interfering with her plans.
Ginger Taylor has been gone in his truck a week and a half now. Frances has kept his purple house under surveillance. She knows he’ll be back tomorrow because she gets close enough to listen. She has motive. She has means. She watches the moon and awaits her opportunity.
Tonight Boutros follows Frances home as usual. He has given up trying to walk with her because she tells him where to go every time. So he escorts her secretly all the way to New Waterford and watches her slip round the back of the house on Water Street. He waits out front for the glow of her candle to appear in the gabled window at the very top of the house. Tonight as he waits, the headlights of a passing car catch two yellow gleams at the attic window — there’s a demon up there, crouched and lying in wait for Frances! Boutros is halfway to the veranda when he sees her light appear and cast a halo of black fur around two yellow eyes. He watches her come to the window, sit on the ledge and cradle the cat. His face softens. He is glad to see that he is not her only friend.
As yet, Boutros has not caught anyone attempting to ambush Frances on her way home. But if he ever does, the fella will die. Snap. Simple as that.
When Ginger Taylor returns the next day, he lays Christmas in August on the kitchen table. Rolls of white lace trim and coloured ribbon, yards and yards of fabric. A swatch of sun, moon and stars against a smoky midnight-blue, a bolt of emerald polka-dots on iridescent black, spring flowers for the girls, grey flannel for the boys. Candy, pineapples and a whole deer dressed on ice in the back of the truck.
Adelaide’s eyes water at the sight of the fabric. The ladies she sews for buy some fine cloth but nothing so jazzy. She has made gowns for most of the white weddings in Sydney. She uses silk, satin and organdy for her ladies, and her imagination for her family. Often there’s a nice piece left over from a job, but if the lady doesn’t ask for it back Adelaide gives it away to a neighbour because it is contrary to her own professional code to dress her children in leftover piece-work. She’d sooner turn flour sacks into perfect pinafores, and she does. The Mahmouds were Adelaide’s biggest customers till the Teresa fiasco, and when you add that times are worse than ever, Leo has no business throwing money away on all this nonsense.
Madeleine, Sarah, Josephine, Cleo, Evan, Frederick and Carvery swarm at the sweets, shrieking, sharing, fighting, and Adelaide wants to know, “What in the name of time is all this, mister?”