They sat up talking and drinking and I gave them my bottle of Kenya Cane and I drank water till I was sleepy, then I hit the hay, excited to be leaving Lamu the next day, ready to get back to Nairobi, then Amsterdam and Montreal.
I stopped taking my meds and didn’t drink for the rest of the trip, either. When we were back in Nairobi, back at the Heron Court Hotel, I read Half of a Yellow Sun and didn’t socialize much save dinner at Galina and Martin’s house with Sveta and Alexi and Tanya and Boris.
Then it was time to leave Nairobi.
Again, we had a long layover in Amsterdam but not as long as on the way there, so there was no need for a day-room. We ate overpriced sandwiches, which Boris generously bought, and Tanya and I walked around the gift shops as Boris checked his email and surfed the internet.
Saddam Hussein had been hanged the day before and I didn’t know about it. It was on the cover of every newspaper — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, De Telegraaf, Haaretz, Le Monde, El País — all with images of Saddam. They did it, I thought, and wasted no time. They executed him.
Holding Tanya’s hand, a young woman walked past us, in her early twenties, I guessed, wearing a T-shirt that said F★CK, and I hoped Tanya didn’t read her shirt. But then she said, ‘You’re never a star when you use that kind of language.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘So true!’
We waited around for our plane. The Amsterdam sky was grey, for it had been raining lightly. I stood at the giant window looking out onto the runways. The light grey sky streaked with white and dark clouds looked like cold hard marble.
Our flight was called.
When we landed it was nighttime and snowing in Montreal. Our luggage arrived fairly quickly and we breezed through customs.
I spotted Nina waiting for us on the other side of the gate, and when Nina saw Tanya her eyes were full of tears and she was smiling, holding her hands up to her chin, patiently waiting and holding back her excitement to see her child. As soon as we were through passport control and on the other side of the gate, Tanya made a mad dash for her mother and Nina picked her up in her arms, squeezing her tightly, then putting Tanya down; Nina kneeled and cleared the hair away from her daughter’s face, taking her face in, examining it, and she smiled tearfully, kissed her and then embraced her tightly, the two cheek to cheek, holding each other. I choked up and I could tell Boris choked up, too.
I said I’d grab a cab and Boris laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly, man. We’ll drive you home.’
I was back in my apartment by eight that evening, giving me enough time to shower before meeting my girlfriend at a party, a party to ring in the new year, though I wasn’t in a partying mood. I knew things between Stacey and me were finished.
JENNY
‘I find pretty much everybody I’ve ever cared about disappointing,’ said Jenny, ‘and it’s always been this way, even when I was a little kid. No one can love you the way you want to be loved. It’s just another sad fact.’
‘There are two types of people: one, those who believe in an afterworld and the various sets of rules one has to live by to get to said afterworld, even if those rules hurt others; and, then, two: those who don’t believe in an afterworld and within that group many would like to enact the dichotomy of heaven and hell here on earth because they won’t get the satisfaction in the afterlife because they don’t believe in one. Regardless, that makes for a hell of a lot of people who don’t care about others and only care about getting their just deserts, whether here on earth or in the heaven that awaits. And I don’t see much else going on.’
‘No, I hate cocaine. It gives people a false sense of accomplishment. Which makes them super obnoxious. But go ahead if you want.’
‘Just a couple of beers.’
‘Sometimes I think I associate heartbreak with having zero appetite and getting skinny just so I put it in a positive light.
Who wants to be in love and content and getting plump on turkey,’ she said.
‘No, he died in ’63. All right. Sure.’
‘People aren't interested in the truth. They're interested in preserving their own narcissism — keeping it intact, whatever the cost…’
‘Babe and The Mother and the Whore.’
‘Tastes like diesel fuel.’
‘Jews have been historically seen as obstacles to ridiculous fantasies,’ she said, ‘but that doesn’t mean they haven’t manufactured their own equally ridiculous fantasies. Israel, for example.’
‘People just want to get famous, like it’ll save them, even if the reasons for getting famous are ignominious. It’s actually a boring topic and for stupid people, like God.’
‘I don’t know. I kind of find sex boring,’ she said. ‘Like, cocks are fascinating, I guess, but also gross, and they make you pregnant and ruin your life and at best give you a home filled with children and a fat husband who all resent you. And ruin your body, of course. But, yeah, I kind of like to give blowjobs, though.’
‘I actually find Jews really annoying, too,’ she said, ‘so don’t worry if you’re an anti-Semite. Actually, I take that back, not that I find Jews annoying, but that I don’t worry about antiSemites. They’re worse than the Jews.’
‘Boxers or briefs?’ she said. ‘Oh I hate it when guys wear briefs or boxer-briefs because it’s like they’re trapping their sweaty penis smell — SPS — in. You pull down the waistband to suck a guy’s cock and it’s like a locker-room smell wafts toward your face. You gotta air that shit out. And protect your sperm. It’s really the only thing attractive about you, like on a subliminal level. The potentiality of something better, beyond your disappointing existence. You know.’
‘I know. And you’re left feeling, what just happened? Who was that? How could this be? How can I go on? I must go on … I’m not so sure … Something’s stopping … ’
‘My singing voice is stronger than ever, though … ’
‘If life, and like the formation of an ego, et cetera, like if life works on you like waves against a coastal shelf, like eroding you and forming you at the same time as you become an adult, then early heartbreak’s like the tsunami in the formation of the adult ego-slash-coastal shelf. You know.’
‘Yeah. Sure. It was fun. I’m glad you’re a vegetarian.’
‘I have to pee. I’m going to pee.’
‘Yeah. And we always came together.’
‘I hate dreams most of the time. I hate when the day’s residue makes me dream of, like, me and Snooki doing surveillance for Michelle Obama. It’s bullshit.’
‘You’ve got a long way to go, buckaroo.’
‘The Prophet’s never accepted in her home country,’ she said.
‘Whatever. You’re so gay, even if you think you’re not. Three of your friends relentlessly hit on me and then you invite me in here with you. Don’t think that has nothing to do with it.’
‘The only good thing about dying is you really start to like life. What a joke.’