Yasmin and I still clung to each other, our hearts thumping and our breath ragged and quick. We clung until our bodies quieted, and still we held each other, both satisfied, both exhilarated by this restatement of our mutual need and our mutual trust and, above all else, our mutual love. I suppose at some time we separated, and I suppose at some time we fell asleep; but in the late morning when I awoke, our legs were still entwined, and Yasmin’s head was on my shoulder. Everything had been fixed, everything had indeed returned to normal. I had Yasmin to love, I had money in my pocket to last a few months, and whenever I wanted it, there was action. I smiled softly and slowly drifted back into untroubled dreams.
Chapter 6
It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it’s going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can’t do it. It’s not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven’t you ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it’s reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent.
Yasmin and I made love again when we woke at last, this time on our sides, with her back to me. We held each other close when we finished, but only for a few moments, because Yasmin wanted to live life to the fullest again. I reminded her that this, too, was just not in human nature — at least as far as I was concerned. I wanted a little longer to savor the gardenia, which was still pretty fresh in my mind. Yasmin really wanted another gardenia. I told her to wait another minute or two.
“Sure,” she said, “tomorrow, with the apricots.” That’s the Levantine equivalent of “when pigs fly.”
I would have loved to jam her right then until she cried for mercy, but my flesh was still weak, “This is the part they call the afterglow,” I said. “Sensitive, voluptuous people like me value it as much as the jamming itself.”
“Fuck that, man,” she said, “you’re just getting old.” I knew she wasn’t being serious, that she was just riding me — or trying to. Actually, I was beginning to feel my weak flesh beginning to stir already, and was almost ready to proclaim my remaining youth, when there was a knock at the door.
“Uh oh, there goes your surprise,” I said. For a recluse, I was sure entertaining a lot of visitors lately.
“I wonder who it is. You don’t owe anyone any money.”
I grabbed my jeans and crammed myself into them. “Then it’s got to be somebody trying to borrow,” I said, heading for the peephole in the door.
“From you? You wouldn’t give a copper fiq to a beggar who knew the Secret of the Universe.”
As I got to the door, I looked back at Yasmin. “The universe doesn’t have secrets,” I said cynically, “only lies and swindles.” My indulgent mood vanished in a split second when I looked through the peephole. “Son of a bitch,” I said under my breath. I went back to the bed. “Yasmin,” I said softly, “give me your bag.”
“Why? Who is it?” She found her purse and passed it to me.
I knew she always carried a low-grade seizure gun for protection. I don’t carry a weapon like that; alone and unarmed I walked among the cutthroats of the Budayeen, because I was special, exempt, proud, and stupid. I had these delusions, you see, and I lived a kind of romantic fallacy. I was no more eccentric than your average raving loon. I took the gun and went back to the door. Yasmin watched me, silently and anxiously.
I opened the door. It was Selima. I held the seizure gun pointed between her eyes. “How nice to see you,” I said. “Come on in. There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“You won’t need the gun, Marîd,” said Selima. She brushed by me, seemed unhappy to see Yasmin, and looked in vain for somewhere to sit. She was extremely uncomfortable, I noticed, and very upset about something.
“So,” I said cruelly, “you just want to get in a few last whacks before somebody lays you out like Tami?”
Selima glowered, reached back, and slapped me hard across the face. I’d earned it.
“Sit on the bed, Selima. Yasmin will move over. As for the gun, it would have come in handy when you and your friends dropped by and started my morning with such a bang. Or don’t you remember about that?”
“Marîd,” she said, licking her glossy red lips, “I’m sorry about that. It was a mistake.”
“Oh, well, that makes it all better, then.” I watched Yasmin cover herself with the sheet and crawl as far away from Selima as she could, with her knees drawn up and her back in the corner. Selima had the immense breasts that was the trademark of the Black Widow Sisters, but otherwise she was almost unmodified. She was naturally prettier than most sex-changes. Tamiko had turned herself into a caricature of the modest and demure geisha; Devi accentuated her East Indian heritage, complete with a caste mark on her forehead to which she was not entitled, and when she was not working, she wore a brightly-colored silk sari, embroidered in gold. Selima, on the contrary, wore the veil and the hooded cloak, a subtle fragrance, and the demeanor of a middle-class Muslim woman of the city. I think, but I’m not sure, that she was religious; I can’t imagine how she squared her thievery and frequent violence with the teachings of the Prophet, may prayers and peace be upon him. I’m not the only self-deluded fool in the Budayeen.
“Please, Marîd, let me explain.” I’d never seen Selima — or either of her Sisters, for that matter — in such a state of near-panic. “You know that Nikki left Tami’s.” I nodded. “I don’t think she wanted to go. I think someone forced her.”
“That isn’t the message I got. She wrote me a letter about some German guy and what a wonderful life she was going to have, and that she had a real fish on the line here and she was going to play him for everything he had.”
“We all got the same letter, Marîd. Didn’t you notice anything suspicious about it, though? Maybe you don’t know Nikki’s handwriting as well as I do. Maybe you didn’t pay attention to her choice of words. There were clues in the note that made us think she was trying to get something across between the lines. I think someone was standing over her, making her write the letters so no one would think twice when she disappeared. Nikki was right-handed, and the letters were written with her left hand. The script was awful, nothing like her usual writing. She wrote our notes in French, although she knows perfectly well that none of us understands that language. She spoke English, and both Devi and Tami could have read that; that’s the language she used with them. She never mentioned an old German friend of her family; there may well have been such a man when she was younger, but the way she called herself ‘a shy, introverted little boy,’ well, that just underlined the bad feeling we had about the whole letter. Nikki told lots of stories about her life before she had her change. She was vague about most of the details — where she was really from, things like that — but she always laughed about what a terror she — he — had been. She wanted to be just like us, and so she went into these biographical accounts of her hell-raising. She was anything but shy and introverted. Marîd, that letter smelled from beginning to end.”