60DH.
Sixty dirham, about $3.
I looked at the paper, then at the keychain. I frowned. I shook my head slowly. This is where the trick would come in. I asked for the paper and pen. He handed them to me and on his paper, under his 60DH I wrote:
150DH.
Then I gave it back in a stern but hopeful way.
At that moment, many things could have happened. He could have burst out laughing, getting the joke, thinking the joke funny. Or he could have scratched his head, briefly bewildered, then pointed out my mistake. There was also the possibility, odds not too small, that by reversing the forces of bargain-logic, we were pulling on the universe's loose threads, and by doing so might unravel everything from money to love to the double-helix-tremors felt from Bombay to Akureryi. But none of these things happened. What happened is that the man looked at the paper, cocked his head a moment, squinted, then nodded his head once quickly.
"Okay!" he said, grimacing. It was a deal. We had taxed his patience, but a hard bargain had been won; he was a fair man.
It was spectacular. It was better than we could have ever hoped.
Hand stepped closer. I showed Hand the paper, and indicated that this good man had agreed to my hard-driven terms. Hand, though, was not to be so easily satisfied. He asked to hold the sheep keychain. I put it in his palm. He held it and weighed it in his hand. He ran a finger along its length. He examined, closely, the keyring, clicking it open and shut as if fidgeting with a carabiner. Then he shook his head and took the pen and the paper and under the 60DH and under the 150DH he wrote:
250DH.
Here I thought we might have gone too far. The man would laugh. The man would see the gag.
Not a chance. Instead, again, the man took a long hard look at the proposal, fist to chin… and slowly agreed with a slow nod. My knees were shaking.
I took the sheep again. Now I held it to my face and rubbed it. I kissed it softly, and looked into its tiny black eyes. The price was not right.
"Two-fifty?" I said to Hand. "That's an insult."
I took the paper from Hand and wrote under it:
1800DH.
I handed it back to the salesman, at this point truly expecting him to throw up his hands and laugh. We were insisting on paying about $120 for a keychain priced at $3.
But the man didn't flinch. He was a titan. He touched a finger to his mouth, either gauging our sanity or pretending to mull our newest offer, and after a long perfect pause… again acquiesced. I was having probably the best time I could remember ever having.
But Hand turned to the man, shook his hand, said "Good," and paid him. It was over.
We left. The square was almost empty.
"How come you didn't keep going?" I asked. I was pissed. "We were just getting started."
"Come on. We had to quit before he caught on."
"He wouldn't have stopped. I guarantee it."
"He's not stupid."
We passed two men disassembling their food booth, dumping the ice back into a rolling cooler, packing their fish.
"I was so happy there," I said. "I really thought we were doing something there."
"But so we did it. There wasn't any point in going on."
"But there was! Just to see. Didn't you want to see?"
"It was pointless."
"It wasn't," I said.
"Will, it's all kind of pointless, don't you think?"
"What is?" I said.
"How far do you really want to go with this?"
"Till the end."
"Seriously."
"I am serious, fucker. That's what we're here for."
We stood. A small crowd near us roared about something. A monkey had done a trick.
"C'mon. Really. We've got about $14,000 left. Why not just get rid of $2,000 or $3,000 more and call it even?"
"That wasn't the original idea, Hand. Jesus. What about the staging ground? You remember? We were there, we had perfect control over that moment. We were creating art there -"
"Are you talking about that woman in Saly, the head lady?"
"Annette."
"She was insane. Staging ground? Fuck you. The problem with that idea is that you have to see these other people as – well, how do they figure in? How does that guy in the shop figure in? Is he part of it, or part of the scenery?"
I thought for a second.
"He's in the chorus," I said.
"Right. In the chorus."
A tall man strode by, face dark under a hood the color of bark.
"Hashish," he whispered. Then "Crystal," and was gone.
"Listen," Hand said, "fuck the original idea. I could use that money."
"Why are you doing this now? You didn't say anything about this earlier."
"I just didn't think you were that serious. I figured you'd get your shit together at some point and we'd save the rest."
"You don't have a right to do this, especially now."
We stopped. We stood in the middle of the Djemaa el-Fna. There was a hotel on the far end of the square, and on a balcony a man seemed to be watching us.
"Maybe we should go home," Hand said.
He didn't mean it.
"I'm not going home," I said. "You can."
His hands were on his hips, his head hung.
"I just don't want to -" he started. "I just think.this has something to do with everything else, and that's fine, but you're not telling me why, and then I have to be reminded constantly, because every time we give some away I think it means something to you – But even then I don't get it."
"There's no connection," I said.
Hand's head was slung to one side, defiant.
"There isn't," I said.
"Well why the fuck not?" he said.
"You want there to be some connection, but there isn't. We're here. We were in Senegal now we're here. Let's go."
"I'm not going," he said.
"Good," I said, "Jesus," and sat down. The ground was cold.
Now I didn't want to go. I wanted to make Hand cry. I couldn't make that fucker cry.
Hand stood, hands on his hips, watching the people leave the square. He sighed. He closed his eyes. He opened them after a moment, looking like he would say something – his eyes again had that unblinking and wild stare and I expected his jaw to start churning – but he closed his mouth and eyes again and now tilted his head so his ear met the roof. He whistled a few notes of nothing.
I leaned back until I was lying flat, staring up. The smoke from the grills striped the black starless sky. I couldn't see Hand, but his shadow dimmed my right eye's view. My body became heavier the longer I lay. I felt huge, sluggish, limitless in mass. It would take me hours to get up. I might never move again. I could become this landscape. I could fade into this pavement. I could watch as a mountain would watch, as a man on a balcony would watch, the people and their transactions, their hissed offers and threats, myself amused and without obligation. From a balcony, even twelve feet up, there was enough distance. There is movement below but it's not your movement, these people are not your people. Who are my people? My people are fumbling and not listening.
My eyes were hot and full with water. The water ran down either side of my face, into my ears, cooling in the black air.
"Will."
"Oh fuck," I breathed.
He was standing near my shoes.
"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck."
"What? Will, talk."
"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck."
The tears made the smoke overhead into crystal, surging and bursting. I dragged the mucus back into my nose and closed my eyes and pushed the water there out, spreading it down over my bones and to the ground.
"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck."
Hand's shadow threw itself over me. He was sitting now, arms holding his knees.
"Holy shit," I said. "Holy shit holy shit."
I was hiccuping now. I could sense people walking by, slowing, walking on. I was the only person lying on the pavement of the Djemaa el-Fna.
"Slow down," Hand said.
My eyes hurt. The water was being pulled from me and the strain was incredible. My forehead was tight, a pressure above my nose. My throat jerked and coughed. I couldn't remember crying this way. It was pathetic.