They won’t recognize you, I said. Lit from the back, you’ll look like a silhouette on a stage. They won’t see your face.
But he didn’t listen to me.
He slammed the door and walked in front of my car with the bag in his hand. His shadow swayed in the dark.
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Zee, in his splendid role as the drug dealer. What a marvellous performance, and now here it comes, the back flip after the last delivery . . . and what a delivery!
A pair of headlights shone on Zee from the audience’s side, and I saw the car advancing. It stopped and Zee got in. And a few minutes later he got out and started walking back without the bag. A man stretched out his gun through the passenger window and I heard shots and could see Zee no more. He must have fallen to the ground. I saw the car moving towards me. I immediately switched on my lantern. I imagined that everything that started with the letter T could provide safety and emanate neutrality. Terrified, I searched for words that started with T. I recalled
tenderness
and
tears
, then I switched to less emotional, more action-oriented phrases such as
take a breath
,
take a dive
,
take a hop
,
take a shit
,
take flight
!
But then I realized that Zee had the keys to my car. So I simply ducked under the dashboard and waited for the killer car to pass. Well, I hoped it would, and to my surprise it did, in so great a rush that I knew no man could leap from such a cosmological velocity and land intact with a gun in his hand. It would be impossible, incomprehensible: even killers are not capable of surviving such infinite speed.
I waited until I didn’t hear a sound. Like a seal in the ocean, I stuck my head up and peeked, then I opened the car door and walked the muddy road towards the place I’d last seen Zee.
He was lying on the ground with his face buried in the mud. I rolled him over and I saw the whiteness of his eyes inside a face that was covered with soil. I poked him and whispered his name, but he was gone, dead.
I searched his pockets and found my car keys, and then I opened the inside of his jacket and pulled out his wallet. I counted out what was due to me, which I assessed should include insurance, modelling, risk management, entertainment, subordination fees, gas, windshield washer liquid, insults, waiting time, a shoeshine, penalties for damage to the welfare of society, and, naturally, the taxi fare. In short, after a quick mental addition, the total came out to the exact and full amount of money contained in the wallet. I ran to my car and drove in reverse to the next street, then I wove through the town’s alleys, aiming for the highway. I sailed out of the Island and into the city.
WREATH
UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES,
I cut my night short and decided to go home. As I drove up in front of my building, I saw the janitor coming out, wearing a black suit. He had shaved and his windy hair had settled. I almost didn’t recognize him without his leather jacket. I stopped and watched him walking towards a long black car that was blocking the garage entrance. Under the illumination of my headlights, he walked to the passenger side of the black car and opened the door. An elderly woman slowly got out, holding his hand. Her thick black stockings and church-lady shoes extended towards the sidewalk, out from under her bell-like skirt. She stood up and reached for the janitor’s neck, he bowed his head clumsily, and she kissed his cheek. The old woman was crying. My Kleenex box was about to fly ahead of me, its layers ready to scoop up the tears, but the lady pulled a handkerchief out of nowhere and dabbed her cheeks. The janitor glanced at my car but did not seem to recognize me. Later on, on my way up from the garage, on the first floor I encountered several large wreaths propped up in the hallway.
I went straight to my apartment to lie down on the carpet. I unbuckled my belt, but the presence of death was too near, too vivid to allow me to imagine gladiators, sailors, or women in need of rescue. I stood up and walked to the cupboard, looking for alcohol. Nothing was there. Fuck it, I said. When short of drink, seek the Arab. I will knock at Zainab’s door.
As I was buckling my belt, I remembered a Saudi prince I once drove around for a while. I had met him in the pool joint of a fancy hotel. I was sharking at the time, while also driving my cab. I had picked up the game in no time. When I was a kid, the contortionist had taught me how to twist and how to hustle.
I let the prince win a few times and then gave it to him. Soon he was out of cash. He offered me his Rolex, but once I realized that he was a Saudi, I told him that between us brothers material things shouldn’t matter and fed him some fraternal flattery, et cetera . . . He immediately bought it. So I drove him to a “refreshment” bar and told him that my taxi was at his service. The man drank whisky like a fish and fucked like there was no tomorrow; as soon as he had exited the Kingdom, the drinking and the orgies had started. That is all these heretic Westerners are good for, he would say. I made a deal with Linda and provided his highness with pleasures, and then, one day, his two royal cousins came from
London
and business really thrived.
I would pick up Linda and her friends from the corner and wait in the parking lot of their hotel until they were done. It worked out very well because the Bedouins have a preference for women on the plump side, and this brought prosperity and equal-opportunity employment to everyone. In a single evening they would empty the room’s minibar multiple times, swap the women between them, and fuck and sing all night.
The girls would come down giddy and drunk and showered
with gifts and golden watches. One must admit, the oily nomads are the most welcoming, hospitable people on the planet. They treated those women very generously and the women welcomed it. Sometimes they would all decide to go dancing and I would have to get another taxi. I would call Mani the Sex Spider or Number 79 or whoever was available at the Bolero . . . One day, three Saudi princesses, the sisters and cousins of the men, showed up to visit. They all decided to go to an expensive French restaurant. I took the boys in my car, and Number 79, a good-looking Nigerian with broad shoulders, handsomely defined, cut biceps, and a big, bright smile, arrived to take the princesses. He opened the door and eyed one of them and smiled at her. Late that night, before he drove away, the princess pretended she had left something in the car, and she leaned over the front seat, gave him a big tip, and asked him to meet her at another hotel.
At the appointed hour, he came back all dressed up, cleaned, shaved, and wearing cologne. Inside the hotel bar, the princess was already seated, waiting for him. The driver didn’t recognize her at first, because she was wearing a short skirt and high heels and smoking behind a whisky glass. She waved him over, bought a drink or two, and took him upstairs, where they drank and fucked all night. She was head over heels in love with him. Her screams of ecstasy rang and echoed all over the town. The next day, I brought them cocaine from a dealer on Main Street and they sniffed and fucked all that night as well. Before the princess went back home, she gave the driver a cheque and a postal address and asked him never to call, but to write.
Number 79 wrote to her, each time with a different story asking for financial support or help. War stories, family sagas, the death of his mother, the breakdown of his car, and in no time, he would receive a cheque in the mail to assist him with his troubles. His biggest coup was to ask for lawyers’ fees because he was about to be deported, and if he was deported he would be dragged into the army and forced to fight, and he could well be killed. Immediately, a big fat cheque was couriered to him.
One day, the princess sent him a letter telling him that she had decided to leave everything and run away, if only he would meet her at the same hotel where they had first met. He never answered her letter. She sent a second letter and he still didn’t answer her. In her third letter, she threatened to kill him by sending one of her royal bodyguards to cut off his balls. He called home to Lagos and instructed his cousin to send the princess a letter stating that, finally, Number 79 had been deported back to his country, in spite of the lawyers’ efforts. He had been drafted into the army and killed in the line of duty. His dying wish was to tell the princess that he was sorry and that they would meet in paradise.
SOME MEMORIES MAKE
me want to drink even more, so out of sadness or joy I knocked at Zainab’s door. She opened and said, Fly, my dear, it is late, and I have a friend with me. I apologized and asked her if I could borrow some whisky or a cognac. I explained that I’d had a long, hard day and that I needed a drink. Just a shot before bed, it will help me fall asleep, I said.
Okay, Fly, come in. I’ll introduce you to my friend Gina here, and since we are also having a drink . . . just come in.
There was a woman there. She stood up and kissed me on each cheek. You must be the man Zainab has been telling me about, who once brought the forest of flowers, she said.
Yes indeed, I am the flower carrier and the people mover.
You do have great taste, the flowers were magnificent. I’ve heard so much about you, Fly. All good things.
I am honoured, I said. What a relief and a compliment. People live their lives thinking that they are forgotten, and that is why we do the most outrageous things, so as not to have gone unnoticed.
I agree, said Gina, laughing. Our need for acknowledgement is certainly underrated.
People want to be remembered; the burden of impermanence hovers like a sword above our necks, I said, as I showed off my eloquent thoughts and gallant manners. Speaking of death and flowers, what is with the flowers of death outside?
Oh yes, the landlady died, Zainab said.
I’ll pass by tomorrow and pay my respects to her son. Or better yet, I will write him a letter of condolence. May I have that promised drink now, please? I asked. Some days can only be concluded with a certain amount of intoxication.
Here you go, Fly, Zainab said, and poured me a glass of whisky.
And so we all drank and continued our conversation about death, histories, and other inevitable matters.
May I use your bathroom? I asked, with a certain urgency. Though I could always return to my apartment and use mine, if you promise to let me in again.
No, we don’t want to lose you now that the conversation has gotten interesting. You can go here, Zainab said. We will wait for you.
I want to hear more about the cannon man and his companion, Gina said.
I walked down the long hallway to the bathroom with my whisky glass still in my hand. But then I thought that it might be dangerous to take it with me into the bathroom (drops of the same yellow hue could accidentally mix and be drunk in a moment of confusion or excitement), so I went back to the kitchen to deposit my drink on the counter, and what did I see but Zainab and the woman in each other’s arms, kissing and embracing tightly among the garden of dried flowers.
I gulped my drink in one shot and I tiptoed back to relieve myself.
Back in the kitchen, I helped myself to another drink and called it a night, telling Zainab that I would leave the empty glass at her door.
Zainab smiled at me and said, No problem, Fly. Here, keep the little that is left in the bottle. I think Gina and I are done drinking for the night.
I SAT AT
my desk, alone, and drank some more. I flooded the walls with light and shone the lamp on the spider web. The light shall bring the looting of blood from the flying cadavers of the night, I recited. The end, contrary to all popular beliefs, never comes to us, I proclaimed. It is we transient creatures who happily, clumsily, philosophically, drunk with the hardness of denial and the cloudiness of faith, walk towards it with open wings. Death is the inevitable net that shall scoop up the last swing, last sigh, and last blink before the last play, the last note in this symphony of chords in the web of nature that shall inevitably wrap us and bite us to an eternal sleep, I concluded.
I woke up the next day and realized that I had fallen asleep on the carpet, in yet another failed attempt to change history and prevent the splattering of blood.
MIMI
THE NEXT EVENING,
I went down to my car, and in the thin light of the garage, I saw a shape that looked like a quilt resting on the back seat. I opened the door and picked it up. It was indeed a quilt. I took it and opened my trunk and laid it inside. I didn’t remember seeing any quilt the previous night, either before or after Zee’s death. There was also a faint smell of alcohol and tiredness and even fear.
I worked steadily for the rest of that night, and towards morning I drove back home. The streets were empty but for the hundreds of plastic cups and beer bottles that littered the ground. From behind the haze of the windshield, the streets looked like an ocean filled with bottles carrying messages. I remembered the letters the bearded lady had received from the dispersed people of the circus. Once in a while she would get a colourful letter from a magician in Germany or a lion tamer in Africa, or photos from the Siamese twins who had married two women and had, between them, four kids. The circus people all kept in touch and, through this network of letters, we learned that it was the animal keeper who was having the worst time making a living. He had tried all the zoos and all the circuses, but nothing had come of his efforts. In one of his letters, he told the bearded lady that he was working in the furnace room of a cement factory, and he eloquently described to her the fires and the baking of the earth. All starts here, he wrote. All these new nations bake the earth to build and make stones. But the weight of progress and the benefits of contractors and the wealth of nations began to take a toll on the man. His skin itched and his lungs were clogged with dust and chemicals, and then, one day, he died from the smoke and the toxic powders and asbestos that make cities and pave their stretches of sidewalks.