The Garden of Last Days (56 page)

Khalid.

She frees him from his pants. She stands and pushes down her black undergarment. Bassam is ashamed of his hardness exposed for Tariq to see, and he covers himself but Tariq watches only the young kafir woman. Her hair above her qus is like the black whore’s, a thin shaved line. And she turns and lifts her clothing and reaches into her purse. Her naked rear is exposed to them.

“Bassam,” Tariq says in their language, “do you want to go first? You are older, you should go first.”

“It’s rude to tell secrets, boys. English, please.” She tosses to Tariq
a small square package and she opens hers and kneels before Bassam. “Take off your clothes, honey. Come on, I won’t bite.” She pulls down his pants and he lifts one leg, then the next. How weak he is. How so very weak. Thirty or thirty-one years, this is what she has, and the skin of her back is smooth and Bassam touches it with fingers that shake. She rolls the rubber skin over his hardness, her face only centimeters from it. His legs are trembling.

“Go on, Bassam,” Tariq says. “I wait.”

“What’d he say, sweetie? Huh? You want to tell me? Do you?” She leaves the socks upon his feet, rises and pushes his shirt past his shoulders, Bassam’s throat and face burning.
This is too much. This
— “Tariq, please. Close the lamp. And the
Book
, remove it.” Now the music is finished and a man speaks loudly, selling a product, Ford trucks. The room darkens and Tariq carries the Book to the closet, making a supplication before closing the door. She pushes against Bassam’s chest, makes him lie down upon his bed. And she is a professional, such a professional. Where did she acquire the small bottle she opens now, pouring the liquid onto her hand, rubbing it along his hardness? Then she touches herself with it, wipes her hand on the bedcover, and more music begins, the kicking drums, the piercing guitar, the singer’s voice forcing its way out of the radio and over their sealed envelopes into Bassam’s head to where he has disappeared. He makes the du’a to be said before lying with a woman, one he has never made:
In the name of Allah. O Allah, keep Shaytan away from us and keep Shaytan away from what you have blessed us with
.

How soon and how fast he is inside her. Completely inside her. She begins to rise up and down and she calls to Tariq, calls him to her. Bassam closes his eyes. He holds her hips, feels the skin and beneath it her muscle and beneath that, her bones. How long will she possess this? How many years will she be given by the Creator before she will burn? For now a sadness opens itself inside him, a cool darkness where lies so much: his father and his brother, his mother’s cries, her cries for Khalid and the cries he knows she will have for
him
, Allah willing. Allah willing. These ripples of heat pricking across his skin,
this fire lit and now burning. Her fire pushing onto his, his into hers. “That’s it, sweetie. That’s it. Come here. C’mon.”

There is Tariq’s leg touching his own. The woman makes sucking sounds and Bassam opens his eyes and look how in the near darkness she does as did the pale whore. He closes his eyes, the sadness receeding for there is only her fire pushing onto his, his pushing so deeply into hers, and Bassam sees the black whore, her qus, feels her now on top of him as he goes as deeply into her as this. Then she is Kelly the trainer, her fingers touching him as he exercised. And now she is April, her baby’s scar, her larger nuhood and long dark hair, her eyes like those of a girl from home, the flames inside him rising higher, higher. He could have had a good girl from a good family that in another’s fate he would have married, the Shawfa and Milka and Shabka, the Haflat al-Henna, his bride’s hands and feet decorated with henna, the flames rising and rising, the wedding celebrations he would have had, the dowry he could never have afforded himself, never, not as Bassam al-Jizani, a poor stock boy with only his father’s name he would never equal, except now, except now, bringing it lasting respect, not empty status, not envy, his flames now the whore’s flames, all of his thoughts and deeds descending, then gathering, then rising so hotly up and into the woman’s fire, a sound escaping him, a sound he has never before made and it shames him, his seed not in the whore but gathered in the reservoir of rubber, and the radio is too loud, a kafir woman singing, and this woman keeps moving for she does not know.

He opens his eyes. The bathroom’s light is behind her. Her face is difficult to see as she continues sucking. Tariq, his head back.

“Get off. Please, get off.”

She stops. “Already, sweetie? Already?” She lifts herself from him and releases Tariq and lies upon his bed and opens her legs and Bassam rushes into the harsh light of the bathroom.
O Allah, I take refuge with You from all evil and evildoers
. He pushes closed the door. He locks it. His reflection there in the glass, he cannot look. He is sweating and his legs are weak and he pulls the reservoir from him and wraps
it in tissue from the toilet and pushes it into the container for trash. He hears the bumping of Tariq’s bed against the wall, the kufar music from the radio, the whore’s cries of pleasure. And do not lie to yourself, Bassam. You would like to watch her do this. You would like to open the door and see more, to feel more. You would like to rest and do it with her again. The way Tariq does it now, on top. Your body has been dirtied, but it is a cooling fire and already you wish to burn again. For listen to her, her cries come from Shaytan himself, his dark joy at weakening you. Seducing you with the life of this world when less than one hour before you were in a state of purity, a state befitting a shahid. Could Shaytan be more joyous at this moment?

But no, Bassam, calm yourself. Calm yourself. We have only taken a bounty from the al-Adou al-Baeed; the Book, it is written clearly—
women are your fields
. This whore is simply the shadow of a taste of what is to come, Insha’Allah, as the women of Jannah will lie with them on soft couches in lush gardens watered by running streams. And there will be no kufar music playing, no whores, no money, but Bassam’s eternal flesh inside their eternal flesh. Allah willing, forever.

The bumping has stopped. Tariq speaks. The music has once again become men selling products. As he and Tariq have just been sold this one. That is all she has been, Bassam. A drink of vodka or beer when you were living among them, or a health shake Imad buys at these gyms after exercising.

The radio becomes silent. Bassam presses his ear to the door. The whore’s voice is close by, and he can hear her dressing. He hears the zipper. But he does not wish to hear any more, nor can he see her. She has made him do this, and if it would not harm their plans he would take his razor knife and push her to the floor and cover her mouth and cut her throat, let her bleed her dirty blood onto the carpet, let her body lie there while he and Tariq sleep comfortably on their beds whose sheets would have to be changed because of her and what she made them do.

Again she laughs, says, “Your friend.”

He pushes aside the shower’s curtain. He turns on the water as
nearly hot as it allows. Is she
laughing
at him? Does she think he is a
boy
? He steps inside and pulls closed the curtain. She must leave their room. She must be gone when he is through, but if she is not, it will be difficult to control himself. It will be difficult, and he is grateful for the cleansing water, for the hot rain that extinguishes fires and leaves only ash, wet and black.

UNDER THE FLUORESCENT
light of Publix, April pushed her cart. Inside it was romaine lettuce and vine-grown tomatoes, bags of pears, apples, and a slim crate of clementines. There were carrots and a box of raisins and a package of almonds. There was sliced cheddar cheese and smoked turkey and ham and Ritz crackers. She was buying what she and Franny always bought, nothing to hide here, nothing to change.

She hadn’t wanted to go out and told him so, told him she hadn’t showered yet and still had to buy groceries, that she didn’t know what time these people would be here in the morning and this just isn’t a good time, Lonnie.

“You have to eat, don’t you?” He stood there in an ironed short-sleeved shirt the color of bananas, his damp hair combed back from his face. He was looking right at her with the steady warmth he’d always given her at the club. Just a friendly face.

It was a marina restaurant on Sarasota Bay, one of the places April had applied to with Franny, and as soon as they walked in April wanted to leave. She followed the hostess, who led them through the air-conditioned cool, the linen-covered tables only half-full, out to the patio bar and the table Lonnie had reserved.

But the patio was nice. There were small tables under the last of the sun, most of them full, a woman singing on a platform just under the thatched roof of the tiki bar. She had long dark hair and wore white and she was singing something in Spanish, a keyboard player keeping time beside her. April sat down and looked at the piers of white boats, the sun shining off Sarasota Bay. She closed her eyes, saw Franny holding her arms out to her in Tina’s office.

She stood.

“You okay?”

“I’m sorry, Lonnie. I have to go.”

In the health food section, she opened a protein bar, cookies and cream, and ate it slowly. It’s what she and Franny did. She grabbed a peanut butter chocolate for her and dropped it into the cart.

Lonnie had driven her home quietly, as if he were deeply ashamed of himself. She didn’t mean to embarrass him, but to care right now about how he felt was beside the point. Back in front of the house he’d gotten out fast to come around and open her door. She was going to have to deal with him soon, wasn’t she?

Before leaving for here, she knocked on Jean’s door and asked if she needed anything, had she eaten? She said she hadn’t, but she wasn’t feeling too well, and behind her on the counter was a mug, her cat licking a tea bag on a spoon.

April put the protein wrapper on the clementines where she would see it and not forget to have the girl ring it through. It’s how she and Franny did it. How they always did it.

In the dairy aisle, April opened a pint of milk and drank. It was cold and cow-sweet. This too would be rung up empty, then thrown away, the cashier dropping it into the wastebasket under the register, the virtuous feeling this gave April every time, that she was a good citizen,
an honest person who worked hard and did the right thing without ever being told to, her daughter happy and well-fed and cared for. So why now, standing before the bright shelves of milk and cheese and yogurt and butter, did she feel like a liar, one about to be found out and then punished?

THE BEDSIDE LAMP
burns once more and Tariq is dressed and sits beside the window he has opened, his feet resting upon a chair. He is smoking, blowing it into the darkness. The room is cool and there are the smells of the smoke and the whore’s perfume. On the desk is the glass of wine she did not drink and Bassam, his towel wrapped tightly about his waist, thinks of Imad seeing it and he takes the glass and pours it into the toilet, the red swirling in water.

He rinses it and carries it back to the minibar cabinet.

“Bassam, did you like it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“She is a whore, Tariq. A kafir whore. She is fortunate I did not kill her afterward.”

Tariq smiles. Look at him sitting there with no modesty like a kafir:
his feet with no socks, smoking his cigarette. No longer distracted, no longer restless.

“What is funny, Tariq? Do you think I am joking? I will go find her and kill her now, Allah willing. I will do it.”

“Bassam, you liked it. I know you liked it.”

“My body liked it, Tariq. I did not.”

Bassam grasps his khaki pants and makes the du’a for dressing.
All praise is for Allah who has clothed me with this garment and provided it for me, with no power nor might from myself
. He secures the button of his pants. He pulls over his head the polo shirt from the drugstore in Del Ray Beach. He picks up from the floor his soiled clothing and carries them to the closet and shuts them inside.

“Think how much better will be Jannah, Bassam. Insha’Allah. Just
think
of it.” Tariq pushes his cigarette into the small wine bottle, the smoke rising.