The Garden of Last Days (63 page)

AJ COULD ONLY
think of Cole.

No, he kept
feeling
him. His small body on his lap, his feet knocking against AJ’s shins while they ate together somewhere. Or lying down beside him reading him a book, his son’s head against AJ’s arm. How could his father
not
be with him right now? How could he not be there in their hurricaneproof house, his rifle loaded, guarding the door from whoever these people were?

Did his son know about this? Did Deena? Was she letting him watch it on the TV? AJ hoped not. Lord, he hoped not, and sitting here beneath the tiers in his orange clothes on an orange bench bolted into an orange table, watching hell come to pass in a room full of bad men, it occurred to him he should pray. But with so much suffering, where should he start? My God, where should he
begin
?

Then the tower collapsed into its own rising plume, and one of the men laughed. Some sonofabitch was
laughing
.

IT WAS A
day of celebration. It was a day April and Franny and Jean had planned to spend together, and they did. After a breakfast of pancakes down in Jean’s, Franny sitting on two gardening books at the peninsula, her voice high and cheerful, April had gone back upstairs and made turkey and cheese sandwiches. She wrapped them in foil and placed them in the beach bag with clementines and pears, three carrots, and the box of Ritz crackers. Her kitchen was washed in sunlight and she hummed a song she knew but couldn’t name.

This morning, waking up beside Franny, the room was lit from outside the color of roses. There was her sleeping daughter’s leg over hers. If April had ever prayed before, she couldn’t remember when or why. But in that moment she felt blessed by something large and loving, far away but close too. She pulled Franny into her and kissed her cheek. She thought of her mother. Imagined her waking up in that
empty house. Supposedly happy. Smoking alone in the kitchen while her coffee brewed. Today April would call her. She and Franny both.

But first, the beach.

It was Tuesday morning in mid-September and only a handful of people had come. Most of them were on the main beach and not here, the palm fronds flicking in a warm beeze, Franny and Jean making a sand hill. Jean wore her straw hat, sunglasses, and a blue bathing suit she covered with an unbuttoned overshirt. April could see the varicose veins behind her knees and down her calves, the liver spots on her gardener’s hands. Franny kept filling the bucket and dumping it in front of Jean, Franny’s high, nearly breathless voice telling her what to do with the sand and where to put it.

April couldn’t go look for work in Miami, not that far. Tomorrow she’d drive up to Tampa and check out that national chain. See what the house fees were. Ask about the clientele.

Because look how happy Franny was with Jean. They couldn’t leave her.

At ten before three, April pulled into the bank’s parking lot. Jean looked hot and tired on the passenger side, though she was still upbeat, turning around to talk to Franny about the Slush Puppie she planned to get her after this errand, the iced coffee she was going to buy herself. But her color wasn’t good. She’d worn that sun hat all day but her face was pale and sweaty and April left the engine running, the AC on high, and ran across the hot asphalt with her pocketbook full of money.

The bank was cool and smelled like polished wood and coins. One man was at a teller’s window, the rest empty. He turned and gave her the once-over, his eyes lingering on her breasts beneath her top, and she ignored him and set her pocketbook on the counter and pulled out the cash. She began to count it. She’d spent some on the Chinese food with Lonnie, more on the new things for Franny’s room, more for groceries. But there were still sixty-four one-hundred-dollar bills.
Six thousand four hundred dollars. The foreigner’s fingers on her. His hair already thinning. His cigarette smoke rising above them.

There was a fifty and a few twenties and she folded them and pushed them into the front pocket of her shorts and filled out a deposit slip. The man was gone. April went to the window where he’d been. The rest of the tellers were counting money, closing up. It was a woman her age or younger, a curl of blond hair at her neck, her skin a golden mocha. And it was like being Stephanie, seeing a younger, prettier girl who could leave all this and make some real money if she dared to, if she had what it took. April said hi and pushed the cash and deposit slip under the glass, never feeling more proud of who she was or how much money she’d made on her own.

The girl turned to her keyboard. From the side she looked older, her mouth downturned. She typed in April’s account number and counted the money quick as a machine, but she looked like a drooping flower.

“Long one?”

“Yep.” The girl shook her head. She stacked the money and began dividing it into thousands. “I can’t believe we stayed open. The whole country should stop just out of respect.” She slipped a band over ten hundreds, reached for another. “My uncle worked in one of those buildings. My mom’s been calling his cell phone all day.”

“What buildings?”

The girl stopped counting. She turned toward April, the stool squeaking. The whites of her eyes were pink. “You haven’t
heard
?”

“No, what? I haven’t heard what?”

She turned and looked over her shoulder, then back at April, her expression almost angry. “Are you serious? Do you really not know what’s just
happened
to us?”

THE DAYS AND
nights of television. The images she wouldn’t let Franny see. It was September and maybe it was time to find a preschool for her, but April couldn’t even think of driving her off and leaving her somewhere. There was the feeling she’d been given a great gift while others were robbed of everything.

She called home a lot. Just to hear her mother’s voice. She even called Mary in Connecticut. They talked a long while about their kids, how much they loved them, Mary’s voice breaking. She said they should come visit them soon. “Please, April.
Soon
.”

April spent her mornings with Franny and Jean at the beach. After, they’d share a lunch down in Jean’s kitchen or in the shade of the mango on the Adirondack chairs, Franny on one of their laps, and in the afternoons, after a bath to wash off the sand, April would lie down with Franny on her bed and read her a story and sometimes she’d fall asleep with her. She’d curl up around her, her nose in her damp hair.
There was the feeling she was in a temporary state of grace, one that could not last long, and she knew she should drive up to Tampa or down to Venice to look for work.

One afternoon in late September, she slid out of Franny’s bed and went into the kitchen. She poured cold coffee into a cup and heated it in the microwave. She pulled the phone book from its drawer and opened to the yellow pages, but when she opened to the E section, there was Entertainment—Children and Family, then the phone numbers of animal trainers, puppeteers, and clowns. Below that was Entertainment—Others, nothing but Exotic Dancers and Escort Services, and she closed the book and carried her coffee to the living room.

She would call, she would have to, but not now, maybe tomorrow morning when the manager or owner would be around. She flicked on the television. It’d been days since she watched it. How many times could people see such terrible things over and over again? There had to be something else. And there, in a row of photographs of men, all dark, all young, was him; for a moment she couldn’t remember his name—Mike, no,
Bassam
. And he looked at her as he’d first looked at her, like he had important things to do but first he had to make time for this, just this.

Then there was the blue sky and the tall sunlit buildings and it was clear who the others were and she punched the Off button and threw the remote to the couch.

There was his face as he stared between Retro’s legs, his lips parted, his eyes dark and almost fearful. There were his fingers on her. On her scar from Franny. There was his cigarette smoke and all his money, and her face burned and she stood quickly and rushed into the kitchen. She just stood there.

Jean was probably napping, but April wanted to go wake her and tell her. But Jean’s face, her eyes that no longer bore into her with such judgment, and now April didn’t want to tell her. She didn’t want to tell anyone.

Late that afternoon, when Franny was down in Jean’s garden helping her aim and spray the hose, Louis called from the club. His voice
was thick and raspy. He told her he’d just given her name to the FBI, that they were talking to anyone who’d had anything to do with any of them. “And you had one of them in the Champagne, didn’t you, Spring?”

She didn’t say anything, felt her lips against the receiver.

“Spring? Didn’t you?”

The next morning the sky was too gray for the beach. April had made more coffee and was about to call the club in Tampa when the phone rang. It was Jean. She spoke in almost a whisper, “Some men from the FBI are coming up to talk to you.” April could already hear them outside her door. They began knocking. She thanked her and asked if she could send Franny down and she hung up and let them in.

They were older than she was, their shirts ironed crisply, their ties just the right length. They all wore wedding rings and each had a handgun clipped snugly to his belt. Franny stared at one of them as April held the door open for her and told her she’d be down soon. At the bottom of the stairs, Jean waited, her eyes on April’s, the dark light of distrust back in them.

April offered the agents coffee but they politely said no. Two of the men stood at the peninsula. The oldest-looking one sat in the chair across from her on the couch, a pad and pen on his lap. His hair was combed back over his bald spot and there were laugh lines etched around his mouth, but his eyes were a cool gray.

He asked her how long she’d worked at the Puma Club, the shifts of her average workweek, then that Friday night and the approximate time when she went into the Champagne Room.

She told him, thought of Franny in Tina’s office as she said it.

“What did you do for him?”

“What do you mean?”

“What services did you perform?”

“I danced.”

“That’s all you did?”

“Yes, that’s all I ever do.”

“Did he ask for sex?”

“No. And he wouldn’t have gotten any.” A wave of heat rose into her face.

“But I understand you spent over two hours with him.”

“That’s right, we talked too.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know. He was drunk. He didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“Were you drinking as well?”

“Yes, you’re supposed to in the Champagne. But I wasn’t drunk.”

He nodded, wrote something on his pad.

She was barefoot and wearing shorts and she could feel one of the agents staring at her.

“I understand that was a rough night for you.”

April nodded. His tone was patronizing, and she didn’t like it. She looked away from him. There was Tina’s empty office, the bright empty dressing room, the empty darkness under the stage, her screams lost in it. She made herself look back at him.