“You’re going to come with me,” she said in an ominous voice, “because I got something pretty to show you, you goddamn yellow-bellied pussy.”
I was really angry; I’d never been this angry with Yasmin before, and I still didn’t know what she was talking about. “Slap her face for her,” said Rocky from behind the bar. That always works in the holoshows for excitable heroines and panicking junior officers; I didn’t think, though, that it would quiet Yasmin down. She’d probably just beat the living hell out of me, and then we’d go do whatever she wanted in the first place. I raised the arm she was still clutching, turned it outward a little, broke her grasp, and grabbed her wrist. Then I twisted her arm and forced it up behind her back in a tight hammerlock. She cried out in pain. I pushed her arm further, and she yelped again.
“That’s for calling me those names,” I said, growling softly, close to her ear. “You can do that at home if you want, but not in front of my friends.”
“You want me to hurt you bad?” she said angrily.
“You can try.”
“Later,” she said. “I still got something to show you.”
I let go of her arm, and she rubbed it for a moment. Then she snatched up her purse and kicked open Jo-Mama’s door. I raised my eyebrows at Rocky; Jo-Mama was giving me an amused little smile, because all of this would eventually make a better story than the one she never got to tell me. Jo-Mama, at least, was going to come out ahead.
I followed Yasmin outside. She turned to me; before she could say a word, I put my right hand tightly around her throat and flung her up against an ancient brick wall. I didn’t care how much I hurt her. “You’re never going to do that again,” I said in a dangerously calm voice. “You understand me?” And just for the pure sadistic pleasure of it, I knocked her head roughly against the bricks.
“Fuck you, asshole!”
“Anytime you think you’re man enough, you mutilated, gelded son of a bitch,” I said. And then Yasmin started to cry. I felt myself collapse inside. I felt I had done the worst thing I could ever do, and there was no way I could make up for it. I might crawl on my knees all the way to Mecca to pray for forgiveness, and Allah would forgive me, but Yasmin wouldn’t. I would have given anything I had, anything I could steal, if the last few minutes hadn’t happened; but they had, and they would be difficult for either of us to forget.
“Marîd,” she whispered between sobs. I held her. Right then, there wasn’t a damn thing in the world to say. We clasped each other that way, close together, Yasmin weeping, me wanting to but unable, for five or ten or fifteen minutes. A few people passed by on the sidewalk and pretended they didn’t see us. Jo-Mama stuck her head out of the door and ducked back inside. A moment later, Rocky looked out as if she were just casually counting the crowd that didn’t exist on this dark street. I wasn’t thinking anything, I wasn’t feeling anything. I just clung to Yasmin, and she clung to me.
“I love you,” I murmured at last. When you find the appropriate time, it’s always the best and only thing to say.
She took my hand and we started walking slowly toward the back of the Budayeen. I thought we were just wandering, but after a few minutes I realized that Yasmin was leading me somewhere. The grim certainty grew in me that I didn’t want to see what she was going to show me.
A body had been stuffed into a large plastic trash bag, but someone had disturbed the pile of bags; Nikki’s bag had split open, and she lay sprawled on the damp, filthy bricks of a tight blind alley. “I thought it was your fault she was dead,” said Yasmin with a little whimper. “Because you didn’t do very much to try and find her.” I held Yasmin’s hand and we just stood there for a while, staring down at Nikki’s corpse, not saying anything more for a while. I knew that I’d see Nikki like this sometime, finally. I think I knew it from the beginning, when Tamiko had been murdered and Nikki made that short, frantic phone call.
I let go of Yasmin’s hand and knelt down beside Nikki. There was a lot of blood all over her, in the dark green trash bag, on the moss-covered bricks of the pavement. “Yasmin, baby,” I said, looking up into her bleak face, “you don’t want to see this anymore. Why don’t you call Okking, then go home? I’ll be there in a little while.”
Yasmin made a vague, meaningless gesture. “I’ll call Okking,” she said in a toneless voice, “but I got to go back to work.”
“Frenchy can go fuck himself tonight,” I said. “I want you to go home. Listen, honey, I need to have you there.”
“All right.” she said, smiling a little through the tears. Our relationship hadn’t been destroyed, after all. With a little care it would be just as good as new, maybe even better. It was a relief to feel hopeful again.
“How did you know she was here?” I asked, frowning.
“Blanca found her,” said Yasmin. “Her back door’s down there, and she passes by here on her way to work.” She pointed further up the alley, where a peeling, gray-painted door was set into the blank brick wall.
I nodded and watched Yasmin walk slowly toward the Street. Then I turned back to Nikki’s ruined body. It had been the throat-slasher, and I could see the bruises on Nikki’s wrists and neck, the burn marks, and a lot of small cuts and wounds. The killer had invested more time and expertise in finishing Nikki than he had with Tami or Abdoulaye. I was sure the medical examiner would find the traces of rape, too.
Nikki’s clothing and purse had been thrown into the trash bag with her. I looked through her clothes, but I didn’t find anything. I reached for the purse, but I had to lift Nikki’s head. She had been clubbed cruelly and savagely until her skull and hair and blood and brains were all crushed together into a repellent mass. Her throat had been cut so brutally that her head was almost severed. I had never seen such profane, desecrating, perverse savagery in my life. I cleared the strewn refuse from a space and rested Nikki’s corpse gently on the broken bricks. Then I walked away a few steps, knelt, and vomited. I heaved and retched until my stomach muscles began to ache. When the sickness passed, I made myself go back to look through her purse. I found two curious and noteworthy objects: a brass reproduction that I’d seen in Seipolt’s house of an ancient Egyptian scarab; and a crude, almost homemade-looking moddy. I put both in my shoulder bag, chose the trash bag with the least stench surrounding it, and made myself as comfortable as I could. I addressed a prayer to Allah on behalf of Nikki’s soul. Then I waited.
“Well,” I said quietly, looking around at the squalid, mucky place where Nikki had been abandoned, “I guess I get up in the morning and get my brain wired.” Maktoob, all right: It was written.
Muslims are often, by nature, very superstitious. Our co-travelers through Allah’s bewildering creation include all sorts of djinn, afrit, monsters, and good and bad angels. Then there are legions of sorcerous people armed with dangerous powers, the evil eye being the most frequently encountered. All of this makes the Muslim culture no more irrational than any other; every group of people has its own set of unfriendly, unseen things waiting to pounce on the unwary human being. Commonly there are far more enemies in the spirit world than there are protectors, although there are supposed to be uncountable armies of angels and the like. Maybe they’ve all been on R R since the deparadisation of Shaitan, I don’t know.
Anyway, one of the superstitious practices clung to by some Muslims, particularly the nomadic tribes and the uncivilized fellahin of the Maghrib — i.e., my mother’s people — is to name a newborn with an affliction or a dreadful quality to ward off the envy of whatever spirit or witch might be paying too much attention. I’m told that this is done all over the world by people who have never even heard of the prophet, may peace be on his name. I am called Marîd, which means “illness,” and I was given it in the hope that I would not, in fact, suffer much illness in my lifetime. The charm seems to have had a certain positive effect. I had a burst appendix removed a few years ago, but that’s a common, routine operation, and it is the only serious medical problem I’ve ever had. I guess that may be due to the improved treatments available in this age of wonders, but who can say? Praise Allah, and all that.
So I haven’t had much experience with hospitals. When the voices woke me, it took me quite some time to figure out where I was, and then another while to recall why the hell I was there in the first place. I opened my eyes; I couldn’t see anything but a dim blur. I blinked again and again, but it was like someone had tried to paste my eyelids closed with sand and honey. I tried to raise my hand to rub my eyes, but my arm was too weak; it wouldn’t travel the negligible distance from my chest to my face. I blinked some more and squinted. Finally I could make out two male nurses standing near the foot of my bed. One was young, with a black beard and a clear voice. He held a chart and was briefing the other man. “Mr. Audran shouldn’t give you too much trouble,” he said.
The second man was a good deal older, with gray hair and a hoarse voice. He nodded. “Meds?” he asked.
The younger man frowned. “It’s unusual. He can have almost anything he wants, with approval from his doctors. The way I understand it, he’ll get that approval just by asking. As much and as often as he wants.”
The gray-haired man let out an indignant breath. “What did he do, win a contest? An all-expense-paid drug holiday in the hospital of his choice?”
“Lower your voice, Ali. He isn’t moving, but he may be able to hear you. I don’t know who he is, but the hospital has been treating him like a foreign dignitary or something. What’s being spent to ablate every little twinge of his discomfort could relieve the pain of a dozen suffering poor people on the charity wards.”
Naturally, that made me feel like a filthy pig. I mean, I have feelings, too. I didn’t ask for this kind of treatment — I didn’t remember asking for it, at least — and I planned to put an end to it as soon as I could. Well, if not an end to it, that is, maybe ease it off a little. I didn’t want to be handled like a feudal shaykh.
The younger man went on, consulting his chart. “Mr. Audran was admitted for some elective intracranial work. Elaborate circuit implants, very experimental, I understand. That’s why he’s been on bed rest this long. There may be some unforeseen side effects.” That made me a little uneasy: what side effects? Nobody had ever mentioned them to me before.
“I’ll take a look at his chart this evening,” said the gray-haired man.
“He sleeps most of the time, he shouldn’t bother you too much. Merciful Allah, between the endorphin bubble and the injections, he should sleep for the next ten or fifteen years.” Of course, he was underestimating my wonderfully efficient liver and enzyme system. Everyone always thinks I’m exaggerating about that.
They began to leave the room. The older man opened the door and stepped out. I tried to speak; nothing came out, as if I hadn’t used my voice for months. I tried again. There was a whispered croaking sound. I swallowed a little saliva and murmured, “Nurse.”
The man with the black beard put my chart on the console beside my bed and turned to me, his expression blank. “Be right with you, Mr. Audran,” he said in a cool voice. Then he went out and shut the door behind him.
The room was clean and plain and almost bare of decoration, but it was also comfortable. It was much more comfortable than the charity wards, where I had been treated after my appendix burst. That had been an unpleasant time; the only bright spots were the saving of my life, all thanks be to Allah, and my introduction to Sonneine, once again may Allah be praised. The charity wards were not wholly philanthropic — I mean, the fellahin who could not afford private doctors were, indeed, given free medical attention; but the hospital’s principle motive was to provide a wide range of unusual problems for the interns, residents, and student nurses to practice upon. Everyone who examined you, everyone who performed some sort of test, everyone who did some minor surgery at your bedside, had only a modest familiarity with his job. These people were earnest and sincere, but inexperienced: they could make the simple taking of blood an ordeal, and a more painful procedure a hellish torture. It was not so in this private room. I had comfort and ease and freedom from pain. I had peace and rest and competent care.
Friedlander Bey was giving this to me, but I would repay him. He would see to that.
I suppose that I dozed off for a little while, because when the door opened again I awoke with a start. I expected to see the nurse, but it was a young man in a green surgical outfit. He had dark, sunburnt skin and bright brown eyes, with one of the largest black mustaches I’ve ever seen. I imagined him trying to contain the thing within a surgical mask, and that made me smile. My doctor was a Turk. I had a little trouble understanding his Arabic. He had trouble understanding me, too.
“How are we today?” he said without looking at me. He glanced through the nurse’s notes and then turned to the data terminal beside my bed. He touched a few keys, and displays changed on the terminal’s screen. He made no sounds at all, neither the doctor’s concerned clucking nor the encouraged humming. He stared at the scrolling parade of numbers and twirled the ends of his mustache. At last he faced me and said, “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I said noncommittally. When I deal with doctors I always figure that they’re after certain specific information; but they won’t ever come out and ask you just what they need to know because they’re afraid you’ll distort the truth and give them what you think they want to hear, so they go about it in this circular way as if you’re not still trying to guess what they want to know and distorting the truth anyway.
“Any pain?”
“A little,” I said. It was a lie: I was drifted to the hairline — my former hairline, that is. You never tell a doctor that you’re not suffering, because that might encourage him to lower your dosage of anodynes.
“Sleeping?”
“Yes.”
“Had anything to eat?”
I thought for a moment. I was ravenously hungry, although the IV was dripping a glucose solution directly into the back of my hand. “No,” I said.
“We might start you on some clear liquids in the morning. Been out of bed?”
“No.”