And West Is West

by Ron Childress

  Mariatu’s laugh lightens the air and the knots inside Zoe relax. Her laughter comes and soon the two of them are laughing toward the blue sky. They make a small spectacle for passersby. Then Zoe’s eyes fall again to the scar on Mariatu’s cheek.

  AT THE CENTRAL office of WIDO, Zoe is trying to micromanage a microloan situation. A contract they made with a collective of women farmers in Burundi has inspired the men of the village to imprison their wives in their huts. The village is to be the first stop on a tour of WIDO’s Central Africa projects by one of their major donors—a technology entrepreneur turned philanthropist. Zoe’s task is to settle the situation before WIDO’s hired photographer heads into the Burundi countryside to take preliminary site shots. She phones her contact in Bujumbura, Jean-Pierre.

  “You must give money to the husbands,” Jean-Pierre says.

  “But that’s not okay,” Zoe replies.

  “Still, you must give money to the husbands. Five million francs.”

  Zoe relays this information to Dr. Coombs, her boss, and he calls it extortion. “They live in grass huts for God’s sake. Can’t the women escape?”

  The solution is simple but not anything Dr. Coombs can discuss. So Zoe does. She has already calculated the exchange rate. “Five million Burundi francs are only a few hundred dollars,” she says.

  Coombs knits his graying eyebrows.

  “Look,” Zoe says. “I know that you can’t”—and she raises her fingers to form air quotes—“know anything about this, but—”

  “No,” Coombs cuts her off. “If word leaked that we paid a bribe as official policy, our donations would dry up.”

  “But it wouldn’t be official policy, not if I arranged the payment behind your back,” Zoe answers. “If something goes wrong, the burden of blame is on me.”

  Coombs considers this. “You would make that sacrifice?” Respect glints in her boss’s eyes. This is what Zoe is living for now, that glint. “Well, we are backed into a corner.”

  Zoe nods. She is not afraid of losing her job for the cause. Although at this point she is vague on what, exactly, their cause is. Are they trying to help the women in the village? Or are they trying to make sure WIDO’s donors keep donating?

  Zoe calls Jean-Pierre, but he does not pick up. Twenty minutes later, when Jean-Pierre finally answers, he tells her that now the village men want ten million francs to let the women go back to work. As there are no cell towers near the village Zoe knows that Jean-Pierre cannot have spoken directly with the husbands about the new demand. And if this much is a lie, what about the rest of Jean-Pierre’s story? Perhaps everything is fine in the village. But even if Zoe were sure of this, she cannot refuse Jean-Pierre. If she did, he might go to the village and create the problem.

  “Jean-Pierre,” Zoe says, “We only have five hundred dollars in our African account,” she lies. “Won’t the men accept that? It’s twice what we loaned their wives.”

  Jean-Pierre is silent and Zoe worries that she has insulted him. She worries that she has just ruined a photo op for WIDO’s most important donor. But finally, Jean-Pierre speaks. “I will give you an account number for the wire transfer,” he says in his cheery French accent.

  THAT EVENING THE Burundi situation is causing Zoe’s temples to pound. At lunch with Mariatu she had been five thousand miles distant. Now, here, ordering Ethiopian with Mariatu and her friends on Ninth Street, Zoe lags hours behind. Again and again she is reliving how Jean-Pierre cheated her until the menu she is studying displays not dinner choices but transcriptions of Jean-Pierre’s persistent, “You must pay the husbands. You must pay the husbands.” Their waiter is waiting on her.

  “Per-plexed?” Johannes, Mariatu’s friend, asks. Immaculate in his gray suit and yellow tie, perpetually smiling, he musically punctuates each of his syllables as if showing off his deep voice. “I would try the kitfo tartare.”

  “But you can’t go wrong with the shiro fit-fit,” interrupts Johannes’ friend, Hajhi. He is slighter, less sure of himself, and habitually touches his sparse goatee as if to make sure it’s there. “They serve it vegan here.”

  So far Zoe likes Hajhi better than the blustery Johannes. “Shiro fit-fit,” Zoe says to the waiter, who nods and departs.

  “I think you made the right choice,” Johannes says and reaches across the table to pat Zoe’s hand. He is not referring to Zoe’s selection of a meal but to her bribe to Jean-Pierre. She ought to have kept quiet about it. Now Johannes turns to Mariatu. “Do you remember Professor Kamara?” he asks.

  “Oh yes,” Mariatu says sadly.

  Johannes, speaking well over the conversations of neighboring tables, explains to Zoe, “The professor was failing a student whose papa worked for De Beers. One day a small pouch of uncut diamonds appears on our teacher’s desk.” Johannes lifts his eyebrows as if the conclusion of the story is apparent.

  “Well, what happened?” asks Hajhi.

  “Oh, Dr. Kamara,” Mariatu sighs.

  Johannes turns to Mariatu. “Sorry for bringing up the old days.”

  Mariatu’s eyes glisten. “It is fine. Go ahead, Jo.”

  Johannes begins. “During our civil war it was common for citizens to barter in rough diamonds, though this was very illegal. Dr. Kamara, of course, turned in the mysterious pouch. But this was not enough for him. He failed his failing student and made a stir about corruption at the university. He became the Socrates of Fourah Bay. It was inevitable that he would be arrested.” Johannes stops talking, perhaps out of consideration for Mariatu. The story, though, must be finished.

  Mariatu inhales and speaks. “Dr. Kamara was charged with possession of the contraband he himself turned in. Then he was accused of supporting the rebels. Even before the trial he lost his professorship. I started a petition.”

  “A dangerous thing,” Johannes interrupts.

  “Not so,” says Mariatu.

  “Yes,” says Johannes. “And what good did it do for you to risk your future.” This last statement hangs in the air.

  Zoe cannot stop herself from asking. “What happened to your professor?”

  “After receiving a sentence of fifteen years . . . Dr. Kamara hanged himself,” Mariatu says.

  There is silence until Hajhi snaps at Johannes. “But this has nothing to do with Zoe’s problem.”

  Johannes slowly wipes his face with his napkin. “My good friend, it has everything to do.” He turns to Zoe. “America operates differently from the world. Here you are not as desperate. You have the luxury of playing fair and you expect others will. So it is a shock when you go into another world and there are different rules. You think you are being cheated. But in some places a bribe is simple business. Not to ask for a bribe is a mark of stupidity. And not to offer one is bad form. When you are more experienced you will understand that a bribe is just a commission. As they say, ‘The monkey works, the baboon eats.’ ”

  “Johannes, you are not only corrupt but a complete idealist about America,” says Hajhi. “Here bribery is called a political donation.”

  After Johannes finishes laughing, Mariatu asks him, “What is Freetown like now?”

  Johannes considers the question. “Same-same.”

  Mariatu nods.

  “When was the last time you were home?” Hajhi asks, and this makes Mariatu smile.

  “Five years ago. And I’m afraid my country was still not ready to deal with this.” Mariatu touches the dent in her cheek. To Zoe, her friend’s injury seems more pronounced now, perhaps because of the restaurant’s lighting.

  “You could have it fixed,” suggests Johannes.

  “No,” Mariatu says simply.

  “Then I still do not think you could find a job in Freetown.” Johannes turns his eyes to Zoe. “It has been more than ten years and everyone is still traumatized by the war. They want to pretend it had not been so terrible. But if you have a wound like Mariatu’s, you remind them.”

  “You’re drunk,” Hajhi says to Johannes. “He had three beers befo
re you arrived,” he explains to Mariatu.

  Johannes pours the contents of his current beer down his throat and sighs “ahh” as if to antagonize Hajhi. Zoe cannot tell if the two men are spatting lovers or simply friends irritated with each other. “I am celebrating my reunion with Mariatu,” Johannes says. “And I will drink.”

  “Drink. Drink,” says Mariatu. “So I can always count on you to tell me the truth.”

  “JOHANNES IS MY time machine,” Mariatu tells Zoe. They have said goodnight to Mariatu’s friends and are walking west on U Street. “That is why I enjoy seeing him. He reminds me of what I must try to be.” Mariatu crosses her arms against the night’s chill.

  “Arrogant?” Zoe says.

  Mariatu laughs. “Honest. In Freetown, Johannes was beaten up many times. He was brazen in presenting himself as a man who loves men. In Sierra Leone a man cannot be as apparent as one is here. There, for men to have sex together is a serious crime.”

  It is a Thursday night and on U Street’s narrow sidewalks the privileged young mill about. Zoe and Mariatu pass through crowds of them outside nineteenth-century townhomes that have been converted into cafes and bistros, funky clothing stores and shops filled with trendy furnishings.

  “Johannes inspired me to go into the countryside to teach,” Mariatu says. “I was warned that it would be risky. My family forbade me to go. But if Johannes stood up for what he believed in, how could I not do what my conscience asked?”

  They pass a check-cashing store that seems out of place.

  “The rebels came to my school more than once,” Mariatu says. “At first they were afraid of me because I showed them no fear. They did not know what this rich uman was doing in the village. They probably thought I knew Charles Taylor. They were ignorant men that you can sometimes stand up to. But, yes, it was arrogance to imagine I could send them away time and again. When you are young you believe that your ideals can save you and the world.”

  On an island in the intersection where they are about to part, Mariatu asks if Zoe has read Simone de Beauvoir. Guiltily Zoe shakes her head. Mariatu continues. “When she was young Simone was a ferocious hiker and traveled everywhere alone, hitching rides through the countryside whenever she grew exhausted. A colleague at the school where she taught warned her that this was dangerous. Simone, however, believed that the warning only reflected her colleague’s spinsterish fantasy. Then one day Simone accepted a ride from two young men. Only after they made a wrong turn in the direction of a desolate valley did she understand their intention.”

  Zoe begins to imagine that this story has a lot to do with Mariatu’s life—with how Mariatu turned around what would be for most people an insurmountable trauma. “Is it because of what the men did to her that she wrote The Second Sex?” Zoe asks. Though Zoe has not read Beauvoir she does know the title of her most famous book.

  “No. No,” Mariatu corrects. “As the men were driving her away Simone threatened to jump from their moving car. She intimidated them and they let her go. Then she went on to write The Second Sex.”

  “Because she was not raped?”

  “Exactly,” Mariatu says. “Simone said that her escape strengthened her delusion that she could always get herself out of any fix. It helped to make her audacious. If she had been abused by those men, perhaps she would not have become the writer we know. Perhaps she would have been broken. Our lives turn on such fortunes.”

  The walk light has now come and gone several times. Mariatu and Zoe hug goodbye. But after Zoe steps into the street she looks back at Mariatu. “Do you ever wonder? . . .” Zoe stops speaking.

  But Mariatu is quick. “Do I wonder what the alternate me, the me who was not attacked, is doing now? I do not wonder this. I know,” Mariatu says as if announcing a cosmic joke. “If she had been able to stop those soldiers, today she would be the president of her country and also satisfying the hunger of multitudes with a single loaf of bread. That is how arrogant and impossible I was then. That I might still be that way. The Mariatu you see before you, I am afraid, is not her.”

  DR. PORTER COOMBS lives six blocks from work on a street mixed with residences and embassies and art galleries. His row house, a brick federal three windows wide with black shutters and stone lintels, looks as formal as Porter behaves at the office. Zoe turns her key and steps inside. Strangely, she hears the television and smells popcorn. And before she can backtrack she is caught.

  “Hey,” Cassie Coombs says over the back of the living room couch as if Zoe’s late appearance in her father’s home is the most ordinary of things. Cassie, just four years younger than Zoe, is enrolled in prelaw at Georgetown. She lives in the dorm and sometimes spends the weekends here. But she never stays overnight on school nights, so she has surprised Zoe.

  “Hi, Cassie,” Zoe replies awkwardly. Porter, even though his ex-wife is remarried, likes to keep his worlds separate. Or is it that he doesn’t want his daughter to find out that his girlfriend is almost thirty years his junior?

  “Dad’s taking a bath,” Cassie says.

  “Okay,” Zoe says, her smile locked.

  “So you guys are dating,” Cassie says, then offers Zoe popcorn from a steel bowl.

  “Just ate,” Zoe apologizes. On the television, investigators at a crime scene are standing over a corpse. Cassie settles back in the couch to watch.

  Upstairs, Zoe hears water slosh. “It’s me,” she whispers through the closed door.

  More water sloshes and then it goes still. “Zoe?” Porter whispers back.

  “Sorry. Can I come in?”

  Porter meditates a moment. “What the heck.”

  Later, when Porter goes downstairs to say goodnight to Cassie, Zoe gets in bed and checks her phone. There’s an email from Alex castigating her about Ethan. For not communicating. She deletes it.

  “You all right?” Porter asks when he returns.

  She puts the phone on the nightstand and turns out the light. “It’s nothing.”

  The bed creaks as Porter gets under the sheets with her. “Shhh,” Porter says. “You can hear a pin drop through these floors.”

  But Zoe hasn’t moved. Now she runs a hand up the inside of Porter’s thigh. “What do you think she thinks we’re doing?” She sees Porter’s eyes sparkle, darting in the ambiance filtering through the closed blinds. “Your daughter is grown up,” Zoe says.

  “And she seemed fine with us?”

  “Like it was barely worth commenting about.”

  “Wait till her mother finds out.”

  “Finds out what?” Zoe asks even though she knows he means their age difference. For the hundredth time Zoe considers that their age gap might make her laughable. Within herself, however, she imagines herself to be his peer. Her hand touches Porter’s penis, which is thickening. She clenches it as if squeezing a lemon.

  “Ouch,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

  Everyone is sorry for something tonight. “Sorry for what?” Zoe asks. Is he sorry for calling her out about her Indian summer comment? Is he sorry for letting her send extortion money to Jean-Pierre in Burundi? She squeezes Porter again.

  Porter squirms and tries to restrain a giggle, but he does not push Zoe’s hand away. They are equals now. They are both acting like naughty, gleeful children. But the moment passes. Zoe takes back her hand and listens to their breathing. In the dark, she hears Porter swallow.

  “I’m sorry for not going with you to your parents’ funeral. I should have been there for you,” he says.

  CHAPTER 19

  New York City

  “Red cadium,” Ethan says, brushing the snow from his fleece top.

  “You mean cadmium,” the clerk corrects.

  “Cadmium? Are you sure?” Ethan asks. He reviews Alex’s list. It reads cadium.

  Ethan is a double-checker. How he lost his job over a misplaced decimal point is a mystery. He was overtired, certainly. He had worked the previous night through, yes. But he had tested the algorithm twice with pseudo-data before maki
ng it live. Over the past three months he has mentally reconstructed his keystrokes countless times and has concluded that the decimal point shift was not his. That someone had sabotaged him.

  “No such animal,” states the clerk like an offended expert. He is close to a decade younger than Ethan, boasts fingernails encrusted with pigment.

  “Do you know Alex Carr?” Ethan asks.

  The put-upon clerk—put upon because he is wasting his genius on an art amateur like Ethan, put upon because he is probably only clerking here to steal the painting supplies he can’t afford—says, “I’ve heard of Carr.”

  Things are happening fast. Alex’s local fame is the new norm. His star began to rise—following a mention in Time Out and a sidebar review in the Voice—after Ethan’s imploded. Ethan shows the clerk Alex’s list. Taking dictation, Ethan had scrawled the supplies on the back of a Duane Reade receipt for Wellbutrin. “This is his handwriting,” Ethan fibs, pointing to his own misspelling.

  The clerk takes the list. “It’s cadmium,” he mumbles as he goes into the aisles, efficiently returning a few minutes later with the list items—the ten tubes of paint, the extrawide hog bristle brushes, the turpentine, the linseed oil. Scanning barcodes he asks Ethan, “Carr wouldn’t need a good studio assistant?” Ethan says nothing and gives the clerk his credit card.

  While the card is run Ethan asks himself if this is true—not whether he is a lousy studio assistant, but whether a studio assistant is what he now is.

  He has spent much of the past three months assisting Alex—though it could be argued that Alex is assisting him. Picking up supplies, stretching canvas, helping Alex move to his new studio in Chelsea have been healthy distractions for Ethan while he takes on his old company. His lawyer’s advice was to go on the offensive. This would be expensive, perhaps ruinously so. But UIB’s clawback would have ruined him anyway. Why not fight?

  Having never sued anyone, he is finding the process exhilarating. The strategy sessions, the briefs, the petitions, the counterclaims are, in fact, overstimulating. He cannot settle down to the drudgery of looking for a new job. And what work could he find anyway, with his professional reputation in shreds? For that matter, away from the influence of Dwayne Hoke, he’s been reflecting on his old work beyond the math. “Think of it as creative destruction,” Hoke had said whenever he’d expressed the slightest reservation about profiting from military violence, or sometimes just, “The world’s going into the shitter, pussy. Man up and do your job.”