“Well,” says Aaliyah, “I am sure she will learn. Perhaps I will gift her a recipe book at the wedding.”
And I’m thinking that since respect for all living creatures, no matter their deliciousness, is Tariq’s thing, maybe he’s the one who needs to learn how to make hummus and baba ghanoush and cornmeal whatever. But this is not the time or the place for that discussion.
I take another dollop of the hummus, and one of mystery dish number two for good measure. I use my right hand only, as Tariq instructed me. My left hand stays in my lap. This, even though I explained to him that I actually use my right hand to wipe my backside. Apparently the appearance is more important in this case than the reality.
“Aaliyah,” I say after a long silence. “I hope this isn’t a sensitive topic, but I’ve noticed that my phone doesn’t seem to work here.”
Aaliyah shoots a quick, sour glance at Tariq.
“That is true,” she says. “Has Tariq not explained this to you?”
I shrug.
“He said something earlier about a Faraday cage, but I don’t know what that is, and without my phone, I couldn’t look it up.”
“I do not know either what is a Faraday cage,” she says. “My home is a refuge. What is of the outside cannot reach us here, and objects that are of the outside—like your phone, or implants if you had them—cannot function here.”
“Implants?” I say. “You mean like oculars?” Aaliyah nods. “What about medical nanos? Or macro devices like cardiac pacemakers?”
She shakes her head.
“All these things are dependent on contact with the outside,” says Aaliyah. “None of them will function here.”
I look at Tariq.
“I would have explained this if it had been necessary,” he says. “You have no implants, so it did not seem important.”
I stare him down. Plenty of people claim to be 100 percent natural. Not so many actually are at this point. It would have been a wicked surprise if I’d keeled over as soon as Aaliyah’s door closed behind me.
I guess that would have been one way for him to find out that I’m not the girl for him.
“You should have explained all of this to Elise,” says Aaliyah. “Not because she will die for lack of her implants, but because this is an important aspect of the faith.” She turns to me. “What has my brother told you about his faith? What has he told you about his family?”
Tariq’s eyes are wide. The truth is that he’s told me virtually nothing about his family, and I had no idea that he had a faith until Aaliyah asked me if I would convert.
“Well,” I start in, but Tariq cuts me off.
“I have not spoken with Elise about our family,” he says. “And I have not spoken with her about our faith. You know this, Aaliyah. It is unkind to torment her so.”
“Yes, I know.” Aaliyah says. “I know that I have opened my home to a stranger.”
Tariq shakes his head. He opens his mouth to speak, but I put a hand to his lips.
“No,” I say. “I am not a stranger. Tariq may not have told me as much as he should have, but he will now. I may not be family yet, but I can be. I will be.”
Aaliyah’s eyes flicker back and forth between mine and Tariq’s. I close my eyes, and when I open them Aaliyah is smiling.
“So tell me,” she says. “How did you meet?”
I met Tariq in the Inner Harbor, on the last Friday night in August. I was walking off dinner with Terry, wandering past the aquarium and talking about heading over to Fells Point for a drink, when I saw Tariq mugging for the tourists in the little amphitheater on Light Street. There was a crowd around him—mostly women, and mostly either drunk or on the way there. Tariq was giving them a mix of silly acrobatics and card tricks, and they were squealing and cheering and egging him on. I had no intention of stopping. Terry was actually making fun of him when his eyes met mine.
“Elise Freberg,” he said. “Come and join us. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Terry stopped in mid-mock, and stared at me. “Do you know this guy?”
I shook my head. Tariq crooked a finger at me and smiled.
“Seriously?” Terry asked. She put a hand on my elbow. I pulled away. Tariq held up a stack of cards. He fanned them out, and letters written in marker on the backs spelled out my name.
“Come on,” said Terry. “The Green Goose is calling.”
But I wasn’t interested in the Green Goose. I was interested in Tariq. He was short and skinny, and wearing these ridiculous green cargo shorts with a tee shirt that had a picture on the front of Theodore Roosevelt boxing a kangaroo. His teeth were a little crooked, and his hair looked like he’d cut it himself. But his cards spelled out my name, and for some reason that made up for everything else.
Later, when the tourists were gone and the sun was down and Terry had taken a cab back to her apartment, I asked him how he’d known my name.
“I’ve always known your name,” he said. “I just didn’t know when I’d finally be able to say it.”
Back in the guest room, I grab Tariq by the shoulders and push him down onto the bed.
“Elise,” he says. “Why so forceful? All you had to do was ask.”
He looks up expectantly, but I’m not smiling. His face falls. I sit down beside him, rest my elbows on my knees, and run my hands back through my hair. I haven’t washed it in two days now—or is it three?—and my fingers come away with a light coating of oil.
“Look,” I say. “I need to know what’s happening, Tariq. You haven’t been honest with me, and that’s not a good thing, considering that we’re supposed to be getting married in less than a month.”
“This has nothing to do with the wedding,” he says. “Bigger forces have intervened in our lives.”
I shake my head.
“This has everything to do with the wedding. We all have little secrets. I mean, I may not have been totally honest with you as far as how I feel about a nice medium-rare steak, but Tariq—this is a pretty big one. Why didn’t you tell me you have a sister? I didn’t think you had any family at all. Were you planning on springing them all on me on our wedding day? And by the way, how many more are there?”
He stares me down, and for one long moment I think he’s actually going to give me shit about the steak thing.
“There are no more,” Tariq says finally. “My parents are no longer with us, and I have no other siblings, no nieces or nephews or uncles or aunts. Aaliyah is all.”
“And you never told me about her because . . .”
He looks away.
“Because I was afraid of how your meeting would go. You see how she is, with her talk of cookbooks and conversions. I was afraid she might . . . frighten you away.”
I look at him. His eyes are wide, and almost pleading.
“So you thought you could hide her from me forever?”
He shakes his head.
“No! Not forever. Just until after the wedding. Until you could see that her talk is just talk. Until you could see that I have no interest in making you over into something you are not. Aaliyah is all the family I have, and I love her terribly. But she and I are very different, and I wanted to make sure that you could see that certainly before you spoke with her.”
He takes my hand and squeezes. I sigh, and squeeze back.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll give you a pass on the sister—but what about this faith? I’d kind of assumed you were a Rastafarian or something, but now I’m thinking that’s not right.”
He laughs.
“No, I am not a Rastafarian.”
“So what are you? My next guess would be Muslim, but I don’t think that’s right either, is it?”
“No,” he says. “I am not a Muslim. In truth, I am not anything. I am of the outside now. I can no more claim my mother’s faith than I can her cooking.”
There’s a sadness in his voice now, and I don’t want to press—but I do want an answer.
“But what about Aaliyah? Her faith seems to be very important to her, and it seems like she thinks it should be to you as well.”
He looks down, then away.
“My apostasy saddens her. This is very true. There are few of us left, and every loss now is another coffin nail. There is great beauty in the faith, and very deep truth. But there is also a bitterness at the core that I found at some point I could no longer deny.”
I slide over until our hips touch.
“Isn’t that true of every faith? Grace was raised Catholic, but she doesn’t pretend to follow every tenet of the faith. I doubt there’s a single Catholic in North America who does.”
He shakes his head.
“That may be so. But our faith is not the sort that can be taken in parts. It must be embraced in its sum, or rejected. Aaliyah embraces it, and you can see what this does to her. I have rejected it, and so am now a part of the outside.”
I wrap my arm around his waist. He leans his head against mine, and closes his eyes.
“You know,” I say. “You still haven’t told me which faith I’m not converting to.”
He smiles, and pats my leg with one hand.
“No,” he says. “I have not.”
I’m jolted from sleep by a knock on the door.
“Aaliyah?” Tariq’s voice is slurred with sleep. He rises up on one elbow beside me.
“Wake up, brother,” says Aaliyah from behind the door. “You need to go.”
He sits up fully, and rubs at his eyes.
“Go? Go where? You agreed that you would keep us here.”
“Yes,” says Aaliyah, “and I am not withdrawing my hospitality. But events are moving swiftly, and there are things that you must do. I will keep Elise here. You will do what you must and return.”
“Sister, why? Have I not done enough?”
There is a long silence before Aaliyah replies.
“I am sorry, brother—but it seems that you have done too much.”
8. GARY
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
Angry Irish Inch:
Sir Munchalot:
I open my eyes. Someone’s pounding on the door. I blink to my chronometer. It’s a little after nine.
“Anders!” I say. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Gary. Unlatch the door.”
I shake my head clear, arch my back and stretch.
“I dunno, Anders. It’s past your curfew. I expected you home by six.”
His fist thumps against the lintel.
“Open the fucking door!”
Okay, he’s not amused. I kick down the footrest on the recliner, stand and stretch again. For most of the day there’s been a dull ache in my lower back. Now it’s radiating all the way up to my shoulder blades. I can’t complain about my job for the most part, but it’s definitely tough on the spine.
I’m sure my ditch-digging grandfather would sympathize.
I walk into the foyer. Anders has the door open a crack, but I’ve got the chain lock set. He gives it a rattle when he sees me coming.
“Why the chain, Gary?”
“These are crazy days,” I say. “UnAltered roaming around, beating up innocent mutants and cyborgs. Can’t be too safe.”
I push the door closed and unlatch the chain, then open it again to let him in. He shoves past me, and stalks into the kitchen. I close the door behind him, turn the deadbolt and set the chain.
“Easy there, big guy,” I say. “What happened? Rough day at the office? Did one of your students finally figure out that you have no idea what you’re talking about?”
The fridge door opens. I hear Anders rooting around, and then the door slamming closed again.
“No beer, huh?”
“Nope,” I say. “I think your cave lady put away the last one yesterday.”
He growls. Like a dog. Not a scary dog, though. Maybe a pomeranian.
“Seriously,” I say. “What’s the issue, friend? You’re being kind of a tool.”
“Nothing,” he says. He stomps into the living room and drops onto the couch. I follow after him. He’s sitting with his hands folded behind his head, staring at the wall.
“Okay,” I say. “I think I get it now. You’re three hours late getting back from class, and you’re clomping around the house like a sixteen-year-old girl who didn’t get asked to the prom. So let me guess: trouble in prehistoric paradise?”
His eyes narrow, and his mouth sets into a hard, thin line. Bingo.
I sit down beside him and put a hand on his knee.
“What happened, buddy? I’m here for you.”
He looks at me, then down at my hand. I snatch it back. When he gets annoyed with me, he does this hand-slap thing. He’s too fast to dodge, and it hurts like hell.
“Really,” I say. “I hate seeing my big Swedish meatball down in the dumps. What’s going on?”
“Seriously,” he says. “Nothing is going on. I stopped by Terry’s place on the way home. That’s all.”
“Did she feed you?”
He looks at me.
“What?”
“Did she give you any dinner?”
He rolls his eyes. Not sure where the attitude is coming from.
“No, Gary. She did not give me any dinner.”
I smile.
“Mystery solved. You’re being a jerk because you have low blood sugar. Also low blood alcohol. I’ll ping for a cab.”
The taxi drops us off in front of the Green Goose a little after ten. Anders gets out while I pay the driver. The driverless cabs are cheaper, but in my line of work, it’s a good idea to pay a little extra to avoid traceability.
“So,” I say. “How long are you working tonight?”
“Not sure,” the driver says. “Nobody out tonight. Maybe I go home and take a nap.”
I hand him double the fare.
“Tell you what,” he says, and hands me a card. “You need a ride home later? You give me a call.”
I climb out and close the door. The driver signals, pulls out into the nonexistent traffic, and accelerates away.
The Green Goose is on Thames Street, just off of Broadway in Fells Point. It’s usually packed on weekend nights, and pretty busy even in the middle of the week. It’s empty tonight, though. There are two bartenders—a big guy with a red neckbeard, and a woman who’s an obvious Pretty—and a couple of waitresses circulating around, but not more than a half dozen customers. Anders takes a stool at the bar, and I sit down beside him. I
love this place. The bar stools are comfortable, the brass is polished, the sound system is loud enough to hear but low enough to talk over. It always makes me think of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.”
I once made the mistake of mentioning that to Anders. He looked at me like I had two heads.
“Hemingway,” I said.
Nothing. It was like talking to a chimp.
“Hemingway,” I said again. “Ernest Hemingway, you illiterate dolt.”
He did the hand-slap thing then. Bastard.
The Pretty bartender comes over. Her eyes slide past me and settle on Anders.
“Hey,” she says. “Where’s your no-tip robot friend?”
Anders hesitates, then snaps his fingers.
“You wait tables at the diner up on Charles, right?”
“Yeah,” she says. She turns around and hikes her ass up onto the bar. “Now do you recognize me?”
Anders blushes. I burst out laughing. She smiles as she hops back down.
“It’s okay. Everybody in that place stares at my ass. I’m pretty sure that’s what they hired me for. Anyway, what can I getcha?”
Anders scratches his head.
“Two IPAs to start with. Is the grill still running?”
She looks at Neckbeard. He shakes his head.
“Nah, but there’s not much going on tonight. I can fix you something cold. Sandwich and a salad, maybe?”
“Sure. Ham and cheddar, with some yellow mustard?”
“You got it.” She looks at me. “How about you, hon? Hungry, or just thirsty?”
I shrug.
“Same as him, I guess. With a BrainBump.”
She looks at Neckbeard again. He scowls. She leans over the bar toward me and lowers her voice.
“We’re not serving that crap for the duration. Better stick with the beer.”
She straightens up and heads into the kitchen.
“Huh,” I say when she’s gone. “What do you think that was about?”
Anders looks around. Neckbeard is pouring our beers. There’s nobody else at the bar.
“I’m not sure,” he says. “But I guess there’s some bad stuff going on. Terry said she got punched in the head this afternoon by Joey at the Jolly Pirate.”
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