THUGLIT Issue Six

by Kieran Shea

  Startled, I responded. "He's not my friend. We just met on the plane." The clerk was being dragged away by other frustrated passengers. The stranger yawned.

  "Well lady, its fine with me if you don't mind. I'm beat. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

  “Okay.” I gave in. The Indian nodded, pleased the matter was settled, and turned away into the crowd. My new roommate touched my arm. Fine-tuned nerves iced my skin. He was a big man. My feet seared and I felt swollen. I needed a snort of coke. "I'm going to find the head. Could you get our hotel together and grab a cab? My bags are there." I pointed to the counter where my luggage sat guarded by a young boy.

  As I walked off, he yelled after me. "By the way, lady, what’s your name? Mine's Jim.” Anxious, I pushed toward the lounge.

  Inside a dirty stall with no paper, a hit of cocaine burned sleep-starved nerves alive. After a second snort, my heart jumped, running through a dozen pictures of my life. I remembered a scared five-year-old in a frilly dress beside my mother in tears. There were flower heads stoned out in Griffith Park, Laguna Canyon acid trips, and whipped-cream orgies in San Francisco; waiting for test results at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, and Country Joe screaming during Berkeley riots. There was a fast, angry, lost series of escapes to Europe, to Asia, and then here, in this airport again. Tucking the vial away, I walked out to meet Jim. He was leaning on a taxi fender. "Come on,” he said. “By the way, I never got your name.”

  “Crystal,” I lied.

  The parking lot was crowded, a hundred shoebox cars mashed tail to tail. Our driver spit a dark ribbon of betel juice across the road as we settled onto worn seats.

  "You’ve been to Kabul before?" Jim asked.

  "Kabul?"

  "Heard you ask about the flight to Kabul. I'm headed there myself. I bought a house up in Paghman. Beautiful place. I love Kabul, especially the rug sellers on Chicken Street with their crafty lies.” He turned to me, “You okay?”

  "Just tired." My head leaned back wishing for the home I'd made in Kabul. Nick was waiting with French Champagne and payoffs.

  "You got friends in Kabul?"

  "No, not really." I closed my eyes to ward off conversation. In my past there were only people I ran from, and people I ran to. Nick was a friend.

  The taxi careened through a large iron gate. A garden of orchids captured moonlight in a path to the hotel lobby. We signed in and climbed a marble staircase three flights, while the bellboy filled the only elevator with our luggage. The door opened to a spacious air-conditioned room with two beds, one large double and a single. I collapsed on the single and kicked off my clogs.

  "Bring a bucket of ice and four bottles of Seven-Up. You have Seven-Up?" Jim asked the bellboy.

  “Yes sir. Seven-Up, ice, a bucket. Right away." Jim fell on the double bed, while I sat up to rub my aching feet. His eyes were watchful. "If you don't have friends in Kabul you could stay at my place. There's plenty of room.”

  I thought of Nick. “Barracudas in the drug underworld, rip-offs, travel for leads on runners with cash.” These were the dark stories of Asia: American missing in Katmandu. A tourist found stabbed in Calcutta, or another couple dead in a Peshawar teahouse. The American Consul adds a paragraph in a report and no news makes the Herald Tribune.

  I may have been picked up in Bali. What could I do, confront him? Say man, before we get comfortable, you want my money belt? I turned, pulled the rubber band out of my long hair, and shook my head. "I do have a friend in Kabul. Nick. Do you know him?"

  He smiled, "Sure, I know Nick. He's been over my way a few times." The bellboy knocked and entered, placing a full tray on the bureau. Then he scuttled out the door. Jim pulled a bottle of VO out of his flight bag and turned to mix drinks. As he walked over to hand me a drink, I saw a leather sheath on the white bed. I leaned back, slightly. He followed my eyes, "Oh, my knife." He picked it up off the bed gently. My fingers tightened on the icy glass. I took a long gulp. My eyes stuck on the case in his hand. He pulled out a hunter’s knife. Lamplight flashed on metal. He turned the blade thoughtfully. "It's a beauty, all right. Had to pay a lot of baksheesh to get that baby through. Never travel without her.”

  “I've seen those knives in Kabul,” I shivered.

  “I had it made there." He slid the knife back in the case and tossed it on the bed.

  I finished my drink in one gulp, grabbed my flight bag, and escaped to the bathroom. I dropped the bag on the tile floor and gripped the side of the cracked sink. I heard Nick's soothing voice. Keep your wits and guard the money. I'd take a couple of Valiums, just enough to quiet down. The blues went down with tap water. I held onto the edge of the sink. No matter what, I wouldn't take off the money belt. I stared into the mirror at a pale, breathless face. My hands shook as I rubbed cold water over my face. I couldn’t save the money from a knife. I saw my throat peel open ear to ear. Blood pounded in my head. I had to get out of the bathroom.

  The room was dark. I saw his body curled up on the bed before I switched off the bathroom light. "Goodnight," he muttered, shifting his body to the wall.

  "Goodnight," I whispered.

  I pulled my dress over my head and crawled between the sheets wearing a thin slip. The Valiums began to calm me, but now I had to stay awake. As I reached for a cigarette, Jim's quiet snore blended with the soft hum of the air-conditioner. Was he faking? Would he try anything while I was awake?

  Beneath the covers, I slid my hand under my slip to loosen the money belt strap from cutting into my flesh. I took a deep breath. Guard the money or my life. I just did the runs: Go to this place with that package, smile this way at that man, walk this way through that door, talk to this man but not that man, return to this place with that money. If I did the things right I wouldn't get hurt. If not, I'd go to prison or be dead. I ran because it's what I knew; it's what I'd always done. I loved the money. What was my life worth anyway, a twenty-three-year-old drifter on the downside.

  I needed a drink, but was too scared to get out of bed. And I wanted some coke. Finally, I eased out of bed and slid to the bathroom for my bag. Jim stirred. I froze. He snored again. I slipped to the bureau, slid ice cubes into the bottom of my glass, and poured VO. After a quick taste I got back in bed and shuffled through my bag.

  Lying back, I uncapped the vial with its spoon dangling from a gold-mesh chain, a present from Nick. Bankers get watches. I got a golden spoon. Missing my nose, powder floated, disappearing in the lace on my slip. A sip of whiskey washed down the bitter taste. I lay back while the pale moonlight filtered through the room, and watched a thick bug crawl across the wall, waiting for the night to end.

  My eyes opened to light. I reached for the money belt. It was safe. Someone was tapping on the door. I rose with the strangeness of the night clinging to my senses and peeked through a crack in the door. The ice boy rushed his message "Miss, airport call. Flight to Kabul leave one hour. Must hurry."

  "Bring a large pot of coffee, cream, sugar, toast, and lots of orange juice." I shut the door. Gently I shook Jim awake on my way to the bathroom.

  "Wake up. Our flight leaves in one hour."

  The shower was cold and the night showed in dark lines as I stood over the sink to rinse cotton from my mouth. I pulled on my dress, and brushed my tangled hair into a smooth ponytail. I walked out to meet Jim, who stood half-dressed, a coffee cup in his hand. "You're sure in a rush to catch that plane."

  "Yep. Nick was expecting me yesterday." As he moved to the bathroom, I stood munching toast and remembered the cocaine vial under my pillow. “Jim," he peeked around the bathroom door to see me holding a coke spoon. "You want a wake-up?” We smiled.

  "Great, I ran out in Bangkok. Can't score nothing there but smack." I walked over to him with a full spoon. I took a hit, and offered him another full spoon, as we looked into each other's faces. I stuffed the vial in my pocket. We made the flight.

  Event: past-present-future. Nick was lounging by the Customs counter, talking to an Afghan officer whose
new house we'd bought and furnished. He hugged me. "Heard you had some bad weather."

  "Yeah." I smiled, "but I’m fine now." I turned to see Jim pick up our bags and stroll behind as Nick guided me through the door. "You know him?" I questioned Nick.

  His eyes were grim. "Word had it some barracuda got your name, so we sent Jim from Bali." I stood back as Nick and Jim gripped hands. Nick said, "Thanks, man."

  Jim laughed and winked. "No problem. Come up to Paghman sometime. We'll celebrate." Turning, he strode through a mass of donkey carts, slid around a corner, and was gone.

  Nick took my arm and pushed into a cab. I thought of cold champagne, breakfast, and a soft bed. I knew that soon I’d be on another run. I could already hear Nick whispering, "Once you have a nice rest…" The Himalayas loomed over Kabul on a bright blue day, and the merchants spread their wares. The crowd thickened as the taxi wound through dusty streets. Nick’s voice faded in the sharp, cold air as I stared out the window and drifted away.

  Event: ---imagined. I jump out of the taxi and run down the main unpaved roadway past camel lines, past chai shops with old men whose henna red beards wave in the crisp mountain breeze, past the old woman with no face, past the children’s hands held out in thin air, palms outreached… begging… begging… begging and then over the last wooden bridge, and up a goat’s mountain trail.

  I could see a path, away from where I had been. It was steep, and each step was hard. The past lumbered behind me with sour breath on my neck. Gray shapes from the future ran beside me. Afghani tribesmen waved guns in the air, laughing, while they sold hash to foreigners and their sons, and sons of sons stalked beside them. Children who became terrorists and became hunters of terrorists… begging… begging… begging.

  In some small turning of a wheel, a roll of events, led to drugs changing hands that led to money changing hands that led to guns changing hands that led to wars and, even then, in the quiet of Kabul before all hell broke loose, the hills were alive with a soft ghostly whisper of cart wheels wagon wheels, with feet hitting the soft shale of the mountains dust beside them, running toward a future with a thousand angry fingers on a trigger… begging… begging… begging.

  Come On Home

  By Scott Adlerberg

  By now, she’d be angry. He phoned her every night at ten and his computer clock said quarter to eleven. Home in bed, watching TV, she’d be wondering whether he’d taken a break from work to go around the corner for a beer. A beer and a shot. Carla had a mistrustful, pessimistic mind and nothing he could do, nothing he could say to her, changed that. In their five years married, he’d never once cheated on her, yet she’d begin to get heartburn if he didn’t call from his desk at ten. No call by ten-fifteen and she’d be thinking he was at the bar, drinking and talking, hitting on the women there. For crying out loud! She was so predictable, it depressed him. Could anyone blame him if he did sometimes go on a bender? He needed the occasional weekend alone, in a motel, with vodka for company. He needed that time away from her neurotic fears.

  Ben turned his swivel chair and lifted the phone receiver on his desk. Two zero one, three three three, five eight nine five. Two rings and his wife picked up. How come she didn’t say hello?

  “Carla?”

  He heard loud, raspy breathing and at once knew it wasn’t Carla. His wife didn’t breathe so hard. Even when she was furious, dressing him down for something, her breathing remained soft. Ben listened, waiting to hear a voice, and he had the thought that it could be Carla giving him the silent treatment. She was conveying her annoyance for phoning so late.

  “I was busy, Carla. I got caught up in some work...”

  He stopped. No, the person on the other end couldn’t possibly be his wife. Deliberate silence was not her way when upset, and no matter how heated, she never lost the verbal dexterity to fire off a barbed comment.

  Inhale, exhale: slow and almost truculent breaths. They sounded like a challenge to him, an invitation to guess a name, and he began to worry.

  “Who is this?” he said. “Where’s my wife?”

  Would she sleep with someone? Who among our friends--?

  She wouldn’t.

  But it’d be a surprise at least. Might liven things up if Carla does something I didn’t expect.

  “Answer me. Do I know you?”

  “Your wife is dead.”

  He’d called the wrong number. That had to be it. The man who’d spoken was some crazy guy alone in a dank apartment somewhere, fantasizing about killing. Or maybe he’d gotten somebody bitter, a recent victim of a nasty divorce. He could picture this stewing misogynistic man sitting by himself wherever he lived, a jerk who felt compelled to play a nasty joke on the stranger disturbing him, looking to speak to his wife.

  But he was sure he’d punched in his number correctly.

  “You hear me? Your wife is dead. She’s right here, on the floor, but dead.”

  Ben hung up. He rolled back in his chair and pushed himself to his feet, walking away from his desk and across the wide bullpen area. One strip of ceiling lights were turned on and cast a dull white glow on all the empty workstations. Screensaver images twinkled in the darkness, glossy simulacra of dancing cats, tropical beaches, orange moons, lush forests. He normally liked the quiet of the office, the feeling of solitude he had being the only late night man, but right now he felt so cut off from the world an icy tremor ran down his back.

  Shrug it off, try again. A wrong number’s no big deal.

  But he paused, reluctant to go back to his desk. What if he had rung his house and some guy there had said that? Among their friends and acquaintances, Ben couldn’t imagine his wife getting into bed with any of them, not even Robert Straw, that egotistical workout freak she flirted with at parties. And besides, if someone he knew was banging Carla at this moment, the guy wouldn’t pick up the phone when it rang. Carla would say that Ben was calling, checking in late, yes, but calling, and she would grab the receiver herself.

  Could be someone I don’t know, he thought. Someone I’ve never met. In which case...no. Under any scenario he concocted, he couldn’t formulate a reason why the guy would say his wife was dead. I’m fucking your wife, a guy might say. Your wife goes down, does this or that—Ben could see some exulting lover taunting him with sexual gibes. But no one would say, “Your wife is dead.”

  Unless it was true.

  Seated again, his elbows on his desk, he tapped out his wife’s cell phone number. He stared at the touch-tone keys as he did this, intent on making no mistakes.

  The voice answered after the third ring.

  “Yes?”

  “Who’m I talking to?” Ben said.

  “I’m gonna leave soon. You’ll find your wife, like I said, on the floor. The bedroom. Don’t trip when you come in.”

  The voice had a calm even quality, the tone of a man just presenting facts.

  “She’s in the bedroom but we didn’t... I didn’t... That’s not what I came here for.”

  Meaning...what? He’d come to rob the house and been surprised to find her there? A burglar breaking in at this hour should have expected to encounter someone. Whoever he was, the guy didn’t sound like any kind of experienced burglar; he couldn’t have cased the house beforehand.

  You’re analyzing, Ben told himself. You’re fucking analyzing. If Carla’s dead this guy killed her and you’re sitting here dissecting his words.

  “I’m calling the police.”

  “Feel free. But you can’t tell me a part of you isn’t glad she’s gone.”

  Ben hesitated, about to hang up, holding the phone away from his ear.

  “I’ve seen this place,” the man said, as if Ben had asked him to continue. “I’ve looked it over. And I can interpret what I’ve seen.”

  Soon as he disconnected from the man, Ben tried reaching 911. A bored-voiced woman responded—“What’s your emergency, sir?”—but already the red light on his phone was flashing, indicating someone calling him.

  He pressed
the button to switch lines.

  “Just as I thought. You do want to talk.”

  “The police are on their way.”

  “Not that fast. Did you even dial?”

  “I’ve got the operator right now.”

  “You’ve got me right now. You took my call.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “Where’s the operator, on hold?”

  “My wife’s not dead.”

  “It’s like I thought. You want to hear how I know you’re glad?”

  For the first time, Ben heard impudence in the man’s voice, smugness even. An attitude of “I’ve got you, you’re gonna listen,” came through from the guy. But despite his irritation, Ben didn’t click off again; he waited to hear what the man had to say.

  Not much apparently. There was a faint crackle, nothing else, coming over the line.

  “I’m here, asshole. If you’re gonna talk, talk.”

  “I’ve seen your photos,” the man said, “and I opened your diary. You resent the fact that you can’t travel like you used to.”

  Ben offered no answer but stared across the long dark office, over the desks and computer monitors, the carefully organized space.

  “Tell me. Didn't you once travel?”

  “I did.”

  “To Brazil, it says here. And Guyana. And you went to Iceland?”

  “Hiking.”

  “Pretty adventurous.”

  “It’s beautiful there in the summer.”

  “Where else have you been?”

  “Nova Scotia. Alaska. I spent a few weeks in the Hebrides.”

  “You like rugged places.”

  “I do,” Ben said. “That’s true.”

  “Craggy scenery. Harsh. That sort of thing.”

  “More than cities, yeah. Paris, London, Hong Kong—they’re not my cup of tea.”

  “And yet here you are in New York City cooped up in an office.”

  The guy did know something about him, as if, though he hadn’t done surveillance on the house, he’d researched its occupants. But what was the reason for all this interest?