Radiant City

by Lauren B. Davis

  “Did you take that photo in the hall?” Matthew says to Jack.

  “Yup.”

  “Here’s to you. It’s good. Better than good.” He raises his glass again.

  “A change from all the dead body shots, huh?”

  They finish dinner with an apple tarte and caramel ice cream. Matthew hums along to Ry Cooder singing “Trouble, You Can’t Fool Me.” They are sipping coffee and brandy when Paweena says “I have it now.” She keeps her eyes on Matthew and he feels an icicle twist along his spine.

  “Have what, baby?” says Anthony.

  “Where I know Matthew from. Jariya, you know who this is. This is the reporter who was shot in Israel.”

  “Wasn’t me,” says Matthew as Jariya’s head snaps toward him.

  “Shit,” says Jack.

  “Yes. Was you. I remember very good. You think you were Superman or something. Stepped in front of the bullets.” She laughs. “Very foolish man.”

  “Hey, you that guy?” says Anthony.

  “Wasn’t me.” He looks over at Jack, who meets his gaze.

  “Man says it wasn’t him,” says Jack.

  Matthew looks around the table into the faces of the people who, with the exception of Jack, instantly revert to strangers, all illusion of friendship shattered. Anthony regards him with open admiration, Paweena and Jariya with something like ghoulish curiosity, Suzi with slight embarrassment. What do they know about it? A father. A child. Gunfire. Dust and blood. The sharp taste in the mouth like copper pennies. The way the world dissolved in the noise. A gun within reach. The possibilities contained in the gun. Death and silence.

  “Tell us about it,” says Paweena, cocking her head and smiling.

  The stem of the wineglass snaps. There is a skin-pop and then pain stitches through Matthew’s palm. Wine spatters across the table. Blood drips, and someone shrieks.

  “Put this on it,” says Suzi and wraps her napkin around his hand.

  “Sorry.”

  Matthew gets up and goes to the bathroom as Jack whispers something to Suzi.

  “I’ll get a bandage.” Anthony starts to rise.

  “No, let me,” says Suzi as she disengages herself from Jack’s arms.

  While Matthew stands dripping over the sink, Suzi rummages in the medicine cabinet until she finds what she needs. Her small breasts strain against her T-shirt. The lace in her bra is outlined. She pushes up her sleeves and Matthew sees marks on her inner arm. She catches him looking, cocks an eyebrow, and he looks away. She takes his hand in hers and efficiently but gently cleans out the wound, which is narrow but deep. She puts the bandage over it.

  “I did not know this was you,” she says.

  Matthew says nothing.

  “We will get you a new drink,” she says. “That girl is absurd.”

  “I think I better go.”

  “Sure. After a drink.”

  Her hands on his are oddly reassuring and he lets himself be led back to the party, where Jack hands him a large brandy.

  “Drink up, buddy,” he says and winks.

  “Sorry,” says Paweena. “You very sensitive.”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Mr. Sensitive.”

  Matthew accepts the drink and leans back, wanting to be gone, but not wanting to be gone, allowing himself to sink into sullenness.

  “You were a hero, man,” says Anthony.

  “Jesus, let it go,” says Jack, with that growl in his voice again.

  Anthony lets out a big laugh and they all look at him. His face is relaxed, composed.

  “What’s so fucking funny?” Jack scowls.

  “You are. You sound like a bear. You’re just like Saint Seraphim.”

  “Who’s he when he’s at home?” says Jack.

  “If I was Catholic, he’d be my saint. He lived in the Russian forest and lugged a sack filled with heavy stones and sand across his back. Said it was to tire out what tired him out. Then he prayed for one thousand days and nights. Wrestling demons.”

  “And I’m like him? What are you, nuts?” Jack’s laugh sounds forced.

  Anthony raises his glass to Jack. “We both are. But he won, don’t worry, and more than that, he made friends with a bear. He even looked like a bear. Sounded like one.” Anthony smiles. “Just like you.”

  “Wonderful,” says Jack. “How do you know all this shit?”

  “I read.”

  “I don’t believe in saints,” says Matthew.

  “Cynicism is the last refuge of the broken-hearted,” says Anthony.

  “You make that up?” It’s Matthew’s turn to laugh.

  “No. The Canon at the American Cathedral said it.”

  “I think I like you better as a cop,” says Jack.

  “I thought you hated cops. Present company …”

  “Excepted.” Jack and Anthony clink glasses.

  Paweena rolls her eyes and looks bored. Jariya holds a hand in front of her mouth while she discreetly picks her teeth.

  “Anyway,” says Matthew, and drains his glass. “Thanks for a great dinner. A fantastic dinner. I have to go.”

  “Don’t go,” says Anthony.

  “Got to go. Have to get up early to work tomorrow.”

  “Sure?”

  “Sure.” He picks up his jacket, shakes Jack’s hand and bends down to kiss Suzi on the cheek. “Thanks,” he says.

  “You are welcome,” she says.

  He turns to wave at Jariya and Paweena. He notices that Jariya has removed a shoe and her naked foot slowly caresses Paweena’s leg.

  “Uh, bye,” he says.

  “Bye-bye,” they say in unison.

  Matthew walks up to the metro, but once he descends into the underground, he knows he is not ready to go home. He needs to clear his head from the brandy and the talk, from the ghosts. He decides to head to the Seine. The platform is busy, even at this late hour. Couples. A group of young people joke loudly and flout the non-smoking rules. Two guys with a ghetto blaster try to be intimidating, with their French-Afro-rap music turned up loud. Everyone ignores them. At last the car arrives with an earpiercing squeal of breaks.

  He sits and a man sits next to him, wearing a fine blue-and-white striped djellaba, infused with amber and jasmine. At Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, Matthew transfers and heads in the direction of Porte de Sevrès. He gets off at Alma Marceau and makes for the quay. The night is star-scattered and cool, and as he walks down the stone steps that permit access to the river’s edge he begins, if not to relax, then at least to decompress from the shock of the evening. He has been foolish, he now realizes, to think that his notoriety, his infamy, his shame, would not find him here. He will either have to learn to deal with it, or become a hermit. At the moment the latter is more appealing. He shakes his head to get the dusty images out and concentrates on his footsteps. One in front of the other. Just this. Stone under foot. Water. Stars. Houseboats.

  This is what he has come to see. He loves the houseboats, some of them no more than rusty old barges, some gleaming showpieces. His favourite has an ancient wood-carved figurehead, bare-breasted, battered and proud, attached to a pole on the deck. Through the portals nestle tiny, efficient rooms filled with soft light. Water laps against the side of the boat as it rocks gently. Just looking at the boats calms him. He thinks it must be a grand life. He imagines pulling anchor and chugging away down the muddy river to a landscape full of new possibilities whenever the fancy takes hold.

  He walks under the pont Alexandre II when he smells a whiff of something unpleasant, getting stronger. His nose twitches and he puts a finger under his nostrils. The acrid smell of urine is very bad. Catching a movement in the shadows, he jumps. As he turns, his skin prickles and his breath catches. Then he laughs. A sandy-coloured pup wriggles and begins to whine. It is tied to a ring in the wall next to a small alcove in one of the bridge’s support columns. A light within flickers feebly; a candle. The dog cocks its head and barks once, short and sharp. From inside the alcove a raspy voice shushes the dog and M
atthew realizes someone lives there, in the cramped nook in the wall. He can just make out a figure sitting on a stool, a muddle of blankets on the floor and, near the candle, an open book and a frying pan. He nods, but the figure simply stares, the message to stay away clearly articulated nonetheless.

  A flood of loneliness abruptly overcomes Matthew, and he wants to speak to this man. He opens his mouth as the man blows out the candle, leaving Matthew pierced with a jolt of electric isolation.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It is nearly eleven o’clock when Saida climbs the stairs to her apartment two nights later. She has stayed late at the restaurant because dinner was busy and there was much to do afterward, cleaning up and getting things ready for the morning. When she left half an hour ago, Ramzi was still waiting for two tables of men who looked as though they were going to linger over their coffee and cigarettes. Usually Saida is home by eight. They do not generally get many people in after work. A few stragglers, a few of her brother’s friends who come by after they have finished their meals at home, more to talk than anything else. But tonight they had all been hungry and so she had had no choice but to stay.

  If this happens too often, she thinks, she will put her foot down and tell Ramzi he will have to make other arrangements, hire part-time help perhaps. Even under the table if they must take the risk. She cannot leave Joseph alone at night. But this is the least of her problems. Her son’s grades had been very good, once. If only Joseph would stay home, as he promises he will, but rarely does. Ramzi tells her that at the boy’s age it is normal to want to be with his friends rather than stuck in the house studying and looking after his grandfather. Her father tells her not to worry, that he is fine by himself, he is not so old yet that he can’t take care of himself and that Joseph is a good boy. It is only her own gut that tells her there is much for a mother to fear in the twisting, turning, often dead-end streets of Paris.

  Sometimes she wishes she had stayed in the old neighbourhood, in the 13th arrondissement where she had lived with Anatole. At least for a while there had been a few women to talk to. But that was before. They would not talk to her after she returned to the apartment, her bandages public notice of her failure. And now there is no time for friendships with women. There is work. There is family. It is safer that way.

  Saida stops to catch her breath on the fourth-floor landing. Her legs are very tired after more than fourteen hours on her feet. She hopes Joseph is home. She called earlier, but there was no answer. Where does he go? He had stayed in the other night after his talk with Matthew Bowles, though. That evening she had sent him home with his grandfather right after dinner, telling him he must do his homework, that she would check it when she got home. And miracle of miracles, when she arrived a few hours later, there he was. Television off. Books on the table. He had been in such a good mood, chattering away about Matthew and his stories. Saida suspects many of these tales are exaggerations at the very least, but she could not help grinning to herself just the same. She even managed not to laugh when Joseph said he thought he might want to be a reporter himself one day.

  Now, as she reaches the top floor she hears the music. Rai music. Too loud. Oh, Joseph. At least he is home. But how can he possibly work with the music at that level? She is a step beyond the first door when it opens and the fat man who lives there pops out. He wears no shirt, but only a grey, stained undershirt. He holds his rodent-pet, the ferret that is just a rat with delusions. It wriggles in his arms as though it were a squirming baby. Saida’s skin goosebumps at the sight of its sharp little teeth.

  “You hear that? This shit I have to listen to!” the man says as his watery eyes widen in indignation. He puffs on his cigarette.

  “I’m sorry. He’ll turn it down, Monsieur …” Saida tries to remember his name, Leclerc? Lévesque? Levigne? All these French names, they run together like paint.

  “Turn it down? Turn it off! And keep it off or I’ll call the police, I tell you. I’ll call them on you. And I don’t think you’d want that, would you? With what goes on in there?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We do nothing wrong. He is just a teenager. You remember what it was like at that age.” It is embarrassing to stand arguing in this way, in the hall, with that music and its thumping bass, which means they must raise their voices even more. Saida fumbles in her purse for her keys. Something sharp, a stray pin perhaps, jabs under her nail and she jumps with the crisp pain.

  “You Arabs—” the man begins.

  “Yes?” Saida bristles. “What about us Arabs?”

  “Letting your children run the streets. Criminals and drug addicts. It will be the death of France!”

  He slams the door before she can say anything more, and she is alone. It takes her a moment to realize she has found her key, that it is in her palm, digging in. She opens her fingers and sees a bright red imprint.

  “At least we work!” she says to the closed door, but not so loudly. He could be capable of anything, a man like that.

  As she puts the key in the lock the music stops. She swings open the door. Two strange boys look at her and she starts. Joseph steps out of the bathroom with something in his hand. He goes to the sink. One of the boys sits on the couch, a bandana tied around his shaven head, his huge feet in running shoes on her coffee table. He moves them. The other boy sits on the floor and wipes his eyes. But his mouth smiles. Laughing, then? Are they laughing at her argument with the neighbour?

  Both boys are small and wiry. Handsome boys, but hard-looking, and older than she thought at first. Older than Joseph. Dark-skinned, Algerians maybe; the one who is laughing has a gold tooth. He sees her looking and puts his hand over his mouth.

  “Imma,” says Joseph, turning to her. “You’re home earlier than you thought, eh?”

  “No. Later.”

  Saida sees that he is rinsing whatever he had in his hand out at the sink. A shallow tin plate. The windows are open and it is cold in the room, but the air stinks nonetheless, sweet and acrid at the same time. “I don’t want you smoking in the house. You know that.”

  “Sorry, Imma.” Imma. Mama. Like he was a little boy again.

  “Who are your friends?”

  “This is Maloud, and Jamal.”

  Jamal, the one on the floor, gets up and extends his hand, which is delicate, with a thin wrist under a heavy imitation gold wristwatch. “Nice to meet you,” he says. Maloud giggles.

  Saida shakes his hand and says, “It’s time to go home, boys. Don’t you have school in the morning?”

  “Oh, sure. We have to get up early for school,” says Maloud.

  Saida stands in the middle of her living-room floor and they must walk around her to get their backpacks and packages of Marlboroughs, their baseball caps and their jackets. Jamal brushes against her and apologizes.

  “Okay, we’ll see you tomorrow, Joseph,” he says.

  “Tomorrow,” says Joseph.

  When they are gone, she still does not move, and Joseph fusses around the small room, cleaning away cans of Coke and a bag of potato chips. “What?” he says, finally.

  “Look in the mirror. Look at your eyes. That stupid grin on your face. You do this in my house?”

  “What?”

  “You think your mother is a fool? Shut the window. It’s cold.”

  “I said I was sorry. I can’t even have friends round now?”

  “You cannot have these friends here. You cannot smoke drugs in my house.”

  “What are you saying? What are you accusing me of?”

  “Not half of what I bet you are doing. What other drugs are you doing? Are you going to be one of the addict boys up the road, sleeping in their own piss, scabs all over their faces? Oh, my God.”

  Saida drops heavily onto the couch. There are ashes and crumbs under her table, ground into the carpet, which is not a good carpet, but still, it is a nice red colour and the pattern is pretty. “Is your life so terrible that you want to destroy it?” she says.

  “
Imma, it’s just a little grass.” Joseph sits down next to her. He speaks to her slowly, with a tolerant smile on his lips, as though she is incapable of understanding what matters. “It takes the edge off this shithole life.”

  Saida slaps her son’s face with her open palm. She has not intended to do it. And as soon as it is done she bursts into tears. Joseph stands and looks down at her, the red mark on his cheek giving him more authority than his posture. She wishes he would say something.

  She is still crying and her voice has hiccups in it. “So, that’s what you think about the life you have? And it’s just grass? But it’s not a little anything. It is not. You are floating away, getting lost. I want you to go to university. You don’t want my life? Well, fine. I do not want my life either. But my life or something a whole lot worse is all you’ll get if you don’t stop what you’re doing.” Her voice has risen and now she is standing, although she does not remember getting to her feet.

  “Don’t ever hit me again,” Joseph says, and then, “Stop crying.”

  “Tell me I’ll never come home and find you like this again.”

  “Fine.”

  “Tell me you’ll stop doing drugs.”

  “Fine.”

  “Mean it,” she says, taking hold of his sleeve. “Study. No more of these friends.”

  “Fine.” His face is like his stepfather’s then: impassive. A wall behind which he smugly hides. She could pound all day on a wall like that and break nothing but her own bones.

  “I’ll tell your uncle, your grandfather, too. We’ll see what they have to say about this.”

  Still there is nothing, just the blank of him where she can find no purchase on which to pull herself into his heart. “What kind of a reporter do you think you’ll make, stoned? Uneducated. Everything funny?”

  It is just a flicker that she sees, then, in his dark eyes. Nothing more. But it is something.