“Somebody needs a fix,” says Matthew. Like a bag of sand with a hole punched in it, he can feel the optimism of a few minutes before drizzling out of him.
Suzi makes for the bathroom without greeting either of them. Dan, clearly displeased, says something to Jack. Jack merely shrugs and comes toward them, his hands in his pockets. Dan stands scowling, looking after him.
“She all right?” says Matthew.
“She will be,” says Jack, and his eyes flick to the bathroom door. “What’s up?”
“We’re celebrating Matthew’s writing,” says Anthony.
“Oh yeah, why?”
“Because he’s writing.”
“I got over a hump.” Matthew kicks a chair back with his foot for Jack to sit down. “Hebron.”
Jack smiles and holds out his hand. “You wrote about Hebron? Hey, well done!” Matthew takes his hand; Jack encloses it in both of his, and shakes it. “Big step, man, big step.”
“Thanks, Jack. Really. Not a big deal to many people, I guess, but, well.”
“Yeah. I know. I know.”
“Let me get you a drink. What’ll it be?”
“Just a beer, thanks.”
At the bar, Dan brings him another round of drinks and says, “I don’t like this shit in here. Jack knows that. So does Suzi. She’s always kept it in line. Until recently.”
Matthew nods but says nothing. He hands Dan the money.
Dan crumples the bills in his fist. “Cops leave me alone. We have an understanding. I don’t want that upset. She’s gonna get banned.”
“Where else would she go?”
Dan snorts. “Are you kidding me? Chick like that, she’ll always
find some stinking hole to climb into.” He turns away to the register.
He brings the drinks back to the table. “Listen, Jack. None of my business maybe. Probably. But what’s up with Suzi? She seems pretty strung out.”
“Some thing with her kid. She was living with Suzi’s ex and now she’s run away. You know what junkies do when the shit hits the fan. I don’t know. I’ve had about enough, to tell you the truth.”
“She’s been in the bathroom a long time. Maybe you should check on her,” says Anthony.
“Leave her. She’s nodded out is all. She’ll stumble through in a while.” Jack licks the foam off his moustache.
“Dan’s not happy,” says Matthew.
“Dan’s never happy.”
They say nothing after that, for it is hard to talk when Suzi is so close to them in the bathroom with a needle in her arm. Dan keeps looking at the bathroom door as well. Old Charlie, sitting at the bar next to John, has stopped arguing with him and the two sit quietly, watching Dan, watching the bathroom door.
“I better go check,” says Jack after a few minutes.
“Might be a good idea,” says Anthony. “You want me to go?”
“Nope.”
Jack disappears into the bathroom and Matthew fights the urge to get up and walk out of the bar, all his equilibrium gone, nothing but an empty sack inside his chest now.
They can hear Jack calling Suzi’s name. And then there is a loud bang and the sound of cursing. Matthew and Anthony stand. Dan comes around the bar with his crowbar in his hand.
Jack comes out of the bathroom. His face is ashen. “Call an ambulance. She’s fucking OD’d.”
“Not in here,” says Dan.
“What?” says Matthew.
“No ambulances, no cops in here. You get her out. I’ll make the call. Tell them there’s an overdose in the courtyard. Not in here.”
“Are you serious?”
But Jack has already run back into the bathroom and reappears a moment later with Suzi in his arms. Her tights are around her knees. The skin on her thighs is mottled and the veins are red and blue. Her face is blue, her eyes rolled up. Her mouth is open and a trickle of thin vomit dangles. There is more vomit on her chest.
“Make the call,” Jack growls at Dan as he shoulders past him.
Anthony and Matthew follow Jack up the stairs. It is cold outside and garbage bedecks the courtyard. “Where’s her coat?” says Matthew.
“I’ll get it,” says Anthony as he disappears down the stairs.
“Is she breathing?” says Matthew.
“I don’t know. I think so.” Jack holds her until Anthony comes running back upstairs with her coat. Then he kicks a piece of cardboard to flatten it out and lays Suzi on it. He covers her with the coat.
“She’s dead,” Matthew says. There is no movement, nothing. He looks at her lying there and she has become just another body, another mass of tissue, another corpse. He steps back.
Anthony leans down and puts his head to her chest. “Not quite.”
“You guys go,” says Jack. “I’ll stay. I’ll say I found her here. It’s okay. There’s nothing you can do.” He rubs his hands over his face. His features have sagged, fallen, and he looks ten years older. He looks back at the Bok-Bok, as though considering returning to the bar.
“I’ll stay too,” says Anthony.
“Sure, me too,” says Matthew, although all he wants to do is run. Though shame burns him, presses into him like a red-hot poker, he does not think he can bear to see another body. Suzi’s shoe has fallen off somewhere and her foot is so small, twisted in. She looked like an ungainly, pigeon-toed teenager.
Jack turns on Matthew and thuds him on the shoulder. The blow knocks him back several feet. “No! Fuck that. No. I don’t want you here. She’s my girl. She’s not yours! Don’t touch her.”
“What?” Matthew looks at Jack and sees it then. Sees what Jack knows. The inside of his stomach feels as if a tin cat has dug its nails in.
“You have to be fucking everywhere, don’t you?” Jack stands his ground, his hands in fists, white flecks at the corners of his mouth. “There’s nobody you leave alone. Matthew’s fucking little entourage! You’re supposed to be my fucking friend, not some goddamn asshole! You’re supposed to be on my SIDE!”
“Jack, listen …” Matthew takes a step toward him.
“NO!” The violence in his voice stops Matthew cold. Jack crosses his arms and keeps his hands under his armpits. He rocks back and forth as though he is freezing, trying to keep warm. His mouth twists. “Get the fuck out of my face, Matthew. You don’t want to be here now.”
Matthew opens his mouth, but cannot think of anything to say.
Jack takes his fists and hits himself on either side of his head. “Jesus! Jesus! I need a drink.” And he walks back to the Bok-Bok, kicking open the door. He vanishes into the darkness.
“Go on, Matthew,” says Anthony, who kneels beside Suzi and slaps her face quickly, over and over again. He smiles sadly. “It’ll be all right.”
And although Matthew doesn’t think so, he turns and half runs out of the courtyard, down the street. People get out of his way. He can hear the sirens now, although they are still a long way off.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“What are you doing coming here by yourself?” Saida says to her father as soon as she sees him in the doorway of the restaurant. “Come and sit down.”
His coat is wet and his hair sticks to his head. There is blue around his lips and bright patches of red around his eyes.
“I do not want to sit down,” Elias says.
He trembles; she can feel it when she takes his arm.
“Are you ill? Do you want me to call a doctor?”
He shakes her off. “No. I have to tell you.”
“Where is Ramzi?”
“I woke up to an empty house.” There are scabs on the back of her father’s hand. He does not heal well anymore.
“He didn’t come home last night?” He has turned into a tomcat, she thinks.
“He came home. Like a thief in the night he came, and then he went again.”
“What are you talking about?” Saida stands in front of her father, her right hand pressed to her stomach, her left hand rubbing her right. The hard-boiled eggs she ate f
or breakfast churn in her belly.
“I am telling you. Ramzi has gone to Nice.” Her father slumps against the counter and she helps him to a chair.
“Anthony, get my father some water, please.”
“Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know. He says Ramzi’s gone to Nice.” She pulls a chair close to her father. “How can he just take a vacation when he feels like it? When did he say he was coming back?”
“He left this.” Elias hands her a sheet of paper. “I found it taped to the refrigerator.”
I am sorry it has to be like this. I tried to tell you I could not stay in Paris. It will never be my home. I am moving. I know this will be difficult for you, and for Saida, but you will manage, and Joseph can begin to work now. You must know that I have been unhappy and I will never be happy in Paris. Celine has family in Nice. I will be in touch when we’re settled.
I love you, Abba. Your son, Ramzi
“What does he mean, ‘when he’s settled’? Who is this Celine?”
Anthony puts the glass of water on the table. “Is everything all right?” he asks again.
“I don’t think he’s coming back, Daughter.” Elias’s lower lip begins to quiver. “I have failed as a father. My family is scattered.”
“How could he do this? Are you sure?”
“He took all his clothes. I woke up. He was gone. And this is what he leaves me. A note. Not even a kiss. I will never see him again, not even his wedding. I’ll be dead and I won’t see his face again.”
“Morning!”
Saida looks up and sees Matthew in the doorway, shaking the rain off his jacket.
“How’s everybody?” he says and then stops. “Saida?”
“Oh, that selfish bastard! He has run away from home!”
“Who? Joseph?”
“No, Ramzi, I am telling you! He has run off and left us for some girl!”
Matthew looks at her. His mouth opens and then closes. He looks terrible, and although Saida registers this, she has no time for his troubles today.
“Oh, I know what you are going to say.” She grips her father’s shoulder and he puts his hand over hers and pats, trying to calm her down, but what is the point of calming down? Why should she not scream and yell since she is left with everything to do and no one to help her? “You are going to say that he is young and he is restless and has never wanted to be here. Well, who gets to be where they want to be? Who gets to do what they want to do? That is too damn bad, I tell you. He is a selfish little playboy and he can go to hell, for all I care.”
“Saida,” says Elias, and he begins to cough.
“Abba, Abba, drink this.” She holds the water to his mouth and rubs circles on his back. She feels the ribs through his sweater. This will kill him, she thinks. She sits down and puts her head in her hands. “I cannot do this. There is not enough of me.”
“I can help,” says Anthony.
“You’ll be all right,” says Matthew. “Look, he’ll probably be back. Just gone off on an adventure, right?”
“He’s gone. All those maps. All those want ads.” Oh, how her head throbs.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Anthony crosses his arms and stands in front of her as though trying to block anything harmful.
Saida wishes it were that simple. “I could sell the place,” she says.
“I do not want to sell, Daughter. Where would we go?” Elias looks like a frightened, wizened child, his lower lip trembling. “The restaurant is in my name, isn’t it? It is all we have now. The only thing we have. I do not want to sell.”
“No, Abba, don’t mind me. I am talking nonsense is all. We will be all right.”
“Listen, Saida,” says Matthew, looking at Anthony out of the corner of his eyes. “I hate to say it, but you’ve been pulling the lion’s share of the work around here anyway, haven’t you? I mean, Ramzi had sort of drifted away before now, hadn’t he?”
This is true. He has been useless for the past few months. What would change?
Anthony squats down in front of her. “And I’ll help,” he says.
Saida looks at these three men. Mutilated, each of them in their own way. Misfits. The three un-wise men. She looks down at her hand. She is also a member of their tribe. She puts her hands on either side of Anthony’s face and kisses him on each cheek. “You are a great help, Anthony. I could not do it without you. In fact, I’m going to start paying you.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve got my pension.”
“We don’t pay Ramzi anymore. We pay you.” Saida picks up her father’s cold hands and warms them between hers. “We’ll be all right, Abba.”
“I’m very tired, Daughter.”
“Do you want to go home? Shall Anthony take you home? Anthony, would you?”
“Sure. I’ll get a cab.”
“The metro is fine for me,” says Elias.
“I’ll get a cab,” says Anthony.
“Hang on, Anthony,” says Matthew. “I’ll come with you. I need to talk to you.”
They leave, and after a few minutes, Matthew comes back. He looks different. As though he has heard something he did not expect. The whole world is awash in bad news. There is no cure for it. She says, “I made some ghoraybeh. Do you want some?”
“I’ve never turned down one of your cookies before, have I?”
She is halfway to the kitchen when she stops and starts to cry. She stands in the middle of the restaurant and covers her face with her hands.
Matthew comes up behind her, starts to put his arm around her and then stops. “It’ll be okay,” he says.
Saida puts her scarred hand behind her back and stops crying. “Sit down. I’ll bring you a coffee,” she says.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Matthew had gone looking for Anthony, prepared to hear the worst. Prepared to go to funerals, to take whatever punishment Jack wished to deal out. He deserved it. After leaving the courtyard, after leaving Suzi lying on the wet cardboard with her tights around her ankles and the sound of sirens on the wind, Matthew had walked aimlessly, walked and walked until there was nothing to do but stop walking, take a pill and sleep. The coward’s oblivion. Pull the blanket of shame up over his head. He had done nothing for the woman he had fucked, whose lips had been put to use for his pleasure. He had betrayed his friend, and if he could fool himself into thinking it had not felt like it at the time he was surrendering to Suzi’s somewhat professional ministrations, there was no denying it when he looked into Jack’s face. Had he told himself Jack didn’t care much about Suzi? Yes. Had he told himself Jack wasn’t capable of caring? Yes.
But she wasn’t dead.
Anthony had told him, however, that she was done with Jack. Done with them all, in fact. She was done with the Bok-Bok, with the life and the drugs. God willing. She was waiting to get into a treatment centre. Doing outpatient until then. It might be six weeks or more before she could get in anywhere, for of course she couldn’t afford a private clinic. Until then, Anthony said, she was at Saint-Rita’s.
And what, Matthew had asked, is Saint-Rita’s? And then, “Ah,” when he was told.
“If you want to talk to her,” Anthony had said without prompting, “you’ll find her there most afternoons. Mornings I think she’s at the walk-in clinic. Evenings she’s got meetings, you know, recovery—twelve-step.”
“You think I should? I mean, would she want to see me?” Matthew had said as Anthony got into the cab with Elias.
“I think that’s kind of up to you,” said Anthony. “But you need to talk to Jack, too, don’t you think?”
First things first. Saint-Rita, patron saint of desperate cases and prostitutes. Her chapel is on the boulevard de Clichy. Henry Miller used to hang out there. It is nearly five-thirty and dark by the time Matthew finds it. It is a strange little storefront chapel. On one side of the door is a display window with a painting of the saint. A large thorn sticks out of her forehead. On the other side of the door are two large modern, rather luri
d, stained-glass windows, murky with street grime. Matthew goes in. To the right is an office, to the left, the chapel itself.
Inside the chapel a nondescript brown-haired girl in a navy pea jacket stands in front of a bank of yellow, red and green votive candles, in the middle of which Saint-Rita’s wooden statue rests against a blue wall. As Matthew passes behind the girl, she places a scrap of paper in a small basket at the statue’s feet.
The room is small and no one else is in it. Matthew admits relief to himself. He has made the effort. What more is required? You must make sure. Wait a while, it won’t kill you. And so he prepares himself to stay, not long, but long enough to walk out clean.
To the left are the stained-glass windows Matthew saw from the street and to his right is a confessional; before him rows of plain wooden chairs are set up in front of a modest, slightly raised altar with another statue of Saint-Rita and a gold-painted icon hanging above it. Farther along the confessional wall, he notices a small statue placed on a piece of wood above eye level, behind a piece of protective glass. Upon closer inspection he sees that it is a Black Madonna wearing a blue dress, the kind little girls would dress a Barbie doll in, the space around her feet cluttered with bits of paper that have been tucked over the top of the glass.
The room, he realizes as he walks farther in, is actually an L-shape. In the back of the far angle a twig of a figure perches in the last row of chairs. She leans forward onto the back of the seat in front of her. Her head rests on her folded hands. There is no mistaking that tousled head of dark hair. Matthew cannot tell if she is praying or crying. He does not want to disturb her, he tells himself, as his heart hammers. I am afraid of her. He backs away and takes a seat near the altar. He tries to focus on the gold-painted icon of mother and child. Tries to think about what to say to Suzi, since all the words he had have disappeared now that she is before him.
Radiant City Page 27
