by Joshua Corin
“Oh, you have no idea.”
“She works with me every day, Poncho. I have some idea.”
Poncho picked up a stick and threw it into the distance. Both Bo and Luke raced after it.
“I’ve got a bottle of Jim Beam and you’re welcome to a glass, but I think I’m going to pay a visit to the hospital in a little bit and I wouldn’t want them smelling booze on my breath.”
“Muslims don’t drink,” said Poncho, “so maybe they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”
The governor laughed. Oh, Poncho.
“Sir, I was thinking…that speech you gave today…”
“Ah. Yes. You have reservations. Spell them out and we’ll work through them. I meant what I said. I don’t want to do this without you on my team. It would be twice as hard and half as fun.”
“That’s kind, sir. And you’re right. I did have reservations. But then I took a closer look at what you’re really playing at, and it all made sense to me.”
“I don’t know if I follow.”
“It’s okay, sir. You’re among friends. For example, you remember that question you got this morning about the ACLU? Well, my ex looked into that and it turns out the reporter got herself a copy of your signing agreement with some law firm famous for rattling sabers with the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center and the list goes on and so what if the agreement was signed and dated last week?”
“Excuse me?”
Bo returned, the stick caught between his grinning jaws. Luke trailed behind his brother. Poncho grabbed the stick, tossed it to his left, and then tossed another stick to his right. Both dogs shot off after their separate targets like furry missiles.
“It’s okay, sir. That’s what I’m saying. So what if it was dated last week? It proves nothing. Because you didn’t hire them to defend you against all those bleeding-heart sycophants. Or at least not primarily. See, I got a look at the signing agreement, and the junior partner who signed off on it doesn’t even have anything to do with constitutional law. Oh, you should have heard the sound of disappointment in that reporter’s voice. She thought she had this huge scoop. It was priceless.”
“Poncho, let’s go back to how they got a copy of a confidential document and what we’re going to do about it.”
“Oh, that reminds me. You know what me and you haven’t discussed in a while? Property values.”
“That’s probably because I’m no longer mayor, but—”
“But you still own a bunch of property, right? Here in Atlanta?”
“All of my assets have been put in a blind trust. What’s your point?”
The dogs came back. Poncho scruffed them each behind an ear.
“I should really get a dog. Maybe a mastiff. Something large. I think I was a dog once in a former life. Or maybe I’m a dog right now. Your dog. One of your dogs. Those lawyers you hired —what kind of dogs would they be? A nice, mean guard dog, like a Doberman? Probably more like a golden retriever, good at digging up your valuables.”
“Poncho…”
“You hired their real estate division, sir. This land where you plan on resettling all these pesky Muslims…how much of it do you own? All those acres in the middle of nowhere were probably real cheap to acquire, and who would have better inside information on all that than the governor? Plus, with so many of the immigrants exiting Atlanta, the property value is bound to skyrocket. How much of your stake did you have to hand over to your friend at the Muslim-American Coalition to get his seal of approval on it all? But hey, everybody’s got a price.”
“And here I thought you’d given up drinking! Poncho, you sound like you’re on a bender. Take the night off. Relax. Or go to a strip club. When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll feel bad, but don’t worry. Apology accepted.”
Poncho nodded. “I am sorry. I am. It was rude of me to come here and toss around all these accusations. Judy insisted it was a bad idea, but that just made me want to come here even more. Plus, you of all people know how persistent I can get when I’m on the hunt. I love it. I especially love the moment when the prey realizes to his horror that he’s being hunted. That’s when he starts to make mistakes. Be seeing you, sir.”
Chapter 37
“Peace be unto you, my homies,” said Sara.
It was how she began all of her videos, and her newest was no different, not in that respect. In other respects, it immediately became apparent that this newest video to her millions of followers contained quite a few drastic changes.
For one, YourMuslimFriend appeared to be broadcasting from a hospital bed. For another, just as drastic a change, she was cradling a newborn infant.
“As you can tell, a lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours. A lot has happened to us all. The best of us try to look at life through more than one lens. We’ve talked about that a lot here. What unites us is better than what divides us. It sounds real nice.
“But it sure has been put to the test.
“And I don’t know about you, but I hate tests. They always make me feel like a trained monkey. Stand on your head and you’ll get a banana. Well, why do I have to pass a test just to get a banana? There are enough bananas for us all. Right?
“Sorry. I am going off-topic. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about what happened yesterday. But sometimes…when there is so much to talk about…it’s hard to find where to start.
“So let’s start with Daniel.”
The camera zoomed in on the baby’s head, much of which was a blue bonnet and the rest of which was teeny and perfect.
“Go ahead. Admit it. You’ve never seen anything more beautiful in your life. Neither have I. And he came from me! Me, with my coffee breath and my questionable taste in music and my giant ears. He got his father’s ears. Mercifully, he got a lot from his father.
“His father…
“His father was at the North Buckhead Islamic Center when it got attacked. I would’ve been there, too, but I was the size of a blue whale. Still am. But his father, my husband, was there with our friends, in prayer, in celebration, when an American drone attacked American citizens with a missile.
“But today’s vlog is not going to be about labels, as hard as it might be to avoid them. Labels shrink us from complex to simple. How dare they. To quote Walt Whitman, ‘I contain multitudes.’
“Just look at my son.
“I spent a lot of yesterday convinced that I was never going to see him.”
The camera hovered briefly in front of Daniel’s tiny face and then scanned up to Sara’s tired face.
“You see, I didn’t come here to the hospital because I was having contractions or because I wanted to see if my husband had been hurt. It turns out I had appendicitis. I know, right? Great timing! I wasn’t even aware of the terrorist attack until after I arrived. I was in my last trimester, I had appendicitis, I found out my husband was actually missing, I saw the news of the second attack in Dearborn, and I began to write what I honestly believed was going to be my last script for y’all. I pushed through all my pain and grief and I wrote about the importance of love and optimism, especially on days like this. Love is natural, I wrote. Hate is a choice.
“And then my appendix burst.
“And I died.”
Sara took a sip of water from a paper cup. Then she continued:
“I didn’t see a white light. The Muslim concept of an afterlife is complicated. It is believed that the soul is eternal and that a lifetime of righteous choices will lead the soul eventually to Jannah, a place of paradise. But there is a ladder that we see and that we ascend. I didn’t see a ladder. But I saw my son’s first breath. I saw him in the hands of a nurse and I saw a tiny tube suck out some mucus from my son’s nose and mouth and then I saw him open his mouth and cry. I couldn’t hear it, I couldn’t hear anything, but I could see it. And I felt such peace.
/> “I know, I know. I sound like a crazy person. I can only share my experience. I can’t explain it. Maybe I don’t want to explain it. Explanations are like labels. They minimize. The Quran teaches us not to question the wisdom of the Almighty. This is me accepting that what happened, happened. Praise be.
“When I woke up, I was here. In this hospital bed. Alive. And my husband was at my side. Alive. He’s the one who’s holding the camera. He’d wave, but you know how shy he is. He was only mildly injured in the blast. He’s got a cut above his right eye. Now he’s got a Band-Aid above his right eye. Looks like he’s been in a fight. They triaged the minor injuries to a separate hospital. That’s why he wasn’t here when I showed up. That’s why nobody knew where he was. But he’s here now.”
Sara offered the camera, and presumably the man behind it, a loving smile.
Then that smile diminished.
“When my appendix burst, it released all this poison into my body. The doctors were able to remove Daniel before any of the poison got into his bloodstream but by then, I had gone into renal failure. But then I was saved by Officer Ray Queen. Maybe some of you have read about his heroics yesterday, running into the mosque, into the fire. He was an organ donor. I’m told a teenager got his heart. I got his kidneys. We’re both alive due to his sacrifice.
“Do I believe this was the divine plan, that a mosque get attacked so a policeman could run into it so he could die so two people he never met could inherit his organs? No. That would be grossly self-centered, not to mention just plain gross. The better question isn’t why. The better question is: Now what?
“The police have arrested some of those responsible for what happened here in Georgia and in Michigan. Their motivations don’t matter to me. I can guess what they were and so can you. But what do we do now? The governors of Georgia and Michigan have suggested rounding up all the Muslims and forcing them to live separately to protect the ‘real Americans.’ Again with the labels. And we know from history that segregation doesn’t work. So what do we do instead? How do we move forward?
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to continue to talk and I’m going to continue to listen when you talk. Some of what I have to say you’ll find preachy and some of what you have to say I’ll find absurd, and that’s the way it is with those we love. We don’t turn our backs. We hold hands knowing that only together can we face the world. That’s what I’m going to do. That’s what I’m going to teach Daniel to do.
“I love you all.”
Chapter 38
The church basement was teeming with alcoholics.
Xana hadn’t been to a meeting at the United Methodist church in months, but she assumed this sizable a turnout was not normal, especially at a closed meeting. It certainly hadn’t been normal to see so many wan and weary countenances when she and Em used to come here as regulars. It hadn’t been this crowded the night that Rachel the Redhead had murdered Em in the women’s lavatory.
An older, bespectacled lady with a macramé shoulder bag stepped out of the lavatory and returned to her seat in the second row. A clean-shaven man who could not have been more than thirty years old was at the podium, sharing his pain with the group.
Xana sat in the back. Xana always sat in the back.
She was not entirely sure why she was here, but she suspected she knew what had drawn everyone else. After all, it wasn’t as if an alcoholic needed a reason to drink, but give an alcoholic a reason—such as a terrorist attack in their hometown—and watch their willpower strain and buckle.
Maybe fifty people were here. Fifty people who, given the choice between the smoky laughter and cheap escapes of a bar and the somber droning and flickering fluorescents of this place, chose to come here.
But Xana wasn’t thirsty. Xana was feeling congratulatory. Xana had survived an attempt on her life and contributed to the apprehension of some truly nasty domestic terrorists. And Hayley was alive! And Del Purrich had a broken nose! So why come here to this dank room overfilling with dank humanity? Didn’t she deserve better? Hadn’t she earned better? Wasn’t it time, after almost eighteen months of nearly nonstop misery, to…
To what? Raise a glass in celebration?
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Except that wasn’t the entirety of it, either. Yes, maybe she had come here for the same goddamn reason as everyone else, but she had come here, to this specific place, because she needed closure, and she sure wasn’t going to get it sitting quietly on a metal chair in the back row.
It was time for her to testify.
Xana got up. Her long legs wobbled with nervous energy. While the clean-shaven man at the podium pontificated about his rock bottom, Xana made her way, slowly, toward revisiting hers. She passed row by row by row. A few of the faces turned to watch her pass. She didn’t look back. She dared not look back. She left the group behind and continued on alone and reached the lavatory door and pushed it open, only then remembering to breathe.
Blood on the sink. Em on the floor.
No.
The door shut with a hiss and Xana was alone in the lavatory. No Em. No blood. A reek of bleach stung her eyes. She took a step toward where she had found Em, dying so very quickly, butchered, all to keep the wheel of vengeance spinning. The square-inch tiles were in alternating shades of blue. Cold to the touch. The two sinks were porcelain. Smooth. Hollowed out. Idle droplets lazed out one faucet and pinged the eye-shaped metal stopper below. Xana ran a fingertip across the stopper, across the thin pool of water.
Goodbye, Em.
The door opened. In walked a middle-aged woman with long blond curls and a leather dress that might have fit her when she was twelve.
“Same shit, different day,” the woman said.
“You’re half right,” Xana replied, and left the woman alone.
When she returned to her seat in the very last row, she noticed a large egg of a man poised at the bottom of the basement stairs, just on the far side of the threshold, obviously hesitant, as if he were afraid that stepping into the room might turn him into dust.
Xana motioned toward her seat. It was his if he wanted it. He declined her offer with a shake of his head.
Meanwhile, up front, the clean-shaven man had finished his spiel and a tall, bearded man in a cheap blue suit stepped to the podium. Xana recognized him from her earlier days of frequenting this meeting. Lionel. Aeronautics engineer. Sixteen years sober. Could be seventeen months by now. Or could be seventeen weeks.
Lionel was taking volunteers to chair the next meeting. A few hands went up. And then came the time for the thank-yous and the announcements. Xana glanced back at the man by the door. He was still standing there, although his attention appeared to be directed at the folding table set up off to the side and the homemade chocolate chip cookies on display atop it.
Suddenly, everyone else was standing, too, and so Xana did the same, and locked hands with the person to her left.
“God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change…the courage to change the things we can…and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Amen.
The official part of the meeting was over, and its unofficial sequel—refreshments and gossip—commenced. Xana considered a quick exit, but free coffee also had its allure. But at the cost of mingling among people? As she weighed the pros and cons, she felt someone nudge her elbow. It was the egg-shaped man. He had a half a cookie pinned between his teeth and a full-to-the-brim Styrofoam cup in each meaty hand. He offered one of the cups to her and washed down his cookie with the steaming sludgy contents of the other cup.
Xana raised her cup in appreciation. “Thanks.”
“No problem at all. I hope you like it black.”
They drank in silence for a moment. Then he spoke again.
“Name’s Poncho.”
“Hi. I’m Xana.”
<
br /> “I know. I think we have a mutual friend.”
Xana’s spider-sense pinged. “Oh?”
“Opinionated old man. Claims to be Irish, but I don’t believe it. Teaches law at Georgia State. Goes by the name of Jonesy, but I think he made that up, too.”
“How do you know Jonesy?”
“He used to be my sponsor,” Poncho replied.
“Funny. You don’t seem like the kind of person who’s comfortable at meetings.”
“Neither do you.”
“I’m not much of a people person.”
“Oh yeah? Me, I love people.”
“Then why didn’t you come in?”
“I’m in now.”
“So you’re here for the refreshments and the gossip.”
“What else is there to life other than refreshments and gossip?”
Xana smiled, sipped her coffee. She hadn’t yet made up her mind about this man, but at least he wasn’t boring. “Why did Jonesy send you to track me down?”
“Because I’ve gotten myself in way over my head.”
“And?”
“And he recommended I find someone who knows what that’s like.”
“Everybody in here knows what that’s like,” replied Xana.
“Yeah, but not everybody in here chases it. Ma’am, a terrible thing got put in motion today, and I need someone by my side who can’t be bought and won’t ever, ever back down.”
Xana sipped some more of her coffee, felt it wash down her throat and settle in her center. Her nerve endings danced. She felt alive.
“So,” she said, “tell me more.”
To my niece Ava
For when she is much older
Acknowledgments
This, the briefest Xanadu Marx novel, took the longest to write. In many ways, it is a coda not only to the first two novels but to a chapter in my life.
I won’t bore you with the personal details. You didn’t come here for a memoir.
