The Garden of Last Days

by Andre Dubus III

  April turned to leave, and the woman touched her wrist. “If you’re gonna get treated like that, you should get paid for it, honey.” She nodded in the direction of the office. “I get fifty up front before I let ’em get that close. And look at you; Jesus, you could make a ton over there. A ton.”

  It was dark already, the parking lot dimly lit by a few leaning streetlamps. On the concrete overpass was the speeding glare of headlights, and under it, on the other side of the highway, the purple neon glow of the club where Summer worked.

  “What does your tag say?”

  “April.”

  “Look, April, you’d make a bundle over there, honey.” She bit into her wrap, chewed thoughtfully, shook her head. “More in one night than two weeks working for that one.” She nodded in the direction of Fuad’s office. The door was parted, the bright fluorescent tube over the prep area buzzing. “I’m serious.”

  April felt her face warming. She didn’t know what to say and was grateful when a group of high school kids clambered in. She smiled down at Summer, who smiled back, dabbing away a fleck of mustard from the corner of her lip. “My real name’s Stephanie. Think about it.”

  April couldn’t stop thinking about it. What she’d said about money anyway. After her shift, she drove home to her mother’s in South Hooksett to the same house on Rowe’s Lane where she was raised. There used to be fields and woods on both sides of the road but now they were gone, sold off to developers who’d built dozens of houses there. All the same size and shape, two-and-a-half-story rectangular boxes with gable roofs, each with a round window centered under the front ridge, each sided with clapboards painted in shades that varied only slightly from gray to sage to steel blue. There was a deck built onto the rear of the houses which overlooked square yards seeded with green grass and surrounded by fences or hedges, and they were not ugly homes, April thought, but their exact sameness was and she’d always figured if she ever had the down payment to buy one that she’d paint it red, build a deck in the front, take out the round window and put in an oval, something—anything—to stand out more. And that night in October, driving past the new homes in what were once meadows of long grass and purple loosestrife and tall stands of pines behind three-hundred-year-old stone walls, she couldn’t stop hearing that woman’s voice in her head. More in one night than two weeks working for that one.

  How much was that? Because before taxes, Fuad paid her three hundred dollars a week. Could she make twice that in one night? How could that be possible? How could anyone make that much money? But there was all that jewelry this Stephanie wore, her clothes and shoes and handbag, the new Acura she’d park out front where she could see it from the window.

  The club was tucked away on the other side of an overpass: it could be a secret thing she did for just a short time. Just till she’d made enough to leave the house she’d had to return to, to leave her dried-up, bitchy old mother who’d never seemed to like being a mother in the first place. April thought of her dad, dead ten years—what would he say? Though he never did say much. He was big on praying at dinner and at bedtime, big on running his printing company and spending the weekend away from home doing whatever he did. If his spirit saw her in such a place, would he care?

  Would she care herself? She didn’t know. She’d never been inside a place like the Empire, just seen a few movies where there were scenes of women dancing naked onstage for men seated politely in tables below. The lights were always dimmed and the women moved up there like teasing cats, cash stuffed into their garter belts. She imagined herself up there. She’d had to wean Franny early so she could work, and her breasts had only just begun to lose their milk-heaviness. Her belly was flat again but with looser skin. She’d have to look better before she took off her clothes for strangers, a thought that turned her on a little bit—it did. Not about being naked but in breaking a rule flat out. Like doing something wrong just to do it. Like quitting high school and never going back. Getting shit jobs like this. Spending too much time in bars and pubs and sometimes waking up with someone at his place. And the money. How else could she get that kind of money?

  But all these thoughts fell away when she pulled into her mother’s driveway and in minutes was holding her baby in the kitchen, her mother washing dishes with her back to her. The TV on the table was turned up too loud, an infomercial for real estate. Franny held on to her tightly, her hair so fine. April felt dirty for even thinking what she’d been thinking.

  She turned the TV down, sat at the table in front of an empty plate. She began tickling Franny, getting her to laugh, though her diaper needed changing; she could feel its warm mass against her knee. Franny’s chin was smeared with tomato sauce.

  Her mother said something from the sink.

  “What, Ma?”

  “I said that girl eats like a bird.”

  What she used to say about her, too. Her mother’s plump back, her short practical haircut. Her cigarette burning in an ashtray on the windowsill. She was still living off her dead husband’s life insurance and business and complained all the time of barely getting by, though once or twice a year she and her girlfriends went on a cruise.

  April took a clean napkin and wiped her daughter’s chin, made a game of it so Franny’d let her do it. She wanted to tell her mother that Franny ate plenty, that she was in the fiftieth percentile in weight for her age, and please stop smoking around her and how long has her diaper been this wet?

  But she knew what she would get, nothing but bitching in return about how lucky she was she’d let her come back home in the first place, how ungrateful she was—and you’d better not get used to this sweet little deal either. I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but you should’ve thought about that before, shouldn’t you?

  “There’s meatballs on the stove.”

  “Thank you.” April carried Franny upstairs to her room, a room she once shared with her sister, Mary, who’d gone to the community college and married Andrew Thompson, the vice principal of a middle school now. They had three children and lived in a modern ranch house in a cul-de-sac in Connecticut. In their old room were all of Mary’s childhood books: a series of stories about a girl’s softball champion who worked on the sly as a private eye, Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Drew. April had never been much of a reader. On her side were the bare walls where she’d tacked posters of bands her sister hated: AC/DC, Dokken, KISS, though April wasn’t drawn to their music, just their look, their wild hair and tight pants, their sinewy arms etched with tattoos, their deep, heavily made-up eyes that seemed to stare right out into the world like they didn’t care what anybody in it thought about them or said about them or even felt about them because they were what nobody else had the balls to be: free.

  And Stephanie driving what she did. Tipping like she’d just picked it off a vine. Wearing three-hundred-dollar outfits just because she felt like it. It’s not what April would do with her money, but it was a picture of a woman she’d never really seen before, a woman who had so much she made on her own she could come and go as she pleased. If that wasn’t free, what was?

  The foreigner stopped talking. He closed his cell phone, placed it on the table next to his money. She smiled and tried to look straight at him but it was hard with this one. She looked down at the cigarette he’d dropped into the ashtray, at his money, so much of it.

  “Want me to dance?”

  “Please, say to me your name. The name your father gave for you.”

  Such an unoriginal and lame request. He pushed her Rémy closer to her, smiling with his bad teeth. His eyes seemed more sunken than before, like he didn’t eat or sleep or do enough good things for himself.

  “Tell me yours.”

  “Mike.”

  “Mike?”

  “Yes, Mike. Drink.” He handed her the cognac. She put down the Moët and sipped the Rémy. It burned its way over her tongue and down her throat and she chased it with cold sweet champagne, swallowing twice, knowing she’d get drunk if she kept this
up.

  “You do not like this, do you?” He held up the full snifter, then drank it down.

  “You like it.”

  “Yes.” His lips were wet. He reached for his champagne. “How many years have you?”

  “Here?”

  “No, how old?”

  “Old enough, Mike.”

  “Twenty-four, yes? Twenty-five?”

  She nodded. “And you?”

  “I have twenty-six years.”

  She smiled at him. “Are you here for business, Mike? You go to school?”

  “My name is not Mike.”

  “I know. Don’t you want me to dance?”

  “If I tell to you my name, you will say yours, yes?”

  “Why? We don’t need to know, do we, Mike? Let’s just pretend.”

  “What does this mean?”

  “Pretend. Act. Like playing a game.”

  “You mean lies.”

  “I don’t lie, I pretend.”

  “No, you lie. All these girls, they lie too.” He waved his hand in the air as if he were excusing her and was big and generous to do it.

  “But you call yourself Mike.” She stood. She glanced down at his money. More cash than she’d ever seen up close.

  “You wish to have this?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “I would not.” He lit up another Marlboro, squinted at her through the smoke.

  I don’t believe you. Those were the words in her head, the ones she wanted to say, would be able to say with some.

  “But it’s yours, right?”

  “You say I take it?”

  “No, I’m not saying that.” You should never talk about money with them, Summer taught her that. Keep their eyes on you, on the body you’re letting them see, and act like the money’s a nice surprise, a sign of their generosity it would be rude to deny.

  “You would like more?”

  She sipped, shook her head, swallowed.

  “Your name is Kelly.”

  She shook her head again, Sadie’s song coming to a close on the main floor. The crowd’s reaction was lukewarm, just some polite clapping. Maybe the place was clearing out or the VIP had filled back up again. She wanted to get back out there. Get back on rotation and check on Franny just before her act.

  “Gloria.”

  “Nope.”

  “You see this?” He left his cigarette between his lips, leaned forward, and pulled a hundred-dollar bill from the rest. He laid it flat on the black cushion between them. “Give to me your name and I let you keep it.”

  Asshole. She liked it better when he was eyeing her breasts. Now he looked into her eyes, and his were dark and distant and deep in his head where who knows what went on.

  “You do not want it?”

  “Why don’t I dance for you?”

  “There is no music.”

  It was true; Sadie’s act was over and they were in the quiet between girls. She sipped her champagne, put her glass on the table, turned to see him lay two more hundred-dollar bills, one next to the other. He was smiling at her with his ugly teeth.

  “How would you know?”

  “I will know.”

  “But how?”

  “Because you will not look like an American girl any longer.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The truth is new to you. Your eyes will show it because it is new.” He took a long drag off his cigarette, his eyes on the black ceiling, on something there and not there. Out on the floor more music was blaring away, a hard rock song she didn’t recognize. Maybe the new girl’s, she didn’t know; she’d lost her bearings in the rotation, and on the other side of him were her blouse and skirt folded on the arm of the sofa. As if he planned to keep something of hers for himself, as if he planned to keep her here.

  Two knocks sounded through the door. She shouted she was fine, though as soon as her hour was up she was going to get up and go. Still, three hundred on top just to tell him her first name? She didn’t know what he was going on about truth for, but what would he do if she told him?

  “That’s it? I tell you and you give me that?” She nodded at his money, didn’t name it. He was sitting forward now. He looked distracted, his elbows on his knees, the cigarette smoke rising.

  “This fat man, does he think he can save you if I am going to hurt you? Why does he knocking if he can do nothing? He leaves too much time, you see? What is he going to do?”

  Something cool flipped inside her, a deeper fear she hadn’t really considered. But she smiled. “Catch you, I guess. I guess he’d just catch you.”

  “No, there will be no catching.”

  “I know.”

  “No, you do not.” He motioned toward the three hundred dollars. “Now, do not lie, please.”

  She made herself look into his eyes. Into his drunk eyes. “April.”

  “Take it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She gathered up the bills, folded them once, slid them behind her garter, though she’d prefer to put them into the pocket of her blouse with the rest and not wear a reminder of what she’d just won. She wanted to ask him if she looked American or not, but he might hear it wrong. Or right.

  “How did you know?”

  “I have already said to you.”

  “Oh.”

  He rested his cigarette in the ashtray, pinched six or seven bills between his fingers, dropped them on the cushion. One of the hundreds brushed her bare skin like an insect.

  “Explain to me why you do this and I give these to you as well.”

  “Don’t you want me to dance? Your time is almost up.”

  He nodded slowly, as if she’d just said something he hadn’t expected from her, something intelligent and useful to him, his eyes passing over her entire face: her eyes, cheeks, nose, and mouth. She sipped her Moët. She tried not to glance down at the bills and count them. Five hundred from him already.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Please.” He pointed to her bra. “Remove this.”

  “Want me to dance?”

  “No.”

  She’d rather do this dancing; it felt less intimate then but she reached up and pulled apart the Velcro, let her T-back fall open, pulling out first one arm, then the other. These rooms were cooler than the club, the vent in the ceiling on for the smoke, an air conditioner going somewhere. Her nipples stiffened and she felt strange; she felt shy.

  She felt naked.

  BOTH OF THEM is who he wanted to fuck up, the big motherfucker and Marianne, though now he could hardly make a fist with his left hand and it was hard to hold the wheel to sip from the Wild Turkey he’d gone back to town for. In the bright light of the store he’d had to hold his wallet open with two fingers for the man at the register, an old sonofabitch who didn’t want to go into AJ’s wallet but then saw him holding his hurt wrist in the air and fished out a ten for him. Over a dollar change and AJ just walked out and let him keep it so he didn’t have to mess with it.

  Now he drove up Washington Boulevard, steering with his knee for sips off the pint, his left hand useless, and all the man had to do was say let go. Let go of Marianne’s hand and he would’ve. He knew the goddamned house rules better than anyone, but it was Marianne who broke ’em. She was the first one to reach over and squeeze his hand, two weeks ago Wednesday night when he’d told her about Cole. Told her how he’d never done a good goddamned thing but break his neck to pay all the bills and now he can’t see his boy.

  “I bet you’re a nice daddy.” She said it. Smiled at him and took his hand like she meant it, and hell yes, hearing that and feeling her warm hand in his was better than watching her shake her ass and tit-ties, so he told her that and she said he was nice. Been saying it since then too.

  Till tonight.

  What, she think it was easy for him to ask her? She think he didn’t know he wasn’t the first one to do that? Goddamn all he said was the time and place when she was the one told him it’d be nice to go
someplace nice with him, the nice damn daddy.

  His F-150 kept lurching ahead into its own headlight path, his foot pressing down on the gas just thinking of her and the spic chink sonofabitch. He should just wait for the club to close and follow his ass home.

  He was past the industrial park now, the boulevard a dark empty stretch through swamp grass, his rifle at home, not in the claustrophobic condo he lived in now with Mama, but at home, in his house. In his goddamned bedroom closet. Deena had changed the locks on him but he could still get in. Didn’t she know that? Did they all think he was stupid?

  On the southbound side a half mile ahead, the Puma Club sign was just a yellow spot and the Wild Turkey was going down smooth, a little something to dull the hot throbbing in his wrist and hand. He wedged the pint between his legs, turned off the AC, and pushed the window buttons. Ten o’clock at night in September and the air was still hot, smelling like cypress root and asphalt and alligator shit. Least that’s what he thought. Loved the Everglades south of here. Had always wanted to live out in them. Get a boat and build his own cabin on piers. Teach Cole how to fish and hunt, the two of them swinging in a hammock behind mosquito netting, eating roasted gator and bobcat and manatee. Lounge around like naked warriors. And no women. No goddamned women.

  But he couldn’t stop thinking of Marianne, her high cheerful voice. Her sweet blue eyes and that soft waist and pear-shaped ass he could curl up against till he was old and beyond. Her tits were fake, but that’s only because she didn’t know her own beauty. Didn’t know how much better she was than all the others. That’s what he’d told her and meant it. And the way she’d looked at him is what did it to him. Convinced him he had a chance. Her blue eyes getting all moist in the corners and round, her mouth partway open like a little kid’s.