"I let you call it. You keep what you owe me and I go to sea for a year, or into my savings to make up the difference. But either way," Xavier said, "you know we gonna have more fun than a barrel of naked monkeys." SHE BELIEVED HIM, SHE did, but told herself to say something funny. Not get serious.
She had a buzz, halfway down the bottle of champagne feeling good, but still had to ask herself, Are you nuts? The times he held her and she'd press against him were comforting, his arms around her, but not as lovers.
What would she say after?
You don't have to say anything, he'll say it. He'll be funny and you'll laugh.
Maybe sometime later on he'll want to do it again.
Yeah…? He's seventy-two years old, how long can he keep doing it, if he ever starts? Being with him every day, it isn't like you don't know him. You even know his bathroom smell. How can you be any closer to someone? XAVIER SAID, "YOU A tired little girl, huh? Worn out from dealin with pirates. I tied up at the dock, there's the CIA man waitin for me, Patrick Mackenzie and two of his boys. Patrick tells me he's met you. They come aboard and take two hours searchin the boat. I ask him what he's lookin for, contraband? Illegal shit like drugs? What for? This ain't even your country. Patrick ask me was it hot enough for me. Been here three years, still talkin about the heat. I tell him, stay out of the kitchen. He frowns at me, don't get it. They only talk straight at the embassy. Patrick takes me to meet the head security person, Ms. Suzanne Schmidt. She look at my passport and ask have I ever been arrested. I told her no, not for anything since I was a boy wasn't piddlin. She serve me Turkish coffee without askin did I like it and we started smilin at one another as we talked. I asked her did she ever chew khat. Ms. Suzanne say no, she never tried it, and I said I'd get her some if she wanted. She said, 'Oh, you can get it here?' Sounding innocent. That's my next project."
From living on the Buster Dara could go to sleep holding a champagne glass in her hand and not spill any. Xavier eased it from her fingers and finished it. Next he picked Dara up in his arms and laid her in her bra and short pants on the king-size bed and watched her curl on her side and stick her cute butt at him.
Xavier looked at her thinking he'd been like the houseman with this woman long enough. Miss Dara, you like a cup of hot tea? I be happy to fetch you one.
It wasn't ever like that, Xavier serving the lady of the house, but it was a way he thought of it now and then. He'd see her spread the hammock on the deck and lie down on her stomach and unhook her bra to get her back tan. One time he said to her, "You leavin your ninnies pure white, huh?" She didn't say a word but it was like she took it as a dare, rolling over to show her girlish breasts to the African sun. He said, "Careful you don't burn your buns." Not a word from her, eyes closed behind her sunglasses, ignoring him while he stared at her. One of Dara's horny times aboard. He threw out a line and fished for supper. Like the houseman who's seen all kinds of behavior and minds his business.
He said to himself, You not thinkin about gettin married and raisin a family, you thinkin about gettin laid. She wants to do it…Wants to try it, see if it works out…Like once in a while. It couldn't be often anyway, the tank gettin low. He believed he was cool. Don't say nothin, go at it, man. But looking at her on the bed he thought, No, you want to be tender, she's a tender girl you're holdin. Don't say nothin, just be cool with the slow moves. See if you can get Miss Dara to scream and bang her blond head against the headboard. That's all.
After a while the phone rang.
Xavier took it in the sitting room, picked up and said, "Dara Barr's suite," and heard Idris Mohammed's voice.
Idris saying, "That fucking Harry-I think he's become crazy." XAVIER HAD STUDIED THE Gold Dust Twins, saw Idris as a gentleman, though a wild one, he was a pirate. He had to be crazy to board ships, do all that pirate shit. Harry was something else. Idris couldn't put his finger on it but saw him as a man not to trust, even though there wasn't anything not to trust about him, not even his trying to sound like a Brit. Took after his mom. What's wrong with that? What Xavier wanted to do was go home and let the Arabs do their Arab shit and not worry about it. They were all crazy.
Xavier let her sleep for an hour and got a Coke ready for when she opened her eyes and saw him. It wasn't a bad look, but it wasn't horny either.
"Idris called."
Dara said, "Wait," went to the bathroom first, then the sitting room for her cigarettes and dropped on the settee.
"Idris called…"
Dara showing her cool now.
"They not gettin along. Idris say Harry's tryin to fuck up the deal. He wants to find out without comin out and askin if the reward's for dead or alive."
"Alive," Dara said. "The feds want to parade them around first. They've got a major terrorist they can use, get him to tell on some of the other al Qaedas."
"If they can't deliver them dead," Xavier said, "Harry wants to give them Jama under his real name and negotiate up his price. Harry believes he's worth at least ten million bein an active traitor and a black man. Thinkin the things they can do with that combination."
Dara lighted a cigarette.
"Where did he get Jama's real name?"
"Qasim's the only one knows it," Xavier said, "but Idris don't think he's told Harry yet. Like Qasim wants to make sure he's out of there before he tells."
"Where are they?"
"Right now they hidin out in the African quarter."
Dara smoked her cigarette.
"Harry's too glib for me. I ask him a question, he always has an answer I'm not expecting."
"All Idris wants you to do," Xavier said, "see if you can settle Harry down. Idris says he'll take whatever reward they offer and leave town. Harry wants to shoot the moon, see if he can score big off Jama."
"They know what's going on," Dara said, "the embassy people, they've been following this since the Toyotas left Eyl. Remember we tried to find out who was taking pictures?"
"I thought we might've been hasty," Xavier said, "but it didn't matter to us that much. You want to talk to Harry? Or let them fuck up their deal without your help."
"What do you think?"
"It ain't up to me. I'll tell you, though, that boy Jama, I keep thinkin of him. I wouldn't mind chattin with a real terrorist from back home."
"How do we find them?" Dara said.
"Idris give me directions. He's gonna be waitin for us."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THEY WERE IN XAVIER'S Toyota, feeling their way south through the African quarter.
"Idris say to go down past the circle by Avenue Thirteen and it becomes rue des Issas. We keep straight ahead…all right, we on rue des Issas now and we keep goin till we come to Avenue Twenty-six." Now they were looking into the narrow side streets they crept past, sightseers taking in the native quarter: streets full of junk and rubble, chunks of cement worn from walls to lie where they fell. Laundry hung from clotheslines above the decay.
"It's a slum," Dara said. "Maybe the worst slum in the civilized world."
"How you know it is?"
"How could you make it slummier?"
"Some in India bug your eyes out. But their slums don't seem as busted up and put back together, old boards and strips of corrugation from someplace else. There's what looks like a mosque I've seen in this quarter, made of old strips of tin they painted blue. They pray five times a day and make four hundred fifty dollars a year. How come Allah don't listen and give 'em a raise?"
"Or a kick in the ass. Why do they live here, with the rats and the roaches?"
"It's they-all's home."
"They could leave."
"Go where?"
"Those two guys under their umbrellas," Dara said, "what are they talking about?"
"What khat's selling for today."
"I could do an entire documentary," Dara said, "on the African quarter. You know it? Shoot the European section for contrast, an area somewhat less depressing."