She sat on his legs a minute longer, panting, muscles trembling with strain. Then once again she climbed backward off him, and stood shaking in the middle of the room. Blood had spouted from him, and more blood had sprayed around every time she’d lifted the knife, and now there was blood everywhere. There were dark droplets on the ceiling. Blood ran into the mattress where twice she’d missed him in her frenzy and slashed down through spread and sheet into the cloudy stuffing. Great splotches and splashes marred the walls and the drapes over the window. The mirrored closet door was smeared. The maroon carpet was sticky beneath her bare feet. And her own body felt as though she’d been dipped into a giant jar of rancid raspberry jam. Blood was caked around her nostrils; she breathed the foul air through her mouth, and tried to think.
Boots, dress, bag. The boots were dark, so nothing showed. The dress was stippled with drying blood, and so was the bag. Snuffling in her throat as she tried to breathe, she moved in a dazed and wandering manner into the bathroom, turned on the water in the sink, then turned on the shower as well and climbed in under the flow. A few times before, Johns had let her shower in the wonderful hotel bathrooms, so she knew how to make this one work. She peeled the paper wrapping from the soap cake and rubbed the soap in her hair, over and over, rinsing under the rush of water and then rubbing the soap into her hair again, repeating and repeating until at last the white soap did not come back rosy from her head. Then she scrubbed her arms and body and legs. Her pubic hair was like a sponge, full of blood, to be soaked again and again; finally she sat down in the tub, the shower water falling on her like rain, and simply washed and washed and washed. Would the water never run clean!
Yes. She stood again, clumsy, exhausted now, almost slipping on the smooth tub, and stepped out onto the tile floor. There were large soft beige towels. She dried herself, then used the towels to make a path along the floor of the main room, to keep from getting more blood on her feet. She went out there, picked up her dress and bag, and carried them into the bathroom, where the water still ran in the sink. She cleaned the dress as best she could without getting the whole thing wet, then rubbed the bag with a wet washcloth. She pulled the dress over her head, the wet parts sticking to her body, put the shoulder bag over her head as well, then went out along the towels to her boots. She wiped them on a towel, put them on, straightened up, and then looked over at the burst bladder of blood reeking on the bed. There was nothing in her eyes when she looked at him; she could barely remember him now.
What she remembered was the money. Spreading another towel in front of herself, she moved to the dresser and was about to close the lid on the attaché case when she saw that, in addition to the money, it also contained a passport. She took it out, opened it, saw a picture of the John looking grumpy.
Don’t want this passport. Don’t want to carry anything that hooks me up with that Danish man. She put the passport on the dresser, closed the case, picked it up by the handle in her left hand, and looked around the room. Nothing else.
It was so hard to think, to keep moving. It was as though great lethargy and great horror were both just outside her range of vision, range of understanding. I’m not working any more today, she told herself. I’m going home, I’m gonna sleep, I don’t know what happened in here. This is too crazy. I’ll feel better tomorrow.
Ananayel
Two new experiences there: sex and death.
Both were intensely absorbing and interesting, and neither was exactly what I’d expected. The one wasn’t all pleasure, and the other wasn’t all grief. Emotions seem to blend into one another when you’re a human, even the greatest happiness being tinged with sorrow, the most horrible agony illuminated by some kind of satisfaction.
How intensely these creatures live! My kind burns for a long time with a very low flame; humans burn bright and hot, and don’t last. I have always thought our way was better, but would they? Given the choice, would they select our long serenity, or are they happier with their consuming passions?
Well, they don’t have the choice. And soon, according to His plan, there will be no choices left at all. I have my people now, my representatives. I’ve touched them all, I’ve put them in motion. Grigor Basmyonov is on his way to New York to consult a cancer specialist; Li Kwan is washing dishes in the loudly grumbling belly of the Norse American Line Star Voyager; Maria Elena Rodriguez is buying a wedding dress in Brasilia and fighting off feelings of guilt for her so-easy manipulation of Jack Auston; Hodding Cabell Carson’s campaign to rid himself of the explosive Dr. Marlon Philpott is about to bear fruit; and Frank Hillfen is in a county jail in Indiana, held for parole violation, but will soon be loose once more.
Which leaves Pami Njoroge. Her murder of Kjeld Ulrichslund and the sudden appearance of the attaché case full of money should get her moving. Shouldn’t it? But it seems to have paralyzed her in some way. She has the cash well hidden, she has her memories well buried, but she isn’t in motion. These people must be in motion.
We must poke little Pami.
9
Pami lunged upright out of sleep, staring at the window, terror in her heart, the taste of vomit in her throat. Dim amber illumination from a distant streetlight defined the open glassless rectangle of window, indicated the shape of the canvas cot and metal bureau crammed into this narrow closet of a room, but those weren’t what Pami saw What Pami saw, though now she was awake and her eyes were open, was the nightmare.
Her right arm ached with the tension of slashing at the dream shark; her belly was cramped from the horror of those shark teeth grinding through her middle. The drowning water, heavy and dark as blood, still lay on her face, bearing her down. Her heart pounded, bile moved in her throat, her nerves all jumped and trembled as though she’d just been electrocuted.
The shark dream wasn’t the only violent phantasm to destroy her nights since the murder of the Danish man, it was merely the one most often repeated. But there was also the dream in which she chopped off her mother’s breasts and ate them, her nose filling with blood and milk. And the one where biting ants covered her body, crawling into her nose and ears and all her body openings, red ants, biting, stinging, drawing blood, a blanket of swarming red ants eating her as she ran...
There was no movement of air in the hot night. The room smelled like blood, like the Danish man’s hotel room. Trembling, her movements exaggerated and uncoordinated, Pami pushed away her single sheet and clambered from the cot to lean out the window in search of air. But there was no air. The hot night of Nairobi lay against her face like the blood/water of the dream, a palpable presence. She looked up at the starless black sky, clouded over and oppressive, then down at the narrow dirty lane two flights below. The streetlight was at the corner with the main road, four buildings away, and not much of its light made it through the trees down there. Nothing seemed to move in the lane.
Pami backed from the window and sat on the cot, trying to force herself to be calm. No matter how many times the dreams came at her, no matter how often the same ones repeated, they still terrified her, the effects still lasted for hours, they still destroyed sleep. This can’t go on like this, she thought. I have to sleep.