“What’s this about Turkey?” she asked.
“Yeah, for the hard shit,” Paul said.
“What do you mean? You mean heroin?”
“No, no. Opium. Raw opium.”
“That’s heroin.”
“Well, it’s opium, is what it is. I mean, opium’s opium, and heroin’s heroin. You can’t call oranges apples and...”
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “Are you telling me you’re going to push heroin?”
“No, I’m going to buy the raw stuff and sell it at a profit, that’s all.”
“That’s pushing heroin,” she said. All she could think of was the girl at Elysium sitting in her own shit. Paul was saying he wanted to buy and sell heroin, that’s what he was telling her, he wanted to buy and sell hard drugs to kids who sat on the floor in their own shit. No way, she thought. “No way,” she said aloud, shaking her head. “Not with my money.”
“Why the fuck not?” he said.
She blinked at him. Up the beach, someone began strumming a guitar and the words to “Blowin’ in the Wind” drifted languidly on the air, the voice almost a whisper. The naked boy with the black beard and the tiny cock rolled over onto his side and propped his cheek on his hand, elbow bent, a faint smile on his face, as if he was enjoying a two-character, one-set play starring a pair of extremely good actors.
“You told me,” she said, started to say, but Paul waved this away impatiently as if what he’d once told her was of absolutely no consequence now that there was the possibility of a very large deal involving the purchase and resale of Nepalese hash and then the further purchase of some forty kees of opium which, for Christ’s sake, would bring two hundred grand in Marseilles, that’s exactly what he said to the bearded boy now, “two hundred grand,” sounding like a New York gangster.
She stopped listening to him. She didn’t really care anymore. She knew only that he was a stranger who planned to make money selling raw opium to someone in Marseilles who would convert it to heroin which might or might not be sold later to young kids in America — she didn’t know and she didn’t care, she wanted only to be rid of this fucking little pusher who’d done nothing to help her in Iran or with the dogs, the fucking dogs.
“I’m going home,” she said.
It was a decision made as easily as that.
Silence.
New Year’s Eve.
He was sitting in the living room adorned with the matted pictures of Lissie he’d hung when he’d still expected her home for her birthday. It was three hours to midnight, three hours to 1971, and his daughter was not here, and he was beginning to believe again that she was dead. He sat in his new tuxedo, sat in his new ruffled blue shirt and his blue velvet tie and cummerbund to match the blue velvet on the tuxedo lapels and cuffs, sat in tuxedo and ruffled shirt, and the Schlumberger cuff links Connie had bought for him on his twenty-eighth birthday, too many years ago and he wondered where his daughter was, and he thought again that she was dead.
He had not felt this since receiving the undated letter she’d written from Goa, but now he was beginning to believe it again. The State Department didn’t know where she was, Mr. Brothers had called to say they’d had no luck contacting her on the beach at Goa, so Jamie could only believe that somehow the $500 he’d sent hadn’t reached her, or possibly she’d been slain on some Iranian road, or was being tortured in some Turkish prison, he didn’t know where she was, or if she was, if she still even existed. She was his daughter, and she’d been gone since April, and this was now the thirty-first of December, and he didn’t know, he simply didn’t know, and he wanted to weep. He brought the glass of Scotch to his lips and then hesitated. He had taken to drinking it stronger these days, a lot of Scotch and just a few ice cubes.
The toast did not come immediately to his mind or to his lips. He looked around at the pictures of Lissie, not too many taken this year, not too many at all, the tradition somewhat strained, but plenty of others from the years before. The one of Lissie kneeling to pluck the dandelion in Central Park, and the one of her in the rowboat at Martha’s Vineyard when she was almost fourteen, five years ago, Jesus. And there, near the post, the picture of her tangled in her skis at Stratton, and there, his favorite, the lollipop shot, Lissie in the second year of her life, looking down in consternation at the sand-covered lollipop, blue eyes squinted, her blond hair catching the sun for a dazzling halo effect. He lifted the glass in a toast.
“Fuck it,” he said.
When he heard the car outside, he thought at first it was the booze he’d ordered from Ritchie’s Wine & Liquor in Talmadge. He’d discovered earlier, when he’d come downstairs to pour himself a solitary drink while Connie was still dressing, that he’d run out of Courvoisier and Grand Marnier both, and he’d been worried that someone might want to come back tonight after the party at the Blairs’, and he’d seem ill-appointed — though who gave a fuck? Really, who gave a fuck? He glanced at his watch, and realized that he’d placed the order only fifteen minutes ago. Still, he’d asked them to deliver as soon as possible as he and his wife would be leaving the house at nine-thirty, ten. Though it seemed too early for Ritchie’s to be making delivery, he thought it might just possibly be them after all, and he went to the drape in the living room, and pulled it back, and looked out to the curb.
It had been snowing on and off for the past week, and the snow was piled high in the front yard, creating a wall of white that protected the house from the street. Above the banked snow, he could see the yellow roof of a taxi cab, its exhaust fumes puffing on the brittle silent air. He heard the door of the cab slamming shut. A guest arriving for the big party across the street, he thought. He knew the Sammelsons were having a big party, but in Rutledge, Connecticut, neighbors never invited neighbors who lived just across the street. He let the drape fall. He walked into the kitchen and was pouring himself a fresh drink when the doorbell rang.
His heart stopped.
He knew, he knew before he took the twenty steps, thirty steps from the wet-sink in the kitchen to the entry hall, he knew, his heart was pounding, he knew this was his daughter. He fumbled with the lock, he tried to twist the old brass key in the lock that had been here when the mill was converted to a house in the year 1910, his hands were trembling on the key, he could not twist the fucking key, he knew this was his daughter standing outside the door, and he could not open the door, he could not, “Just a minute,” he said, and at last twisted the key, and threw the door wide.
He did not recognize her at first.
This could not be... this was not his daughter.
The snow was falling behind her. She stood just outside the door with a tentative smile on her face, illuminated by the globe to the right of the door, slanting down onto cheekbones that were higher than he remembered them, deeper hollows beneath them than he remembered, her face altogether thinner than he remembered, her hair stringy and oily, plastered to her skull, an Indian band, American Indian, across her forehead — she looked sallow and dirty, this was not his daughter. She was barefooted. There was snow banked eighteen inches high in the front yard, but she was barefooted. The temperature outside was thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit, but her feet were naked and dirty below the hem of the tent dress patterned with lilies of the valley. She was wearing a leather fleece-lined jacket. The jacket was unzipped and open. Beneath it, he could see a black velvet vest.