We smoked two more rounds before she started wrapping up.
“Are you going home after this?” she asked.
“No. I have this crazy friend in North Philly I’m going to go see.”
“Same guy as from the deli?”
“Yeah,” I said, and in my excitement I pulled up the video of him threatening to kill George Gabriel. “Total original.”
“He’s very. loud,” Candace said.
“He lives near you. We can go up together?”
Candace appeared interested. But decorum still made her cautious. “How is Marie-Anne?”
“Things between us are ending,” I stated. “Are you down or what?”
“Sure, sure,” she said. “I’m down, I’m down.”
We paid the bill and headed out from Byblos toward Walnut Street, where we intended to catch an eastbound bus that would connect us to the northbound transportation. I staggered with an arm around Candace and tried to liken her to paganism, asking her if she had any connections with Rastafari or animism. She laughed and said not at all, she had grown up a good Baptist girl and then transitioned into Islam. God, she said, was a secret she couldn’t ever forget.
I told her if that was the definition of God, then my God might be a girl I just smoked hookah with.
She laughed and told me I was intoxicated.
* * *
The commute took about two hours. There had been a shooting on the Broad Street line and the buses were running forty-five minutes behind. Candace exchanged messages with the newsroom and mobilized a cameraman to go out and find footage. Places like North Philly were neglected in American media and it was her duty as a journalist to illuminate what was concealed. The world deserved to know how the heart of the empire was full of gunshots.
It was well past midnight when we made it to Ali Ansari’s building on Diamond Street. Candace told me that the area used to be a hub for art deco and for jazz, until the race riots of 1964 which began when a pregnant black woman was killed by a pair of white police officers. Since then this part of North Philly had known nothing but murder and mourning.
The front door to Ali’s building was wide open and we let ourselves in and headed up to his second-story apartment. Candace kept the back of her skirt cinched with two fingers like a wedding train. Outside Ali’s apartment there were two women standing in the hallway. Both were topless, texting on their cell phones in heels and thongs.
Candace turned to me and asked what kind of illicit business my buddy was into.
“I thought it was Islam.”
“He’s not a pimp, is he?”
I was about to ask the women about the apartment owner when the door opened wide. There was Ali Ansari, wearing his usual slacks but only a sweat-soaked white undershirt with them. There was a small bowler hat on his head and he held a miniature digital camera. Behind him I could hear the sound of a couple men talking to one another. Ali Ansari hadn’t looked at me or Candace just yet, and proceeded to give one of the girls instructions about her scene. The only words I made out were “Obama” and “hymen.”
I cleared my throat. Ali Ansari’s eyes bulged upon noticing me. He came over to give a hug.
“Ali Ansari, Candace Cooper.”
“I thought the wife was a different complexion.”
“Definitely not the wife,” Candace laughed.
“You know,” Ali put an elbow in my rib, “Muslims are allowed up to four—”
“If there’s anyone who should be talking about polyamorous relationships, it’s you,” I interrupted, gesturing at the two women. “And what’s this about Obama and hymen?”
“Osama and Ayman,” Ali Ansari replied. “Not Obama and hymen. Come in, come in. Let me introduce you to Talibang Productions.”
He panned his hand across the room and led us inside. Tripods, reflectors, flashtubes, and camera batteries were strewn around the bedroom studio. I saw two guys who looked vaguely like members of GCM get undressed and head into the bathroom. The room was covered with other paraphernalia as well. Ejaculating sheaths with hand pumps; bukkake lotion; brushes for concealer paint. Candace nearly stepped into a half-empty jug of piña colada mix and Ali rushed over to save the backup fake sperm. From the bathroom one of the performers complained loudly about discoloration. Ali yelled back and said some discoloration was normal after girth-enhancing fat transfers.
Candace and I leaned against a dresser. The only decorations in the room were a pair of picture frames with stock wedding photos. Ali explained that the scene he was filming involved a couple of Mainline widows of 9/11 who had an inexplicable desire to experience terrorist sex with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Candace and I wanted to watch the scene, but Ali said our giggling was going to be a major distraction and told us to sit in the hallway until he finished. We went outside and sent the housewives in.
“Aren’t you glad you came?” I asked Candace.
“Literally the greatest night ever.”
We sat down on the carpet and shared a cigarette. Candace rambled along about how little money she had. The Al Jazeera paycheck was not enough to cover her expenses, much less help make a dent in her student loans. When she was in journalism school, two of the biggest loan checks issued to her were actually private loans from a bank. The name had sounded very official, very governmental, and she had thought the loans were part of the federal cornucopia. Except they weren’t. The private loans went into default less than a year after graduation. There she was, studying investigative journalism, all while getting hoodwinked. The default became a permanent blight on her credit. Buying a house was out of the question. So was renting at most corporate buildings.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I get to be in North Philly. Feel like this is supposed to be my community.”
“Maybe you should’ve stuck it out at Plutus. Money was good.”
“What about principles?”
“What about student-loan default?”
“What about principles?” she persisted. “What George Gabriel did to you was wrong. If he could do that to you, then under different circumstances he could do it to someone else as well. To a mixed-race girl with a lot of debt. I wasn’t about to live in fear for the rest of my life.” She eyed me with sudden admiration. “I’m kind of surprised to see that you’re doing so well. Surprised, but glad.”
“You’ve no idea how bad up I’ve been.” I gestured toward the door. “First off, I’m unemployed. After that, what can be said? I’m sitting in a slum in North Philly with a woman not my wife outside the door of my only friend who’s inside having a couple of terrorists fuck a couple of whores pretending to be Mainline elite. I’m not even including the part that he’s trying to convert me to some numerical ideology that might have to do with celebrating terrorism.”
Candace perked up. “Numerology? I am the god of numerology. What are you dealing with here?”
I didn’t have the poetry book on me, so I had Candace download it onto her phone. I showed her the repetition of the number nineteen. “I’m thinking there’s something celebrating Islamic martyrdom.”