by Dave Eggers
She nodded.
I strode to the bar and ordered another of whatever she was having. It looked like gin. I brought it to her and set it between her thin bony fingers. Hand bowed before her and took her small hand into his and kissed it, on the thin silver band around her finger. I bowed too, but my back cracked in a new way and I couldn’t go further, and couldn’t look at her again. I turned with my eyes closed and we jogged down three flights to the night air.
* * *
On the street it was still warm and at the car, our back left tire was flat. We both stood, mouths open, for half a minute. We had not been in a country without blowing a tire.
This time Hand and I could handle it, remembering the tricks of the savannah man with the obsidian cobweb feet. We left the car resting on four wheels as we loosened the bolts. In a few minutes a man’s legs appeared in my peripheral vision.
He was about forty, successful seeming or pretending, wearing a white scarf. He shooed me from the wrench. I stood and handed it to him. I didn’t know what he wanted. Finding the bolts already removed, he got to work on the jack, turning it around with great urgency.
“Whoisthisguy?” I asked.
“Ihavenoidea,” Hand said.
Another man came and shooed the first man from the jack. The first man stepped aside and left the second man to finish it. We had no idea what was happening. We were perfectly capable of changing the tire, but now, including us, there were four men working on the tire, and two more were now watching. It was an American highway construction project.
“Thisiswhathappenshere,” I said. “Everyonewantstochangethe-tire. Thisistheirfavoritething.”
“Thisiseveryone’sfavoritething,” Hand corrected.
Everyone wanted to help. Everyone wanted to help or be ready if their help was needed. This was the way of the world.
We were done the tire was new and we were worthy and we ate a Pizza Hut meal and felt at once shame and great joy with our pizza. The place was empty; the day had been so long; the food was real and warm. The Pizza Hut man brought our soft drinks to us, and then refills, for free. We looked like hell. We were tired, but there were only five days left, now. We had started with seven days and now we had five, four and a half, and had we used them well so far?
“I really have to get to Cairo,” Hand said.
“I know.”
“But if we head north, to Moscow—”
“We can do both,” I said, not knowing a thing. The rest of the trip in my mind sped by with airplane speed and hovercraft grace. More water, more air—a balloon! A zeppelin! More boats, and monkeys and where was that wall again? the one the millions touched, set in the center of that golden square—
We drove to the Djemaa el-Fna. Past the interlocking streams of pedestrians in silhouette, we saw the crowd, a great low mountain moving against the darkening horizon: the heads of intermingling thousands. We didn’t know, exactly, around what they were gathered. Some kind of flea market? We had not been told.
We parked and two boys on one bike offered to sell us hashish. We said no thanks. They begged us to buy some. We passed. Hand patted one on the back to wish them well.
“Faggots,” said the boy.
We walked through the square, but already, while we were looking for a parking spot, the crowd had thinned. It was about 10. All the women were gone and the men were hungrier. In grumbles and whispers ten different sellers of hash made their presence known. We passed through them and around the monkeys handstanding by lanternlight—the crowds were for the street performers—and into the halls of shops.
We entered and shuffled through an ever-narrowing thicket of proprietorships, separated by makeshift walls and rugs hung, vendors barking, selling sneakers, backpacks, scarves, CD players, cameras, crafts, carpets, jewels and vases and anything one can make from silver-or gold-painted tin. We stopped in a tiny enclave, manned by a small quick-moving man with fast small sad eyes and great animal eyebrows. Every object we picked up or glanced at prompted a flurry of proposals and urgings. He called us his friends, and offered us student rates, and put his hand on Hand’s back, patting it nervously.
“My friend,” he said to me, grabbing my shoulder, “you had something happen to you so I have the thing.” He retrieved a long sword, almost three feet long, curved and sheathed in an ornate case. “See how nice?”
“How much?” I asked. I liked the sword.
“For you one hundred dollars.”
Hand laughed in a great burst. I moved onto smaller models.
The salesman kept talking. At first, we laughed when he spoke, while he did the My friend, My friend I help you out part, and then we tried to let him know that he didn’t need to do the act with us, we knew better, we had the blue book and knew the real value, etc., but he continued, and we had to laugh more. We bargained with him halfheartedly. We wanted a couple silly things, a pair of knives, a small jewelry box, oval and studded with fake emeralds, which broke apart and became a bracelet, and we pretended to leave when he would not take our offer. He sighed. He looked around left and right and behind a burgundy curtain, to make clear that if he gave us this price, he had to do so out of earshot of his boss and God. Out of appreciation for his efforts and great comaraderie and fortitude, we bought from him five things—two decorative knives, two of the small jewelry boxes and finally a small tin plate, engraved.
“See you my friends!” he said to our backs when he realized we were leaving. “You want nice chess set? For you beautiful student rate!”
But we were gone and had more elaborate plans.
We walked back into the square and looked for a new merchant-alley. But we had wasted too much time. Most of the shops were now closed. Their metal gates had come down, or their proprietors were packing up.
“Fuck.”
“No, there’s one.”
On the outskirts of the square, a large shop was still open, just an open garage really, but bright and full to the ceiling, sixteen feet up. In front of it, a stray dog foraged through an enormous pile of garbage and human waste.
We greeted the portly store owner as we stepped up and among the bright overcrowded shelves of dishes and rugs and boxes, platters and knives. It was, this store, in its tins and brasses, blues and reds so bright, enamel on tin toys, more ravishing than almost any painting I’d ever seen or had likely ever been made—it was an intricate medieval tapestry and a hundred perfect Dutch still-lifes together melded but brighter lit—the accumulated care and craft put into these objects, each bauble, was surely equal to almost anything more celebrated artists had done or could do, as is any aisle in any grocery store, as is any decent toy shop—but these places would never be recognized as such, nor would a casino so—
Among the tea sets and chess sets and tiny chests for special things, I looked for and found the smallest, cheapest and least desirable item the store held. It was a keychain anchored to a small white animal, probably a sheep, crudely carved from a smooth milky material looking like lucite. I held it, I caressed it, I presented it to Hand, posing as my knowledgeable dealer in precious objects, with a rumble of approval. He came to me and touched it and purred his interest.
“It’s incredible?” I said.
“It’s almost painful,” he said.
Our interest was made clear. We turned to the portly man and asked him, in French, how much.
He spoke no French. He scurried to a desk in the back and returned with a lined piece of paper, folded to a fourth. On it he wrote:
60DH.
Sixty dirham, about $3.
I looked at the paper, then at the keychain. I frowned. I shook my head slowly. This is where the trick would come in. I asked for the paper and pen. He handed them to me and on his paper, under his 60DH I wrote:
150DH.
Then I gave it back.
“Okay!” he said, grimacing. It was a deal. We had taxed his patience, but a hard bargain had been won; he was a fair man.
Hand stepped closer. I showed
Hand the paper, and indicated that this good man had agreed to my hard-driven terms. Hand, though, was not to be so easily satisfied. He asked to hold the sheep keychain. I put it in his palm. He held it and weighed it in his hand. He ran a finger along its length. He examined, closely, the keyring, clicking it open and shut as if fidgeting with a carabiner. Then he shook his head and took the pen and the paper and under the 60DH and under the 150DH he wrote:
250DH.
Here I thought we might have gone too far.
Not a chance. Instead, again, the man took a long hard look at the proposal, fist to chin … and slowly agreed with a slow nod. My knees were shaking.
I took the sheep again. Now I held it to my face and rubbed it. I kissed it softly, and looked into its tiny black eyes. The price was not right.
“Two-fifty?” I said to Hand. “That’s an insult.”
I took the paper from Hand and wrote under it:
1800DH.
I handed it back to the salesman, at this point truly expecting him to throw up his hands and laugh. We were insisting on paying about $120 for a keychain priced at $3.
But the man didn’t flinch. He was a titan. He touched a finger to his mouth, either gauging our sanity or pretending to mull our newest offer, and after a long perfect pause … again acquiesced. I was having probably the best time I could remember ever having.
But Hand turned to the man, shook his hand, said “Good,” and paid him. It was over.
We left. The square was almost empty.
“How come you didn’t keep going?” I asked. I was pissed. “We were just getting started.”
We passed two men disassembling their food booth, dumping the ice back into a rolling cooler, packing their fish.
“How far do you really want to go with this?” Hand asked.
“Till the end.”
“Seriously.”
“I am serious, fucker. That’s what we’re here for.”
We stood. A small crowd near us roared about something. A monkey had done a trick.
“C’mon. Really. We’ve got about $14,000 left. Why not just get rid of $2,000 or $3,000 more and call it even?”
“That wasn’t the original idea, Hand. Jesus. What about the staging ground? You remember? We were there, we had perfect control over that moment. We were creating art there—”
“Are you talking about that woman in Saly, the head lady?”
“Annette.”
“She was insane. Staging ground? Fuck you. The problem with that idea is that you have to see these other people as—well, how do they figure in? How does that guy in the shop figure in? Is he part of it, or part of the scenery?”
I thought for a second.
“He’s in the chorus,” I said.
“Right. In the chorus.”
A tall man strode by, face dark under a hood the color of bark. “Hashish,” he whispered. Then “Crystal,” and was gone.
“Listen,” Hand said, “fuck the original idea. I could use that money.”
“Why are you doing this now? You didn’t say anything about this earlier.”
“I just didn’t think you were that serious. I figured you’d get your shit together at some point and we’d save the rest.”
“You don’t have a right to do this, especially now.”
We stopped. We stood in the middle of the Djemaa el-Fna. There was a hotel on the far end of the square, and on a balcony a man seemed to be watching us.
“Maybe we should go home,” Hand said.
He didn’t mean it.
“I’m not going home,” I said. “You can.”
His hands were on his hips, his head hung.
“I just don’t want to—” he started. “I just think this has something to do with everything else, and that’s fine, but you’re not telling me why, and then I have to be reminded constantly, because every time we give some away I think it means something to you—But even then I don’t get it.”
“There’s no connection,” I said.
Hand’s head was slung to one side, defiant.
“There isn’t,” I said.
“Well why the fuck not?” he said.
“You want there to be some connection, but there isn’t. We’re here. We were in Senegal now we’re here. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going,” he said.
“Good,” I said, “Jesus,” and sat down. The ground was cold.
Now I didn’t want to go. I wanted to make Hand cry. I couldn’t make that fucker cry.
Hand stood, hands on his hips, watching the people leave the square. He sighed. He closed his eyes. He opened them after a moment, looking like he would say something—his eyes again had that unblinking and wild stare and I expected his jaw to start churning—but he closed his mouth and eyes again and now tilted his head so his ear met the roof. He whistled a few notes of nothing.
I leaned back until I was lying flat, staring up. The smoke from the grills striped the black starless sky. I couldn’t see Hand, but his shadow dimmed my right eye’s view. My body became heavier the longer I lay. I felt huge, sluggish, limitless in mass. It would take me hours to get up. I might never move again. I could become this landscape. I could fade into this pavement. I could watch as a mountain would watch, as a man on a balcony would watch, the people and their transactions, their hissed offers and threats, myself amused and without obligation. From a balcony, even twelve feet up, there was enough distance. There is movement below but it’s not your movement.
My eyes were hot and full with water. The water ran down either side of my face, into my ears, cooling in the black air.
“Will.”
“Oh fuck,” I breathed.
He was standing near my shoes.
“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.”
“What? Will, talk.”
“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.”
The tears made the smoke overhead into crystal, surging and bursting. I dragged the mucus back into my nose and closed my eyes and pushed the water there out, spreading it down over my bones and to the ground.
“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.”
Hand’s shadow threw itself over me. He was sitting now, arms holding his knees.
“Holy shit,” I said. “Holy shit holy shit.”
I was hiccuping now. I could sense people walking by, slowing, walking on. I was the only person lying on the pavement of the Djemaa el-Fna.
“Slow down,” Hand said.
My eyes hurt. The water was being pulled from me and the strain was incredible. My forehead was tight, a pressure above my nose. My throat jerked and coughed. I couldn’t remember crying this way. It was pathetic.
“Fuck,” I said.
“I know.”
“Six months holy fuck.”
Hand breathed out.
Six months meant it was in the past. We’d lived all these months since and we didn’t know why. Had we decided to do it, had we decided that this was what we wanted, to wake up and work, as I’d been doing, in my pajama bottoms? Who had told me that I should, as I had just a month ago, spend a full week sitting in the SRO section of Wrigley, watching the maintenance men replace broken seats? That I should, as I had, bring Mo and Thor a half-dozen times to the lake in November and December, showing them where the boats would be if it were warmer, showing them the tall twin buildings that looked like flasks, running through the slush by the dead fountain, hoping my feet would freeze. I couldn’t think of anything I’d done in six months that brought me anywhere new or proved in any way I’d been there, that I’d been taking air from the world and using it to any justifiable end.
We just hadn’t decided yet, any of us. I know Jack’s dad hadn’t decided. We hadn’t yet made a conscious decision about what we would and wouldn’t do. We were standing and blinking and waiting to be told.
There was a tapping from within me, something tapping my breastplate from within. I was hyperventilating. Extra firings, a surge in the Bundle of His. A man stopped and said something to Hand in French
. Hand stood and thanked the man and sat back down again.
“I knew what he’d look like when he was fifty.”
Hand said nothing.
“You know he’d get fat,” I said. “He’d look like his dad, bald and with that big fat ass. You know he was headed there. Fuck.”
Hand said nothing. I could hear someone nearby dunking something in water, removing it and tapping the excess on something made of wood or plastic, a table or bucket.
“I was always serious about that valley,” I said.
“I know you were.”
When Jack had moved to D.C. and Hand was in St. Louis, I’d gotten the idea that even if we lived in different states for a while, eventually we’d buy land together, maybe near Phelps if Jack could telecommute, since he was the only one with a more permanent sort of job. We were very serious. Or I was serious, and the other two said We’ll see, but you could tell they wanted it, too, especially if I did the work. Our kids could be playing with Uncle Jack’s kids, Uncle Will’s, Uncle—
We were planning some kind of less sinister name for Hand.
The land would be on the lake, but if not, a valley. A small valley, unpopulated, wooded, not too steep. We’d get a few acres each, and I was sure we could afford it, the land up near Phelps wasn’t priced too bad, and I’d do the plans for each, and Hand and I would guide the construction and hire local crews, and Jack and Hand would help, and we’d get all three built in one summer.
We’d have a motherfucking shitload of dogs! Horses. Peacocks. Oh to live among peacocks. I’d seen them once in person and they defied so many laws of color and gravity that they had to be mad geniuses waiting to take over everything. Mudskippers, ocelots, tree sloths and hanumans—we’d have all the most ridiculous animals. And it made sense that we’d stay together, and have this valley, and it made sense that our kids would feel at home in any house, and know every inch of that valley, would roll down the sides in the fall when the leaves had fallen and were brittle and red. We’d hear their yelps from our third-story windows, where we were building skylights and painting old furniture new.
The smoke of the market cleared over us and a few weak stars were visible. They did nothing and meant nothing.