I fell in love with a woman on the 7:42 p.m. Or at least, my version of her.
From my perch, I studied her as she waited, weaving new threads into her backstory. I came to anticipate her comings, watching her appear from behind a building and walk the half block to the bus stop, the sound of her heels clacking on the pavement. She was always professionally dressed—a secretary or warehouse manager, maybe?
At first, I made her a thirty-one-year-old from South America. Argentina. Then I rewrote her into something else, something more exotic. She was part Inuit, part Creole.
For weeks I watched her, imagining her returning home from a long day of work to a condo with a view of the mountains and water. I knew her kitchen cabinets were nearly bare: a few cans of tuna, some strawberry Crystal Light packets, and nothing else. She rarely drank, but when she drank, it was prosecco.
And I knew her name. Marya.
In Marya, I saw my new life. I saw myself setting up house, getting a job that I’d have to shower and dress for every morning, filing taxes, mowing the lawn. I saw us having a couple of kids, spending Friday nights lazily sharing take-out or watching a movie or playing cards. I saw us as an old couple, the kind who’ve lived together so long that they no longer speak in full sentences. We were predestined to be together. She was waiting for me. And for that I was thrilled. All I had to do was start the process, put the inevitable in motion.
All I had to do was introduce myself. The rest would play out.
Friday night.
I broke out a new shirt, headed down to the stop. We could jump a plane someplace south, Marya and I. Run away to Napa Valley or Costa Rica or Charlotte, North Carolina. Anywhere. We would be together.
A swarm of jitters chewed my stomach. Calm down, I told myself. This was Marya. My Marya. It wouldn’t be hard. Just talk to her, say “Hi.” Then what?
I didn’t know.
It didn’t matter.
She didn’t show up for the bus that night.
I worried that something had happened to her, that she’d gotten fired or was in the hospital, but then I convinced myself that she must have just taken Friday off.
Saturday and Sunday ached along, dragging the weight of my fantasy behind them. Monday finally ticked around.
Again, I stood ready at the stop. I tried to appear relaxed as I watched each passenger board. Again, no Marya. The driver eyed me. “You getting on?”
I shook my head.
The bus rumbled off, leaving me on the deserted street.
I waited each night that week at the bus stop, reading old newspapers people had left behind. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. No Marya. I brimmed with anxiety. Was she on vacation? Sick? I asked other passengers getting on if they knew her. All I got was confused or frightened looks.
Another weekend. Monday night finally arrived.
The bus rumbled to the stop, the brakes squeaking painfully, picked up the waiting passengers, then lumbered off.
I turned to leave, but then heard the click-clack of heels. Marya. Racing.
The oxygen in my lungs ignited. I stood ready to take her in my arms, hold her like she was life’s last breath.
She approached, winded.
I stepped forward. “Hi,” I said, then motioned down the street. “The bus took off. You just missed it.”
She turned to me, her face a mix of caution and inquisitiveness.
I felt the moment start to escape and quickly fumbled to recover it. I introduced myself as Clement Martin. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Gravity failed as I waited for her reply. Everything loosed from the earth, shooting off into the darkness of space. Misery settled in my heart in the silence.
She paused a moment, thinking. “Sure,” she said, and laughed.
But she wasn’t my Marya. From her first word I knew she wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. For one, her teeth were bad. And then there was her laugh. She sounded like a goat hitting a barbed-wire fence every time she found something funny.
Her name, Jasmina, reminded me of a cheap air freshener, and I knew it’d never work between us.
Still, I had a drink with her.
Still, I went home with her that night.
Chapter 24
But in a way, Jasmina did carry my fate with her. Returning to the loft after our night together, I found a box at my door. It was large enough to hold a horse’s head. No name on the outside, no address, no markings at all.
Warily, I lifted it. It had some weight to it. My mind spun through the catalogue of things that came in unmarked packages; none were good.
Inside, I found twelve dusty, hardbound books, each with a number markered on the cover. There was a postcard included: Florida is hot in the summer. The beach is filled with dead jellyfish. Don’t lose the books. I turned the card over. A picture of Hersheypark in Pennsylvania.
Brighton Rock. Lover’s Guide to Paris. Sex Kittens Take Seoul. The books were a mix of literature, trash, travelogue, and memoir. I picked up book eight, Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell, and began reading. The pages were ready to fall out, the binding weak.
Around me, the evening settled, shadows bleeding across the loft until it was too dark to read.
I turned on the light and the shadows shot back. The place was still, quiet, the night embracing. I looked at the book. I looked at the box. I reread the postcard.
A damp cold took hold.
Higgles. He knew where I lived.
Chapter 25
It bothered me for weeks, like a floater skimming across your peripheral vision, never quite coming into focus.
Then one morning, long after I’d forced it from my mind, the answer came to me in the shower—a sudden rush that left me grasping for support.
My photo on the Tomas Cartright passport.
I realized where it had been taken.
The snap of the camera on my first day at the homeless shelter. The day I first met Ray-Ray.
◉ ◉ ◉
Ray-Ray. One of our last conversations. Him telling me I needed to find my “why.” The reason to exist. To continue. The thing that made me get out of bed in the morning.
My why was not wanting to die.
Which isn’t the same as wanting to live.
Chapter 26
Higgles sending the box of books spooked me. I moved places, hoping to hide.
The apartment I took in the Yesler Terrace just east of downtown Seattle could be mistaken for a closet. The view was of the back of a building. The fall was sweltering, ninety-plus degrees even in mid-October. Otter Pops and Corn Flakes were all I ate, my stomach revolting against me.
Popping out for toilet paper and milk one afternoon, I returned to find a padded envelope propped against my door.
Fuck, I thought, my skin trying to run off without me. This was no Welcome Wagon coupon book.
Inside my place, I bolted the door, threw the envelope in the trash, and then washed my hands for good measure. For over an hour, I ignored the envelope in the trash, but the allure of the mystery was too much.
I dug it out of the garbage, slowly tore it open. Inside was a SIM card.
I swapped it with the one in my cell phone. A text pinged. Book 2, it read. Thursday. Meet me there.
Higgles, I thought, even though he didn’t sign off. Don’t lose the books, he’d written on the postcard. I hadn’t. I’d dragged them along. I scanned my library. Book 2. Brighton Rock by Graham Green. Higgles would be waiting in Brighton, England.
I was finally meeting the boss face-to-face.
Clover, I texted back.
Seattle to Newark to London. At the station, I got a meat pie, four tabloid papers that stained my hands black with ink, and took a train south.
Brighton.
I waited four hours and was about to give up when Higgles texted t
he name of a pub. The Uppin Arms.
How will I know U?
You’ll know me, was his response.
Stocky, oily faced, and huffing for air, he didn’t look anything like I thought he would. His hair was shaved down to his scalp and spittle glossed his mouth. He reminded me of a horse after a hard race.
“That you?” he said, seeing me. I expected an English accent. He was a solid American.
I nodded and he wrapped me in a sweaty hug.
We settled in at a table in the back and ordered drinks, a whiskey and a beer each. “This is great, sitting down like civilized men to talk,” he said. “So, tell me a little about yourself, your background, hobbies. Where do you see yourself in five years?”
I sat back in my chair, studied Higgles. “Is this a job interview?”
He flitted his hand about like he was clearing the air. “Of a sort,” he said. “You’ve been a courier for—what?—a year-plus now? I just figured you’re ready to start making some real money.”
“What’s real money?”
He threw out a number. It had a comma in it. I sipped my beer. “I’m listening.”
“Good.” He leaned toward me, his weight tipping the table a bit. “What do you know about Africa?”
“I know it’s a continent.”
“That’s a start,” he said. “I’ve got a job, a little something on the side I need done. It’s not the regular nine-to-five you’ve been doing. To pull it off, it has to be Hart to Hart. It needs to be Magnum, PI.”
I tasted my whiskey, which burned my tongue. “You’ve lost me.”
“It needs someone credible,” he said. “Someone with a good facade, calm demeanor, and continuity of character.” He smiled a mouthful of blue-white capped teeth. “I need someone who can hold their drink and be charming.”
“You need a James Bond.”
“But without the gadgets.”
“A lo-fi James Bond.”
“Try no-fi.” Sniffing his whiskey, Higgles made a pained face.
“Go on. I’m listening.”
He nipped at his drink, then rubbed his hands together like they were cold. “You know what hawala is?”
“A Turkish dessert?”
His look told me no. “It’s a money transfer without money movement. Popular in the Middle East. And that’s kinda what we’re doing here. Just without the money bit. And there is a bit of movement involved.”
“So it’s not halva at all.”
“Hawala,” he said. “And it is like one because it’s off the books—if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t. “And?” I said.
“Basically, I need you to be on the scene before the scene starts. I need you to influence the results.” He tried his best for a friendly smile. “You’d be amazed at what can be accomplished with a head start.”
I asked who we were getting a head start on, knowing it didn’t matter. The whole set up—the new SIM card, the face-to-face, the blatant skullduggery—raised my guard. I didn’t trust Higgles. But I trusted myself and my abilities to run his gauntlet, best him at his own game, and walk away richer.
“Everybody else. But don’t worry. The everybodies are mostly nobodies. Underlings, creeps, hobos,” he said. “We’re not concerned about them.”
“So then there’s no risk?”
He held up a hand. “Of course there’s risk. There are some people out there who don’t like getting fucked.”
“Does anyone like getting fucked?”
He tapped his nose. “You’ve got a point,” he said. “But the big people, the bosses running everything, like it even less. That’s why, once we set this in motion, we never speak a word of it again. We keep it a secret, between you and me.” His eyes shot bright with a thought. “Let me see your phone.”
I handed it to him.
He pulled out a safety pin and popped the SIM card, which he snapped in half. Then he dropped the phone in my pint of beer, killing it.
I fished it out, irritated. “Why’d you ruin it?”
“I’ll get you another beer,” he said.
“I meant the phone.”
Digging in his pocket, he pulled out a new one and handed it me.
“I like my old one better.”
“From now on,” he said, ignoring my comment, “no calls, no texts to the old numbers. I’ll get in touch when we need to get in touch,” he said, working down his whiskey. “What should my handle be?”
“Your handle?”
“My name.”
“What’s wrong with Higgles?”
He laughed. “Higgles,” he said. “Love it. Perfect. Call me Higgles! Now what about you?”
He was fucking with me now, I could tell. Working through Ray-Ray, he’d okayed my Kam Man recruitment at the homeless shelter, gotten me the Tomas Cartwright passport, and sent me around the world on jobs. He’s just now getting around to asking my name? “Call me Ray-Ray,” I said.
“Fantastic.” He clapped his hands. “Ray-Ray,” he said, pointing to me. “Higgles.” He touched his chest. “Great. Now let’s talk details of the deal.” He pulled out a notecard, read off the points of the gambit. West Africa. I’d meet a man. He’d give me some documents and cash. I’d fly back to the States and wait for further instructions. Higgles leaned back in his chair, placed his hands on his belly. “Simple, yes?”
It sounded vague, dangerous, anything but simple.
“Of course,” he said, “if the whole thing turns Confederate, heads south, then it goes without saying that—” He broke off, not saying. “You in?”
Broadly stroked and extremely rough, the plan relied on facts and factors far outside my soundings. It was like packing for an Arctic trip without ever having seen snow.
“I’m in.”
Higgles sealed the deal with a clank of glass. Whiskey and beer were followed by whiskey and beer.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he said.
I hesitated.
“Come on,” he said.
“You tell me something first.”
He tilted his head back, scratched his chest. “Well, like what?”
“What’d you do before doing this?”
“Before Brighton?”
“Before before,” I said. “CliffsNotes your life for me.”
“Well, I was born, did the military like everyone else in my town, got married, got divorced, worked in the shipping department for FedEx, then got on with AT&T. Now I’m here.”
“What were you doing at AT&T, customer service?”
“Systems analysis,” he said. “I was the best they had. Could get into anywhere, get into any system, figure out any problem, and fix it.”
“Why’d you leave?”
“Ah, well…we had a disagreement over my job responsibilities. Semantics, really. What I called digital exploration and investigation, they called hacking. So did the FBI.” He shrugged.
“So what’s your connection to the homeless shelter? And how’d you get those packages out of the library so smoothly? I never saw you once.”
A shadow of confusion crossed his face. “The shelter? The library?” He sat up in his chair, cleared his throat. “Trade secrets,” he said. “Now’s time you tell me something about yourself, Ray-Ray.”
I said my birthday was the next day. It wasn’t.
“A birthday boy!” He ordered yet another round and lifted his glass to toast. “Here’s to making money the old-fashioned way,” he said, his voice warm. “Stealing it.”
The night hazed on, shifting to black.
I woke on a sticky bathroom floor with a blazing hangover.
In the other room, Higgles snored like a derailing train amid a litter of Wimpy Burger wrappers and uncapped pens.
I vomited, showered, then vomited again. Dressed, I
prodded Higgles, trying to wake him. No response, not even a shift in his chugging snores. Taking one of the markers, I scribbled a note on a hamburger wrapper: Clover.
It was afternoon. I had a few hours until the train clattered me north to London. From London, it was onward to home where I’d set the scheme in motion.
The Brighton day seeped gray, like a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I felt like shit. I must have looked even worse. People commented. The fish-and-chips counterman laughed when he saw me, saying something in a phlegm-coated accent so thick that I didn’t understand a word.
Dropping down on the bench at the end of the pier, I sucked the salt off french fries, and hit a huge bottle of water. The waves sprayed over the pilings. Seagulls screeched above me, wheeling in the air.
An old woman with a face like a cable-knit sweater hobbled past smoking a pipe. It was a beautiful pipe, the bowl carved from a bone of some kind, crafted into the head of a man with a pointy beard. Maybe a sultan with many wives, even more camels. The smoke was sweet and spicy, like melting pumpkin butter, overwhelming. I coughed up a mouthful of bile into the fry bag.
She paused. “Just have a birthday?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
She pointed the stem of her pipe at me. “From the look of your face,” she said, and sat down next to me. Stoking the pipe strong, she kicked out mouthfuls of smoke.
I got up, my stomach churning. She grabbed my arm, gripped it tight. “Sit.”
“The smoke—it’s too much.”
She tapped her pipe out, the tobacco sifting away in the breeze. “Sit.”
I sat, sweating out toxins, and waited for her to start in on the state of England, how it had lost its way in the world. I waited for her to say something cryptic like, “The turtles follow only the purest moonlight.”
She didn’t. She didn’t say a thing, just took a small notepad and a pencil from her purse. She drew two lines, the top line slightly longer, then held the pad up to me. “Which one is longer?”
“The top.”
She nodded, her cold pipe hinged tight in her jaw. Turning to a fresh page, she drew two new lines, one with an arrow on each end and one with an arrow only on one end, a hard stop on the other. She held out the pad. “Which one is longer?”
Where Night Stops Page 6