by Harlan Ruud
'Remember what?' she asks him.
'Nothing,' he replies.
'Yes,' Maggie says, 'I remember nothing. Do you?'
'Very well,' he answers.
'Me, too,' I add, watching them look at each other, then look away.
Surprising me, my father offers me a ride to the bus depot. Our drive into town is silent, each of us staring out into the countryside. I am anxious, even a bit frightened. Most of all, I am relieved. By tomorrow evening, I will be in New York City. What, I wonder, will happen?
In the bus depot's parking lot, my father steers the pickup into a vacant space and turns off the ignition. His hands on the steering wheel as if he is anxious to leave, he stares at the rusted Cadillac parked ahead of us.
'You know, Dad,' I say, 'you don't have to come in with me. You have – you have a long drive home, and there's still a half-hour before my bus leaves. I'll just get a coffee or something.'
Taking an envelope from his shirt pocket, he folds it in half and passes it to me, still looking at the Cadillac.
'Put this in your bag there,' he says.
Silently, I take the envelope and, leaning forward, slip it in the side of my knapsack on the truck's floor.
Is it a letter? I wonder. I hope not.
I sit straight and look out the window at the bus depot's entrance. Two young Asian girls walk inside, each lugging a huge backpack. Behind them is a skinny, teenaged white boy with long, blond hair, tight blue jeans, and huge, white sneakers. On the back of his black T-shirt are the words, Get in the Ring, Motherfucker.
I turn to my father.
'Well, son,' he says, you better get going.'
Looking at me, he holds out his huge hand. I shake it at once, then reach forward and pick up my knapsack.
'If you get into trouble,' he says, 'call me.'
'I will,' I say, opening the truck door and stepping out onto the pavement.
No, I think, I won't.
Taking my suitcase from the back of the truck, I stand for a second and look at my father.
'Goodbye, Dad,' I say.
'Okay, then,' he replies, starting the ignition.
I shut the truck's door and watch through the passenger's window as my father shifts into gear. No longer looking at me, he steers the old blue Ford backwards and out of the parking lot.
As I sit in the waiting area at the depot, I take the envelope from my knapsack and open it. Inside are fifteen one-hundred-dollar bills.
When Maggie informs me that she and Jonathan will be traveling to Agadir for two days, I am neither surprised nor upset.
'But don't freak out and run off this time,' she says, kissing me. 'We'll be back. Okay?'
'Okay,' I reply.
'You're not pissed off,' she asks, 'are you?'
'Why would I be pissed off?' I reply. 'You're not my wife. I don't even know your last name.'
'You're pissed off.'
Putting a hand on either side of her head, I raise her face to mine.
'I'm not pissed off,' I say. 'You two came to Morocco together, and I'm sure he's been lonely this last week without you. Go on; enjoy yourselves.'
She looks up at me, a bit suspiciously, then smiles.
'Well, I definitely won't enjoy myself,' she says, again kissing me, 'but I'll try, at least, not to kill myself.'
'Or Jonathan,' I reply.
'That I can't promise.'
Delicately, slowly, she begins to unbutton my shirt, kissing me.
'Walker,' she whispers.
'What?' I ask, putting my hands to her breasts.
'My last name is Walker.'
Later that evening, I sit with YaYa at the café next to our hotel. As he writes, I sip my tea and watch the people around me.
It is a warm night with a clear sky; though there are few tourists, the street is busy, noisy. Oddly, however, there are few people seated at the café's tables: five, including YaYa and me.
The middle-aged American woman returns, still wearing dirty blue djellaba and carrying her large, straw purse, and again asks the waiter for bones. As before, he gives her a plastic bag, filled, and the woman thanks him and quickly walks away.
I look at YaYa, but he is immersed in what he is writing, his hand scribbling quickly across the lined, yellow paper.
Over the next hour, I am approached by two boys and a girl, each offering shoe shines. I decline them all. Two teenaged boys I have never seen before ask to borrow ten dirham. I give it to them.
An elderly veiled woman sells me a copper bracelet and a carved wooden ring for five American dollars. A young man resembling Mussolini suggests we go for a walk along the beach. A long walk, he explains.
'One hundred dirham,' he says, smiling. His teeth are jagged, rotting.
'For what?' I ask.
'A walk. You know.'
'Get lost,' I tell him.
As he leaves, YaYa looks up from his writing and laughs.
'You're popular,' he says.
'Must be my peaceful disposition,' I reply, sucking air through my teeth. 'Damn.'
'Must be,' he chuckles, as he returns to his writing.
I begin to count the people passing by, one by one, until I reach forty-two. Turning to YaYa, I ask if he would like to accompany me to the hammam.
'Hey, man,' he says, looking up, 'I'm still trying to gain back the twelve pounds I sweated out last time we were there. Fuck. Besides, that place gives me the willies. I kept expecting someone to walk by in shackles.'
'Well,' I say, looking up, 'I'm going to head over. I'll see you later, bro.'
'Later,' he says, again returning to his writing.
Though there are several men in the changing area, the hammam itself is empty. Having smoked half of a joint on my way over, I wander, mildly stoned, through the shadowed, steam-filled rooms and settle finally in the darkest corner.
Legs cocked, I rest my elbows on my knees, the palms of my hands turned upward, and stare into the swirling, shadowed clouds of steam. Soon, I am dripping with sweat; since no one is around, I raise my ass off the floor and slip out of my underwear, dropping them in a wet pile next to my shaving kit.
Lowering my head, I rest my chin on my chest and close my eyes. Though it is not yet nine o'clock, I am dazed, sleepy; the heat, steam, and drug-induced haze converge to pull me, as if weighted, into a near delirium.
Slowly, I open my eyes and raise my head. I look to my left, to my right, and then straight ahead. If I think of anything, it is of the need to think nothing, aware of only that which is before me.
I sit straight, overwhelmed by a sudden déjá vu. Closing my eyes, I raise my hands, covering my face, and try to prolong the sense, to – to stretch it into something tangible, something precise.
If I think of anything it is of the need to think nothing, aware of only that which is before me.
Opening my eyes, I lower my hands, telling myself to remember. I do not. I cannot.
Abruptly, the sensation vanishes, is pulled back into the shadows around me. Frustrated, I again raise my arms, roughly rubbing my forehead with the palms of my hands.
'Bonsoir,' I hear a man say.
Startled, I look up into the shadows but see no one, nothing.
'Comme ça va?' the voice asks. 'Et tu malade?'
'Who's there?' I ask, leaning forward, peering into the rolling clouds of steam.
'You speak English,' the voice says. 'Good.'
Slowly, as if born of the steam itself, a man steps out of the shadows. I realize it is the tall, silver-haired gentleman from the restaurant. He is wearing a blood-red towel around his waist and, on his feet, a pair of black, plastic sandals.
'Oh,' I say, suddenly aware of my nakedness. 'Hello. Good evening.'
His name, he says, is Abayomi.
Stretching forward, I extend my hand. He shakes it firmly. I fold my hands, then rest them in my lap. I am, I realize, ashamed. I am ashamed in his presence.
'Are you alright, son?' he asks, standing, looking down at me.
&nb
sp; 'Oh, yeah,' I reply. 'Yeah. I was just – thinking.'
'Unpleasant thoughts, I presume?'
His voice is deep, steady, with a slight trace of Nigerian in its rhythm.
'Well, you know, Abayomi,' I reply, looking up at him, 'if a man thinks enough, he'll eventually get to the unpleasant thoughts. Right?'
'Indeed,' he says, laughing softly.
I watch him as he slowly moves to my left, perhaps two, three feet away, and sits on the floor. Judging by his deliberate movements, he is older than his appearance would imply: sixty-five, perhaps even seventy.
'Do you mind if I sit here?' he asks, crossing his legs.
Hanging from a leather strap around his neck is a round, jade pendant. Though I would prefer to be alone, I look at his face and reply:
'Of course not.'
'You were in that restaurant a couple of nights ago,' he says, looking at me. 'Yes?'
'Yes,' I reply, 'I was.'
'With your beautiful friend and – a Jewish fellow?' he says. 'The three of you were looking at me. Watching me.'
'Oh,' I reply, nodding my head. 'We were trying to figure out what – what your story was. My guess was an ambassador or professor. Maggie figured you were African – and fabulous. She said you were gorgeous.'
Though I expect him to react to Maggie's compliment, he says instead:
'You were correct, my brother; I am a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. Tell your friend that she, too, was correct. About my being from Africa, anyway.'
He laughs softly.
I look at him, then down at my lap, ensuring that my cock and balls are hidden beneath my hands. I want to take my wet underwear and slip them on, but I do not want him to see me do so. I sit still, quiet, staring into the shadows.
His hands rest on his knees, and he too is silent. Eyes closed, he breathes slowly, deeply, his narrow, muscled chest and belly rising, falling. Like my father and grandfather, I note, he is the color of eggplant.
'Not an ounce of the white man's blood,' my grandfather often claimed.
'Until you,' he would add, looking at my brown skin, and frowning.
'She wasn't white,' my father once said, referring to my mother. 'She was a Plains Cree Indian from North Battleford, Canada.'
'Well, she had white in her,' my grandfather replied, 'like most Indians.'
Ensuring that Abayomi's eyes are closed, I reach for my underwear. Standing slowly, wobbling on one foot, then the other, I slip them on. Feeling as if I am about to faint, I quickly squat and, turning, fall back on my ass.
Abayomi opens his eyes, looks at me, and then looks away. Embarrassed, I close my eyes and say nothing.
From deep in the shadows, I hear the heavy, wooden door of the hammam open, then close. Soon, from another of the rooms, I hear the low, steady intonations of a man praying, chanting, his husky voice drifting through the darkness. Abruptly, he stops, and the silence is followed by the sound of water pouring into a metal bucket, then splashing, then pouring, then splashing, then pouring – followed again by the soft, hypnotic rhythm of prayer.
I look up and notice that Abayomi is gone.
'Abayomi,' I say, leaning forward, peering into the darkness, 'are you still –?'
I become silent.
My hands against the wall, I rise and walk slowly through the heavy, hot clouds of steam from one chamber of the hammam to the next.
Stepping into the chamber nearest the hammam's entrance, I stop.
'Comme ça va?'' a voice asks. 'Et tu malade?'
I turn around; standing nearly invisible but for his face and shoulders is a young boy.
'Moi?' I reply. 'Non.'
'Parles vous anglais?' he asks.
'Yes. Yes, I do.'
'Good. Me, too.'
Pausing, he steps forward from the shadows. He is wearing red and yellow briefs.
'Would you like to see something scary?' he asks, his dark eyes conspiratorial, eager.
I stare at him.
'Not really,' I finally reply.
'Please.'
Still, I stare at him.
'Well - okay.'
He holds up a small razor, smiling, and with a swift, silent precision that strikes me briefly as a sort of mime, cuts his throat; a thin stream of black blood spurts across my torso.
'It all comes together in the end,' he says. 'And sometimes not even then. We look back, and what do we remember? I have two memories from the first ten years of my life. That's it. A decade of living and, out of it all, I remember three things: a Dolly Parton concert with my father, the Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather, and finding a turquoise ring by the side of the road.
'My mother died when I was three, but I don't remember that. I had part of my ear bit off by a horse, but I don't remember that, either. Just two more things I was told about later in life but that I don't personally recall.
'So – it's not even like I remember what was important and forget what wasn't – or even like I block out the bad memories and remember the good. For whatever reason, and who knows what it is, this or that particular moment gets stuck in my brain, but most of it doesn't. Just pictures. That's all it comes down to: a few pictures here and there in our mind that come together to form a life, our life.
'The real truth, though, the reality of our lives – well, I won't even guess where that lives. Maybe it just disappears. Do you think? Just crumbles away like – like a charred piece of paper. Or, worse, like it was never even real to begin with. Like, who knows, maybe it was just something we imagined along the way. Do you think?'
She kisses my eyelids, then my mouth; her lips are cool, dry.
'Maggie,' I begin to say, 'it's –'
'Be quiet,' she interrupts.
I open my eyes, look at her, and then close them again.
'Love, Ulysses,' I hear her whisper. 'It's about love.'
'Trust nothing, no one. Love is vanity turned outward. Pride is shame in search of redemption; art is pride is love is shit. Religion is moot.'
His finger touches my lips.
'Silence,' he says. 'We must now have silence.'
Maggie sits on the bed next to mine, smiling. She is dressed entirely in white: long skirt, blouse, scarf, shoes. Removing the scarf from her hair and her shoulders, she folds it and sets it in her lap.
Dangling from her ears, I notice, are tiny silver and topaz earrings, oval-shaped.
'Hey, sleeping beauty,' she says, 'did my kisses wake you?'
I say nothing, looking at her.
'Are you awake yet?' she asks, reaching over and gently touching my bare shoulder.
On the right side of her neck, where her earlobe meets her jawbone, is a small, round sore.
'What happened? I ask.
'When?' she replies, as if confused.
'To your neck.'
'Oh, that,' she says, quickly, gently touching her neck. 'That's nothing. I burnt myself with a cigarette. Hey, did you miss me?'
'Don't change the subject,' I reply, sitting straight.
'Change the subject? I wasn't. You asked me what happened and I told you. Ulysses, are you in –'
She looks at me, suddenly apprehensive.
'Are you in a bad mood?' she continues. 'Because if you are, then I'd just as soon leave.'
'I'm not in a bad mood,' I reply, raising my hands and stretching.
'Are you sure about that?' she asks.
'I said so, didn't I?'
She watches me.
'I saw YaYa downstairs,' she says. 'He said he hadn't seen you since the night I left, that every time he came by you were sleeping.'
'I was tired.'
'Forty hours of sleep,' she says. 'I guess you were tired.'
'Forty hours? What? Was he timing me?'
'No, but he said he remembered when you went to bed, and it was over forty hours ago. You went to the hammam, came back, and went to bed.'
'Well,' I reply, resting against the headboard and putting my hands in my lap, 'if he had done a bette
r job of spying on me, he would know I wasn't asleep the entire time.'
She looks at me, frowning, then says:
'You know what, Ulysses? I'm going to go now. When you're in a better mood, you can come look for me.'
Taking the scarf from her lap, she drapes it around her shoulders and picks up her purse. I am silent, watching her.
'We're not married, you know,' she says.
I say nothing.
'I'm not your husband,' she continues, 'and you're not my wife. And unless I'm mistaken, neither are you a cat on a hot tin roof, Ulysses.'
'What's that supposed to mean?' I ask, looking at the sore on her neck.
'What it means,' she replies, 'is that you're acting like the worst stereotype of a jealous woman, which in reality is just a jealous man.'
'Who said I was jealous?' I ask. 'Besides, what do I have to be jealous of?'
'Nothing,' she says. 'But what does anybody have to be jealous of?'
'Whatever,' I reply, shrugging.
She looks at me for a moment, then stands and walks silently out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
Later that evening, I walk downstairs to the café; Maggie and YaYa are seated at a table across from one another, talking. Seeing me, they abruptly become silent. YaYa waves, while Maggie turns away and lights a cigarette.
'Have a seat, stranger,' YaYa says.
'What were you guys whispering about?' I ask, sitting down between them.
'What is wrong with you?' Maggie asks, turning angrily at me. 'We weren't whispering; we were talking.'
'Okay,' I reply, shrugging my shoulders. 'If you say so.'
'Actually,' she says, looking at YaYa, 'we were whispering because we didn't want anyone to hear us plotting our crimes. Rape, murder, bank robbery. All the good stuff. Right, YaYa?'
'Hey, don't bring me into this,' YaYa replies, laughing, holding up his hands as if to surrender. 'I'm just an innocent bystander.'
'Ignorance is not innocence but sin,' I say, looking not at YaYa but at Maggie.
'Is that another of your father's maxims,' Maggie asks, her eyes ablaze. 'Or would it be your grandfather's?'
'Elizabeth Barrett Browning,' I reply. '1806 to 1861.'
'How white of you,' she snaps.
'I think I'll go take a walk,' YaYa abruptly interjects, closing his notebook and setting it atop the yellow pad of legal paper.