Hana, too, was testing Charlie’s patience now that forging the yellow card had unleashed her craven side. She was worried, nigh obsessed, with the particulars of the card’s delivery: exactly how to get it into Charlie’s hands. “We don’t know who’s watching,” said Hana. “The army. The embassy. The police.” Charlie felt this was overly cautious, but couldn’t expect Hana to feel the same way. People disappeared in Egypt all the time. Rarely foreigners, but still; he saw how that might unnerve a person. Charlie’s goal was to assuage Hana’s fear and thus bring a swift end to their impasse. This by suggesting inconspicuous places to meet. Places where such a handoff would be the last thing anybody cared about. “We could go back to El Horreya,” said Charlie. “People there are blind drunk and generally carefree. You’ve been there. Nobody heard a damn thing we said. Or, if you prefer, we could meet on the corniche. People walk this way, that way, chat, shout, drink tea, catch fish. Not even sore thumbs stick out on the corniche.” Charlie enjoyed having what he thought were two good ideas in a row, so was less than pleased to discover Hana was of a different mind: “You want to meet in public?” She made no effort to hide her contempt for his suggestions. “During the day?” Charlie was so vexed by her seriousness that he couldn’t think up more places to meet. Much less quiet, empty places. Was there even such a thing in Cairo, a city that wouldn’t be itself without its crowds? Charlie sensed that continuing their conversation as such would only test their newfangled and unproven relationship. He said he’d call back later with new ideas. Hana told him not to call back unless the new ideas were also much better. The pressure was like a vise on Charlie’s head. By day’s end, he was ready to put his head through the drywall. An idea only occurred to him when Aos inadvertently brought it up.
“It’s getting late,” said Aos. He began packing his things. Everyone else in the office had left more than an hour before. “I’m going home unless you need me. I’m hungry, exhausted, and, to be honest, a little depressed.” The revolution, he said, hadn’t been going well. Then again, had it ever?
What felt like an epiphany drastically improved Charlie’s mood. “That’s it. Home. My home. Well, my apartment. It’s quiet. More importantly, it’s desolate. Almost no life means almost no witnesses. The only witness will be the blob on my couch known as Ruby.” Charlie hadn’t felt this good in some time. He called Hana straightaway, but kept talking to Aos while the phone rang. “My apartment really is the perfect place. I never have guests and barely have neighbors. They’re recluses, I think. Hoarders, maybe. I can hear them through the walls stacking boxes of—”
The call finally connected. As Hana recited her scripted greeting, Charlie experienced a short-lived pang of guilt. Why had he interrupted his conversation with Aos? It had been so long since they’d just chatted. “Hello? Hana? Is that you?”
She answered in the irked affirmative. Hadn’t she just said her name?
“I have good news,” said Charlie. “I know a place we can meet. My apartment.” It had sounded less debauched in his head. “Before you say no, let me explain. The apartment is impervious to the goings-on. It’s a few stories above street level and on the back side of the building. The view goes absolutely nowhere.”
Hana was surprisingly amenable to the idea. Still, she said she’d only agree on condition that Aos would also be there. She wanted to meet him. Charlie reminded Hana that she’d already met Aos the night of the near riot in the yard. Hana said that wasn’t her point. She wanted to know him better. Was he reliable? Could he be trusted? Charlie tried vouching for Aos, but Hana told him not to bother. She preferred to make up her own mind.
“Fine.” Charlie put his hand over the receiver and told Aos he couldn’t leave. Not yet. Please, he was needed. Aos’ face tensed slightly. Charlie grimaced at him. “Aos will be happy to come,” said Charlie into the phone. He scheduled the “party” for that night at ten o’clock. “The sooner, the better,” he said. “With this over, we can all get back to work.” Nothing had ever made Charlie so happy as the idea that he’d be swamped again without any respite in sight.
* * *
Somehow the “party” turned into an actual party. How did the duty-free whiskey Charlie had been saving get off his bookshelf and on the table? It was too late now to correct the error. He poured three drinks: one for Hana, one for Aos, and one slightly shorter pour for himself. This was a tried-and-failed method of controlling his immoderate thirst. Shorter pours just became more glasses. “A word of warning,” said Charlie. “If you drink this, you’ll never want to drink anything else. Not even cold water.” Aos and Hana drank freely while Charlie mourned the death of a friend: his whiskey. Eventually Hana set the yellow card on the table. She placed the card with a certain hesitation, as if it signified her final and irrevocable commitment to a plan that frightened her. Charlie stared at the card for a few seconds before touching it. A strange feeling. Not joy. Not even relief. The feeling that this should’ve happened much sooner. What a tragedy that it took so long and the means were so devious. Charlie thought he should give some kind of speech.
“I’m not delusional,” he said. “I don’t think we’re changing the world. We’re not even changing the system. We are doing something, though. That’s important. Doing something. Not talking about doing something. Not giving money to someone else who promises to do something on our behalf. Doing something with our own hands. We used our hands, didn’t we? When we get the medical documents, we’ll use our hands to mail them to your office.” Charlie gestured to Hana. “And, Hana, you’ll use your hands to . . .” He mimed the reception of documents and also their filing. “The result is that Dalia will go to Boston and Omran will get to weep openly at the airport. Wouldn’t that be funny to watch? Funny is probably the wrong word, but I think I would just have to laugh. To release the pressure of the moment. If I were there, I mean, to witness it.” Charlie frowned, but not intentionally; his face just got tired. “I won’t be there, obviously. I’ll be here. Working on another case. There’s always another case. I can’t imagine a time when there won’t be one.” Charlie’s life stretched before him. One day leaked into the next until he saw himself as an old man with a picture of a dead dog.
It was unclear what was supposed to happen now that the yellow card had been placed on the table and Charlie had given his speech. Would Hana remember that she’d wanted to interrogate Aos? List three times you were especially trustworthy. . . . Would Aos somehow fail the test in question? If that happened, would Hana take back the yellow card? Charlie slid the card nearer to him and finished his drink. Then poured a second glass, which freed Hana and Aos to do the same. In short order they were drunk enough to relax, if not to enjoy themselves. Charlie tried to savor the equanimity by making it last. He tried to make it last by not talking. He knew, though was pained to admit, how prone he was to ruining the mood. Nobody liked being bad tempered, contrary, unpleasant, and not fun. Charlie wasn’t born that way, he didn’t think. He’d acquired his nature from reading the news. People the world over were suffering. And the few that weren’t suffering didn’t give a shit.
The phone interrupted and thus stalled a party that was just becoming itself. The phone? At this hour? After the city had fallen asleep? Charlie thought at first it was Naguib and tensed up. Oh, God, he thought. I don’t have your money. I don’t even have half your money. The phone kept ringing. Hana and Aos stared each other. “Are you going to answer that?” said Aos. Charlie told himself it couldn’t be Naguib. Not at this hour. It was Omran, obviously. That made more sense given the time change. Also given that Charlie had left about a thousand messages. He was propelled to his feet by the comfort of his assumption and walked at an angle to the phone. He imagined the pleasure of explaining in veiled terms that the winds of Omran’s fortune had changed. He would see Dalia again soon enough. Stay put, stop packing. “Hello?” Charlie pressed the handset against his head so hard that the cartilage in his ear more or less flattened against his skull. He fell into hi
s armchair. Years of sitting in the same spot had scuffed smooth the upholstery. Ruby, who had until that moment been a dark blob on the couch, woke up, climbed down, walked over, and sat on Charlie’s feet. He loved her so much and regretted how he treated her. Not badly, of course. He remembered to feed Ruby on a mechanical level, as part of his morning routine, and pick up her shit—most in the alley, but some in hall when she was too tired to go all the way out—but the duty to keep her alive resided in his subconscious. There wasn’t enough time in the day to give her the attention or tenderness she deserved. He apologized to Ruby in his head for the unfairness of it all. There was nothing whole or round about their relationship. “Hello?” said Charlie again into the phone. The tone of his voice, high at the end of his question, excited Ruby, who beat the floor with her tail. Whack, whack. Charlie told Ruby to stop. Her tail was distracting him.
“Stop what?” said the voice on the phone.
For a second Charlie thought Ruby, grouchy all of a sudden, was talking back. He was mystified and a little afraid. Would she disavow his cruelty, come in the form of neglect? Would she ask Charlie why he failed to tend to her the way an old pooch ought to be tended?
“Hello?” The voice on the phone was fevered now. “Are you there? Is this Charlie? Stop what? I haven’t done anything! I only called. You told me to call when the papers were ready. They’re ready. You must take them. Right now. We have to meet. Charlie? Hello, Charlie? Are you there?”
Charlie’s heart beat his chest the way a hummingbird beats the air with its wings. He whispered, “Yes,” with the faint hope that Naguib wouldn’t hear and would, out of frustration, hang up. Then call back tomorrow. Though Charlie needed the papers, he couldn’t use them that night and didn’t want them right now. His mind-set was wrong. He was a little drunk. He still needed to prepare his logical argument about how two-fifths of fifty thousand was admittedly less than the agreed-upon five-fifths, but was still much more than zero fifths—the zilch Naguib would receive if the deal fell through.
“Zamalek, on the north side of the island by the water,” said Naguib in a gust of wind. “No army will be there, I don’t think. No protesters. The rich people send them away. There’s a one-way street along the bank with cars parked on both sides. I will be there in one hour. Bring the money in a brown sealed envelope. Fifty thousand Egyptian pounds.”
Charlie didn’t have any envelopes in his apartment. Much less brown envelopes. Much less brown envelopes that sealed automatically. Like, without licking them? More than half the money intended to go inside the imaginary envelope was also missing. “Why don’t I have any money?” Charlie screamed at himself in his head. Again, the question was rhetorical. He’d spent his money on clients who called or showed up at the office with simple pleas. Rent, food, medicine. Were the pleas not just? Were the pleas not worth everything? Charlie skimmed what he could from the budget, then skimmed more from his pay. His pay had become a fragile thing. It covered expenses only. His expenses included the whiskey he got at the airport when he faked flying in overnight on the red-eye. He’d bribed and had become acquainted with the janitor who mopped the floor by the duty-free. So was born their relationship. He paid good money for the whiskey every few weeks, after a long taxi ride in which he sometimes got dropped off in the wrong place. The taxi driver would demand more money to go to the right terminal. Of course, Charlie would pay. The money he didn’t use for the ride or food or rent or whiskey or the electricity required to freeze the cubes he dropped in his glass, which he barely washed on account of thinking the glass saved the flavor, was spent on people who would always and forever need it more than him. His clients. Charlie didn’t have fifty thousand Egyptian pounds the same way he didn’t have all the money in the world.
“I’ll be there in one hour,” said Charlie. He hung the phone up as if he wanted to hammer a nail in with the handset. Then he made coffee to sober up. The sink poured water. The stove poured flames. Soon the kettle made the sound birds make as the sun rises. At last, Charlie said, “Naguib has the documents. He wants to meet. I don’t have the money.”
* * *
In Mustafa’s taxi—Hana had insisted on using a driver she knew personally—Charlie struggled to explain to Aos why he kept making promises he couldn’t keep. Lying to Naguib was, in a way, lying to Aos, who’d vouched for him. It was an egregious crime. Aos was, or had been, Charlie’s true brother; the only man on the planet Charlie felt comfortable touching despite his unreasonable fear of male-on-male contact. The fear was a souvenir from his boyhood in Montana, where Charlie’s gender and sexual orientation had been assailed without pause for more than a decade. Not because he was small for his age, gentle, or feminine. He’d just been an affectionate boy. He remembered holding his mother’s hand. He remembered making friends in the first grade and trying to hold their hands for the same reason. He trusted them. Charlie became known as “the girl” for a few years and “the fag” after that, once puberty had increased the boys’ viciousness. Whereas Egyptian men held hands, leaned against each other, and walked arm in arm chatting happily. All the while maintaining their vehement homophobia. It was confusing. It was freeing, too. Charlie and Aos didn’t hold hands, but they hugged when something good happened and leaned against each other on packed trains shooting unseen beneath the city. “You know I’m not rich,” said Charlie. “My salary is almost as small as yours. In a way, it’s your fault for thinking I had fifty thousand.” Pride surfaced as a detached look, as if he didn’t care whom he hurt so long as he got what he wanted. That wasn’t really what Charlie believed. It was just the message he delivered to protect himself. Had Charlie really not changed since grade school? “I’ll pay what I have,” he said, trying to change now for the better. He’d always wanted to be a decent man. “And the rest when I have it until the whole sum is paid. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
Aos said it didn’t matter. “By then, Geb will be . . .”
Charlie’s only solace was knowing that Naguib hadn’t named what ailed his boy. Aos couldn’t say how, when, or even if the boy would perish. For all Aos knew, Naguib was playing them.
“Who’s Geb?” asked Hana from the front seat. The radio was too loud and the windows were rolled open. Most of what Charlie and Aos said had been sucked out of the car.
“What?” said Charlie. Not because he didn’t hear, but because he wouldn’t say. Why burden Hana by telling her?
“Geb!”
Charlie mumbled something under his breath.
“What?” Hana said.
“A boy!” shouted Charlie.
Hana didn’t press for more information. She must’ve intuited the fruitlessness of her endeavor and decided to quit. Charlie admired the ease with which she let go. Letting go required forward thinking, something Charlie had always lacked; he couldn’t see even ten seconds into the future. Or maybe he was just too afraid to look. That cowardice warped time and resulted in Charlie’s blind spot for consequences. Whereas Hana obviously saw consequences from far away. If she learned who Geb was, she’d feel responsible for what happened. It was better not to know.
Mustafa drove to the eastern shore of Zamalek, the river island that split the Nile and marked the center of the city’s richness. What little richness remained congregated in those tree-lined streets north of the Gezira Club. The rest of Egypt’s money had left the country or at least the capital, choosing instead the gated communities on the outskirts of Cairo, where the urban rabble could be kept at bay and where the revolution ceased to be more than an impolite conversation. Trees blurred together as Mustafa annihilated the gas pedal. City lights glared as they flew by and looked like stars shooting through the car window. Those counterfeit stars bounced off the river and were yellow, green, and red. They bounced home to the night sky, which blushed with their color.
5
Aos avoided Zamalek for economic reasons. The restaurants inflated prices for poor views of the river. Still, he knew every street on the island by h
eart. His youth had been spent wandering there and other neighborhoods within walking distance of Dokki. With no brothers or sisters to distract him, the city had been his best friend and only companion after his father died. He spent many afternoons in Zamalek trying to sneak into the Gezira Club to feed the horses. Approaching the club from every angle had taught Aos the name of every street. Mustafa stopped on the narrow Kamal Al Taweel, named after the famed composer and member of Parliament. Aos thought using fame to win office was better than nepotism; at least fame came from the people. Directly to the south, the Hungarian embassy sat fat on a corner. Directly to the north, the overpriced Sequoia. A strange name for a Mediterranean restaurant. The tablecloths were stiff and bleached so white they blinded patrons. An appetizer cost ten times a plate of koshari from a food cart. Aos had gone once to scorn the food only to discover it was pretty good. It had been a troubling experience.
“Here we are,” said Mustafa, bringing the car to a halt. Hana asked him to wait. She promised it wouldn’t take long. Somewhere between two and twenty minutes. “Very good,” said Mustafa. “Call or walk up the street when you’re done.” He said he’d be listening to a song or sleeping with his seat reclined. “Do not worry if the car looks empty. It is not empty. I have not gone. I will only be hidden like this.” He used his hand to show that he’d be horizontal and thus obscured from view. If he wasn’t sleeping, he’d be talking on the phone with his wife. More likely, his daughter. His daughter, who had the bad habit of staying up too late, had been teaching him English vocabulary she’d been learning in school. Lots of words and phrases starting with b, as they’d just embarked on the long journey through the alphabet. Beguile, behemoth, beholden. Betwixt and between. Beehive. Bouncy balls. “She’s so smart I can’t understand where she came from,” said Mustafa proudly. “Another man? Another planet?” He peered out the window at the smog. The smog imprisoned every celestial light. “Hm,” said Mustafa when he was finished gawking. He gestured up the street with his head. “I will park over there for your privacy. Shout if you want, I still won’t hear you.” He released Hana, Charlie, and Aos onto the sidewalk by smiling in the mirror at each of them. “See you soon.” When they were safely on the sidewalk, Mustafa pulverized the gas pedal. The air smelled like rotten eggs and burning plastic. The stink revealed Mustafa’s speed. He was gone before his passengers could thank him.
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