by Michael Ryan
“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Wilder,” he said, addressing me (to my surprise), courtesy apparently trumping passion in his moral universe. “I appreciate your supporting our cause.”
“I’m just along for the ride,” I said.
“Long ride,” he said. “And Angela, how are you?”
“As ever, Ahmad. Good to see you.”
“And you, Angela,” Jalalzada replied. Then they both paused, and we all stood there for what seemed like five minutes but was probably five seconds. All their history, whatever it was, was in that silence. Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca. I could have been Bergman’s hapless husband, the noble freedom fighter, except Jalalzada was not only Bogart but the noble freedom fighter too. I didn’t even own an upright piano, much less a nightclub. Would they rush into each other’s arms? Not these two. Whatever understanding they had come to, it was etched in steel. Neither of them were people who ever wavered from their resolve, unlike us ordinary mortals.
“May we sit down together?” Jalalzada said, and again in one balletic motion he was cross-legged on a hand-woven Turkmen rug. As shabby as the yurt’s outside covering was, the inside was lavish and lush—silk pillows and thick rugs layered on the floor and more rugs draped over the walls. It was also refreshingly cool and comfortable.
Angela had not removed her head scarf, nor did she do so now, but she did remove her veil.
“Same terms, Ahmad,” she said, ostensibly referring to the money. “No strings attached.”
“Very generous,” Jalalzada said. “I will do my best with it. Please thank the president for his trust.”
“We both know it won’t go very far, don’t we?” Angela said.
“Of course. Taliban recruits are pouring in from Pakistan. Twenty-five thousand this year. And they all worship bin Laden. They don’t care about Afghanistan, only worldwide jihad.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing different. The Afghan people support us. But we can’t support them. They need the means to live—food, hospitals, schools—and we can’t provide it. The Taliban can—with Pakistani and Saudi money. Without similar support, we’ll simply have to restrict our horizon to a small section of the country. The Taliban will not defeat us easily but we also will not defeat them. Eventually they must come to a political solution.”
Wake me up when it’s over, I said to myself. But Jalalzada had authority. And charisma. And sexual magnetism. No wonder Angela liked him or loved him during their years in Paris and maybe even now. Plus he was unassailably courteous and focused, and when he addressed you he made you feel like the only person in the universe—instead of what I actually was: thoroughly superfluous and dressed like a clown.
He and Angela talked for another twenty minutes: yada yada blah blah blah.
I’d had enough of Middle East affairs (in both senses). I didn’t want to admire Jalalzada’s apparently selfless devotion and integrity, but I did. He’s a better man than I am, I thought. Maybe he was also funnier than I am and could fuck like Jesus Christ after the resurrection. All I wanted was to go home.
Since time fortunately does pass even when it seems like it won’t, the last twenty minutes did. They were oddly the most painful of all the minutes of my life since I had first seen Angela in the bank in Santa Monica. I don’t know what she or Jalalzada got out of this meeting (except for his getting $10 million), but I was leaving convinced that Angela would never want me the way she wanted him.
Angela stood up and reattached her veil and Jalalzada stood up with her, precisely coordinated. Maybe they would dance away in the moonlight together.
“Allah be with you, Angela,” Jalalzada said. He didn’t move toward her or attempt to touch her. “And you also, Mr. Wilder.”
I said thank you, and shook his hand. Angela had already turned and left without a word and I could see Trymyev’s car waiting when she pulled the rug aside from the doorway. I wanted to say something to Jalalzada that would tell him exactly what I thought about him—about how much I admired, envied, and hated him for how Angela felt about him, that I thought he was a truly wonderful and remarkable person and he should go fuck himself with a fossilized camel dick. What I said was, “Good luck, sir.”
When I got outside, Angela was in the car with Trymyev. Fortunately we wouldn’t be able to say anything to each other for at least the forty-minute car ride back to the plane.
19.
The plane took off two minutes after we got on. Trymyev, God bless him, stood by his 4x4 and waved. Behind him, the honor guard in their tall black Afro hats raised their swords to us in homage and a golden statue of Turkmenbashi glinted in the sun. I thought how apt that I had spent my entire time in Toonloonistan wearing my thobe and Prince Abdullah, which I was still wearing. The right outfit for the right occasion. The moment we were airborne, Angela got up and threw off her hijab and stuffed it in the big brown box along with her Kevlar vest and machine pistol.
“Good-bye forever,” she said. “Turkmenfuckingbashi be praised.”
I just watched and said nothing.
“You looking at me?” she said, mimicking De Niro in Taxi Driver.
“ ‘Would you like to talk about something?’ ” I asked, quoting her in the same tone she had said it to me.
“I would like to go to sleep,” she replied, and started for the bedroom suite.
“One question,” I said.
“One,” she said, holding up an index finger like she was losing patience with her four-year-old.
“Is Jalalzada funnier than me?”
“You are so Robert, Robert,” she said, and kissed me on my mouche. “Wake me when we get to Paris.”
“Paris?” I asked. She didn’t answer, but only gave me a parody of a big sexy wink as she stepped into the bedroom suite and closed the door.
Paris. Did I want to go to Paris with Angela? Does the Pope wear a funny hat? With all my heart, soul, and unreliable mind, not to mention my body from toenails to cowlick, I wanted to burst into the bedroom suite and hump her to paradise. But Angela needed to sleep. I knew her well enough to know she meant what she said. On this occasion. Probably.
This brought me kaclunk right down to earth, where I had been riding this tilt-a-whirl of a woman up down spun around. Every time I’m about to step off I get on again for another fun ride, and why? Do I love Angela? Obviously, except for the minor detail that I have no idea who she is. Do I want Angela? Absolutely and I don’t care who she is. She thinks I’m funny and loves to screw me. Stand-up comic paradise. Forget the seventy-two Islamic virgins and delicious fruits without thorns. Forget also that at various moments I had concluded she was: a liar, a con artist, a murderer, a psychopath—and she never would want me the way she wanted Jalalzada. The latter conclusion perhaps an hour ago at most. She laughs, gives me a wink, and bang, I’d follow her anywhere, including Toonloonistan and certainly Paris.
Fact is, I was following what I’ve always followed: my dick. And there her credentials were impeccable. But was that so bad? Why did I think I could think better with my brain than with my dick? She was overwhelming to me. She was also obviously brilliant, strong, focused, and hilarious herself (Jalalzada, eat your heart out), and all of this entered our sex together. There might be plenty of craziness, but somehow I felt I knew her. And, God help me, loved her. Her words to me in the Malibu kitchen after our first time together had burned their own exclusive neural pathway through my synapses: “You do something to me that goes deep down.” Then she dropped her robe and paraded like a stripper in her red Brazilian bikini with the butt-floss bottom. Thank you, Allah, Jesus, Yahweh, Zeus, and whoever else swims in the sky.
This put me into a happy and horny mood for the nine-hour flight to Paris. I was still sitting there in my thobe and Prince Abdullah, and despite its obviously facilitating my profound meditation on sexuality and identity, I decided to bury the thobe ceremoniously with its female counterpart (Angela’s hijab) in the big brown box, Turkmenfuckingbashi b
e praised. Trouble was that would leave me either in my Arab underpants or exhuming from my suitcase on rollers the pair of underwear I had worn in Irvine, which probably had grown to five times its original size and developed a brain stem and big sharp teeth. Nonetheless I stripped off the thobe and Kevlar dominatrix vest and extracted myself gingerly from the Arab underwear and opened the big brown box. Inside on top was the men’s silk robe from Malibu and a small piece of notepaper with a heart drawn on it and “xoxxox, Angela.” There was even a pair of Calvin Klein briefs and Banana Republic khakis and polo shirt just my size. I was already hooked, but please: could she be this sweet too?
I slipped into the silk robe (happy memories of Malibu). This left the Prince Abdullah to deal with. I didn’t want to rip my face off just yet. I might need it in Paris to look fetchingly at Angela. I went into the little airplane bathroom behind the pilot’s cabin. There was barely room to stand up straight. Never would I be able to use an airplane bathroom again without thinking of Angela trying to pee in her hijab. I slid the bolt-lock shut since it was the only way to turn on the light and use the mirror. I hadn’t seen my Prince Abdullah without the head scarf. The mustache was at least an inch off center and the goatee pointed toward my left nipple. If I had thought I looked ridiculous tooling about Turkmenistan for secret meetings with Central Asia’s military commanders, I had never been more right about anything in my life. The mouche stuck out from under my lip like a shoe-polish brush. Nothing remotely like it could possibly sprout from a human face. But the mustache, goatee, and even the mouche came off easily, as if they wanted to leave me as much as I wanted to leave them. There I was again in the mirror: Robert Wilder. I smiled at him rakishly and asked in my best Turkmen accent, “Want to party, Big Boy?”
Two spanking new copies of Ruhnama topped a gift basket of Turkmenistan delights waiting for me in the galley kitchen. They must have been loaded on board while we met Jalalzada. Apparently Turkmenbashi eats a lot of meat, because the gift basket was nothing but meat: dried meat, smoked meat, salted meat, canned meat, meat sausages, and especially meat pies. There were six meat pies, each as big as a catcher’s mitt, wrapped in cellophane with descriptions of its contents written in Turkmen. I selected a meat pie with ornate red lettering (being in a spicy mood). It was delicious—smoky barbecued lamb in a flaky crust. Georges himself couldn’t have done better.
The other almost-nine hours to Paris before I could excusably wake Angela I spent reading Turkmenbashi’s Ruhnama. Or almost nine minutes anyway. It was worth its weight in Nembutal. A half a page took me right to dreamland.
When I woke up, I couldn’t wait any longer to wake Angela. I removed my mouche from the ziplock baggie in which I had planned to store my Prince Abdullah until I could paste it in my Turkmenistan souvenir album, and pushed open the door to the bedroom. Angela, who had apparently trained herself to hear doors open while sleeping, woke the moment I turned the doorknob.
“I brought you a cup of coffee,” I said. I was completely naked. So was she. She sat up in bed just as I had, the covers slipping to her waist.
“I don’t see any coffee. But I do see something else,” she said.
“Private Wanky reporting for duty, sir.”
“What’s he wearing on his head?” she asked.
“His Turkmen hat,” I said.
“That would actually be your mouche,” Angela said. “And I hope to God you got the glue off the back or we’ll be airlifting Private Wanky to the hospital.”
“The good comedian always controls his props,” I said, showing Angela the bottom of the mouche, which I had covered with a Post-it.
“Bring Private Wanky a little closer,” she said. “I want to give him big Turkmenbashi kisses on both cheeks.”
“THAT WAS a very nice experience for me,” I said in a dorky falsetto after the requisite pause to consider Postcoital Sacred Awe. I was lying next to Angela in bed with my arm around her while she played with the chest hair at my nipple.
“I’m glad it was, because you’re going to have a lot more of them. You touch me like you have little brains in your fingertips.”
“I doooo,” I said in my best Bela Lugosi, wiggling my fingers in her face. “I dooo have leetle brains in my fingertips.”
“I’m serious,” she said, sitting up and turning to face me. “I have a confession to make.”
“My least favorite sentence in English,” I said, still thinking she was kidding.
“There are no Republican ninjas.”
This was not what I expected to hear in our airborne paradisiacal pheromone-saturated chambre a coucher.
“Right,” I said, after a long speechless pause. “Of course. You were just playing Let’s Trick The Bonehead. No Republican ninjas pursuing me for what I know about you so they can bring down Clinton.”
“No.”
“That wild ride to the airport followed by Sheed’s explanation on the plane: all planned.”
“Yes.”
“You’re good,” I said. “Very convincing. And Sheed too. You people just lie, pretty much all the time, right?”
“Yes. We people.”
“So why the truth now?”
“We’re going to Paris. I didn’t want you worrying a Republican ninja would pop out of your next croissant.”
“Very tiny ninja.”
“They come in all sizes.”
“Kind of like dicks,” I said and went into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. Angela was still sitting crosslegged on the bed naked and there I was in the mirror, without my Prince Abdullah this time. I looked at Robert Wilder, all dressed up in his birthday suit. “You are an absolute asshole,” I said to him quietly.
I could open the bathroom door and ask Angela why she tricked me into this trip with her, but maybe she’d lie about that too. Maybe anything she’d ever tell me might be a lie. Maybe I should walk back to her and say, “That’s it. I’m done.” Instead I sat there on the toilet lid for a while, made a goofy face at myself in the mirror, and opened the door without having the slightest idea of what I was going to say or do.
“Well?” she said.
“You want a meat pie?” I asked.
“Somehow I didn’t expect that to be your entrance line.”
“Turkmenbashi sent us a gift basket of meat. The pies are great. And we each got a personal copy of the Ruhnama, which I’ve begun to memorize so I can pass my Turkmenistan driver’s test.”
“Are we still going to Paris?” Angela asked.
“Does the Pope drive a Cadillac?”
“No, but he does wear a funny hat.”
“Then we certainly are,” I said.
She looked at me incredulously.
“Is the meat pie drugged?” she asked.
I smiled enigmatically.
“That’s my Mona Lisa smile,” I said. “La Gioconda. On permanent display at Le Louvre.”
“You’re not planning to murder me in my sleep?”
“Do you know why she’s smiling like that? She’s got a load in her pants.”
“No drama? No screaming? No insults?”
“We’ll work it out. You want a meat pie now?”
“Are you sure you want to associate with one of us people?”
“I’m sure I want to associate with you.”
“Bingo,” she said. “Toaster oven goes to the handsome gentleman in his birthday suit.” She stood up and came over and kissed me—reveille call for Private Wanky. “You are way too good to be true,” she said.
“I’m lying,” I said. “I’m a better liar than you are.”
“But Private Wanky isn’t,” she said, and pushed me back onto the bed.
SO THAT’S how that got resolved. Sort of. Angela’s primary relationship might be to my dick, not to me, but that was okay. We still had a couple of hours to Paris—or days or weeks, it was such a time warp. We figured it would be early Sunday morning when we arrived. I had slept about fifteen hours since Thursday night when I returned from
Irvine to find her in my apartment, and she had slept maybe ten. We had both been jet-lagged back and forth so thoroughly our body clocks were spinning their digits like slot machines.
After much coaching and celebrity product endorsement, Angela accepted a meat pie and I opened another one for myself and we ate them together on the bed still naked. This was odd, too, since before this the only time I had been naked with her was when we were having sex, about to have sex, or had just had sex. I wasn’t used to sitting around chatting like nudists. Still she was so breathtaking I couldn’t believe my luck.
Unfortunately this feeling of longing for her even when my sperm bank was dry as a Saltine made me need to touch another touchy subject.
“Meat pies,” I said. “Yes, another great tradition of the world’s cuisines.”
“Is this a lecture?”
“Certainly is. I have been invited to all the world’s finest institutions of learning to discourse on this fascinating topic. The Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, for example, the school of Europe’s diplomatic and political elite.”
Stony silence from Angela.
“Yes, I met an interesting gentleman there once,” I continued. “A student I believe he was. Afghan, like the hound. I remember because his surname rhymed with the most famous of meat pies, the empanada.”
“I had a feeling this was coming sooner or later. I take it back. You aren’t too good to be true.”
“Empanada, Jalalzada, it’s all the same to me. ‘No matter where in the world it appears, crusty or crispy, spicy or soggy, a meat pie, ladies and gentlemen, is a meat pie’: the final line of my lecture, inevitably provoking standing ovations and thunderous applause.”