Radiant City

by Lauren B. Davis

  Matthew pulls back. “You’re not pimping Suzi?”

  “Fuck, no!” Jack looks deeply offended. “I was never a real pimp. It was back in the seventies when that sort of thing was considered not such a big deal. Just a casual sort of thing, you know?”

  Matthew doesn’t, but keeps mum. Sips his tea.

  “It’s not like that. I like Suzi. I pay my own way. Not that I pay her, no fucking way, but you know what I mean. And it’s none of my business what she does for a living, is it? I mean, not really.”

  “Don’t suppose it is. But I have to say I don’t think I’d like my girlfriend sleeping with other guys.”

  “It’s just a job. Don’t mean anything.”

  “If you say so. I suppose she could stop.”

  “Listen, Matthew, I like things the way they are. She stops hooking on account of me, then I own her, you know what I mean? I don’t want the responsibility. It’s just a for-now thing.”

  “Fair enough. I like Suzi. She’s a nice girl.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s nice enough for me.”

  There is something in his tone of voice that unsettles Matthew.

  The bill comes. “I’ll get that,” says Jack.

  Matthew can’t help but notice the money in Jack’s wallet. “That’s quite a wad of cash.”

  “I sold a couple of photos,” says Jack.

  At the Passy Cemetery they wander through the paths set out like streets in this city of the dead. Over one of the graves a Pietà rises encased in fibreglass; over another is a statue of a naked woman kneeling, her hands palms-up on her thighs, her eyes closed in a face turned heavenward—the picture of despair and submission. There are angels and stone children and lambs and crosses carved to look as though they are made of wood. Trees line the paths and cast dappled shadows. The air smells fresh from the cedar trees but damp and earthy as well. Here and there old people stoop and kneel, dressed as though they’re having lunch with friends. They tend the flowers, water the plants and polish the marble.

  Anthony, his boots ringing on the stones, leads them to the mausoleum of the Russian count he’s told them about. “He did everything,” says Anthony. “Painted, sculpted, wrote poetry.”

  It is a massive tomb, easily the largest in the cemetery, with Cyrillic script engraved on the outside walls. They stand pressed up to the iron grille of the entrance, peering past the glass into the gloom within. The smell of cold stone and mould surrounds them. Inside there is a room decorated with a faded red-and-yellow carpet, a tasselled velvet chair, a candelabra, and a table on which stand two large stone vases holding wilted flowers. Over the table hangs a huge painting, presumably created by the talented count himself. In it, a black-hooded figure, face unseen, trudges up a bleak hill under a glowering sky.

  “All very vampire Lestat,” says Jack. “Very fucking Anne Rice.” His camera shutter clicks; he checks the light setting and takes more shots.

  Suzi, who wears red boots and a long black shirt with some sort of complicated elastic at the hem that makes it poof around her calves, puts her arm through Jack’s. “Does it frighten you?” she says.

  Matthew notices that her pupils seem normal today, her skin less blemished.

  Jack shrugs her off. “Why would you say that?”

  “It gives me some—comment dire …?” She shivers.

  “Willies,” says Anthony.

  She smiles at him, laughing.

  Paweena, in jeans and a purple jacket, looks bored. “I don’t like this place. Too many dead people.” She has brought a baguette with her and picks at pieces of it, nibbling delicately. She behaves as if Suzi does not exist, looking through her or past her. It occurs to Matthew that he can’t recall Paweena addressing any comments to Suzi when they were at Anthony’s for dinner.

  Suzi says, “Debussy is buried in here as well, you know.” Her voice is high, girlish, like she is telling ghost stories, scaring herself and loving it. “Can you imagine it at night? Strains of “La Mer” drifting through the night as the count sits in his chair, listening.”

  Jack takes photographs of Suzi peering into the tomb.

  “I want to go,” says Paweena. She tosses the heel of her bread into a nearby garbage can. “This is no good, this place.”

  “In a minute.” Anthony puts his arm around her. “Let’s take a walk through, at least.”

  She turns away from his embrace. “No. You stay. This is your thing. You like all this mumbo-jumbo. Not me. For children. And fools.” And with that she minces away, not waiting to see if he’ll follow her.

  Matthew is gratified to see he does not. Bitch, he thinks.

  Anthony stares at the ground, his hands in his pockets. “Man, I just thought it would be interesting. There are times when it’s very hard not to give her just the tiniest little slap,” he says, and makes a feeble attempt at laughter. “But hey, I used to arrest guys for that, right?”

  Jack punches him in the shoulder. “It is interesting. Weird. But, hey, I like weird, even if I don’t like cops.”

  “Present company,” says Anthony, his voice flat.

  “Excepted.” Jack nudges Anthony with his shoulder, once, twice, like an elephant trying to rouse a wounded member of the herd. “Come on,” he says, “she’ll meet up with us later, I bet. Not everybody gets this stuff. Come on. Give us the grand tour. Gimme the full bones, all that root doctor and hoodoo stuff.”

  “Yeah. What the fuck.” Anthony smiles, although it is not his usual smile.

  They wander away from the count and walk through the lanes. Matthew is oddly at peace here. It is like a town set out on fairy scale. Maybe, he thinks, my ghosts are socializing. Or maybe the world of death has finally become more his home than that of the living. It isn’t a pleasant thought, and yet he finds himself thinking that he could bring a book, a Thermos of coffee, maybe, and spend an afternoon here.

  Anthony has meandered off on his own, and Matthew watches Suzi and Jack. They hold hands. She looks so small next to him that she could be his child. Her neck, underneath the tousle of short hair, looks very fragile. She missteps on a loose stone and Jack steadies her, protectively reaching out with both arms. Matthew finds himself grappling with a sudden surge of jealousy.

  He spots Anthony standing by a large monument in the corner of the graveyard. Anthony looks up at the statue of a heavy-limbed woman, who appears to droop under the weight of the stone cloth draped around her body. Anthony himself might be taken for a mourner, dressed all in black as he is.

  “That’s some statue,” Matthew says as he reaches him. “Great stones.” Around the upper rim of the stone square, at the feet of the figure that kneels over a central slab as though felled by sorrow, are a row of jewel-cut glass pieces the colour of amethysts.

  “Look inside,” says Anthony.

  Inside, the light falls in mauve beams onto a reclining female figure carved from marble.

  “It’s beautiful, but …”

  “But what?”

  “It’s well, it’s sort of lonely.”

  “Yeah, you could see it that way. Although the light brings something in, don’t you think?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Too bad,” he says gently. The breeze shifts direction and the damp, truffle-y smell of the crypt floats around them.

  “You all right, Anthony?”

  “Thought I’d beaten down my old ways. All that anger.” He sighs. “What do you think about Suzi and Jack?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she might be good for him.”

  “I wonder who’s going to be good for us, Matt? Who are we going to be good for?”

  Anthony walks away then, just like that, and the place where he stood feels empty, a vacant spot in the shape of his body.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Sorry,” says Anthony.

  He says the word frequently because he and Saida often collide in the small kitchen. At first this upset her, flustered her, and she flapped tea towels at him to keep him at bay. No
w, after more than a week of having him at Chez Elias, it has become something of a joke.

  “Your feet,” says Saida.

  “Sorry,” he says and looks down to see whose path he is blocking.

  “Move back,” says Saida, and she ducks in front of him to reach for a plate while he presses up against the counter behind him.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  “Watch out,” she says, and she swerves around him with a tray of glasses as he chops tomatoes on the big wooden board.

  “Sorry,” he says, and now she smiles at him.

  She finds him funny, the big black man. Several days after their first meeting he had appeared at the café with a plastic container of delicious roast pumpkin soup. The day after that he had appeared again, this time with a grated apple tart. The next day, embarrassed by yet another offering—stuffed cèpe mushrooms this time—she had said, “You must stop. Our customers will begin wanting your food instead of ours.”

  “Might be to your advantage to put me to work, then, don’t you think?”

  “Why don’t you chop those onions for me?” And he had. Which is how it began.

  She had been unsure about him at first, but now she does not know what she would do without him. He is never late. He works with great concentration and enjoyment. He loves the food, loves everything about the restaurant, even the mundane chores like cleaning up and stacking dishes, which he arranges beautifully. It took some time for him to understand the way things work. He doesn’t make connections like other people. He is unable, for example, to look at a menu and then find the corresponding item in the display case. However, once he knows the name of something he never forgets it. He learns in some mysterious way of his own and her explanations do not help, and so she leaves him to puzzle things out in his own way. What he lacks in associative ability, however, he makes up for in observational skills. His comments about customers make her laugh, particularly since they are delivered in a deeply serious voice.

  “Maybe her pantyhose’s too short,” he says about the woman who refuses to smile and takes tiny mincing steps.

  “I think he’s afraid no one will listen to him,” about a businessman who speaks far too loudly on his cell phone.

  Altogether, he is a good employee, and since he works for free—well, for food that he mostly cooks himself—she is well pleased. The only problem is that now Ramzi feels he can do less. This morning, when Ramzi declined to show up at all, Saida decided Anthony would work only three days a week—she would be happy to have him there every day, but she fears if she agreed to that, Ramzi would stop coming in completely. Even before Anthony came to them, Ramzi worked less and less, his eyes fixed more firmly on the horizon every morning. There are nights he does not come home and Saida is sure there is a woman somewhere.

  If once she thought her brother would help in raising her son, she no longer thinks so. Her son has become even more guarded, at least toward her, and she is frightened. She suspects he has a secret life somewhere that does not include her. And in the back of her mind a bulky shadow appears. He stopped talking about the big man Jack so easily. Too easily, perhaps. She has asked Matthew if he thinks Joseph sees Jack. He says he does not think so, but she is not convinced. And so she turns to Anthony at times, since there is no one else, really, for her to talk to. Her father is frailer with every day and the doctors say there is nothing to be done, that he is old and tired, and they shrug in a way that makes her want to pinch them. She cannot burden him more.

  “Hey, there’s Joseph,” says Anthony, as he chops parsley. Saida wonders if thinking about her son has drawn him to her.

  Saida looks up as he comes into the restaurant. His feet are so big in those sneakers. The laces are untied. She is sure he will trip but says nothing because he has already informed her that this is the style.

  “Whattttzzzzuuuuup?” Joseph says, and Anthony laughs. This is also a style, apparently, something from an American television commercial.

  “Are you hungry?” she says.

  “Sure. Chawarma?”

  “Cut it yourself,” and she hands him a plate.

  “Anthony, listen to this.” He pulls the little silver disks that act as headphones from around his neck and puts one up against Anthony’s ear. “Listen. Who is it?” he says, grinning.

  Anthony listens for a minute, and then smiles. “Easy. That’s Ice-T. ‘Cop Killer.’”

  “Ah, you’re too good!”

  “Cop killer?” Saida’s hand rises involuntarily. “Who is a cop killer?”

  “Nobody. It’s the name of a song.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “It’s political,” says Joseph. “Right?”

  “Well, since I used to be a cop, I don’t know how down I am with the sentiment.”

  This talk baffles Saida. “How was school?”

  Joseph wags his head back and forth.

  “What is that? Yes and no? Good and bad?”

  “Okay.” He heaps his plate with marinated lamb.

  “You have homework?”

  “Not much.”

  “You must go to the only school in Paris that gives no homework.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t have any. I said I didn’t have much.”

  “So, what do you have?”

  He sits at the counter and shovels food into his mouth, his arm wrapped around the plate, as though he’s afraid someone will steal it. “Some biology.”

  “Sit up, Joseph. You look like a gorilla. That’s all?”

  “I did the rest.”

  “Let me see.”

  He sighs and regards her from the great distance of long suffering. “I left it at a friend’s house.”

  Saida folds her arms. “Why would you do that?”

  “Imma,” he rolls his eyes, which she chooses to ignore. “Pierre lives close to the school. I stop there sometimes on the way home and leave books there. You know we have no lockers at school. The books are heavy.”

  “I don’t want you to do this. You know I want to see your homework. If the books are too heavy for a delicate boy like you, we can get you one of those carts the old ladies use to bring their groceries home. There, you see, I am smart too. I have come up with a good solution, yes?”

  “Right.” Finished with his food, he carries the plate to the dishwasher.

  “Rinse it,” Saida says. “I want you to get your books now, from this boy’s house. I want to see your homework.”

  “I can’t now. I have to go.”

  “What do you mean you have to go? You have to go where?”

  “I’m meeting a guy.”

  “What guy?”

  She can see him thinking, licking the bulge in his lip, searching for a plausible lie. It is so like him not to have something prepared. Her heart contracts with love.

  “Some guys. We’re going to play soccer.”

  “Soccer can wait.”

  “I have to go.” Joseph puts his arms around her and kisses her on the top of the head. “I’ll show you later. I promise.”

  “Joseph, do not patronize me,” she says in Arabic. “I will not have it.”

  “I won’t be late,” he calls. “See you later, Anthony.”

  “See you.” Anthony picks up Joseph’s plate from beside the sink where he left it and puts it in the dishwasher.

  Saida slaps her cleaning rag against the counter, and then goes to the door and watches her son. At the corner, two boys meet up with him and they go through some sort of hand-shaking ritual, all fists and thumbs and sliding palms. She faintly recognizes the boys. Are they not the boys she caught with Joseph in the apartment smoking dope? One of them, the larger one who wears a bandana around his shaved head, passes something to Joseph that he quickly puts in his pocket, and then they split up again. Joseph looks back, checking to see if he is watched. Saida ducks her head inside. Silly boy! You should have looked before! When she peeks again a moment later, he has disappeared. She turns and finds Anthony watching her.

&nb
sp; “He’s okay,” says Anthony. “He’s a teenager.”

  “This is normal in America? That a boy can do as he pleases at only sixteen, without any thought to his family? To his studies?”

  “Teenagers are a pain in the butt the world over, I guess.”

  “You think he’s going to play soccer?”

  “He said he was. You don’t believe him?”

  She wants to tell Anthony what she has seen, ask him what it means. But it is family business, and already too many people are involved in her family. Again, it twitches, a hulking shape, dark in the corner of her mind. “He’s spending time with that man Jack, isn’t he?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Jack’s got a lady now. And the job at the hostel. I think he’s pretty busy.”

  “I hope you’re right,” says Saida.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Matthew, pick up the phone. Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone.” Brent speaks so quickly into the machine he sounds like a scat singer.

  Matthew listens to the messages. The phone has rung six times in the two hours since noon. All of them Brent. He must have risen before dawn and vowed to make harassing Matthew his sole purpose for the day. As Matthew contemplates ripping the phone out of the wall, it rings again. He considers not answering it, but knows Brent will not give up.

  “Hello,” he says.

  “Where have you been? I haven’t heard from you in three weeks and you promised me you would check in every week.”

  “What’s up?”

  “What’s up? I’ll tell you what’s up. Publisher says if they don’t see a manuscript before Christmas the deal is off and you have to give back the advance. Which means you are screwed. Screwed. Do you get this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You are driving me fucking nuts! I’m gonna have a fucking coronary right here on the phone.”

  “I’ve got some stuff.”

  “Read me some.”

  “You want me to read you something? Now?”

  “I do not believe you have anything. I believe you are lying to me. So prove me wrong. I love for people to prove me wrong. Make me happy. Read me, I don’t know, three, four pages.”