by Nick Cole
He pauses to clear his throat.
I have no idea who Vonnegut is. But I probably should. I imagine Samira and I reading together in bed. In some quiet other place not here. Not Calistan. Don’t ask me why. I’ve been pushing away all the usual thoughts. But the image of the two of us reading somewhere, near the beach… in a car… listening to the seagulls and the sounds of spinnakers clanging against one another on the sailboats that are docked nearby… That image is something I’ve been waiting for for a long time and never knew it until now.
“My brother… is trying to prove to our father that he can manage Calistan. The line of succession isn’t clear. I am too. As I said, that was my clan’s base you blew up. We’d contracted with the Japanese to help us increase our tech. To open up our society. I had to do it in secret because the mullahs want to control everything. Even our online presence. I was hoping to show my father that if I could build something noble, something good, inside a little digital make-believe world, then maybe Calistan could… could choose to be something else. Something besides what it is. Maybe…”
He pauses. Listening to some music only he hears.
“Maybe we could climb out of the ninth century that Islam chooses to remain in. You’ve seen it out there beyond the zone. Outside the Gold Coast. The Mexicans are at the gates. It’s brutal and horrible and they have every right to hate our guts. There’s a way forward. For all of us. Not just for those who were born to rule because they’ve got so much gold and oil and financing from the other powers around the world. But for everyone!”
Suddenly he snaps to attention.
“You have to go back out there right now. He’s coming.”
He straightens his lightweight dinner jacket.
“We will be in touch with you. You can rat me out to my brother. He’ll probably reward you. But I’ve watched you online, PerfectQuestion. I know how you play… and I think that means I know you, if you’ll pardon my assumptions. I think you’re more than just a hired gun. I think you believe in the little guy. There’s more going on in Civ Craft than anyone can imagine. There’s still a chance to turn this around. To turn Calistan around. We’ll be in touch. Best thing you can do… get away from Rashid. Ask him to set you up in your own place. You need privacy.”
And then he’s walking toward the door. His leather shoes tapping out a quick determined cadence. Precise. Measured. Clear. He doesn’t even turn at the door. It just opens and he’s gone. For a brief moment I hear the music of the club suddenly become real and present.
I turn back to the mirror and try to find the man I thought I was.
Chapter Twenty-One
I’m back at the bar, drinking another gin and tonic and feeling something. Reflective, maybe. Gin does that to me. But I’m not really talking. I’m just listening to this girl who’s telling me she has an Instaflash account with three million followers. She started a UBeg campaign just to fund her wardrobe for her trip to Calistan. She’s hoping to hook up with a wealthy prince and get some serious likes on her account. But really, any member of the royal family will do, she openly confesses. She doesn’t even want to marry one, she tells me very seriously, because she knows that’s nigh impossible since they only marry their own kind. But she’s leaving open the possibility for a regular “harem gig,” as she calls it. She’s from some place back in the Midwest she never wants to go back to. Party capitals and nonstop nightlife are her only long-term plan.
At least she has a plan.
Rashid appears, and he’s keyed up and ready to move. I can tell from his body language that he’s looking to get out of this place like it’s something other than one of the nicest clubs I’ve ever been in. Like it’s some gas station out on the highway where getting stabbed by a drifter is just as likely as getting food poisoning from the eternally rolling corn dogs.
“I’m Summer!” The girl with the Instaflash pounces on Rashid in a sudden blooming rush of excitement and slutty flirtation.
Rashid shoots me a look that tells me I can do better. And I could. But I felt bad for her. She spent money on a boob job that was too much, and badly done at that. As though that was all anyone would ever look for. Giant knockers barely concealed. And maybe she’s right. Maybe that is all some people are looking for now. Sex first, then true love.
But it doesn’t work that way. Even I know that.
I’m waxing eloquent and I feel like I’m wading through syrup when I try to stand.
I need sleep.
Real sleep. Not a couch. A bed. A place where I can lock the doors for a day. And a night. And then another day.
“Let’s bail, PQ,” prompts Rashid as Instaflash Summer moves in close and bends low to give Rashid a look at her more than ample goods.
Like I said, I felt bad for her.
“Not interested,” says Rashid. Then he nods at someone over my shoulder, and instantly security is dragging her from his presence. From the bar. She’s screaming. In a few moments I’ll hear her still screaming at the entrance to the club, screaming that they had no right to touch her and force her from their club like she was offensive. The bass thunder doing its best to drown out her ragged shrieks that she’s American.
But right now…
Right now she’s begging. Begging for a chance to let Rashid have her. She promises him it will be the best night he’s ever had.
In Calistan…
And then we’re leaving, too. Rashid grabs me around the shoulder and leans in.
“C’mon… now the real fun begins.”
America doesn’t matter here.
We cross the club with Rashid explaining how he had to do the social thing with Samira and some other couples upstairs, and that he’s done for the night with all that and he can be himself, and then he suddenly shouts, “I’m alive again!” as the DJ beat-mixes some song called, apparently, “I’ll Be Back.” It thunders over the speakers like a sudden war. On the walls Arnold Schwarzenegger—I know the old actor because I looked him up once—is shooting some woman in the back as she runs from him. Then he’s shooting up a club with an Uzi. Then he’s shooting up cops. Then more cops. And all the while the music keeps chanting “I’ll be back.” And keeps up a pounding rhythm that promises such.
We make the front entrance.
The Instaflash girl is screaming then. Screaming about being an American. Her makeup is ruined and her dress is torn. Everyone in the line laughs at her. The bouncers do too.
Rashid’s car is waiting in front. The night club manager is murmuring alongside Rashid. Telling him something low and hushed in Arabic, which to me already seems low and hushed. And always harsh. Angry, almost frantically neurotic.
Rashid guns the engine as soon as we’re in. Revs it higher and higher knowing everyone’s watching us. Knowing it’s drowning out the screaming girl who’s now devolving into hysterical sobbing as she sees all her plans driving away from the curb. Then we peel out in smoke and the smell of burnt rubber as a thousand flashes go off in the crowd of people still waiting to get in and be part of all that cool.
And they have to be distantly aware that all that cool is driving away now. That cool has left the building in Calistan.
In the rearview mirror I can see no sign of Instaflash Summer. The seething glitter-struck mob has swallowed her. And I feel that she will never leave Calistan alive. And that if she ever does it will be because she got lucky.
In that, we are kindred souls.
A few blocks later Rashid gets a call and takes it on his smartglasses.
“Yeah… we’ll pull in at the Bazaar. Meet you in five.”
We make a quick left and follow a lit palm tree-lined drive into an ancient mega mall. Grand lighting announces the place as something called The Bazaar. Cars and people throng toward it. It’s only midnight after all. Three o’clock in the morning if you’ve most recently been on Cuba time.
Rashid finds a secluded parking lot well away from the mall perimeter and pulls into the darkness of its farthest reaches, s
hutting off his lights and the car.
I have that feeling that I’m about to get killed. That whatever I said to “Rashid’s brother” is about to be played back to me, somehow revealing my disloyalty. Or that the car pulling up behind us will be “Rashid’s brother.” Head of the secret police.
I try to make conversation. The kind about whether I have a future, or don’t.
“Hey,” I start lightly and sound anything but. “You said I could get my own place while I’m here…”
He merely grunts “yeah” and continues gesture-scrolling through messages on his designer smartglasses.
“Living down at the beach would be great! Is… uh… that possible?”
“Yeah,” he says absently. This does not fill me with the confidence that I am not about to get my head blown off. Yep, I think, there’s two bullets in the back of the skull coming for you. If you’re lucky you won’t know it. But I check the side mirror anyway because I can’t help but try and survive. Life’s a game that way.
The person who pulled up behind us has turned off their lights. I hear two doors open. Two sets of footsteps. Two hired guns, secret police, whatever…
“I’ve always wanted to live near the beach,” I whisper as though prompting him to let me live a little longer.
“Yeah… I mean yes,” says Rashid, now more formally, as though he has just now returned to his own body. “That can definitely be arranged. Sorry, I was just going over tonight’s menu.”
That reminds me I haven’t had anything to eat in… all day. I am in fact very hungry. Getting killed made me forget that.
“Ordered you something special.”
Is it two-bullets-in-the-back-of-the-head special?
“Good…” I say. “I’m hungry.”
He laughs at this.
“Yeah… We can put you up in a beach house. I’ve got a really cool condo in Newport you can have too. And there’s my yacht. You can stay on that if you like.”
I wait to feel the cold barrel of a gun against my neck. But it will probably be my head. Now I’m just waiting for it…
“There’s also this sailboat I inherited. It’s docked on the island Samira and I are having cleared to build our first house. No one’s there right now. Pretty quiet.”
That sounds nice.
I can picture that if I somehow live. It’s also a nice last thought to have before a bullet tears through my skull and destroys my brain.
A sailboat docked on a lonely island. Yeah… I could do that. All I have to do is live long enough to get there.
“That sounds great. I’ll take that, if it’s cool?” I say as nonchalantly as a man about to die can.
“Cool,” mumbles Rashid. He sounds far away again.
“Rashid,” says a gravelly voice that sounds smoke-ravaged. “Here’s the stuff.”
I turn to see a man standing above Rashid. A kid really. Thin. Mexican, I guess. There’s another guy standing over my shoulder. He has a gun out.
I lean back in my seat. Close my eyes and tried to think of that sailboat I’ll never see. Of that island.
And Samira is there for just an instant.
That’s fine, I think. Rashid will never know.
I hear Rashid open something.
I look over and he’s going through a leather briefcase. The man standing over him has his smartphone’s light focused on the case. I see drugs. Or at least, I think they’re drugs.
“Thanks, Carlos,” says Rashid. “Everything looks great. Good stuff?”
Carlos laughs his gravelly laugh.
“The best, El Jefe. The best. Some for you. Some for the girls. You’ll go all night and they’ll be so out of it they won’t care. Extra special. I threw in a bag of coke too. I know it’s old school, but whores love it. Happy whore, happy time. As they say.”
The man with the gun over my shoulder laughs.
So, I’m not going to get it.
This is just a drug deal.
Rashid gives Carlos a baseball-sized wad of the local money and the two men leave us in the dark, start their car, and drive off.
Rashid starts taking some pills.
“Want some?” he asks. “You gotta take ’em before.”
“Before what?”
“The party we’re going to.”
It’s close to one a.m.
“I thought… food was… happening.”
“Oh…” He rubs some of the coke across his gums. Then does a bump off his fist. “There’s a whole buffet where we’re going.”
“I thought you ordered…”
“You’ll see.”
Then he laughs wickedly and we roar off into the night. The drugs sitting on his lap. Occasionally he pinches some coke and inhales. Or pops one of the pills. The others he begins to stuff into various pockets of his lightweight dress jacket.
A few minutes later we arrive at a house east of Newport. Inland. It looks out over an estuary made silver by the falling moon. Rashid pulls up in front. Other high-end cars are there and there’s no place to park. Rashid guns the engine and honks his horn, then pulls onto a carefully manicured lawn.
“Shhhhh.” He giggles uncontrollably. He’s pretty high.
We exit.
The hostess comes out. She’s wearing a flimsy see-through white silk robe. I saw her at the club. Now I’m really seeing her.
She embraces Rashid.
“They’re ready?” he asks.
She says something in Arabic.
“And for him,” says Rashid, nodding at me.
She regards me with little fanfare. “Chloe’s ready, as you have asked. Are you sure that’s wise, my prince?”
“Ah, buddy,” giggles Rashid, ignoring her. “You’re going to get Chloe. She’s the best.”
The hostess leads us into the house. It’s large. Palatially decorated. Fine furniture and tapestries along the walls.
Three girls in nothing but high heels, each one gorgeous, wait for Rashid like models ready for their shoot. Other naked girls are dancing on tabletops or sitting on couches with other young men of the Arab princeling variety. The girls are from everywhere. Arabs, Persians, Asians, Caucasians, Latinas, a black girl. And every one of them is a knockout.
The party continues without us as we’re led upstairs. We pass rooms where it’s obvious what’s going on behind the closed doors. Some doors are open and nothing needs to be guessed as we pass. A piece of performance art is in progress. Except the art is lewd and as old as time itself. As though the skills of some young prince need to be viewed by all to be believed.
We’re headed toward a double door on the third floor and I’m suddenly concerned it’s about to get weird. As in me, Rashid, and the three girls who are following us weird.
I try to tell myself five million in gold, but… it feels empty. Greedy. And true in the worst way.
Before we reach that last grand door though, the hostess stops and opens a different door.
She speaks to me for the first time. “This is where you get off.” She barely titters at her tired joke. I bet she thinks cheap innuendos make her seem smart and witty. I suddenly want to punch her in the face.
“Good night, buddy,” giggles Rashid as he gathers up his girls and pushes them forward toward his door at the end of the hall. He opens it and I see a mammoth circular bed. The girls strut toward it. Rashid turns just before closing the door and laughs once more, saying, “See you on the other side, PerfectQuestion.”
The statuesque blond hostess looks at me coldly. Appraising me. Daring me to do something.
I give her a look that tells her I want to punch her in the face.
Then I step through the door she opened for me and I meet Chloe. The door closes, and it’s just the two of us.
Chloe is wearing a choker around her slender throat. It looks like some piece of old jewelry. A vintage antique. Small and dangling against her throat. I will always remember that about her.
She’s wearing just that, and nothing else.
&nbs
p; Chapter Twenty-Two
A long moment passes as I stare at her perfectly voluptuous body.
Then she comes at me with a knife.
I barely get my hands around her wrists as she pins me to the wall. Through it all I can feel the thudding bass notes of the party downstairs and the disconcerting thumps, bangs, and screams from the rooms all around me as the bacchanalia and drug-fueled orgies attempt to silence any cry for help.
“Die!” she says through gritted teeth as she presses the knife toward my throat.
I push the knife hand away with my left hand and send a right cross into her perfectly heart-shaped face. She goes down on her knees while I hold on to her hand. The one with the weapon. I twist the knife out of her grip and bring her up to her feet as I twist her arm behind her back and push her against the wall, chest first.
“Pig!” she growls.
“No…” I’m about to tell her. Along with, I’m not. And I have no intention of hurting you. Except she suddenly pistons her foot right into my stomach. And now I’m without the benefit of oxygen.
“Then go ahead… do what you want… like all these…” she spits.
“Not… with them,” I gasp.
“Liar!” she hisses, then tries to smash her head into my nose. We wrestle for control while I get my air back.
“I had no idea what was going on before I got here. I just work with Rashid,” I whisper. Because a whisper is all I can manage.
She tries to kick me again. I pin her legs with my body. She twists loose and slaps me across the side of the head. Solidly.
That rings my bell.
Now she’s scrambling for the knife, which I tossed to the other side of the room. Dizzy and slightly stunned, I clue in on what she’s up to and leap at her. We’re both on the carpet, rolling around and flat-out hitting each other as hard as we both can.
I know I am, because what she’s going to do with that knife has been made abundantly clear.