The Garden of Last Days

by Andre Dubus III

  Louis saw him then, in Houston on one of those nights. It was in a hotel bar near the Galleria mall in the theater district, one of the last places Lonnie hadn’t been 86ed, and there was no band, just a mediocre piano player who flowed without shame from Neil Sedaka to Brubeck to Billy Joel. The bar was half-full with men and women passing through on business, the men’s ties loosened, the women in skirts and heels, some of them on cell phones or answering pagers, an empty glass in their free hand.

  Most of these people weren’t much older than Lonnie but they looked thousands and thousands of dollars richer, and while he didn’t want to be like them, throwing their lives away pursuing money and all they believed they could buy with it, he’d sip his bourbon and chase it with cold beer and watch them chat and laugh, and he’d feel the way he often did as a kid, as if he had shown up at a party that was already in full-swing and to which he hadn’t been invited and never would. Not simply because he was not like them but because they had the easy confidence of master players in a game whose rules they knew by heart when Lonnie had never fully understood the point: there was hard work you did to survive; there was the occasional test of what you can do that not many men can; there was good music, good books and bourbon, every few weeks a woman. But that night, just as his mood was lifting from self-pity to a semi-bitter superiority over them all, a woman to his right jerked away from the man beside her, her face pale and drawn.

  “Let go of me.” Her shoulders were hunched slightly. A tiny silver earring swayed above the silk collar of her blouse. The man was a low-voiced presence Lonnie stepped away from the bar to better see, a handsome alpha dog, his black hair coiffed, his jaw straight and clean-shaven. He wore a dark blue suit that fell over his physique like an advertisement, and he was leaning close to the woman, squeezing her upper arm, his mouth an inch from her ear. Lonnie tapped him on a knuckle. “She said to let go.”

  The man took him in as if he were somebody’s unruly child he shouldn’t even have to talk to. “She’s my wife, so go fuck yourself.”

  Later, his heart still beating in his chest like a one-winged bird, standing on the sidewalk in the moist belly of a Houston Saturday night, the bar manager watching him from the door, Lonnie was again surprised at how fast it always went—Words, Action, Reaction, then his ass once more out on the street. He’d laugh if his superior mood hadn’t dissipated so completely. He’d smile and shake it off and go someplace new. But where was that? He’d outstayed his welcome in just about all of downtown. Would he have to drive out to the honky-tonks where his habit would surely get him killed? Because he could only go so long doing what he did before he got himself shot or stabbed. Maybe tossed in a cell somewhere.

  And he’d miscalculated a bit this time too; the first right had caught Alpha in the side of the head, snapping it sideways, his shoulders slumping, his knees going, but the second caught only half his nose, and when Lonnie pulled back for a third, his knuckles grazed the ear of the shrieking woman he was standing up for, her earring flying. And now it was clear the bar manager, who had smelled like spearmint gum and body odor, was waiting for the Houston Police, and Lonnie wedged his hands into his pockets and started walking, his fingers swelling up.

  “Hey.” A man leaned against one of the hotel’s columns smoking a cigar. He was decked out in pleated silk pants, an open-collared print shirt, and woven leather sandals. Around his neck and wrists were flashes of gold, his red hair slicked back. He held a business card out to Lonnie. “Take it.”

  And for nearly two years now Lonnie had been his main closer just because Louis had been west for a family wedding and a fucking inboard motor boat show and he’d seen Alpha Dog drop between the barstools like a pile of wet rags and Lonnie had moved to Florida because why not? But Lonnie was tired of barstools, tired of dropping men like Dolphins Cap and others like him. He’d never been superstitious but more and more over the months, this deep, wide emptiness inside him had darkened with hints of danger ahead; how long could he go before the pocket he tried to close didn’t close, before the man he tried to drop wouldn’t drop, or if he did drop, who’s to say he wouldn’t come gunning for him? Last winter a closer at a club in Venice got himself shot in the face. He lived, but half his jaw was gone and wasn’t ever coming back.

  And this time of night was the worst, an hour to go before lights-up when pockets were opening and closing all over the main floor, so much cigarette and cigar smoke in the air it burned your eyes, the dancers working hard to get men to the VIP for a private. At the end of the night a few would actually hand him a ten spot, that’s it, when it was supposed to be five percent.

  Only Spring passed out the right money on a regular basis. The second thing Lonnie had noticed about her, that she was honest and looked him in the eye when she tipped him and thanked him like she meant it. The way she held her chin up like she had nothing to be ashamed of ever, and that dark light in her eyes—warm, smart, and a little wounded. That’s the first thing he’d noticed about her. That was the first thing, and now it was the last, and he took it with him most nights to sleep.

  “ENOUGH.” THE FOREIGNER looked bored with Retro and what she showed him. He stood and pulled out all those hundreds, handing her three. “More drinks, please.” Retro closed her legs. She stood slowly, giving him a long, cool look April could only see in profile. She watched Retro step into her red mini and shimmy into her tube top. On her way out Retro nodded at April like she’d better not let this little shit get the best of her.

  “She will do anything for money, yes?”

  April was a little drunk. She didn’t plan to drink anymore, no matter how many times he tried to fill her glass. She shrugged and didn’t answer him, but she had a good thirty minutes to go before she could check on Franny and that money in his hand was all she could think of. He was looking at her breasts, her crossed legs. Her face.

  “Do you believe in nothing?”

  “I believe in some things.”

  “What please?”

  “Like keeping your word, Mike. I believe in that.”

  “What does this mean?” He was squinting at her, though the smoke in the room had cleared.

  “You asked me why I danced.” She nodded at the wad still in his hand. “You put eight of those down and asked me.”

  “But I know why it is for you doing this, April.”

  “Spring.”

  “April.” He stood and sat back down on the love seat, the cash in his hand. So much of it. “Stand, please.”

  She didn’t feel like standing. He pulled a hundred from the fold and dropped it in front of her.

  Such easy, easy money. That’s how she had to keep looking at it. She folded the bill into her garter, then set her glass on the table and stood, her crotch level with his face. He was looking up into her eyes. She could see how his hair was thinning prematurely at the top, his scalp smooth and brown in the recessed light. Again, he seemed like a boy, one who’d been curious about things and was now filled with a sadness that had turned hard. She wasn’t afraid of him anymore. She almost felt like reaching down to run her fingers back through his hair, comfort him the way she would her own child. Then his fingertips pressed against her scar through her pubic hair and she stepped back, a band of heat prickling along the skin of her throat.

  “No touching, Mike. You know that.” She smiled. It was a stiff, half nightsmile and she was suddenly cold again, her nipples bunching up. She wanted to cross her arms.

  “For enough money, you will allow me for touching you anywhere, yes?”

  “No, not me. Go get one of the other girls for that. I don’t do that.”

  He smiled, letting his bad teeth show. For the first time all night he looked genuinely pleased about something. He kept his eyes on hers and separated three more hundreds from the fold. Two drifted down onto the black cushion, the other bent over itself and fell to the floor.

  “What’s that for, Mike?”

  “For that.” He nodded at her crotch.
<
br />   “What?”

  “Where they cut you.”

  “It’s just a scar. You don’t want to touch a scar.”

  Two more hundreds floated and spun like playing cards onto the other two. Six hundred. He was crazy in some way, and unless he came back and did this again, she would never have another night like this ever.

  “Why do you want to touch it?”

  “I do, that is all.”

  “I need to know first. Or I can’t do it.”

  “Know. Why do you need to know? You know nothing.”

  “About you?”

  “About nothing.”

  “Why do you want to touch it, Mike?”

  “I will touch it if I want to touch it, you know this, yes?”

  “I’d have to call Andy. That wouldn’t be good.”

  “Good? I can kill that man in many different ways, April. Do you want to know how many?”

  The door opened, Retro swaying in with fresh Moët and Rémy, Celine Dion belting out her tune behind her.

  “It’s hopping out there, y’all. It is hoppin’.” She squatted and set the Rémy down. There were three or four twenties in her fist, and she filled each of their flutes with Moët, April’s bubbling over the rim. She watched it pool around her glass while Retro pushed the bottle deep into the bucket.

  “Thank you, you may please leave now.”

  “ ’Scuse me, honey?” Retro cocked her head to the side, her earrings swinging.

  He put a Marlboro between his lips. He nodded at the change she still held. “You may keep that.”

  “What’s the matter, little man? You don’t like black girls?”

  “I like them, yes. Only I don’t like you.”

  “That makes two of us, honey.” Retro shot April a cold glance. She picked up her champagne glass and walked out, leaving the door open, April’s face flushed as if she’d just betrayed her somehow. She could hear men hollering out there for Wendy’s act and she felt a twist inside her to leave too, go back to the dressing room and check on Franny. She was probably still asleep, but with all the noise maybe she wasn’t.

  “Secure the door.” He lit his cigarette, sat back, crossed his legs. She moved around the table under the light and closed it.

  “Why don’t you like her, Mike?”

  He was studying her again, his elbow on the arm rest, the cigarette’s smoke rising up past his face. “Because she shows me nothing.”

  “I thought she showed you a lot.”

  “No, I do not want that.”

  “Then why do you come here?”

  He blew out a long, thin stream of smoke. “Because it is allowed.”

  “Allowed?”

  “Yes, it is allowed for me, so I come.”

  “Allowed by who?”

  “You would not understand.”

  “Your wife?”

  “No, I have no wife. I will never have a wife.”

  “Never?”

  “Do you not want this?” He left his cigarette between his lips and gathered the bills up off the cushion beside him and tossed them onto the table.

  She glanced down at the one on the floor at his feet. “Yes.”

  “Please, come.”

  Her heart began beating faster. She uncrossed her arms away from her breasts and walked around the table, standing where she’d been before Retro came back. She’d never let any customer touch her before, not since the Empire where she’d had to do lap dances in the VIP, grinding herself against hard-ons under zipped pants, telling herself she wasn’t a whore as long as she didn’t touch them with her hands and they didn’t touch her with theirs, she wasn’t. Under her bare feet was one of the hundreds. Mike seemed to have forgotten about it.

  “You will let me touch that and you will tell me why you think you do this and I will give you your dirty money.”

  “My scar?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one’s ever touched that but me, Mike.” It was true, not even Glenn. Her mouth was dry. She could feel her heart beating in her head. She nodded at the cash. “That’s not enough.”

  A hard knocking at the door. “Fifteen minutes. Everything cool?”

  “Yep.”

  “Spring? Everything cool?”

  “Yes, Andy!” The club noise thrummed on the other side of the walls, Andy’s massive weight squeaking on the floorboards as he lumbered back to the VIP.

  “You think he is here for protecting you, but he is not.”

  “You’ve never seen him throw anybody out.”

  “He only has power if I care what happens to me; he is not here to stop me from hurting you. I could have done that one thousand times. He is here only to punish me after for hurting you.”

  “That stops most people, Mike.”

  “Only you kufar.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the full ashtray, exhaled out his nostrils twin trails of smoke. “You are in love with living, and you have no God.”

  “Some of us have a God.”

  “Then why do you worship your prophet? He was not the son. There is only one Allah and He had no son. These are your gods.” He picked up his cash, handed all of it to her. “Here, take your gods. As much as you wish. I do not care.”

  “I don’t believe you don’t care.” She took the stack of hundreds, her fingers trembling slightly.

  “You see how you shake? You are in the presence of your gods. But I can burn your gods. You have seen me burn your gods.”

  “Why?” She didn’t want to take time to count it out; he could change his mind any second, the way he had about Retro. She separated a half or three-quarters of an inch from the rest, handing it back to him, folding the money and dropping it onto her skirt and blouse on the floor behind her. Two or three thousand for sure. It was hard not to smile at him. “That’s why you don’t care about money, Mike. You have enough of it.”

  “My name is not Mike.”

  “I know.”

  “My name is Bassam.”

  “That’s a nice name.”

  “Come here.”

  She stepped closer, a flutter inside her.

  “Sit, please.”

  “Just the scar, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  She sat beside him. He put two fingers to her shoulder and gently pushed her back. Both her feet were on the floor, her knees together, and this was an uncomfortable position to be in but she didn’t want to lift her leg and give him a look at what he hadn’t paid for.

  He was staring at her pubic hair, the short horizontal scar beneath it. She thought of Franny yesterday at Siesta Key, letting the white sand sift through her fingers over and over again. Now his fingers passed over the knotted line of skin they’d pulled her from three and half years ago, how they botched the sewing job, Glenn sitting beside her, useless.

  “It is very small.”

  She didn’t speak. She hoped he’d forgotten the rest of their deal, that she didn’t have to tell him anything. His face looked years younger now, and he was touching her so gently she was close to crying and didn’t know why and she wished he’d just wanted her to flash him some pink, but not this. How could she let him?

  “Tell me, please.”

  “What?” Her throat felt thick and doughy. If she kept talking she’d cry.

  “Tell me why you do these things.”

  He was barely touching her, running his fingertip back and forth over her healed skin, a dull itch snaking its way into her belly. Her eyes began to fill up. She wanted to slap his hand away and stand, but in a few more minutes Andy would come knocking on the door and even if this one wanted to buy her again she’d leave. She’d take all the money he’d given her and leave.

  “I am waiting.” Now he pressed two fingers along the scar like a doctor trying to rule something out.

  She took a breath. “For my kid, okay? I do it for her.”

  He glanced up at her, shook his head. “No.”

  “Yes.” She was angry and she didn’t care if he got angry back or not. She had
his money and Andy would be here soon and this rich little foreigner could go fuck with somebody else.

  He was smiling at her, his eyes bright. “You do it for this.” He tapped her scar, scratched lightly the hair over it.

  “What?”

  “You do it for skin—what is this way you say?—for flesh.”

  “Flesh?”

  “Yes, for your love of it. Even if you had no children you would sell your flesh.”

  “I don’t sell my flesh. I dance.”

  “Are you dancing now?”

  “That’s enough.” She sat up and scooted away from him, his hand grazing her thigh.

  “I have paid you. I say when it is enough.”

  “You think so?” She knew she sounded as angry as she felt but this one was small and drunk and she still had her heels on, could lean back and kick one right into him if she had to.

  He sat up, took the bottle of Rémy, poured some into his snifter. “You do it because you think it is allowed.” He picked up his glass and swirled the cognac.

  He stared into it like there was something in there only he could see. “But it is not. Not for you. Not for any of you.”

  IN BACK OF the club, a single bulb shone brightly over a screen door and through it was a pale fluorescent light lost in steam. Outside a couple of oak pallets leaned against an oil drum next to a Dumpster, the air smelling like hot Frialator oil and detergent. He pulled right up to the bumper of a Sable, then backed over broken shells past all the employees’ cars into the wire grass under some black mangroves. He flicked off his lights and cut the engine down.

  His wrist was throbbing again, a thick pulsing that gave him an ache as high as his shoulder and neck. He tore the seal off the Tylenol bottle, got it open, and shook four or five into his hand, chasing them down with beer. It’d be better if he still had that pint of Turkey but the rest of this twelve-pack would have to do, and damnit, had he left the empty bottle in the driveway? Deena shouldn’t see that. It made him look bad.

  He thought of Deena and Cole, how since he’d been gone he didn’t think of them as separate, how in his mind he saw them together, mother and son, son and mother, her holding him in her arms, feeding him, changing him, bouncing him on her lap. Woman and boy, his family. That’s what he wanted back, though he wasn’t sure about Deena by herself, was he? If she weren’t his son’s mother, if she didn’t go with that picture, did he really want her? And if he did, why was he sitting here waiting for Marianne?