Sweet Jesus (28 page)

We should get you back to the hotel, he said.

Rose gave a sudden shiver and tossed her magazine onto a nearby table. They had to bring me here in an ambulance, she said, laughing gently. I’ve never been in an ambulance before. She leaned towards him and put her hand on his knee again. The good thing about travelling at my age, she whispered, is that you always travel with health insurance. Can you imagine how much this would’ve cost me?

She seemed different somehow, Zeus thought. And he wondered if she had changed. People get older, and they can change. He liked the idea. Strangely, it made him feel safe.

Rose suddenly grew serious. I didn’t die, did I? She touched the wound on her head. I feel like maybe I died, and this is all some strange episode in the afterlife. It feels like a dream to be sitting here beside you.

It’s not a dream, Zeus said. Dreaming comes soon. Do you want me to take you to the hotel now?

Yes, as soon as they let me go here. She looked at her watch again. I’m waiting to see the doctor. They need to check my oxygen levels before they can release me.

Just then a woman walked over and moved the compressor and sat down beside Rose as if she knew her. The woman was big. She was dressed in black, with a black wrap slung around her neck, and her skin was very white and smooth.

Oh my
God
, she said, opening her purse with a small metallic click and taking out a pack of Nicorette. How much is one person expected to endure? She cracked a tablet out of the pack, pitched it into her mouth, and started chewing furiously.

Who’s this? Zeus asked.

The name’s Esperanza Saks, she said and held out her hand.

How do you do, he said. I’m Zeus.

Oh, what a great name, Esperanza said. Her eyes were on fire. A white light brimmed around the edges and her pupils were deep black.

We met out in the hall, Rose explained. Her mother was out there on a stretcher for a very long time, poor thing, before anybody would come and see her.

She was screaming her head off, Esperanza told Zeus. You see, my boyfriend, Marty, he just had a stroke. That was two weeks ago. Then today, my mother collapsed and had to be brought in – and now
this
? She turned to Rose. This news about my brother? I mean, it’s just insane! I don’t understand it! She sat rigid for a moment, then covered her face and sobbed soundlessly into her hands.

Zeus looked at Rose. Her brother just died, Rose said softly, and Zeus nodded. Why was he drawn, again and again, to these mournful scenes in hospitals? Did he, in fact, have a hand in all this suffering? Was he supposed to know what to do? What to say? Because he didn’t. If someone else could be here instead of me, Zeus thought, somebody
else
inside my shoes –

Let it out, sweetheart, Rose said and put her hand on Esperanza’s back.

Now this was the Rose he knew, Zeus thought. Attending instinctively to the pain of others. Esperanza took a kleenex out of her purse and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She looked out across the room.

The awful thing is, she said, my
dad
just died four months ago. My mom and I were mourning him like a family of elephants. We helped him to die like a midwife helps a woman give birth, stroking him with our trunks. I’ve learned so much recently about being human. Or being an elephant – I don’t know which one! And there he was – my dad, Nigel Saks – in his music satchel under the piano stool. He’d been cremated and he was back home. Suddenly, the thing you can’t accept becomes beautiful and you
want
it. We toasted him in a circle, and there he was, on the floor in his briefcase.

I used to know a man once, Zeus said, who got into suitcases.

Rose turned to Zeus and looked as if she might laugh.

Esperanza spat the gum into her kleenex, put it back in her purse, and clicked it shut. Zeus wasn’t sure if there was more. She tossed her long dark hair over one shoulder, then the other.

We had asked my brother,
Donny
, to come to the funeral, she said. So he came, but his eyes were rolling back into his head. Boy, did I ever fake him out though. Jollying him into position at the back of the church. You were there when it counted, I told him afterwards, but you were
stoned
and it’s only going to get worse.

It was nearly eleven o’clock, and Zeus was getting impatient, though Rose was showing no sign that she wasn’t interested and sympathetic to Esperanza’s story.

I have a gay Catholic friend from New Orleans, Esperanza said, called Romeo?

She was lightening up, Zeus thought, that was a good sign.

Well
, she said, Romeo told me he had an order of Carmelite nuns
praying
for Marty. I wanted to know, are they wearing
panties
?

Esperanza laughed, and Zeus saw a small muscle of irritation flex along Rose’s jaw line. She had quietly taken offence, perhaps even made a private judgment, and this was also something he recognized. She could rush in to help, but she would only go so far.

I used to make fun of his spirituality, Esperanza said, but guess what Marty told me this morning? He said that, in the middle of the night, he felt people
praying
for him. I’m telling you, if you’ve got spiritual friends, use them if they have access to nuns. I still have this beautiful image of all these nuns with their panties off, down on their knees. I got Romeo to light one of those candles. Did you know they can burn for three days straight? If there was a Christ, he’d be
Romeo
.

Rose had started to gather up her things, she was pulling on her coat.

But, oh God! Esperanza said. I can still remember kissing my dad, day after day. Until an hour before he died, he could still pucker!

I’m just going to go over there, Rose said, and talk to the nurse about getting released. She stood up. Excuse me, will you, for a minute?

Esperanza put a hand to her throat, straightened her posture, and lifted her chin. She looked proud and wounded. She turned to Zeus, and there was a quality in her look that made him feel as if he knew her, the kind of person she was, maybe even some of what she’d been through.

After my dad died, she said, my brother came back and helped himself to what was left of Dad’s medication. He took all his morphine. He said he just wanted to kill himself, and I
didn’t speak to him for months. So then I thought, he
must
be dead. I
wanted
him to be.

But then? Esperanza said, and her eyes seemed to shine again. After Marty had his stroke? I realized my brother’s an animal, a drug-taking animal, a fox in a hen house. He behaves exactly the way he’s supposed to behave. I felt so much compassion for him. We’re all becoming more of what we are, Zeus. He acts the way he acts. A crow eats its baby bird. That’s what they do. You can’t blame the crow for that, she said. We’re all becoming
more
of what we are.

When Zeus and Rose left the hospital, it was almost midnight. They were delirious with fatigue. The three of you drive all the way here in
this
thing? Rose laughed outright, getting into the truck. When Zeus had closed his door, she said, That woman in there, I thought she’d never stop. I got the feeling she comes from a very
theatrical
family. Something of the chaos of her life reminded me of you and Hannah. The sordid messes you could get yourself into, living outside the church like you do.

Zeus felt that feathering again, like the front of his body was fizzing up with carbonation. He refused to show his feelings. They drove to the hotel in silence, Zeus half waiting for Rose to apologize. They cruised the parking lot until he found an empty space.

When the truck stopped, Rose said, It’s not like you’re the same as me, Zeus, or
have
to be. I understand that now.

Zeus got out and slammed the door. He felt an old anger coming to the surface. A strip of light peeled off the back of the building and a man stepped out of a door and, standing beside a dumpster, lit a cigarette. I’m going to go over there, Zeus said and started walking towards the hotel. Sometimes it seemed all religion did was make people worse.

The man didn’t see him at first and yelped at somebody coming out of the darkness. Sorry, Zeus said. I didn’t mean to scare you. Could I bum a cigarette?

Yes, the man said, of course. He was wearing a brown cleaner’s uniform.

Zeus bent towards the man’s lighter, inhaled, and got a head rush. He sat down on the curb that bordered the narrow lawn surrounding the hotel and let the cigarette burn down between his fingers. Rose caught up with her wheelie suitcase and asked Zeus gently, Are you coming inside?

Zeus ignored her and turned to the man, Where are you from?

I’m from Libya, he said. My name is Zoher.

Zeus, he said, and they shook hands.

The man turned to Rose and she raised her hand at the wrist. Rose Crowe, she said in a sad voice. Do I detect a British accent?

Irish, he said.

Was she going to pretend that everything was fine? Zeus wondered.

Many years ago, Zoher said, my country send me to Oxford, but in Oxford they keep me for twelve hours at customs, then tell me I have to leave. This is just after Lockerbie. There is embargo on Libya. I am suspect. But do I know anything about the bombing? So I go to Dublin. I learn English and computers. My government, they pay for everything. Libya was
socialist
country. I knew the two men accused of bombing. They had nothing to do with it. We refuse to release them and there is blockade. You know this? All traffic coming from air and sea. You can only trade by desert. So now Libya is poor like Cuba.

Are you saying you knew the men who did the Lockerbie bombing? Rose asked.

University friends, Zoher said. Libya is small country, not like here. Qaddafi? He lived in same house like us. You could become great doctor in Libya, very famous, but you cannot make money. So maybe you leave. Go to Germany.

But they were found guilty, weren’t they? she said.

Zeus flicked his cigarette onto the ground. Was she seriously interested in this right now?

Many people claim responsibility, Zoher said. Islamist jihad revolutionaries. Hezbollah. Maybe even Mossad, Israeli intelligence service. So much fear, always the enemy is invisible. That’s how it will be from now on.

He dropped his cigarette and twisted his shoe over it. I miss my country, he said. I miss my friends. I used to play soccer with Qaddafi. Always his jersey was number ten. Always he played in goal. He loved fresh dates with camel’s milk, just like my wife. I miss her. I miss my children, my mother.

Zoher raised his face to the dark sky. I like it here at night, behind the Comfort Inn. I smoke a cigarette. I look up at the stars. Same stars over Tripoli. I blow smoke out of my mouth and it carries my prayers to Allah and I wait. I wait for peace. Sometimes I wait for revenge. That is life. Islam teaches us about suffering. When we suffer, it does not surprise us as much as you westerners.

Our disappointments undo us, Rose said, reaching out to lean on the handle of her wheelie suitcase.

And our disappointments, Zoher said, lead us to a greater devotion. In that, the Arab resembles the Jew. You are never so close to yourself, as when you are staring your enemy in the face. A man without enemies learns nothing.

Rose shook her head. These are not my beliefs, she said almost inaudibly and put a hand on her wound. My head is
throbbing, she said. The painkillers must be wearing off. I need to sleep now.

Don’t we all, Zeus said and continued to look out across the parking lot as Zoher helped Rose towards the door. There was mist around the lampposts, the sound of highway traffic, like a manmade river surging across the land. The orange logo of the Comfort Inn hummed like a futuristic moon and the pavement, so expansive and familiar, seemed like the natural state of things, as if the earth was really made of concrete. Not built up, Zeus thought, but uncovered. After years of clearing and sweeping the debris of nature away, this is what the world was meant to look like. The artificial is real. It was, perhaps, a strange, new, magnificent landscape, if you could give yourself over to it.

I
n the morning, Hannah woke fresh and well rested. Zeus was just leaving the room, already wearing his trench coat and scarf. I’ll wait for you guys downstairs, he said and closed the door.

Connie came out of the bathroom with her hair wet and her jacket on. You’re not dressed yet? she said to Hannah, going over to the hotel phone. She called the front desk and got her mother’s room number, then she called her and woke her up. Rose didn’t want to get out of bed. Connie asked her if she needed anything, some breakfast maybe, but Rose declined. All she wanted to do was sleep.

The sisters took the elevator down to the lobby, where Zeus was waiting on a black leather bench, studying something in his hands. Connie went over to the front desk to see about getting some food sent up to her mother, and Hannah took a seat beside Zeus. What’s that? she said, and he handed her the coloured photocopy Fenton had given him.

It’s a recent picture of my parents, he said.

Oh my
God
, Hannah said. These are your parents? Wow,
you look so much like your mother. They’re so good-looking. They look pretty young.

My mother’s only two years older than you are, Zeus said.

Really? Hannah said and stared at the wall in amazement, her mouth slightly open.

Connie returned and checked her watch. Come on, it’s already nine o’clock, and I want to get a spot with the prophetic ministry before it fills up.

Look at this, Hannah said and showed her the picture. It’s Zeus’s parents.

You’re kidding me, Connie said and looked at it intently. That’s
crazy
. Oh,
Zeus
, she said, handing the picture back and giving his shaved head a maternal stroke.

The three of them walked out of the hotel and into another clear day. The sun was so vivid, cars on the highway flashed like diamonds on a long conveyer belt. They got into the truck and Hannah turned out of the parking lot.