The 56th Man (9 page)

Ghaith did not answer.

"I've told my brothers about your
photographic memory. Don't make me look like a fool."

Akhee
. 'My
brother'. Always 'my brothers'. Brothers in arms, band of brothers,
blood brothers, daisy chain brothers. There is as much blood
relation here as between an ox and an eel. Doesn't matter.
Plumbers, beggars, jihadists--all brothers in kind. The U.S. Army’s
motto is more accurate. 'An Army of One'. That's it. You're on your
own, with only your own sweet ass to kiss good-bye.

Omar smiled tensely. He was not concerned
with looking foolish. He was, Ghaith decided, screwing up his
courage.

The little rat-mouth can't still think of me
as an old friend, can he?

"Hey! You! Asshole! I'm talking to you!"

Ari had no doubt that the man was speaking to
him. He had been discreetly urinating in the bushes when this rude
madman burst through. Not believing in putting off business, Ari
continued to pee.

"Do you hear me!" the man screamed. "I can't
believe it! There are children around here!"

The last child Ari had seen had been over a
mile back on the main trail. He had chosen a narrow, half-overgrown
side path to empty his swollen bladder. Even then, he had stepped
half a dozen yards into the undergrowth to guarantee privacy. Back
in his homeland, where a man found the nearest convenient corner to
piss in, he was considered a bit of a prude because of his delicacy
in this matter. It had nothing to do with timidity and everything
to do with public hygiene. The city and outlying villages stank
enough without him adding his few ounces to the mess.

The woods seemed a perfectly reasonable venue
for relieving himself, screened off from women and little girls,
and a perfect absorbent for natural human waste. It was just his
bad luck to encounter a lunatic. He finished peeing and rolled up
the front of his jogging pants.

The lunatic retreated a short distance as Ari
stepped through the brambles and onto the path. He only now saw
Ari's face, and was busy reassessing the situation.

Foreigners were more common in the outlying
counties than in Richmond proper, Ari had noted. Sometimes, in a
checkout line or on a street corner, he saw the same flicker of
uncertainty or outright fear--and occasionally loathing--that made
Americans overseas so disruptive, if sometimes amusing. But most of
the locals seemed to accept the presence of Chinese and Indians and
(above all) Hispanics in their midst. There weren't that many Arabs
yet, though, not this far south. Perhaps a few thousand in the
immediate area. Ari wondered if the outraged jogger would conclude
he was Punjabi. Or Sikh. Or a member of that relatively new race: a
Terrorist.

Why not? We all look the same to them.

"You don't do that here," the jogger
admonished, no longer screaming, but scolding. "There are public
toilets."

Ari had tried to use the facilities at a
nature center further up the trail, only to find the building
locked. Peering through a plate glass window, he saw a marine
turtle moping in a fish tank and some fanciful children's drawings
of various animals on a bulletin board next to the entrance.
Otherwise, the interior was dark. Ari had encountered this
manifestation before. Americans were very good at stockpiling
material in great abundance, then locking it all up. Everything for
the record, none for use.

The jogger was into the second phase of his
assessment, his eyes running up and down Ari's baggy jogging pants
and sweaty gray shirt. They compared poorly with his own natty
outfit. The logos on his shirt and striped shorts matched, while
his immaculate running shoes appeared to have an inch of cushion.
He was a brand name. He belonged. Whereas Ari (and his renegade
penis) was fraught with anonymity. Was he homeless? Or that worst
of all conjunctions: foreign and destitute--with nothing to lose?
In other words, was he dangerous?

"There's a shelter for..."

Ari raised his brow inquiringly.

"They have toilets. You can even take a
shower." He chose to interpret Ari's silence as a query. "It's
three or four miles from here, across the river. Next to the city
jail...I hear."

"I am not a peasant," Ari said with grim
civility. Feeling a twinge in his calf, he braced his hands on one
knee and stretched out his leg. When he straightened, the other
jogger was gone.

It was his own fault, he thought. He had been
living in a state of semi-savagery, sleeping in his jogging suit,
eating junk food, neglecting his appearance. He had neither
showered nor shaved this morning, putting off his toilette until
he'd taken his morning run. Which only made sense, but which also
helped explain why the man treated him like some alien
cast-off.

But it did nothing to alleviate Ari's
sense of outrage. He had done well in his country, so well that
there was an assumption among some that his good fortune was simply
that, plums that had fallen out of the sky into his lap. True, luck
had been involved. But few understood how hard he had worked, the
risks he had taken, the fragility of the thread from which he
dangled. And with the final toss of the dice, he had lost all. Not
that he had had much choice. Nor was he by any means the only one
to have found a desert where, only a day before, there had been
lush pastures. Which made the man's reaction to his uncovered
presence all the more galling. He had reprimanded Ari out of
ignorance. He had
screamed
out
of ignorance. And Ari wondered, as he jogged the several miles back
to Beach Court, if he should have broken the idiot's
jaw.

No. You did well. Doing
something like that might draw attention
.

An unpleasant odor greeted him inside the
house. It seemed to be coming from upstairs. Going up, he found his
thin blanket balled up at the end of the mattress. A nudge of his
foot exposed feces and a large wet patch that could only be
urine.

The cat must have predicted Ari's reaction,
because it was nowhere to be found. What a clever beast, to find a
hiding spot where none existed.

Only we both know that's not true, don't
we?

His wrath slowly receded, like a slow-moving
thunderstorm disappearing over the horizon. After all, he reasoned,
the cat was only guilty of a cultural misstep similar to the one
Ari had apparently made in James River Park. Locked inside the
house, it had used the nearest thing at hand that approximated
loose soil.

His primitive bed was now unusable. The
mattress was thin and folded easily, along with the blanket, in the
large trash can (Waste Management Systems grandiosely stenciled on
its green flank) sitting outside the garage.

He took a quick shower, shaved.

He dressed.

His suit looked rumpled in the bathroom
mirror.

A major shopping spree was called for. He had
a $3,000 credit limit. Prudence dictated limited expenditure. How
much would, say, $600 buy?

As he raised the garage door a pickup truck
pulling a trailer entered his driveway. The driver saw that Ari was
about to leave and backed away to the street. After parking at the
curb, he hopped out and walked up the slight rise.

"Mr. Ciminon?"

Ari nodded. "You must be Ted. It says so on
your truck."

"Actually, I'm Fred." The young man stuck out
his hand. "I just work for Ted."

"I received an email--"

"All taken care of."

"I don't understand."

"I tried calling ahead, but no one
answered."

"I went jogging."

"And didn't take your cell phone with you,"
Fred clucked, as though Ari had committed a major faux pas. His
second that morning. "That's all right. I'll just run my little
Toro around here a bit and trim a few hedges and I'll be out of
your hair."

"I never requested this service," Ari
said.

"It's all under contract," the young man
answered with an annoying combination of servility and confidence.
"You just go about your business. We'll do fine."

"Uh, Fred," Ari called out as the man turned
and headed back to his truck.

Fred turned. "Yes?"

"Your uniform."

Fred, puzzled, glanced down at his carpenter
jeans, then tucked his chin for a look at the name stitched on his
shirt pocket: Fred, in flowing cursive. He raised his head. "I'm
sorry?"

"It's quite...immaculate."

Their eyes met. Fred held his gaze a fraction
too long. He grinned broadly and chuckled, looking away. "It's
under contract, too!"

Ari smiled, nodded, and returned to the
garage. As he backed his Scion down the driveway, Fred waved for
him to stop. Ari lowered his passenger window and Fred leaned
down.

"About these," he said, nodding at the
flowers and wreath clustered around the mailbox post. "You don't
want me to get rid of them, do you?"

"You can leave them," Ari said.

Fred gave him a sad smile and turned
away.

"Uh...wait!" Ari called after him. "I've
changed my mind. You may get rid of them. All of them."

Ari brushed off Fred's dismay with a wave of
his hand. "There will be more, soon enough. Fresh ones."

Fred gave him a long look, then said, "Nice
car!"

Ari glowered and pulled away.

America, Land of Shops and Shoppers. Ari had
been astonished when, only a few days after 9/11, the President of
the United States had stood before the people of this great land
and announced the sure cure for global terrorism:

"Go shopping."

Ari had gone barely a mile down Midlothian
Turnpike before he spotted a men's clothing store and negotiated a
turn into a strip mall parking lot.

"Ah, yes," a salesman said appreciatively as
Ari walked in. "Just the shark for my sharkskin."

Ari gave him an 'I beg your pardon' lift of
the brow.

“
I have a real bargain from Vanetti,
just the thing for hot summer days,” the salesman said, guiding Ari
to a rack near a fitting room and a trio of mirrors. He looked the
prospective customer up and down and removed a gray three-button
suit, holding it up to the side of Ari's chest. “Polyester and
rayon blend, very cool. Classic center venting, with pleated pants.
Of course we have this style in wool, too. It will be getting
chilly in this neck of the woods in a month or so.”

Ari fingered the material. Adequate. He
noticed the chalk marks on the unfinished pants cuffs and sighed.
“I need something right away.”

The salesman sighed, too, as though forming a
duet of disappointment with his client. "That limits our options
somewhat." He hesitated, then said, "I hope you won't take offence,
but...your English is very good."

"Cambridge," Ari said.

"Ah! I thought I detected a trace of English
English."

Ari smiled.

The salesman tapped his lower lip, then held
out his hand. "Do you mind?"

"Please."

The salesman pinched Ari's pinstripe jacket
and rubbed the fabric between his fingers. "This is very fine."

"This? I wore it at work.”

“
This?”

“
At the Casino du Liban.”

“
That's…” The salesman's eyes widened.
“In Lebanon? Beirut?”

“
Actually, it's in Jounieh, about
twenty kilometers outside the city. They're famous for their
Maronite Catholics.”

“
Those Catholics love to gamble!” the
salesman barked--then closed his mouth. “I'm sorry. You aren't by
any chance…” Then he frowned. “Didn't all the casinos close down? I
thought I heard something about that…”

“
Casino du Liban reopened years ago,
after the civil war. But because of the recent troubles with Syria,
there's been some readjustments in the staff.”

“
Hard times?”

Palm down, Ari brought his hand up to the
salesman and the inch of pinstripe still between his fingers. “As
you can tell, this has seen better days."

"Yes, but…the thread count must be
tremendous. Barbera? Piana?"

"Marzotto."

"Oh my," the salesman wailed lowly. "I'm
afraid we don't have anything like that here. You would have to go
to New York to find something like this. Or Rome!”

"I certainly don't have time for that."

"Of course not, of course not." Making a
sound that combined a snort with a laugh, the salesman said, "You
could take a look at Macy's Donald Trump Collection."

The salesman showed Ari a few more suits and
combinations, but his attitude was halfhearted. It was like showing
the Queen of England a collection of Tupperware. When Ari made it
clear even these modestly priced items were beyond his current
means, he dropped all pretense.

"I suppose you'll be wanting Wal-Mart, then.
This is as low as we go."

Ari had seen at least a dozen Wal-Marts, or
signs directing shoppers to Wal-Marts, during his drive south. He
had concluded that it was some kind of department store chain.

"They sell suits?"

"Allegedly." The salesman was
courteous, but obviously put out. "
Chinese
suits, strictly off the rack. You'll
probably need a tailor, to take out the shoulders."

"Can you tell me where the nearest Wal-Mart
is?"

The salesman told him. Then, his sense of
self-promotion completely shattered, at least for what remained of
the morning, he added: "Too bad, too bad. My suits would have
looked so good on you. You put my mannequins to shame."

Ari glanced toward the display window. All of
the mannequins were blue.

Two hours later Ari unloaded his wardrobe.
The George suit and slacks (Bulgarian, not Chinese) went onto new
plastic hangers, as did his three new shirts, an additional pair of
pants, a dark blue sports jacket, and two ties. On the overhead
shelf he placed underwear, socks, a fresh jogging suit, and a
proper pair of pajamas.