The Garden of Last Days (41 page)

But Eliot was Eliot and April wanted to hear him. Lonnie turned his ignition quarter way and pushed in the tape. “Want me to rewind it?”

“No.”

“This is from
The Waste Land
.”

“‘On Margate Sands
.

I can connect

Nothing with nothing
.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands
.

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.’

la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord Thou pluckest me out

O Lord Thou Pluckest

Burning

IV. Death by Water”

April jabbed at the buttons. “Stop it. Turn it off.”

He did. She was breathing hard, shaking her head. Lonnie put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right.” He could feel her lungs filling and emptying down there inside her. “It’s okay.” He began rubbing her back but her muscles tensed and he pulled his hand away. She was squinting out at the road like there was something coming from a long way off. Lonnie looked but there was just the purple asphalt and the palm trees and hibiscus along rose-colored walls.

“Lonnie? You know that foreigner I had in the Champagne?”

“Yeah?” Nicotine- and cologne-smelling little fucker, the way he walked right past him at the filling station.

“He kept saying something bad’s going to happen to us all. He kept saying we’re all gonna burn.”

“In hell?”

“I don’t know. He just kept predicting something bad.”

“You believe that?”

April sniffled, dabbed at her nose. “He looked at me like one of those born-agains. Like I’m dead and don’t even know it.”

“They blame you for their own weakness, April. I can’t stand those people.”

“Maybe they should.”

“What?”

“Blame me.”

“For what? Showing them what they came to see?”

“But I’ve made money dancing, Lonnie.”

“Good.”

She stared down at the phone in her hand. “A lot.”

“Not as much as Louis.” Lonnie’s eyes felt dry and his arms were heavy and there was still a swelling in his finger from where he’d caught Dolphins Cap in the mouth. He wanted more coffee.

“I always kept it separate, Lonnie. I swore I’d never be one of those bitches dragging her kids to the club and I didn’t, Lonnie, I never did.” She shook her head and lowered her chin. “I was only going to do it till I didn’t have to anymore.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

She nodded. She looked again at the phone in her hand. “Keep talking, Lonnie. Please, just keep talking.” She shook her head and started to cry and he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her. He began to rock her. Then he smelled her hair, and felt like a real lowlife for doing that.

HE TURNED SIDEWAYS
in his seat and watched her sleep. Her hair was in her face, and she had a slight snore on her inhale. The beer had cleared his head: forget the temple or any other public building out on the circle or just off it. He couldn’t chance the county cruising by again. Outside his truck window and over the stucco wall, the stars had faded. She was a sweet child and he didn’t want to let her go just yet but dawn was twenty or thirty minutes away and now was the time to move.

He upended his Miller, laid the bottle on the seat beside him, reached across himself with his good hand, and was out of the truck three or four seconds before the light switched on bright all over him again.
Just don’t wake the girl. Just don’t wake her up
. His hand and wrist pounded hot at his hip and he could see the flecked paint above the garage door handle he squatted for now, gripping it, standing
and pulling, a hollow shriek of spring and wheel in an iron track that needed oil.

His heart was kicking again. He held on to the handle above his head, stood there looking at a new Honda Civic sitting in front of him like a gift.

He let go. The door slid up another foot or so, bobbing once against its spring, then all was quiet but that goddamn door had been loud—
he
wouldn’t’ve slept through it—and if he was going to do what he had to do, this was the one and only moment he had to do it in. He moved quickly over the concrete floor and hooked his fingers under the handle of the rear door and pulled. The door didn’t budge and what’d he expect? He began to look around for a place he could put her where somebody’d see her right away, where she wouldn’t be run over, his fingers hooking under the front door handle now, the metallic click in his hand as the door swung open, the interior light coming on.

There was a leather briefcase on the passenger’s side, stacks of papers on the backseat. He jabbed the unlock button and opened the rear door and knocked all those papers onto the carpet, the air smelling like a new car, like just-molded plastic and spotless upholstery, rustless steel and dustless electronics, clear oil and smooth glass—it was the smell of First Place, a just reward for one’s hard-earned dues, and AJ took it as a good omen, his own prize coming just as soon as he did the right thing by this child.

He walked fast back to his truck, the floodlight on him too damn bright, as if it had its own sound, and he had to focus his mind and ignore his broken bone and move her as quickly as he could.

He got the access door open and leaned in. He smelled Wild Turkey and diesel, coffee and grape Slush Puppie and dirt. He was breathing hard and closed his mouth, felt his heart bucking in his head. He’d doubled her dose but maybe he should’ve tripled it—man, what if she woke up? What if she woke and began to howl?

He’d leave her anyway.

He lifted his shirt off her, reached between her legs for the buckle, but he couldn’t get at it unless he pushed his palm against her leg. He
began to raise his left hand but it was swollen useless. The air at his back felt crowded and he put his fingers around her bare ankle and pulled it over just a bit, then he pressed on the button and the buckle let loose and he swung the plastic tray up over her sleeping head. He wanted to part the hair from her face, he wanted to do so much more than he was, but this was it, and he leaned close and snaked his hand behind her back and let her cheek rest against his shoulder, his fingers scooping her up beneath her butt, in his head Marianne’s shaking at him from the stage under blue light, how it wasn’t right that a little girl could grow to end up doing that—so many things weren’t right and he pressed his face to her head and backed out of the cab on one knee. He was breathing hard and the concrete under him tilted a second, like the whole town was a boat out on the Gulf, a boat of revelers, and surely there was somebody who’d look after Spring’s girl better than she had.

The Honda was low. He had to bend down, her head resting against his palm, her warm back against his arm, and his knee slipped on papers but he laid her down on the new seat in the new car in the clean garage. Now her hair encircled her face like flowering ivy. One hand was under her, the other across her belly. He wanted to pull that arm free but she’d stopped snoring and she could come out of it and he straightened up and half ran back to his truck for his shirt to cover her again. But—shit—Caporelli written all over it. They’d trace him in no time. In a couple hours the air would be plenty warm, but now it had a chill to it and there was nothing else to cover her with.

Except what he had on; he grabbed his back collar with his good hand and yanked it over his head, gathered it up in his fingers, held his breath as he raised his bad hand, and yanked again, dropping it through the sleeve.

Too much time had passed since he’d opened those doors. The sky was a lighter blue, and he could see the black rise of a gabled roof over the wall, the dark shuttered windows.

He leaned into the Honda and lay his T-shirt over the girl, tucking it in lightly around her hips and legs. She had such a pretty little face;
he didn’t see Spring in it anywhere. He kissed his finger and held it over her, then he backed out and pushed the door closed. He pressed the lock button on the driver’s door, all four of them thumping down, and he pushed that door closed too—
quiet, quiet
—and pulled on the handle but could no longer get in and neither could any other sonofabitch except the owner and he was going to chance that the driver of this new car, the handler of all those papers on the floor, was a decent man like he was, a man who’d do the right thing.

Still, he should call the law soon as he could, tell them where she is. But can’t they trace a cell phone call? Pull up your cell bill faster than you can press the End button? These thoughts running through him as he reached up and grabbed the handle and with too much noise pulled the door clacketing back down. He wanted to leave it halfway open, let some fresh air in, but when he let go, the door began to rise back up. He pushed down till it was a foot off the concrete but it rose up again and goddamnit he had to close it all the way, run back to his truck, start her up, the engine tearing a hole through the quiet of the alleyway. He got his door shut and, bare-chested, backed away.

He switched on his parking lights and moved slowly down the alley the way he’d come. He looked up over the walls and the dark rise of roofs to the sky, a hint of peach in it from the east. The digital on his radio told him he had just over thirty minutes to set himself in the ditch under the CAT, and it was going to be hard to make a cut in the hose look like a tear. Maybe he should loosen the nuts on the clamp instead. Shitty maintenance could shake those loose too. His ratchet set was in the toolbox, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sure, but why wouldn’t it be? His heart began to slow down now but his head felt heavy on his neck, his eyes and shoulders ached, and he wished his wrist and hand weren’t so damn swollen. Not that Cap Jr. had a brain in his fucking head about anything like this. But would the doctor at the hospital say anything? They might. And that could change everything.

At the alley’s end he pulled to a stop. Across the street, in the deep blue light of dawn, an armadillo crept over the bahia lawn of a rich man’s home. AJ’s lights were on him but the creature took his time,
the bony plates of his hide shifting as he went. It was the right thing to lay the girl down away from bugs and reptiles, but there was a cool emptiness inside that pulled on him the way not seeing Cole had pulled on him, and as he turned left away from St. Armand’s Circle, he knew there wasn’t much time but he couldn’t just leave her back there without a call to the county. There had to be a pay phone somewhere. He looked behind him at the street sign. A palm tree was in front of it and he had to stop and back up and read the words in the white glow of his reverse lights—
Fruitville Road
.

He looked down the alley once more, couldn’t even make out the building, and he put his truck in drive and accelerated, the V-8 pulling him ahead under a cobalt sky, getting lighter and lighter to the east.

BASSAM TURNS OFF
the engine and sits. It is dawn in the parking lot of the Acacia Inn and across the street are two hotels, their many balconies lighted from beneath. He can see the ocean between the buildings. The sky above it is now nearly visible, a blackish blue that makes the water appear gray, its waves breaking on the sand. His chest aches. Beside him is the half package of cigarettes he smoked on his drive west, the three empty bottles of Coke. Khalid.

Bassam pushes the cigarette package into his pocket and leaves the small rental car. At the fuel station halfway across the state, before driving away, he counted his remaining money: nine thousand five hundred sixty-five dollars. But from the bank he had withdrawn over sixteen thousand he was to wire directly to Dubai. He does not wish to do the subtraction, and he steps onto the concrete walkway, the keys in his hand.