The Night Counter (35 page)

At Ann Arbor during college, when his parents were less naive about him, he had met Carol. She somehow had gotten pregnant—while they were high, they assumed, as they didn’t remember having sex that month. As they were boyfriend and girlfriend, they also assumed the baby was probably his and got married. His parents did not attend that wedding— or any of the others. They weren’t really weddings, just civil ceremonies. Bassam had decided to follow Arab tradition as the only son and named his baby Ibrahim, but the boy was stillborn.

Bassam had married four times since Carol. Most good first dates ended in marriage followed by divorce. Part of his generally addictive personality. The women shared his addictions, particularly the alcohol.

“You’re the reason the Koran recommends not drinking,” Ibrahim yelled after Bassam’s second marriage ended. “Look at you—a hobo.”

“The word is ‘alcoholic,’” Bassam had replied, as if medical terminology gave it dignity.

Bassam couldn’t do anything in less than extremes: He couldn’t go on a date without getting married, he couldn’t drink without becoming an alcoholic, and he couldn’t get an education without getting a Ph.D. He couldn’t be a success without being a complete success or a loser without being a complete loser, and the latter came more naturally.

Candy motioned to the clock. “Sam #2’s waiting,” she reminded him.

Bassam drove straight past the Venetian, past crowds of conventioneers, any of which could have contained his sister. Lena was the closest to him in age, just three years younger. Lena’s many accomplishments— National Spelling Bee finalist, Mini-UN delegate, and today an M.B.A. with a high-powered job in television—had always been overshadowed by the crisis of Bassam.

As Bassam entered the Luxor, guilt over Lena was swept away by girls—well,
hardened
women despite their best efforts at trying to look cute in pigtail extensions. They wove through the lobby in pastel scarves twisted into bikini tops, diaphanous slit skirts, and bras with tinsel fringes, all bedazzled with blinding quantities of rhinestones. He followed the women through the slot machines to the belly-dancing convention, or the “casbah,” as the casino signs read. The badly recorded Arabic pop music, with its heavy emphasis on the keyboard, sounded no better than the shit Sam #2 listened to in the Town Car.

On the walls of the casbah were life-size posters of American belly-dancing queens in heavy kohl with names like “the legendary Jamila,” “the glamorous Jasmine,” “the visionary Aziza,” and of course “the scintillating Scheherazade.”

Several drunken Saudis were gathered around the smoky stage, clapping and hooting to semiclad dancing women. Even though the Saudis no longer wore their
thowbs
and headdresses in the States, especially since 9/11, there was no mistaking these ones, tall and doughy with Indian subcontinent faces set off by wiry hair. Bassam picked up the faint odor of frankincense and sandalwood that always surrounded them, that lingered in the Town Car long after they had gone home.

Three of the Saudis clapped and danced in a circle, shouting “
Yallah,
ya banat Arab.
” Arab girls? Fuck no, Bassam thought. The Saudis knew that these weren’t Arab women. That was why they were having such a kick-ass good time. The women were a fantasy. Women who looked as cheap and easy to them as McDonald’s. Women who didn’t think of them as the faces of terror. For the women, the Saudis were a fantasy, too: rich, handsome, interested, really rich.

Bassam pushed aside a dancer’s veil that swirled into his face but didn’t leap into high-speed subservient mode like the other Sams who had leeched on to this gig. Devout Muslims for the most part, they couldn’t bring enough drinks over fast enough for the Saudis.

“We could use a little cash to improve the minaret at our mosque,” Sam #17, aka Wissam, said in Arabic to a Saudi who looked to be about nineteen.

“God is great,” the Saudi replied, handing Sam #17 a stack of twenties and taking the Amaretto and Coke from his hands. “If this is not enough money, let me know how much you need to make it the most beautiful minaret in America.”

Sam #17 bowed, smiling as he flipped through the money on the way back to the bar, where Bassam joined him. Sam #17, along with many of the other Sam cabbies, thought Bassam, like them, didn’t drink because he was a Muslim.

“Jerkoffs. Maybe I can get them to pay for some new prayer rugs,” Sam #17 said. “My boy Ahmed said the mosque really needs some. A good boy. He’s going be a doctor one day, just like I was in Algeria.”

In Sam #17’s enthusiasm over his oldest child’s future, Bassam heard Fatima’s once-high hopes. Too fucking dark of a place to go, so Bassam looked for a quick distraction and settled on a belly dancer with a green rhinestone-studded bra and black hair with dishwater-blond roots. He held her eyes for his habitual six seconds and smiled. Shit. Force of habit. Big fucking mistake, he thought as she responded with a huge grin. It was too late to take back his smile, and so he kept it on his face as she sashayed over to him.

“You look familiar,” the woman said, her voice a surprisingly demure
contrast to her heavy makeup. “Were you at the convention in Richmond?”

“Nope,” Bassam replied.

“My name is Candy,” she said. “What’s yours?”

He couldn’t offer to buy her a fucking drink. It would lead to marriage. It always did.

“Tell her you don’t have a name and walk away,” Sam #2 whispered, magically there for him. “
Amigo
, there’s good money to be made tonight. I’m taking my half now. I’ve told the others to come get you when they’re ready.”

He slapped Bassam on the back—extra hard—and left.

“What’d your friend say?” this Candy asked.

“What would you like to drink?” Bassam replied.

“I like green apple martinis,” she said. A hip drink—five years ago. But not bad for someone who probably had been a prom queen runner-up two and half decades ago.

“I’ll get you one,” he said, smiling, “but then, honey, I’m going to have to skedaddle back to work.”

When Bassam came back with her drink, Candy looked a little hurt, as if his whole work thing were an excuse. But it was honest, which was more than most of what was said in this town.

“Here’s my card, if you want to give me a call. The convention finale isn’t for another three days,” Candy told him. Her card said she was a masseuse. “I’ve got a number coming up: the Dance of the Seven Veils. Maybe you could stay and watch. My belly-dancing name is Fatima.”

As she pronounced his mother’s name the American way, with the stress on the second syllable instead of the first, Bassam knew it was no longer possible for this woman, masseuse or not, to give him a hard-on. He would not marry her.

“Girls are still determined to save you,” a cheery voice said as Candy left to shimmy with the other women from her North Carolina troupe. Bassam turned to face Lena. His only younger sister was right on the cusp of turning forty but with a face so babyish that she could still wear pigtails
if she wanted. Not that she would want to. Fuck, Bassam could see that she still had pimples, and she didn’t do anything to hide them. She lived among the pretensions of Manhattan’s elite, surrounded by reasonably convincing cosmetic surgery, and she didn’t even put on any fucking lip gloss. It was like she had given up on love or sex—or whatever the fuck people called it—before she’d even tried it.

“What are you doing here?” Bassam said, enveloping her in hug that should have been a little more enthusiastic.

“I heard there was a belly-dance convention,” she said, shrugging.

She was swaying her hips to the music now. She would be horrified if she realized that she was doing that, and so Bassam didn’t tell her.

“I meant what are you doing in Vegas?”

“NATPE,” she said. “It’s a television industry convention.”

“I drove a bunch of them around today,” he remembered.

“Lucky you,” she said.

“They were fuckin’ assholes,” he replied.

“That’s why I told them I couldn’t go with them to Cirque du Soleil tonight.” Lena smiled. “I told them I had to see my brother.”

“You should have told me you were coming,” Bassam said.

“I left a message with Candy at the bar a week ago.”

Yes, yes, you did, he told her silently. “Candy can be a blond ditz,” he said aloud. “She must have stuck the message in her fucking hairdo and lost it.”

“How come you have your name tag on?” Lena asked. “I thought you worked the day shift.”

She sniffed loudly. Bassam knew that she couldn’t tell if the alcohol smell was from him or from the drinks in the other cabbies’ hands. He didn’t lean in any closer to help. He was tired of having to prove himself to the worriers, which he knew from AA was completely selfish. But he wanted his sisters to believe for themselves that he was sober.

“I can make extra money doing two shifts,” he answered, sounding uncharacteristically ambitious. “How’s your job?”

“I love it,” Lena lied.

Lena was successful despite herself. With her knack for numbers, she had soared in finance, with the network moving her up, always as an example of female promotion. So timid, she wasn’t the natural choice. However, the more natural choices had been more aggressive in everything, including getting husbands and having children, which inadvertently put them out of the running.

And she was a good sister. Even though she had never even taken a puff of Millie’s Virginia Slims, she had never given him away to their parents. When Fatima had identified the smell of pot in the house as mold, she had made Lena spend most of 1976 cleaning under cabinets and shelves for hours, scouring for the source. Meanwhile, Bassam would leave the house to continue his high at the park, telling Fatima that he was rehearsing his clarinet solo with the junior high school marching band for the bicentennial fireworks celebration.

“Two hundred years,” Fatima had scoffed as he hummed John Philip Sousa music while walking out the door. “We have vendettas in Lebanon twice as old as that.”

Lena stuck out her tongue at Bassam as he left, which made Amir, toddling behind her, giggle. But as much as she had fought with him about the pot when it was just the two of them, she did not tell Fatima that the school didn’t have a marching band anymore. She hadn’t wanted to add to the sadness in the house.

She was laughing as Candy and her troupe twirled blanket-size silk scarves around their heads.

“It looks like a fucking sheikh’s harem rebelling,” Bassam joked.

Lena began chuckling, which involved some snorting. Still, her beauty lay in how easy it was to make her laugh. They had to leave the room as women in reinforced rhinestone bras turned to look at them.

“We’re mean,” Lena said, finally getting control of herself.

“Oh, come on, you’re ten times better,” Bassam told her. “Hell, I am.”

He swiveled his hips in a pivot, wanting to hear her chuckle more.

“No, I’m about as ridiculous as them,” she concluded. “But I know I’m not sexy. They don’t.”

“You could have any guy you wanted,” Bassam told her.

“That’s pretty lame for a pep talk.” She held up her hand, just as Fatima always did. “It’s okay. I’ve done okay in other areas. We each have our strengths.”

Bassam had very few strengths. “Whatever happened to … ah … what’s his name?” he asked. “The personal trainer.”

“The guy I went out with for five years? That what’s his name?” said Lena, trying to make light of a man who had cheated on her as often as the opportunity arose.

“He wasn’t a drunk, was he?” Bassam said.

She shook her head. “Men without paddles,” she mumbled.

“What?” Bassam repeated.

“Men without paddles. It’s something I heard my assistant Lucienne say the other day,” Lena explained. “Men who just float aimlessly from spot to spot forever, like most of the men in New York. Like Tony. That was his name. Like—”

“Like me,” Bassam finished for her.

Bassam watched reruns of
Sex and the City
sometimes when Candy had it on in the bar. Lena needed to get out of Manhattan. It was too bad she was successful there. It would be hard to leave success, he imagined. He wanted to tell her that in any other city men would appreciate her, but those were not comfortable things for a failed brother to tell a smart sister.

But maybe a sober brother could do more for her. He was that now. What would a sober brother do for his little sister? Then it came to him.

“You should come visit more often,” he said. He was going to find her someone. Yes, that was what he, as a sober man, would do. He would not rest until he did. After all, it was in the blood. Fatima always said his great-grandmother was some amazing matchmaker in Lebanon, and his father had found Miriam a husband.

Sam #17 tapped Bassam on the shoulder. Standing behind him were four red-eyed, weaving Saudis.

“Here’s your driver,” Sam #17 said to the Saudis.

“I’ll bring the car around,” Bassam told them. “Where is it you gentlemen would like to go?”

“The Bunny Ranch,” one slurred.

“The Moonlight Bunny Ranch,” another corrected.

“It’s near Reno,” Bassam said. “You want to go all the way to Reno?”

“Yes, the Moonlight Bunny Ranch,” they said, nodding.

Bassam bowed as he, his sister, and Sam #17 watched the Saudis totter outside. “Why defy your stereotype when you can afford not to?” he said.

“Gross,” Lena mumbled.

Sam #17 looked at her with appreciation. “Finally I see you with a nice girl,” he whispered to Bassam.

“Dude, this is my sister,” Bassam told him. “Lena.”

“
Bint Arab
, an Arab girl.” Sam #17 bowed with flourish. “I am Wissam.
Ahlan wa sahlan
, welcome, welcome, most welcome.”

Lena shuffled her feet, uncomfortable around friendly men. Bassam thought it was too bad that Sam #17 was married. And no longer a doctor.

Sam #17 motioned to Bassam that they should get going.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Lena said.

“How are you going to get back to your hotel?” Bassam asked. He wanted to give her a ride but didn’t want her to be in his car with this evening’s customers.