Lights Out

“What’s his relationship to Paz?” Eddie looked around. “Does El Rojo own this place?”

Sookray bit her lip. “I don’t feel very well,” she said. “Do you mind if I go to the bathroom?”

“Of course not.”

Sookray left. A harem girl arrived with more Krug.

“I don’t think we ordered that,” Eddie said.

“Drink up,” said the harem girl. “It’s all on the house.”

Eddie drank up. Soon-at least Eddie thought it was soon-a beautiful woman-at least Eddie thought she was beautiful, although he wasn’t seeing too clearly-asked him to dance and he said yes. He wanted to dance with Sookray, but more than that he wanted to dance.

Eddie and the woman went up on the battlements and danced. He forgot about Sookray. He and the woman-she had platinum hair and taut skin everywhere but under her chin-drank another bottle or two of champagne. After that they set out across the sand. They rolled around on the dune for a while. There was some kissing, some more champagne. A crescent moon floated over the desert and the sky filled with stars. The shadow of a huge bird passed overhead. The oasis grew darker and darker, the moon and stars brighter and brighter, the music louder and louder. The bass boomed through the earth with a seismic beat.

“I’m free,” Eddie shouted into the woman’s ear; taking up where he’d left off fifteen years before, having fun on the sand and winning races in the water.

She laughed hysterically. “Me too. We’re both free, free as the fucking wind.” She bit his ear.

14

Eddie awoke at the base of a date palm, his face in the sand. He felt like someone who had been wandering in a real desert: head pounding, mouth parched, cells desiccated.

He was alone. Sookray and Paz, the harem girls and the fire eater, the crescent moon and the skyful of stars: all gone. The dancers were gone too, and the music was over. The only light, an orange glow, came from inside the casbah. The only sound was the trickling of water. Eddie rose, steadying himself on the date palm. It tipped over and fell to the sand with a soft papier-mache crunch. Eddie followed the trickling sound down to the pool.

The pool was round, with irregular edges that might have been found in nature, and muddy banks. The trickling sound came from a fountain in the shape of a silver breast that hung over the other side. Eddie walked around the pool, stuck his finger into the flow and tasted the water. Unlike the date palm, the water was real; cold and metallic, but drinkable. Eddie lowered his head and drank.

And felt a little better almost at once. He stripped off the sweats. Two or three cigarette butts floated in the pool, but it smelled clean. Eddie lowered himself in. The water came almost to his waist, just deep enough. He pushed off and began a slow lazy crawl.

The movement and the coldness of the water got his blood going. The fog of alcohol lifted from his mind, and the headache soon went with it. Eddie swam back and forth across the pool until he grew tired of making all the turns. Then he climbed out, dried himself with a cloth napkin from one of the tables, dressed. Time to go. He walked over the dune and onto the flat stretch of sand that led to the studded leather door.

It was locked. Locked from the inside, like a cell.

Eddie went back across the sand, past the pool, into the casbah. He entered a bar called Le Chameau Insolite. It had whitewashed walls, Persian rugs, plush divans, mosaic tiles. Behind the bar was a swinging door on which hung a calendar where the year was 1372. Eddie pushed through it, into a stainless-steel kitchen of his own era and civilization.

A man in coveralls was piling green-plastic garbage bags on a trolley. He saw Eddie and said: “Are you the new guy?”

“No.”

“Then where the fuck is he?” The man waved his hand through the air, accidently striking the trolley. The bags slid off and tumbled on the floor.

“That’s all I fuckin’ needed,” the man said, giving the nearest bag a murderous kick with his work boot. Lobster tails and champagne bottles sagged through the hole he made. The phone on the wall started ringing. He snatched at it, barked, “What is it?” listened for a few seconds, cried out, “That’s what he always says,” and banged down the phone. He glanced down at the garbage bags, stopped himself from kicking them again, turned to Eddie.

“Wanna make a quick twenty bucks, buddy? Or thirty?”

“Doing what?”

“My job. I’ve got to do some other asshole’s.”

The job: bagging the night’s garbage, piling it on the trolley, wheeling the trolley out the kitchen, down a long hall, into a freight elevator, up to a loading bay, out to a gray-dawn street. It took three trips. When Eddie returned from the last one, the man, now dressed in a tuxedo, was on the phone again.

“All done,” Eddie told him.

Without looking at him, the man offered a twenty.

“What happened to thirty?” Eddie said.

“Jesus,” said the man. “No, not you, him,” he said into the phone, adding a five. “Everybody wants everything,” he said. He raised his voice. “Not you, I said. Him. Him. Him.”