How It Ended: New and Collected Stories (10 page)

Things had gone sour after the incident in the bazaar. Michelle had seen all she cared to of Landi Kotal and wanted to move on. She began talking about Katmandu, where she and Trey had met. He didn't want to be reminded of Katmandu. They'd spent three weeks together there, Trey having just arrived in Asia. Then one night Michelle went off with an Italian, and he didn't see her again until six months later. She now spoke wistfully of Katmandu's pastel-colored temples and the tall, crooked houses with hex eyes painted on the lintels.

“And the monkeys,” he said absently. “Don't forget the monkeys.” They were lying on a single pallet in the upstairs room, in the dim light of an oil lamp. Rudy had been gone for three days.

“I hate the monkeys,” she said. “Nasty, ugly things. I hate them.”

“Sorry,” Trey said. There was no telling when some little thing would set her off. He turned onto his side and looked at her. Her face was rigid. He stroked her shoulder; she pushed his hand away.

“It smells like pig in here.”

“Sheep. It's sheep.”

“Pig
. Pig pig pig. Big-time, big-deal businessmen. They make a big deal and stay in a pig house. Pig time. Pig deal. Pig guys.”

“Michelle.”

“Pig!”

He leaned over and kissed her neck. “Once we finish this we'll have money, lots of money. Then we can go anywhere.”

“I want to go now.”

“We have to wait for Rudy.”

“Rudy. Always Rudy. Rudy Rudy—”

Trey clapped a hand over her mouth and she bit him, then resumed the chant, her voice rising until she lashed out at him with her arms and legs. When he tried to cram the blanket into her mouth, she kneed him. He got a handful of her hair and rolled her off the pallet. He thumped her head, hard, against the wooden floor. She stopped struggling and began to cry.

After a while she said, “Do you love me?”

Trey said that he did.

“Do you love me more than Rudy?” she said.

“Do I sleep with Rudy?”

“Maybe you do,” she said after a minute.

It was an easy thing for her to think, a quick reduction of whatever was exclusive in Trey's affection for Rudy. They had been traveling together for six months when Michelle showed up in Goa, where they were renting a beach hut for the winter. In Michelle's version of Katmandu, Trey had abandoned her, and when she moved in with them she made him promise he would never run out on her again. For a few weeks it had been idyllic. Rudy liked Michelle, and she liked him. But then she had turned petulant and jealous, quizzing Trey with hypothetical situations in which he had to choose between the two of them.

“I don't go for redheads,” he said now. “Now go to sleep.”

The next day Michelle stayed in bed complaining of cramps, and he went to Peshawar to check on bus schedules. When he got back she was high. He could see it in the way she greeted him, giddy and languorous, and in the slight drop in register in her voice. She'd had a habit for three months in Goa, and he knew the signs.

“Where did you get the stuff?”

“Come hold me, Trey.”

“Where did you get it?” Even as he asked, he didn't know why he bothered. The point was, she had it. But it was the only thing he could think of to say.

“Only a little bit,” she said. “To make the sickness go away.”

She nodded off before sundown. He stayed with her through the next morning. By noon she was sweating and trembling. He held out until three, when he could no longer stand to watch her. She told him she'd bought it from the Pathan who'd helped them that day. Trey went to find him, and returned an hour later with her fix. There would be time to straighten her out when this business was all over.

He went outside the moment she started to tie off. He might have bought it, but he wasn't about to watch her put the needle in her arm. He looked out over the barren gray peaks. The afternoon sun cast harsh, angular shadows. There was no vegetation in sight. To the west, the road threaded between the jaws of the pass. Three eastbound vehicles crawled like beetles toward the bright mosaic of the town. It was possible that Rudy was in one of them. Trey wanted to think so. But he felt that a landscape like this didn't have anything encouraging to say about the fate of individuals.

He went daily to the Pathan, buying Michelle's fix and checking for news from the border. Afternoons, while she slept, he went back down to the bazaar and lingered over tea in one of the shops. The days were warm and getting warmer.

It was the thirteenth day of waiting when he saw the Australian's pendant for sale in the bazaar. It seeemed like an omen. He went immediately back to the fort, waiting until Michelle was on the declining slope of her afternoon fix to tell her that he wanted her to leave. If there was going to be any trouble, he wanted her to be clear of it. At the same time he wanted to streamline his own concerns. Worrying about Michelle was sapping him. He felt he would have to do something soon, and her presence severely limited his options.

“Listen,” he said. “This is important. Do you still have friends in Katmandu?”

She shrugged and smiled. “I have friends in Katmandu, I have friends in Goa, I have friends in Paris, friends everywhere. So many friends.”

He took her by the shoulders. “This is serious. Things could get bad here. We have enough for a plane ticket. You go to Katmandu and stay with your friends. I'll meet you there as soon as I can.”

She frowned. “You come too.”

“I have to wait for Rudy.”

“You're wanting to give me the dump.”

He shook his head.

“It's true. You don't love me.”

“I
do
love you and I
don't
want anything to
happen
to you. I'll come get you as soon as Rudy shows up.”

“I stay here with you.”

He knew she wouldn't change her mind. He also knew his idea wasn't very practical. She was in no shape to travel alone, yet it seemed more dangerous to let her stay. He'd been having nightmares about the incident in the bazaar.

That night he brought the subject up again, but Michelle put her hands over her ears and began singing whenever he tried to speak.

The Pathan was more discursive than usual on the morning of the seventeenth day. After taking note of the weather and inquiring after Michelle, he began to discuss the business climate. The government was stepping up border patrols. Rival tribes were fighting over the smuggling routes. Trey guessed he was being softened up for a price hike.

“It is especially dangerous for amateurs,” the Pathan said. He shook his head slowly and frowned.

Trey registered a new note in the conversation. He felt his heart in his chest, as if it had just started pumping a moment before. “You've got news for me?”

The Pathan raised his eyebrows, as if amazed by Trey's acuity or else by his lack of tact in coming so abruptly to the point. He scrupulously smoothed the baggy folds of his sleeves. “There is a rumor.”

Trey waited.

“The men your friend contacted across the border, they are not honest men. They require a payment for his safe return.”

“Why haven't I been approached?” Trey demanded, but the answer came to him without any hint from the Pathan, who was gazing impassively over the bazaar as if he'd lost interest in the conversation.

“How much?” Trey said then. He guessed that whoever had Rudy would know exactly how much he was planning to pay on delivery and therefore would ask for a little more. For a moment he felt almost relieved, finally knowing what the situation was, and what was required, but at the same time he didn't feel he knew anything for certain.

“If you wish,” the Pathan said, “I can look into the matter.” Trey doubted that any such inquiry was necessary, but he had to observe his broker's ritual. That he appear to trust him was crucial now that he didn't know if he could.

He went back to the fort and read to Michelle, not even broaching his conversation with the Pathan.

That afternoon Trey was told that the kidnappers would settle for nothing less than two thousand dollars. He had a little more than eighteen hundred in his money belt, and wondered if the Pathan had any way of knowing this.

“I don't have that much.”

“Then your friend is dead.”

“Tell them I have fifteen hundred.” This was the amount Rudy would have promised the Afghanis on delivery.

“I do not believe they will change their minds.”

“What if I wired for more money?”

The Pathan laughed. “Where do you think you are?” He was looking at Trey intently now, having shed the bored manner of a man performing an unwanted and unprofitable task.

“I need some proof.” He could think of no way to get the other two hundred but felt he somehow had to keep the process moving forward.

“I was asked to show you this.” The man reached into a leather pouch on his holster belt and removed a gold signet ring. Rudy's.

“That doesn't prove anything. Why didn't he send a note?”

The Pathan shrugged. “These are not literary men.”

“But how do I know he's alive?” Until that moment it hadn't really occurred to him that Rudy might be dead. Even if he came up with the money, he had no guarantee except this man's word.

“I believe he is alive,” the Pathan said.

“I have to think this through.”

“Do you have the money?”

Trey shook his head. “Not all of it.”

“Perhaps,” the Pathan said, “I could assist you with the balance.”

And then Trey realized he had been waiting to say this all along.

“In exchange for what?” he said, then fixed his eyes on the man's face and listened.

Michelle was sleeping on the pallet with her mouth open. Trey knelt down beside her and pushed the hair away from her eyes. He timed her respirations: twelve a minute, low even for a junkie. He watched an insect crawling up the earthen wall above them and wondered if there was a right thing to do.

“Trey?”

“I'm here.”

“What time is it?”

“Afternoon.”

“I think it is time.”

“There's something I have to talk to you about.”

“Not now.”

“Yes. Now.”

She turned to look at him, her face slack. He tried to remember her as she'd been in Katmandu. The outlines of her beauty were still there, but back then this beauty seemed to be projected from an inexhaustible source of reckless energy that kept her always in motion, her eyes full of mystery. When he saw her again in Goa she was showing signs of wear. She'd lost weight and her eyes didn't have the precision he remembered.

“You're crying,” she said, then reached up and wiped a tear from his cheek.

Trey said, “Michelle.”

“Don't be sad,” she said. “Maybe you take a little fix with me.”

He shook his head.

“Give me one, Trey. I want you to do it.”

“Rudy's in trouble,” he said.

She sighed dreamily. “Don't worry. You will think of something, no?”

“I need your help.”

“You do what's best.”

“Listen to me.”

“Please, Trey. Not now. After a little fix.” She reached down and stroked his crotch. “Then we make love.” They hadn't, not since she'd started shooting up again. The drug had swallowed all of her desire, and he found he didn't want her as she was now.

He pushed her hand away. “I'm trying to talk to you.”

“Trey, please.”

He had no illusions about his complicity in Michelle's habit, but he felt that some last shred of principle was upheld by his refusal to stick the needle into her arm. Now this seemed a cheap distinction. Michelle was beyond thinking. He had allowed her to do this to herself. For this he had to accept responsibility, and for the rest of it.

“All right,” he said. “All right, I will.”

She sat up on the pallet and rolled up the sleeve of her shirt. The arm was thin and pale, speckled near the joint with needle marks. Trey took the bandana from around his neck and tied her off. She leaned over and kissed him. He swabbed her arm with alcohol, then wiped off the needle.

“A little more,” she said when Trey started to heat the spoon over the flame of the oil lamp. “Okay?”

A little more, then. For the next few hours he wanted her out of it. He didn't want her to know what he'd had to do. He wished her a long, cool rush that would lift her beyond the clammy walls, beyond the gray hills outside to a white, featureless place where there was neither choice nor betrayal. He almost wished he could join her there. He shook more powder from the packet into the spoon, then closed his eyes and opened them.

When the powder had melted, he put the spoon down on the pallet, drew the liquid into the syringe and held it up, looking for bubbles. He missed the vein on the first try, his hands shaking badly. When he tried to pull it out a peak of white flesh rose around the needle. He clutched her elbow tighter. The second time the needle slipped easily into the vein. He raised his thumb and depressed the plunger.

Where he drew the needle out, a tiny red bubble blossomed and burst. Michelle's face unclenched and she sank down onto the pallet with a sigh.

He staggered down the stairs and, outside, got down on his hands and knees and vomited.

He found him in the bazaar.

“You have decided,” the Pathan asked.

Trey nodded. There was nothing he could say.

“You have somewhere to go?”

“I won't bother you,” Trey said.

The Pathan nodded solemnly, then reached under his shirt and held out a dirty white envelope. “Two hundred dollars,” he said, “as a token of good faith. When I return you will have the rest of the money for me, as we agreed.”

Trey let him stand there, holding the envelope. The Pathan waited; he would not insist.

Finally Trey took the envelope and shoved it into his pocket. “Two hours,” he said.

After nodding again, the Pathan turned and walked off through the bazaar. Trey imagined rifle sights on the receding blue turban.

The sun had just dipped behind the mountains in the west. The bazaar was closing down. Trey was sitting at a table in front of a tea shop. The old man who had served him came out to look at him, then went slowly back inside.

Someone was talking to him but at first Trey didn't hear what was being said. The man who was speaking had his bushy hair tied back in a pony-tail and wore a gold ring through his left nostril. He was waving his hand in front of Trey's face.