The Radiant City (29 page)

“Yeah,” says Jack. “Without making it look like Mama sent Matthew here all the way after you.” He snorts and sways, and then reaches out to steady himself against the wall.

“I guess my cover doesn’t much matter now, does it?
Merde
. And what if I don’t want to go?”

“I’m not going to drag you out. Fuck that. You’re old enough to make your own decisions. I’ll let her know you’re alive and you can do what you like.”

Jack comes down the stairs, his heel slipping on the fourth step forcing Joseph and Matthew to grab him. He only laughs and slaps Matthew on the back. “You missed the poetry. You missed the performance art.” He says the word in such a way that Matthew assumes the performance must have involved human excrement, or toads, or someone squeezing blackheads.

“I thought we talked about this. Was this your idea?”

“What? Was what my idea?”

“He’s sixteen! His mother’s going out of her tree. For Christ’s sake, Jack!”

“Didn’t know it was that late. Want a toke?” He holds out a soggy joint in the fingers of a hand that also holds a bottle of beer. He’s been drinking for so long his sweat smells of it.

“C’mon, Joseph. We’re getting out of here.”

Joseph’s shoulder stiffens under Matthew’s hand.

“I don’t want to go. What is this? You are now my mother’s . . .”

“Her what?” says Matthew.

“Her . . .
flic
.
”

Cop. Matthew can live with that. In the wide ocean of possibilities, it is not so bad.

“Like I said. You make your own decisions.”

Jack stands in their path, swaying. “Ah, man, let him stay awhile, Dad. He’s got a thing going.” He puts his finger up to the side of his nose and grins, his eyes wandering from side to side.

“Maybe you should call it a night as well, Jack.” Someone yells from upstairs, followed by the crashing of metal chairs collapsing. Matthew’s stomach squinches up into his throat. “I didn’t think this’d be your kind of crowd.”

Jack’s head tilts back and he chews on the inside of his mouth. “Don’t think I fit in with an artistic crowd? That’s the truth, right? Is it? You know what I think?” he says and folds his arms across his chest. As he does so, his hands get tangled in some complicated manoeuvre designed to keep him from burning himself with the joint. In the transaction the beer slips to the floor and the glass shatters. Jack looks at it sadly; he looks at Matthew and smiles lopsidedly. “Maybe you’re right.” And then he laughs. The Jack Laugh, the one that makes heads appear in the stairwell, even over the music.

Joseph’s muscles relax under Matthew’s hand.

The three of them make it out of the building slowly, picking their way through the maze of halls and half-lit doorways, the pulse gradually diminishing as they descend. Once they get lost and find themselves in a bathroom of sorts where someone has set up a child’s wading pool and a hose from the sink. It smells of bleach and mildew in equal measure. “Just like a Turkish jail,” says Jack. They retrace their steps and find the stairs.

“I see you found him” says the border guard.

“Was I lost?” says Jack.

“You never know,” says the guard and unlocks the door.

The air is colder than Matthew remembers. He buttons up his jacket, but Jack seems immune. Joseph looks tired and a little pasty.

“I have to find a phone to let your mother know you’re all right.”

Joseph hangs his head.

“Tell you what,” says Jack. “I’m coming home with you. Sure. Explain it was my fault.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” says Matthew.

“She’s going to be very mad.” Joseph’s eyes cloud, sulking under heavy brows. “She treats me like a child. It is impossible.”

“She’ll be glad you’re all right, but I suspect that yes, you are going to have to face the music, my friend.”

“Yup. Coming with you,” says Jack again.

“Listen, let me talk to you.” Matthew pulls Jack aside and tries to remember that taking a pop at Jack is not a wise thing to do. “This has got to stop, all right? You got to leave this kid alone. You said he had nothing to do with your selling dope.”

“Yeah. I said that. That’s what I said.”

“Would you want Jack, Jr., mixed up in shit like this? Hanging out in a place like that?”

“If he’s with me, why not?” says Jack, but he doesn’t sound convinced. He takes a cigarette out of his pack and tries to light it. The match falls to the ground. “Oops,” he says and tries again. “Ah, what the fuck. What am I doing hanging around with a kid anyway? This place is a rat hole, full of pertenti . . . perntentious, full of shits. I miss the ole Bok-Bok.”

“So do I, as a matter of fact.”

Jack puts his arm around Matthew. It feels like a sack of wet sand.

“We need a good drunk up, the two of us. Joseph!” he calls, “Come here! Joe!”

Joseph comes over and Jack puts his hands on either side of the boy’s head, and let his hands slide onto his shoulders, leaning into him, swaying on his feet. Joseph looks at Matthew, puzzled, and braces himself against Jack’s weight.

“Gonna tell you a story,” Jack slurs. “My dad gimme a piece of advice, see? He said if I was inna bar fight, always need to remember it would be a dirty fucking fight. Fighting dirty. So the thing to do, see, you gotta grab an ashtray—one of those big heavy mutherfucking bar ashtrays, metal, or glass’ll do I guess. If it’s heavy enough—and stuff it down my pants in front of my dick. Get it? Protecting the boys.” He takes his hands off Joseph’s shoulder and gestures as to correct ashtray placement. Matthew and Joseph steady him. “So, few years later here I am. Okinawa drinking in this bar with a bunch of fucking Danes—they are big mothers, right, big as me, all of ’em, or bigger. And this fight breaks out. Nasty. Very nasty. So I remember my dear ole daddy’s words of wisendom and I grab me this big metal ashtray off the bar and pooshisin . . . pussin . . make it nice and tight over the boys.” He stands back and splays his feet, balancing, blocking out the action. “I’m getting ready now to do some seerus damage to this Norwegie guy who’s pissing me off, when I get this feeling. This really bad shensation. Next thing I know I’m clawing at my dick, pulling my pants down and rolling on the floor trying to get the fucking ashtray off my dick. Everybody’s stopped fighting to watch me have this fucking epi fit.” He takes a deep breath. “Fuckin’ epi-lep-tic fit or whatever they think is happening and then they’re all laughing at me so hard the fight’s over. Bartender sure was happy and I’m drinking free for a week. But, and this is the point. Let me tell you now, I was feeling mighty sore.” He claps his arm around Joseph. “So, I will leave you with this: Always, always, every time, make sure the ashtray’s empty. Burning butts are the temporary ruin of a man.”

Jack slaps Joseph on the chest and Matthew on the shoulder and ambles uncertainly off into the night.

“Is he all right?” asks Joseph.

“He’s fine,” Matthew says, and points to the phone booth. “Come on, we have to phone your mother.”

They call Saida. Once she knows he is safe her voice becomes icy with anger.

For the next couple of blocks, Joseph is quiet. He shuffles and tries to look unconcerned, but Matthew sees he is worried about what his mother will say. Now that he’s back on the street reality settles in.

“Anthony was there tonight, too,” he says, as though this would make it all right.

“I didn’t see him.”

“He left early.”

“Smart guy.” Matthew tries to remember what it is like to be sixteen, to feel tied down and impatient and invincible. “Tell me about the squat. Why do you like it there?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“What do you do there?”

“Hang out. Nothing. I don’t know. There are people who care about things, who understand what’s going on in the world and aren’t always talking money, money, money, school, school, school, work, work, work. It’s boring. It’s capitalist bullshit. All my mother and uncle care about is, are they making enough money. This is no kind of life. I’m going to be different. My life will mean something. I’m going to travel, see the world. I want to go to America and see these roadside attractions. Like Carhenge.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Brian at the squat told me about this. It’s in the Nebraska flatlands. Like Stonehenge, but made from cars. Also, I want to see the world’s largest ball of twine and Paul Bunyan the giant. And Route 66.”

“Well, I agree with you on that last one, anyway.”

“The point is to travel. To drive through deserts alone. Jack says a man has to know he can stand alone.”

“Jack says that, huh?”

“Yes. He says a man doesn’t really know what he’s made of until he only has himself to depend on. If he can survive this, being alone and facing death, then he will never be afraid again. You must agree. You’ve been all over the world, in very much danger. You told me stories.”

“Well, I can talk an awful lot of shit. And, I hate to break it to you, but so can Jack. And believe me, Jack’s a good friend of mine. But he can be one hell of a gasbag.”

“A gasbag?”

“Full of hot air. Tells a good story, but doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not all the stories add up. It goes with the territory, Joseph.”

“What territory? You are telling me he is a liar? That you are?”

“Not exactly. Just that sometimes for guys like Jack, and like me I guess, after a certain amount of alcohol, or whatever, the stories can get a bit shinier in the telling than they were in the living.”

“No. I don’t think he’s like that at all.” He shakes his head. “No.”

“I know you made some introductions for Jack. For his sideline money.”

Joseph says nothing.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?”

“I know.”

“Don’t get involved with that shit, Joseph.”

“I am not involved with anything.”

“That’s good. Because you get caught, you’ll end up in a world of trouble. It’d kill your mother.”

“I am not involved. I introduced him to a friend. It’s no big deal. It’s not heroin. Not crack. Just a little grass.”

“Be that as it may. Stay away, you understand?”

“Sure.” Joseph stopped and pulled at Matthew’s sleeve. “Does my mother know?”

“She suspects. I’m not going to tell her any more, as long as you promise me it’s over, agreed?”

“Yes. Agreed.”

So, they walk, lost in their own thoughts along the quiet streets, past the blinkered bakeries, past pharmacies with their green crosses dull and dark, past bookstores and butchers and travel agents with photos of Tunisian beaches in their unlit windows.

They arrive at Joseph’s apartment building. “Well, we’re about to see what kind of man you are, Joseph. Can you step up?”

“I’m not afraid of my mother. What can she do to me? I’m old enough now to make my own life.”

“If you say so.”

He presses the code and opens the door.

“Are you coming up?” Joseph says, and it is difficult to know whether he wants Matthew to or not.

“I just want to say goodnight and make sure she’s all right.”

“I can make sure she’s all right.”

“I won’t stay long.” Matthew gives him a gentle push into the dark entranceway. He wants to see him to the door. He follows him up the stairs, smiling. He wants to see Saida’s face. Then he stops smiling, unsettled. Apparently, he wants her to be pleased with him.

Now that she knows he is alive, is free and unharmed, her hands tremble. There is nowhere to put the futility, nothing to wrap her fingers around that will help her make her son see sense.

When Matthew first suggested she make soup, she thought he was a fool. When he left, she sat and looked out the window. She watched him walk away, saw him hesitate at the corner and had been afraid he would not look for Joseph, that he would go home to his bed, and she could not blame him. And then he had disappeared and she sat in the apartment watching the candles that didn’t help at all, or did they? Did Mary send her Matthew? She had tried to pray again, but the words were a scatter across her mind.

She began to make the soup.

It was something to do with her hands. Cilantro, cinnamon, garlic, onions. Lentils, spinach and potatoes. The rhythm of chopping, the smell of the spices, clean and hopeful. Make something good to eat and your men will find their way home. Her mother had said that. Oh, Imma, bring your grandson home, she prayed, picturing her mother’s face, wide mouth and eyes like the sweep of a bird’s wing, like calligraphy, her brow smooth, without a worry line.

Then the phone rang and he was not found. Not in the playground. But Matthew would keep looking.