George Effinger - When Gravity Fails

Hassan and Abdoulaye exchanged glances. “You will pay me the twenty-five hundred today,” said Abdoulaye, “and another thousand tomorrow.” Another exchange of glances. “I correct myself: another fifteen hundred tomorrow.” I got it. Five hundred to repay Abdoulaye, five hundred juice to him, and five hundred juice to Hassan.

I nodded sullenly. I had no choice at all. Suddenly, all my pain and anger were focused on Nikki. I couldn’t wait to run into her. I didn’t care if it was in front of the Shimaal Mosque, I was going to put her through every copper fiq’s worth of hell she’d caused me, with the Black Widow Sisters and these two fat bastards.

“You seem to be in some discomfort,” said Hassan pleasantly. “We will accompany you to your bank machine. We will use my car.”

I looked at him a long time, wishing there was some way I could excise that condescending smile from his face. Finally I just said, “I am quite unable to express my thanks.”

Hassan gave me his negligent wave of the hand. “No thanks are needed when one performs a duty. Allah is Most Great.”

“Praise be to Allah,” said Abdoulaye.

“Yeah, you right,” I said. We left my apartment, Hassan pressed close against my left shoulder, Abdoulaye close against my right.

Abdoulaye sat in the front, beside Hassan’s driver. I sat in the back with Hassan, my eyes closed, my head pressed back against the genuine leather upholstery. I’d never in my life before been in such a car, and at that moment I couldn’t care less. The pain was grinding and growing. I felt droplets of sweat run slowly down my forehead. I must have groaned. “When we have concluded our transaction,” Hassan murmured, “we must see to your health.”

I rode the rest of the way to the bank wordlessly, without a thought. Halfway there the sunnies came on, and suddenly I was able to breathe comfortably and shift my weight a little. The rush kept coming until I thought I was going to faint, and then it settled into a wonderful, lambent aura of promise. I barely heard Hassan when we arrived at the teller machine. I used my card, checked my balance, and withdrew twenty-five hundred and fifty kiam. That left me with a grand total of six kiam in my account, I handed the twenty-five big ones to Abdoulaye.

“Fifteen hundred more, tomorrow,” he said.

“ Inshallah .” I said mockingly.

Abdoulaye raised a hand to strike me, but Hassan caught it and restrained him. Hassan muttered a few words to Abdoulaye, but I couldn’t make them out. I shoved the remaining fifty in my pocket, and realized that I had no other money with me. I should have had some — the money I’d had the day before plus Nikki’s hundred, less whatever I’d spent last night. Maybe Nikki had clipped it, or one of the Black Widow Sisters. It didn’t make any difference. Hassan and Abdoulaye were having some sort of whispered consultation. Finally Abdoulaye touched his forehead, his lips, and his chest, and walked away. Hassan grasped my elbow and led me back into his luxurious, glossy black automobile. I tried to speak; it took a moment. “Where?” I asked. My voice sounded strange, hoarse, as if I hadn’t used it in decades.

“I will take you to the hospital,” said Hassan. “If you will forgive me, I must leave you there. I have pressing obligations. Business is business.”

“Action is action,” I said.

Hassan smiled. I don’t think he bore me any personal animosity. “ Salaamtak .” he said. He was wishing me peace.

“ Allah yisallimak .” I replied. I climbed out of the car at the charity hospital, and went to the emergency clinic. I had to show my identification and wait until they called up my records from their computer memory. I took a seat on a gray steel folding chair with a printed copy of my records on my lap, and waited for my name to be called. I waited eleven hours; the sunnies faded after ninety minutes. The rest of the time was a delirious hell. I sat in a huge room filled with sick and wounded people, all poor, all suffering. The wail of pain and the shrieks of babies never ended. The air reeked of tobacco smoke, the stink of bodies, of blood and vomit and urine. A harried doctor saw me at last, muttered to himself as he examined me, asked me no questions at all, taped my ribs, wrote out a prescription, and ordered me away.

It was too late to get the scrip filled at a pharmacy, but I knew I could score some expensive drugs on the Street. It was now about two in the morning; the action would be strong. I had to limp all the way back to the Budayeen, but my rage at Nikki fueled me. I had a score to settle with Tami and her friends, too.

When I got to Chiriga’s club, it was half-empty and oddly quiet. The girls and debs sat listlessly; the customers stared into their beers. The music was blaring as loud as usual, of course, and Chiri’s own voice cut through that noise with her shrill Swahili accent. But laughter was missing, the undercurrent of double-edged conversations. There was no action. The bar smelled of stale sweat, spilled beer, whiskey, and hashish.

“Marîd,” said Chiri when she saw me. She looked tired. It had evidently been a long, slow night with little money in it for anybody.

“Let me buy you a drink,” I said. “You look like you could use one.”

She managed a tired smile. “When have I ever said no to that?”

“Never that I can recall,” I said.

“Never will, either.” She turned and poured herself a drink out of a special bottle she kept under the bar.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Tende. An East African speciality.”

I hesitated. “Let me have one of those.”

Chiri’s expression became very mock-serious. “Tende no good for white bwana. Knock white bwana on his mgongo.”

“It’s been a long, rotten day for me, too, Chiri,” I said. I handed her a ten-kiam note.

She looked sympathetic. She poured me some tende, and raised her glass in a toast. “ Kwa siha yaho .” she said in Swahili.

I picked up my drink. “ Sahtayn .” I said in Arabic. I tasted the tende. My eyebrows went up. It tasted fiery and unpleasant; still I knew that if I worked at it, I could develop a taste for it. I drained the glass.

Chiri shook her head. “This nigger girl scared for white bwana. Wait for white bwana to throw up all over her nice, clean bar.”

“Another one, Chiri. Keep ‘em coming.”

“Your day’s been that bad? Honey, step over here by the light.”

I went around the edge of the bar where she could see me better. My face must have looked ghastly. She reached up gently to touch the bruises on my forehead, around my eyes, my purple, swollen lips and nostrils. “I just want to get drunk fast, Chiri,” I said, “and I’m broke, too.”

“You couped three thousand off that Russian, didn’t you tell me about that? Or did I hear that from somebody else? Yasmin, maybe. After the Russian ate that bullet, you know, both of my new girls quit, and so did Jamila.” She poured me some more tende.

“Jamila is no great loss.” She was a deb, a pre-op transsexual who never intended to get the operation. I started on my second drink. It seemed to be on the house.

“Easy for you to say. Let’s see you lure tourists in here without naked boobies shaking on stage. You want to tell me what happened to you?”

I shook the glass of liquor back and forth, gently. “Another time.”

“You looking for anybody in particular?”

“Nikki.”

Chiri gave a little laugh. “That explains some of it, but Nikki couldn’t bust you up that bad.”

“The Sisters.”

“ All three ?”

I grimaced. “Individually and in concert.”