George Effinger - When Gravity Fails

Jacques closed his eyes wearily and rubbed them. “You want us to go get your thirty kiam back. Why the hell should we, Fuad? You’re an imbecile. You want us to walk up to some screaming crazy flatbacker who’s waving a razor around, just because you can’t hang onto your own roll.”

“Don’t argue with him, Jacques,” said Mahmoud, “it’s like talking to a brick wall.” The actual Arabic phrase is, “You talk in the east, he answers in the west,” which is a very perceptive description of what was happening with Fuad il-Manhous.

The Half-Hajj, though, was wearing this moddy that made him into a Man of Action, so he just twirled his mustache and gave Fuad a small, rugged smile. “Come on,” he said, “you show me this Joie.”

“Thanks,” said the skinny Fuad, fawning all over Saied, “thanks a whole lot. I mean, I don’t have another goddamn fiq, she has all the money I had saved for the next—”

“Just shut up about it,” said Jacques. We got up and followed Saied and Fuad to the Red Light. I shook my head; I didn’t want to be involved in this at all, but I had to go along. I hate eating by myself, so I told myself to be patient; we’d all go by the Café de la Fée Blanche afterward and have lunch. All of us except the Cursed One, I mean. In the meantime, I swallowed two tri-phets, just for luck.

The Red Light Lounge was a rough place, and you went into in knowing it was a rough place, so if you got rolled or clipped in there, it was hard to find someone to give you a little sympathy. The police figured you were a fool to be there in the first place, so they would just laugh in your face if you made a complaint to them. Both Fatima and Nassir are interested only in how much profit they make on each bottle of liquor they sell and how many champagne cocktails their girls push; they couldn’t be bothered keeping track of what the girls were doing on their own. It was free enterprise in its purest, most unhindered form.

I was reluctant to set foot in the Red Light because I didn’t get along with either Fatima or Nassir, so I was last in our little group to sit down. We took a table away from the bar. They kept it as dark in there as Chiri kept her place. There was a heavy, sour smell of spilled beer. A hatchet-faced redhaired girl was dancing onstage. She had a nice little body unless your gaze strayed up past her neck. What she did on stage was designed to keep your attention away from her defects and focused intently on what she had to sell. Fanya, her name was, I remembered. They called her “Floor-show Fanya,” because her notion of dance was mostly horizontal, rather than in the customary upright position.

It was still early in the night, so we ordered beers, but virile old Saied the Half-Hajj, still listening to his manly moddy, got himself a double shot of Wild Turkey to go with his beer. No one asked the undernourished Fuad if he wanted anything. “That’s her over there,” he said in a loud whisper, pointing to a short, plain girl who was working on a European in a business suit.

“She’s no girl,” said Mahmoud. “Fuad, she’s a deb.”

“Don’t you think I can tell the difference between a boy and a girl?” responded Fuad hotly. No one wanted to voice an opinion about that; as far as I was concerned, it was too dark for me to read her yet. I’d know later, when I saw her better.

Saied didn’t even wait for his drink. He stood up and sort of strolled over to Joie. You know, “nothing can touch me because, deep inside, I’m Attila the Hun, and all you other faggots better watch your asses.” He engaged Joie in conversation; I couldn’t hear a word, and I didn’t want to. Fuad followed the Half-Hajj like a pet lamb, piping up in his shrill voice now and then, agreeing vigorously with Saied or denying vigorously the new whore.

“I don’t know nothing about this chump’s thirty kiam,” she said.

“She’s got it, look in her purse,” screeched the Unlucky One.

“I got more than that, you son of a bitch,” cried Joie. “How you gonna prove some of it is yours?”

Tempers were igniting fast. The Half-Hajj had the sense to turn and send Fuad back to our table, but Joie followed the scrawny fellah , pushing him and calling him all kinds of foul names. I thought Fuad was almost on the verge of tears. Saied tried to pull Joie away, and she turned on him. “When my people gets here, he’s gonna climb into your ass,” she shouted.

The Half-Hajj gave her one of his little, heroic smiles. “We’ll see about that when he gets here,” he said calmly. “In the meantime, we’re giving my friend here his money back, and I don’t want to hear about you shaving him or any of my other friends again, or you’ll have so many cuts on your face you’ll have to turn tricks with a bag over your head.”

It was at just this moment, with Saied holding Joie’s wrists together, with Fuad standing on her other side, blithering loudly into her ear, that Joie’s pimp came into the bar. “Here we go,” I murmured.

Joie called to him and quickly told him what was happening. “These cocksuckers are trying to take my money,” she cried.

The pimp, a big, one-eyed Arab named Tewfik who everybody called Courvoisier Sonny, didn’t need to hear a word from anyone. He slapped Fuad aside without so much as a glance. He put one hand around Saied’s right wrist and made him release Joie’s hands. Then he shoved the Half-Hajj’s shoulder and sent him backward, staggering. “Messing with my girl like that can get you cut, my brother,” he said in a deceptively soft voice.

Saied strolled back to our table. “She is a deb,” he said. “Just a man in a dress.” He and Sonny were standing right above me, and I wished they’d take their negotiations outside. The disturbance hadn’t seemed to draw the attention of either Fatima or Nassir. Meanwhile, Fanya had ended her turn on stage, and a tall, lanky black sex-change, American, began to dance.

“Your ugly, thieving, syphilitic whore took thirty kiam of my friend’s money,” said Saied in the same soft voice as Sonny.

“You gonna let him call me names, Sonny?” demanded Joie. “In front of all these other bitches?”

“Praise Allah,” said Mahmoud sadly, “it has turned into an affair of honor. It was a lot simpler when it was just larceny.”

“I won’t let nobody call you nothing, girl,” said Sonny. He had put a little growl into his soft voice. He turned to Saied. “I’m telling you now to shut the fuck up.”

“Make me,” said Saied, smiling.

Mahmoud, Jacques, and I grabbed our beers and got halfway out of our seats; we were too late. Sonny had a knife in the rope belt around his gallebeya ; he reached for it. Saied got his knife out quicker. I heard Joie cry a warning to Sonny. I saw Sonny’s eyes get narrow as he backed away a step. Saied swung his left fist hard at Sonny’s jaw, and Sonny ducked away. Saied took a step forward, blocked Sonny’s right arm, bent a little, and drove his knife into Sonny’s side.

I heard Sonny make a little sound, a quiet, gurgling, surprised groan. Saied had slashed Sonny’s chest and cut some big vessels. Blood spurted in all directions, more blood than you would think possible for one person to carry around. Sonny stumbled one step to his left, then two steps forward, and fell onto the table. He grunted, jerked and thrashed a few times, and slipped off the table to the floor. We were all staring at him. Joie hadn’t made another sound. Saied hadn’t moved; he was still in the same position he’d been in when his knife had cut open Sonny’s heart. He slowly rose up straight, his knife-hand falling to his side. He was breathing heavily, loudly. He turned around and grabbed his beer; his eyes were glassy and expressionless. He was soaked with blood. His hair, his face, his clothing, his hands and arms, all were covered with Sonny’s blood. There was blood all over the table. There was blood all over us. I was almost drenched in blood. It had taken me a moment, but now I realized how much blood I had on me, and I was horrified. I stood up, trying to pull my blood-soaked shirt away from my body.