"You Shall Know Our Velocity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eggers Dave)

FRIDAY

I woke up angry at Hand, though he couldn't know why.

"I can't do another night like that," I said.

"What? The disco? Why?"

"I don't know what to do."

"What are you talking about?"

"Let's go."

"We're going. Look at us. We're going."

He was shoving his stuff in his backpack. He zipped it and stood ready.

"We have to go," I said.

Hand paused. He looked at me like a father would, when a father knows his son needs a mother.

"We'll keep moving," he said as we crossed the white gravel parking lot. "I'll make sure. Let's go."

"I can't go to bed tonight," I said.

We threw our bags in the backseat.

"Fine. We'll stay awake, find something to do."

"Good."

"We won't sleep," he said. "That's the plan. We shouldn't be sleeping anyway."

We had to get out of Dakar by noon. It was our second day. We'd left Chicago thirty-six hours ago. The road was clear for us and Hand swung the radio volume right and we were delirious. The air soothed me and we bought oranges from a boy on the roadside, and pastries in Mbuu, afraid we'd see Denis's brother. We didn't. We ate and my hands were sticky from all the juice.

"I have a surprise," Hand said.

We were on the coast and he turned off at one of the beaches loaded with garbage. We parked by the road, among a group of young men, all wearing light shirts and jeans.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Hold on," Hand said, jumping from the car.

He spoke to the group for a second, and one man directed him down the beach to an older man, painting a large white sign protruding from the beach. They discussed something, and Hand walked back to the car.

"We're going for a ride," he said. "Quick, but it'll be nice."

Hand had contracted this man, Thione, to take us up and down the coast for half an hour. We had to see things from this side, he said, and there was no speed, he said, like water speed.

We set off from the beach, helping with two other men to push the boat off a narrow sandbar near the shore. I sat at the front, Hand in the middle. A teenager jumped on just before we took off. He was the navigator.

We were in a small white motorboat-watertaxi steered by an older man and guided by a teenager who stood on the bow as the boat bounced, holding a rope tied to the point, standing as if riding a white and featherheaded circus horse. At our feet, the water sloshing to and fro. I leaned over the boat's edge, watched the same point as the froth blurred by, white and blue – and I wanted to have my arm in the water. To have it lazily running through the water, like I did that day, with Helen Peters, at Phelps Lake, on that boat, both of us naked – But here it wouldn't really be water like that, not here so fast, this wouldn't feel like water at all but more like fast-moving pavement. The foliage went right to the water and then went up, furry and dense, squiggly with dementia.

The sea was not smooth, the ride was thunderous, as if the boat had been thrown and was skipping along the surface. Tick-tick-tick-whap! When the boat jumped and its flat bottom struck the hard water, my spine compressed, briefly, between expectations of flight and the boat's great desire to come down and pound the surface, to slap it like you slap a shoe on a summit table – WHACK! -- and it rose and struck again, and the water blurred by and I saw it all, the white beaches, the small cottages along the shore, the miles of rocky beach, and then I knew that all I wanted evermore was whap! whap! The boat was skipping and then there would be a larger wave, or we would hit a regular wave a certain way, and the pause between when we became airborne

and WHACK! when we landed we landed like a cannon and I clenched my teeth – BAMBAMBAM -- for the aftershocks and I looked to Hand and the old man for a commiserative glance – what the fu-fu-fuck? - but no one wanted to share. They were busy, devoting their attentions to traveling, to watching the progress of the boat-instrumental in traveling is the participation in it, the belief in progress, the witnessing of passage. And I was traveling, too, I was serious about it. In a low hard motorboat one had to be serious. Whap! There was urgency about a boat like this, riding the coast, banging against the surface-three little waves coming: BAPPITY! We were going somewhere. And not just moving, but moving quickly – past things that were moving slowly or not moving at all. WHAP! The only motion I knew was relative motion, the only speed that truly felt like speed was when I was speeding past things. WHAP! WHAP! A sudden veering of the boat.

– Hand you've saved me today, but what about later?

– I will continue to move us.

– What about tomorrow?

– I'll move us tomorrow.

We sped through the savannah and suburbs – we'd tipped the boat man and boat boy like kings – and made it to the airport by eleven. We dropped the car in front of the rental office, gave the keys and a $50 tip to the attendant, and ran into the airport. At the Air Afrique desk, the three stunning queens, again splendid in blue and yellow and green, wanted $400, in cash, for each of the tickets to Casablanca, so I put my name on more travelers checks at the money-change desk – me! me! swoop! swoop! - and came back and presented the money, two inches thick, to the eldest of the three.

"Ah, so you the big boss?" she asked.

"The what?" I said.

"The big boss! You!" she repeated.

"Yes, the big boss, this one!" said another of the women.

"But it was you who wanted of the cash," I said, in Handspeak. I was confused. I didn't want to be the big boss.

"Some man hit the big boss," said the third, gesturing at her face with loose fists.

Then they all laughed. For a long time.

Two hours in the air. I was in one row and Hand was across the way. We were both in the exit row, which he'd requested. "Extra legroom," he'd said to me and the queens, "and if anything big happens, we're right where the action is." My row was empty but Hand was sitting next to a young couple, maybe Senegalese. I had the idea that I'd try to sleep – with the ambient sounds of the cabin I figured I had a chance of rest with some kind of peace – and so set my head back and closed my eyes. But Hand was in an inquisitive mood and I couldn't avoid hearing the whole thing.

"You speak the English?" he asked.

"I do," the woman next to him said.

I opened my eyes briefly to take a look. She looked like royalty, as did her companion, who might have been her brother. They both looked like models, skin like polished teak. I closed my eyes.

"Where're you going?" Hand asked.

"Marrakesh. For medical school."

A flight attendant offered me a dinner but I declined. Hand and his new friends took theirs. As they unwrapped their meals, I almost dozed off, thinking of swimming with small biting fish.

"Is there something wrong with the food?" the woman asked Hand. She sounded confrontational, as if she'd cooked it herself.

"I'm just not that hungry. You want it?"

"Hmm. No thank you," she said, and there was a long pause. "You are American."

"Yes," Hand said.

I opened my eyes again and turned toward them.

"So you hate us," she continued, "because of our skin?" She pinched her forearm and held some of her perfectly maintained arm toward him. She sounded curious now. She really wanted to know.

"No," said Hand, laughing. You could tell he wanted to make a small joke, but decided against it.

"It is because we hear that Americans hate black people," she said. I still wondered if she was kidding. She should be kidding. I wanted her to be kidding.

"No," said Hand, "maybe a few people do, I guess. Extremists, half-wits. Like, people who breed with animals." Hand did a faint sex-with-animals gesture, as if he were holding the backside of a horse or goat. I was aghast. "You know people like this?"

She laughed. "Yes. I do."

"But no actual people. Do you hate us because of our skin?" He pulled a tent from the skin on his arm, too, which I thought was maybe overdoing it.

"No. No, no," she said, smiling.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"Kinshasa Congo. You know where this is?"

"Of course," he said. I forgot he always said this. If you asked him if he knew something, he said Of course, when regular people would just say Yes.

The woman was still smiling. Her teeth were startlingly white and without flaws or gaps. I hoped Hand wouldn't comment on them but -

"Your teeth," he said, "they are remarkable."

She thanked him.

"Did you ever hear," he continued, "about Mobuto, how he wanted to export an 'all-natural toothpaste' because the Congolese teeth were so superior to the rest of the world?"

She smiled again but shook her head. I decided the companion was her brother, because she and Hand were flirting, and the companion was staring straight ahead, saying nothing, with the air of someone who was used to her antics and stoically tolerating them. I faced forward again and closed my eyes.

"Are you married?" she asked.

Hand laughed. "No."

"So you could take an African wife?"

He exhaled in a burst. "Uh, sure. So you -"

Did he just get engaged? I had the feeling she might be messing with him. But she'd been so brutally direct that she was more likely very serious.

"I have a girlfriend," he added.

"Oh," she said, disappointed.

– You should come with us.

– I would like that.

– But it seems so complicated.

– It does.

– I want to have traveled with you and your brother, but I don't want to take the risk that we'll dislike you. I want it to have turned out well, without risking a day with you.

– That's exactly counter to your mission.

– I know. I know. But to risk a day! How can we risk a day?

"So," Hand said, changing the subject, "there is a lot of trouble there since Mobutu is dead?"

At this point I understood Hand's reasons for his fake-clumsy English, but couldn't understand why he turned it on and off. A minute ago he'd been speaking like an actual person.

"No," she said. "Not where we live."

I glanced over to her. Her brother still wasn't paying attention.

"It will be better now without Mobutu?" Hand asked.

"No, no. I don't think so. Mobuto was a [making a pounding fist gesture] strong man." Her brother now nodded in agreement. It was the first indication he'd made that he was listening. "He kept the people to behave," she said.

"So you liked Mobuto!" Hand was aghast.

"Yes," she said. "It is sad he is gone."

Now Hand turned to me. Finding me awake and paying attention, he gave me a cross-eyed Can you believe this shit? look.

Her brother pointed to Hand's headphones, around his neck. "What music is that?" he said.

"Lots of music," Hand said. "What do you like?"

"Prince," he said.

"How much is this in the U.S.?" the woman asked, pointing to Hand's walkman, a middling model, but a Sony.

"The walkman? A hundred bucks maybe."

She touched it as one would a string of pearls. "I want to buy this from you," she said.

"Don't they have walkmans in Morocco?" Hand asked.

"Not the same. Not of this quality. The brand is not the same. For how much will you sell this to me?"

"Shit," Hand said, now looking to me for help again. "I could give it to you, but then I wouldn't have one for the rest of the trip. I don't want your money. We -"

She pressed him. "A hundred dollars you say?"

He sighed. "Sure."

"Good. I will change money and we will meet at the baggage gates and I will pay you."

Hand let her listen to his Sundays album, which she seemed to enjoy tremendously. Her brother borrowed the walkman and an Outkast disc and, holding the walkman above and before him, like a priest would a goblet, he let his neck pump forward and back to the beat. We were all friends now, bound together by money, ease of movement and Japanese technology. I was less surprised than I wanted to be, and soon, to the tinny sounds of Hand's discs loudly spraying American pop music into new ears, I dozed off.

I woke up as the pilots were urging our seatbelts on again. I flipped through a magazine called African Business, featuring a profile of Sierra Leone's Charles Taylor; in one picture, he was wearing Keds and a visor. We descended into Morocco. Which was green. As far as we could see, from the air, it was green.

"Isn't this a desert – the whole country?" Hand asked, leaning over the aisle and toward me. Everywhere, squares of farmland stitched together with orange thread. That Hand didn't know more about Morocco – that it was green, for starters – demonstrated the great gaps in knowledge that occur when one gets most of one's information from the internet.

"I thought so," I said. "But the same thing happened with Houston. I always figured Houston was all dry and brown, but it's trees in every direction, for a hundred miles."

"We thought Senegal would be green."

"We got it backwards. Or they did. Senegal should be green, Morocco brown."

"It's gorgeous down there," Hand said.

"It really is."

"Man, I hope we meet some Tuareg guys."

"What guys?"

"The Tuareg? You know the Tuareg."

"No."

"The Tuareg? They're the blue men?"

I wanted to throw rocks at his head.

"Tell me," I said.

"Blue men. I think that's what the word means. Blue men. These guys were badasses. They're like nomadic trader-thieves, who would spring out from the Sahara and rob caravans. They were insane. Blue eyes, blue skin and everything. Scariest people ever. Twelve feet tall."

I squinted at him, wondering how I'd get along if I ditched him in Casablanca.

"You don't believe me?" he asked, offended. "Ask anyone in Morocco about the Tuareg. Or the blue men. Say blue men and watch them run in terror."

At customs in Casablanca our new Congolese friends were stopped and searched and because Hand didn't really want to be without his walkman for the rest of the trip, we took off.

We got on a train to the city. The passing country was an electric green and studded with grey jagged rock outcroppings. Crumbling stone everywhere; children dressed like medieval peasants ran along the tracks and threw rocks at dogs and each other. Shanties and tents and broken brick homes tied in place with clotheslines.

"Jesus," said Hand. "This isn't what I expected. I expected Tunisia, desert, that kind of thing. This looks like the Balkans."

We watched, from our window on a passing train, one boy throw a rock at the head of another, hitting him.

"What do think the Balkans look like?"

"This. Right? The crumbly buildings, the people with the earthtone garb, everyone walking around, the fires everywhere? This is cold-weather poverty; it looks like it was hit by tanks."

But it was so green. Was the country as poor as it looked? On the plane we'd been afraid this was a too-middle-class sort of country, that we'd be giving money to people like us, but now, here, the women in shawls, the boys and their rocks, the tent-cities -

Hand turned to ask, in French, a young guy behind us on the train, how much longer to Casablanca.

"Where are you from?" the man asked Hand, in English.

"Chicago," Hand answered.

"Oh Chicago! Is it very dangerous?"

I waited for the inevitable:

"Oh yes – very," Hand said.

I laughed. Every Chicagoan uses this. The man was sitting with two friends, backs to us, who now turned.

"Smashing Pumpkins – from Chicago, right?" the man said.

"Right," said Hand.

"I am their greatest fan! I'm in the music business. I produce rap records. French rap."

He and Hand talked music. Apparently French rap was huge in Morocco. The greatest! said the man. Out the window the country receded and the buildings became larger, neater and more square. To the right, across the aisle, the Pacific appeared, rough and dark, whitecaps rushing at the walls of Casablanca. To the left, the city grew in view and gleamed; the buildings, so much glass, were glowing afternoon-golden in a hazy, perfectly somnambulant Los Angeles way. We passed into the trainyard and to the right, now, within the outer corridor's walls was a series of tents, twenty in a row, circular, fires adjoining, the hides of the tents stitched and patched.

Behind me Hand and the record company man were talking about Falco, and Right Said Fred, and RunDMC, and the possibility of a comeback for one or all of them, at once or, better yet, sequentially.

"What about the Tuareg?" I asked, over the seat, interrupting them. I figured these guys were as good as any to prove Hand's inability to leave any fact unbent, any truth unmolested. "Do they exist?"

The man's eyes hardened. "You're not looking for the Tuareg, are you? I must advise you to run from this mission. Is this indeed your mission?"

"Yes," Hand whispered with urgency and intrigue. "Are they killers? I have heard word of this – they are the blue men and are slaughterers, with none of the love of humanity."

"Well," the man said, leaning forward, "they have been known to kill everything, anyone who sees them. No one has returned after seeing them face to face. Only rumors live. They reside in the desert, the lower Sahara, and are legion in number, and are without mercy. They are smarter than us, but stronger. Some say they are eight feet tall, and have hands with six fingers -"

Hand turned to me, smug like crazy.

"Tell me more," he said to our new friend, while looking at me. Then he turned to the man. "Is this all true?"

"Of course not," the man said, roaring. "I am yanking on you, stupid person!" Two of his friends were cackling. The third was not an English speaker, was just watching.

I was dying. I couldn't believe how good this guy was. He was a monster. Hand was rolling his eyes, his tongue tight between his teeth, bobbing his head around like a marionette. "Nice," he said. "Are you finished?"

The Moroccans were still laughing.

"Not yet?" Hand asked.

They couldn't speak. They shook their heads. Not yet.

In the train station we blew past the fingers of grasping families and in the parking lot we lowered ourselves into a small red cab.

Hand asked the driver, in French, to take us to a Hertz outlet. The man didn't understand.

"Rentacar," Hand said, in English.

The man nodded and drove us along the shoreline and up into a residential area, just past an ancient battle fortress, cannons peeking through great stone walls. The driver stopped and made a call on his cellphone.

"What's he doing?" I said.

"I don't know."

"I don't like it."

I wondered how it was that we could land in a city many hundreds of miles from the last one, thousands more from our home, and hand our fate to a stranger simply because his car looks like a cab and because the cabs we have known have been, overall, safe. There was an irrational amount of trust in this world.

We had no guidebook, and until two days before, I'd figured Casablanca was primarily a tourist place, small and quaint, like Carmel or Mystic – a few shops and a cardboard cutout of Humphrey Bogart on bakery signage and on the walls of the delis. But this was a city, a great bright airy sunny city, with hills and bordered by water. Did I know Casablanca was on the water? Now I can't remember.

Hand asked the driver why we were waiting at the battle fortress. The driver, who we now knew spoke no French, showed us his palms, begging for patience. A few seconds later, a portly small-footed man bumbled down from the upward sloping street and opened the door and sat in the front seat. He and the driver began chattering.

They decided on the best way to fleece us and we were off, the four of us in a vehicle the size of golf cart. We pleaded, now, to be taken to Hertz. The new man, who knew a bit of English, said No problem, okay. On his nose was a large mole, black and dredged like a raisin. His forehead was full of worry and sweat.

Ten minutes later, in the center of the city, we stopped at a second-floor place called Access Rentacar. We all got out, Hand and I, the driver and his quick-walking friend, and all of us jogged up three flights of dark winding stone stairs. I worried about a setup, a robbery and a murder. Hand's fists were clenched. Why were we following these men? We trusted too much.

I tripped and fell two steps and felt a flutter. My fingers went tingly. It didn't make sense, really, an attack now, given I wasn't exerting so much, and -

I sat down and waved them on, like a soldier, wounded, would his comrades.

"You okay?" said Hand.

"Fine," I said.

But I wasn't sure. This might not be the best city to have an episode, but it wouldn't, I knew, be the worst. I went grey for a minute. There were animals running through my hollow arms and legs. I decided to lay down for a minute or two. Hand could handle the rental while I rested -

Two veiled women were stepping over me. I tried to look casual. American custom – stairs so nice like easychair!

Then Hand was coming down the steps, trailed by the two driver-men. I must have been out for a few minutes -

"Didn't work," he said. "You okay?"

"I was gone for a second there."

I stood and followed them. I was fine. I was! Down the dark winding stairs now less afraid – though with a brief vision of that Jeremy Irons movie with the cuckolded son falling down a charcoal echoed stairwell, like this – and back into the cab, with the two men again arguing about where to go to fleece us, Hand again begging them to take us to a Hertz. We shimmied through the city, the downtown dark with buildings draping their shadows everywhere like coats on a bed. The car pulled over to a corner and to the passenger window came an ancient man in a fez from whom the cabbie bought four cigarettes -

We weren't going where we needed to go. I told the cabbie and his friend to stop. We got out and I paid -

"How much did you pay him?" Hand said.

"I don't know. Fifty deniro."

"Dirham. Not Deniro."

– and flagged down another cab which took us to the Hotel Casablanca.

At the hotel's smooth chest-level desk, mahogany and older than us, a trio of American girls, all about twenty-four. They were sighing and scoffing. There was some problem with something, many problems with all kinds of things. They could not believe they were in Morocco and there was this problem. A credit card was not being accepted. The card company had to be called and this was just the worst. Yes they would sign the fax to authorize the transferral of information, if that's what it takes. By all means, whatever it takes to get things done around here! Next they'll want a note, ha ha, from my mother! Things were impossible and travel so very difficult.

They were the first tourists we'd seen in Casablanca. We hated them. They had their organizers on the counter and were blowing their bangs from their foreheads. They made phone calls using the reception's phone. They begged to be despised.

We asked the desk people, while they awaited the results of the American girls' fax, about renting a car. Hand and I had decided that the plan would be to rent a car, from this hotel, go to the shantytown near the train station and give cash to the men in the tents, then sweep around Casablanca, eat dinner quickly, and drive to Marrakesh, getting there by midnight. Then a day in Marrakesh tomorrow, but with the idea to leave at six the next morning, for Moscow, then on to Siberia.

The hotel people were not helpful, as hard as they tried to help us. The hotel didn't have a car-rental agency, and the two desk women didn't understand why we wanted to drive to Marrakesh tonight. "Why tonight?" the older one asked. She was big. Next to her a smaller, thinner, younger and glowing one shot a smile to Hand and looked down. Her English was shy so she let the large one talk. The large one was large but not my type.

We tried to explain the need for us to move. Hand made motions with his hands implying lots of movement, circling, spinning. They stared at him. We borrowed their phone book. There was a Hertz listed and we called but they were closed. Outside it was already gone black and I couldn't believe how quickly the night dropped around us. We asked if there was a train that left for Marrakesh tonight. They didn't know; they suggested we go back to the station and find out. We were trapped.

Some don't know, and those who do always forget that there's electricity firing within us. I'm too dumb to know why it's electricity and not some other kind of power source – why not nuclear fission on a submolecular level? – but there you have it. Electricity firing synapses, electricity triggering motions of the heart. And mine's somehow not right. I've got some extra muscle there, and apparently we with WPW have an extra pathway, and while normally the signals are sent through something called the Bundle of His, our extra pathway picks up electrical impulses in the ventricles and sends them abnormally back upward to the atria. I saw a movie about it once, in Dr. Hilliard's office, and it made sense then, but never since. I've come to love the idea, though, of the necessity of electricity to the heart, and its unreliability, its outages and surges. I was remembering an experiment I did when I was younger, involving an old battery and two of Tommy's roach clips – I have no idea why I was remembering this. There's this very old and strange payphone in the lobby of the hotel and it brought me to the battery and -

We walked out and down the street and debated.

"Do we want to stay here?" Hand asked.

Men in the next door café were watching soccer on TV. All in tweed, browns and tans, smoke above shifting like water.

"I don't think so," I said. "Even the guys on the train recommended going to Fez or Marrakesh."

We kept walking. Another café, more men in tweed watching soccer on TV, vague in umber smoke.

"It must be a big game," Hand said.

"We should leave."

"We can't go."

"We could go back to the airport and find something leaving."

"But why did we come here?"

"To spend a few hours and move, right?"

"I'm exhausted."

I was too.

With great shame, we checked into the Hotel Casablanca. The room had a linoleum floor and no towels. Hand reached up to turn on the TV. There was coverage of a skiing competition in Aspen. Then:

"Holy shit. Look," said Hand.

The race, the Paris to Dakar road rally.

"I can't believe it – it's on TV here."

"Morocco. Wow."

We watched as the SUVs cut through the Senegalese savannah at 90 mph, bouncing on their huge tires like kittens pouncing on yarn. The camera, above on a helicopter, implied that someone else was remote-controlling these cars – but who? – as they dusted through settlements and fields. But who? There were shots of villagers watching while drawing water from a well, shots of villagers crowding around a car that had lost its left rear wheel. The driver of the car was apoplectic – the camera swirls from the helicopter above, soundless, as the man tore his helmet from his head and threw it on the ground; it bounced high through the golden grass. A boy ran to pick it up.

In the room there was no soap. The room was cold. In the race, on the screen, motorcycles were flying through the desert like wasps. We were in Casablanca, and the TV hung from the corner, and Hand was standing below it, immobile, fists in his pants.

I showered and put the same clothes on, hiding cash, folding, rolling and crinkling in the same pockets and socks. We'd both been alternating our two T-shirts, and now both were unwearable. I filled the sink and lathered shampoo on my spare shirt, leaving it in the grey water. When I stepped out into the cold room, Hand still had his hands in his pants, watching the rally.

"Can you smell me?" I asked.

"From here?"

"I guess."

"No."

I could smell me. Not a bad smell, not yet, but a distinct one, one with something to say. On the street we looked for food. We passed a streetside butcher presenting passersby three whole cows, hanging from hooks, behind which whimpered, under glass, an array of meats and sausages, crowned by a row of small brains, perfectly intact, the color of purple popsicle juice. We walked on.

A man, squeezed into an undersized sportcoat, caught pace with us and assured us he saw us in the hotel and that he wanted to ww-wel-w-wel-elcome us to Casablanca did we l-l-li-like it. A hustler with a stutter.

We told him we liked Casablanca, but not some of the people. Some of the people, said Hand, were kind of pushy. The man agreed readily and kept with us.

Where were we g-g-g-oing? he wanted to know. I had never heard someone stutter in another language, much less stutter in his second language. It was kind of great.

To eat, we answered.

"G-g-go to disco later?" he asked.

"No thanks."

"You like the disco! Very good the disco!"

"Thanks though."

His welcome had worn out. He wasn't a man anymore; he was an insect. Why is he no longer human? He's dehumanized us, so we by turns do the same. He has no choice but to see you as prey.

– You have a choice, stuttering man.

– I do not.

– Then we have a choice.

He changed tactics.

"You you have to look out around here," he said, "boys will come and grab from your pockets," he said, and while he said this, he pulled on Hand's pockets in a way unnecessarily graphic.

We stopped at shop windows to lose him, but every time we stopped, he did too, loitering ten or so feet away, eating his cuticles while waiting for us to start again.

After eight blocks finally he crossed the street, though kept up with us from there, grinning and waving every block or so. It was strange. I would glance back and always he was there. We wondered about his angle. It was not clear what he wanted.

A carfull of teenagers passed us yelling something lewd about the French; they thought we were French, which we didn't know how to take. We passed empty Chinese restaurants and more cafes full of men and their coffee and tweed and soccer and smoke.

We ate in a diner with a door open to the street and a TV yelling the game. Morocco vs. Egypt.

"Jesus," said Hand. "No wonder."

After the French comment, we began wondering about tensions between Moroccans and Europeans. Maybe it was bad, maybe we were hated, accounting for how few white tourists were in the city; maybe we'd be kidnapped and killed -

We pretended that people cared we were in the diner, but they did not. We ate some kind of chicken and rice dish we guessed at on the menu, which was printed in Arabic. The city, here, looked like Chicago's North Side, in the oblique angles of the intersecting streets, the neighborhood bars, the homogeneity, both comforting and discomfiting. It was cool, about fifty degrees, and the food was good. We'd forgotten to eat all day and here we were. It was my first meal without my left back second molar and the vacancy was chasmic and wet and thrilling. Across the aisle from us, two boys, brothers of ten and twelve, had their mouths open, tongues bobbing, showing each other their half-chewed food.

There is no point to stucco. I've done a little bit of it in my job, applying the goop to a bathroom or two and once in a tall hall with a ceiling of apple-cinnamon, and I pitied those who had to live within it. Why we'd want walls that broke skin when scraped – these people, of the apple-cinnamon hall, had kids! – is beyond me. But these Moroccans like their stucco, their textured wall surfaces. Everything is given some pronounced epidermis, something that comes back at you, and it was starting to get to me.

Ten blocks away we passed through a door of beads and into the darkest of bars, long and narrow, full of men and more tweed, more soccer – a kind of Moroccan sports pub. We ordered beers, small and in green bottles. Everyone was drinking from the small green bottles.

We stood and glanced at the jukebox; everything in Arabic.

"Bonjour," said a man at a table by my waist.

I said bonjour. Next to him were nine empty green bottles, neatly arranged in two rows. I looked around and this was custom – the bottles drunk were kept and arranged, as proof.

"You are not French," he said.

"No," I said.

"American," Hand said.

"Ah, AmeriCAHN," he said, grinning. "AmeriCAHN pop music, yes yes! Eagles!" he said, then went into a credible version of the guitar part from "Hotel California."

Hand clapped and the man smiled.

"And Pink Floyd! I like! We dunneed… no eddjoo… kayshun!" He was really going now. "Yeah! Wedun need no eddukayshen!" He was banging the table. Then another guitar solo, but not, unfortunately, one found in that song.

– I want you to come with us.

– I'd like that.

– You'll come with us to Cairo.

– Sounds like a dream.

– But we won't. We don't have that kind of courage.

– I know. There are limits.

We asked him what the large chart behind him was.

"Horses," he said. Some kind of odds chart. "You want?"

We said no before we could wonder why we'd say no. Then we all kind of smiled at each other, and watched the soccer on the TV above. No score yet, which allowed for good cheer all around. There was just one woman in the bar, in the back, head covered, with four green bottles before her. She was strong, bold, or nuts. Hand caught her eye and gave her an A-okay sign. She waved, though puzzled.

I was tired and hated myself for being tired. We left.

"You still want to go?" I asked Hand. We were walking through the quiet city, along a park, dark and extending forever. He said he did. We could get our stuff from the hotel and leave.

"Where?" I said.

"Somewhere. Marrakesh."

"Now?" It was 11:30.

"There's got to be an overnight train going somewhere."

He paused and while we were standing, at a stoplight in a large intersection, a car flew by, there was yelling, and someone threw a half-empty plastic bottle of Sprite. It grazed my leg.

"What'd they say?" I asked.

"Something nasty, I think. Anti-French. Maybe we should go."

"Yeah. We're not moving fast enough. And we haven't gotten rid of much. How much you think?"

"Maybe $8,200 or so."

"We have to be quicker."

We walked toward the hotel, planning to pack and leave.

We passed a woman, a baby in her arms and toddler sleeping on her lap, sitting in front of a movie theater offering Schwarzenegger in End of Days. Above the entrance was a huge poster of Casablanca, the first sign of that movie we'd seen in the entire town. The woman held out her hand and we passed. I hated mothers who brought their children to the streets.

– You should not bring them here.

– What would you have us do?

– There must be homes. What did you do to your family that they won't bring you in?

– You will not know.

– You are using these children.

– You are ignorant.

– Then I will walk by.

– But I need what you are giving away.

– I don't trust you.

– But anyone who asks for money needs it.

– Really? I -

– Your mother said that. Your mother said anyone who begs must need. That is why there is the word beg.

– At least wash their faces somewhere.

– I will try.

I ran back and gave her all the American cash I had – maybe $350 – though I couldn't look at her as I did it. I leaned down to her and her baby wrapped in brown plaid, and found her hand and stuffed the money in, my eyes closed as if reaching into a crevice to catch a salamander. I jogged back to Hand.

"Let's get off this street," I said.

"Why?"

"She can still see us."

He looked at me and squinted.

"Please. Hand. I want to walk away and turn the corner somewhere. I don't want her coming after me, saying thanks or being confused or anything. Run with me."

We ran a block and turned down a quieter street.

"That was so hard," I said. I was leaning my back against a window. I looked back to make sure she wasn't following us.

"The giving it away?"

"Yeah. God was that hard."

"I know," he said.

"It's shaming, don't you think?"

"Why?"

"I don't know."

– When you give them the bills, Hand, you feel so filthy for having it in the first place.

– I guess.

– It's like returning something you've stolen.

"You think she's okay?" I asked. "I was afraid someone would see me give her the money and then come and take it from her."

"I'm sure she's fine."

"Someone's going to take it from her," I said.

"She's smart."

"We should stay with her."

"She looked tough," Hand said.

"I'm so confused," I said.

"I know."

"Why the fuck is that so weird? Why is it so hard?" We had no idea.

We walked to the hotel and knew I was getting close. We'd promised not to sleep but here we were. I feared the bed. The bed tonight would break me.

– Hand let's not sleep.

I could drink to pass out and keep from thinking. That would be the plan. I could make it sound fun, have Hand and I drink from the minibar, if there was one, or buy a bottle of something on the way home, act like it was part of the trip's grand design. The grand design was movement and the opposition of time, not drinking, hiding, sleeping. Too late. I haven't won yet. You won't win. I don't want even two minutes with my head. I don't know where it would go tonight but knew that the funeral home fucker was there somewhere. He was getting closer, he was somewhere in the basement of my mind and he was pacing and getting ready to climb my hollow stairs -

"We could go to the mosque," Hand offered. I loved him for taking me back into the air.

"Which?" I asked.

"That one there."

"That's not a mosque. Look at it. It's a church."

We walked closer to the huge white structure, ghostly in the dark shooting upward. A sign gripped the wrought-iron fence separating the park from the sidewalk: Cathédrale du Sacré Coeur.

"That's odd," Hand said.

"Let's get something to drink and head back to the hotel," I said.

"Boring. You tired?"

"Yes."

Jack's mom asked us to come to the service early. She and Jack's dad, who could barely stand and had spent the day before the service in a wheelchair, weak beyond hope, hadn't settled on whether it would be an open or closed casket, and wanted us to help decide, once we saw Jack.

"Then we'll sleep tonight but not again," he said.

"Good. Fine."

We got to the church at two for the three o'clock service, and waited, in the lobby, fanning ourselves with paperback psalm books. It was almost one hundred degrees, and the church wouldn't turn on the air conditioning until ten minutes before three. Jack's dad was outside, on the bright bleached patio between the church and the rectory, in his wheelchair, staring at the flowerbed, full of cheap daisies and dying groundcover. I hadn't had that much to say to him for ten years or so, since he sent Jack to Culver Military Academy for a year. He'd been caught stealing a six-pack of Coors from their basement fridge and that was that. Jack's sister Molly wasn't there, hadn't been heard from in three years; there'd been the distant fear she would show up, but it was not to be.

Jack's mom left to get candles; the priest had realized they were short on white ones and was about to use red. Jack's mom wailed No and, out of something like madness, insisted on white, hissed to the priest that it had to be white, and drove off to find two tall slender white candles.

She asked us to stay, to look first at Jack, and if he looked okay, she and her husband would then decide.

The funeral home man, Nigel, emerged from the back twenty minutes before three. He was only a few years older than us, with glasses held within thick black rims. His eyes were vibrating and his heavily gelled hair thrust from his head with cold competence, like dewy plastic grass.

"He's ready, if you want to take a look," he said. We hated him. We followed him into the church and from the back I knew it was wrong. The casket was half-open and it was wrong. From so far away Jack was grey, or blue. The color was wrong.

"Jesus," I said, and stopped.

"What?" Hand said. "You don't know yet."

"I do know."

"I know he looks bad from here but it's the light, probably. These people know what they're doing."

"Who says?"

"People do this all the time. Everyone has open caskets."

"It's so wrong."

"We have to get closer."

Nigel was waiting for us, a few feet down the aisle, his head slightly bowed, deferential to our discussion. Hearing that we would get closer, he lifted his chin, gave a tight smile and nodded. We followed him. My legs felt asleep. They felt so light. They were hollow and being moved by someone else.

Ten steps further it was obvious. They'd fucked it all up. Jesus Christ. He was grey. His face was huge and wide. They'd added feet of flesh to his face. There was too much flesh. It flowed down from his nose like drapery. There was no color on his skin – there was a dull hue, like house paint, and there was blush on the hollows of his cheeks, as if applied by young girls with paintbrushes. He looked fifty. His hair was parted, but on the wrong side.

"So fucked up," I said.

"I know," Hand whispered.

We'd stopped again, about twenty feet from the casket. The lining of the casket was silver and was too shiny. He looked sixty.

"Please," Nigel said, with his arm extended toward Jack's body, hand open, asking us to get closer.

"Please no," Hand said. "Please fuck off."

They'd messed it all up. I'd never seen anyone before like this, never an open casket, and it was wrong. These people were imbeciles. Who wanted this? This was criminal. Where had they gotten all the extra flesh? It hung from him, it swam down into his starched white shirtcollar. His chin was loose, liquid. Who wanted this?

"Justin, William, you should really examine the work we've done. If you're worried about the accident, you should know that we took great care to obscure the puncture to his left temple -" Nigel was interrupted by Hand, who grabbed him at the bend of his arm and turned violently toward him.

"If you don't fucking leave us, fucker, I will break everything in you that can be broken."

Nigel exhaled through his nose, and left. Jack's mom returned a few minutes later. Hand and I were sitting across the aisle from each other, on pews at the back, and the casket was closed. She raised her eyebrows to us and we shook our heads.

"Good," she said, and sat down, legs straight in front of her, on the floor of the aisle between us. "Good. Good."

Hand and I were in the Marrakesh hotel room and we'd bought a bottle of wine and he was letting me drink it because he knew. I filled and drank six glasses and was out cold, blissful and stupid.