The Mirror Thief (47 page)

In the end he thinks: this is how I help Stanley. This is what it comes down to.

He lifts the receiver, dials again. A few rings. His dad’s voice on the answering machine. Curtis talks over it. Pop, he says. I know you’re there. It’s Curtis. Pick up.

A click, and his father’s voice again, louder and clearer. What’s up, Curtis? it says. What’s wrong? You in trouble?

A tear falls from Curtis’s face and makes a dark spot on his foot. His black shoes are pinkish-gray with mud and dust. Their laces are snarled with burrs. They look like some foul echinoderms that might slither along a reef. It’s okay, Curtis says. I’m okay.

I didn’t ask if you’re okay, Little Man. I asked what’s wrong.

Curtis laughs quietly. Well, he says, a lot’s wrong. Nothing that can’t be fixed, though. I’m sorry to put this on you, Pop, but I’m in a tricky spot out
here. I can’t really explain specifics right now, but I need you to do something for me that’s gonna cause you some aggravation and take up a little of your time.

In the silence that follows, Curtis senses a great gathering of judgment, like the rise of water behind a dam. When his father speaks again, Curtis can hear strain in his voice from the effort of holding it back. He loves the old man for that.

Okay, his father says. What do you need?

You got something at hand to write with?

Yeah.

Okay, Curtis says. I need you to call the Jersey State Police.

When Saad appears—dressed in sandals, a workshirt with rolled sleeves, and khakis stained dark brown at the knees—Curtis is taken by surprise: he hasn’t see a cab pull into the visitor center lot. I am not working today, my friend, Saad says. I am in my personal vehicle. I was at home when you called, working on the roof of my house. What is wrong with your eye? Do you need Visine? I have Visine.

Saad shows Curtis to a white Honda and opens the back door for him. There is no meter, of course, he says. For the distances I looked at MapQuest. It will be one hundred fifty dollars. Okay? I hope you will give me a good tip.

Sure I will. You’re making me feel bad for messing up your day off.

Saad shuts Curtis’s door with an indifferent wave. Bah! he says. Why do you feel bad? I told you, I was working on my roof. Now what am I doing? I am driving in the beautiful mountains. Maybe you will give me a nice tip, and then I can pay some men to fix my roof, which is what my wife always has been telling me to do. You see? I am happy you called. And soon we will be gone from the mountains, and I will find some nice jazz on the radio. Yes?

The Honda turns left on the Valley of Fire Highway, and soon crosses the park’s western boundary. The radio starts to flicker and the scenery calms down. You are tired of the casinos, I see, Saad says. Your luck did not improve.

Curtis slumps in his seat. He’s worn out. He doesn’t want to think anymore. The early morning excitement and the long dry hike and the irritation in his eyesocket have ground him down to a nub. No, he says. It sure didn’t.

So you left the city, Saad says, and came to the desert. Just like Jesus. Yes?

Exactly like Jesus, Curtis says. Or Muhammad. Muhammad went to the desert too, didn’t he? After things got nasty for him in Mecca.

Or Moses! Moses led his people out of Egypt, yes? Led them into the desert. I understand this, you see. I also led my people out of Egypt. Now two of my people are at the university spending my money, and the other of my people, she asks me every day why the roof is not yet fixed. Yes, my friend. It is sometimes good to go to the desert.

Curtis smiles, wipes his cheek, leans his head back. Sleep sucks at him like quicksand; his arms and legs are already numb. I guess I’m more like Jesus than those other two guys, he says. When I went into the desert, nobody followed me.

You are wrong, my friend, Saad says. I followed you. You see? I am very loyal.

The drone of the tires works its way up Curtis’s spine and expands to fill his chest, warm and liquid. He’s seeing the landscape through closed eyes now. To the north, a field of pricklypear and tree-cactus, the cyclone fence of Camp Delta, the blue Caribbean beyond it. To the south, the smoke-curtain over Al Burgan, the blackened long-legged corpses of camels, the lake of burning oil. Curtis hears the crunch of gravel under the Honda’s wheels, imagines it cast from the pavement into his eyes, and jerks awake. Hey, Saad, he says, can you tell me anything about that old town in the lake?

I don’t know what you mean, my friend.

I was just down at the lake. The water’s really low, I guess from the drought, and there’s what looks like a little town that’s come out of the water. You can see streets, chimneys, some of the old foundations.

Oh yes, Saad says. I saw this on the news. They built the Hoover Dam, and then the water came, and this town was covered up. Like Atlantis, yes? Now there is no rain, so it comes back. The people who made this town, they were—how do you call them? The ones who build the white temples.

Mormons?

Yes. Mormons. But there is a different name.

LDS, Curtis says. Latter-Day Saints.

Yes, Saad says. That’s who. I am curious about these people. I meet them sometimes in my taxicab. The young men I see sometimes on their bicycles. Are these Christian people, these Latter-Day Saints?

Depends on who you ask, I guess. My dad’s a Black Muslim and my mom was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I’m not gonna talk any trash about Mormons.

Saad leans down to mess with the radio and coaxes a melody from the speakers: Sonny Rollins, “How High the Moon,” a West Coast session with Barney Kessell and Leroy Vinnegar. A quick regular thrum of static cuts against the swingtime, then fades. Curtis shuts his eyelids again.

These saints, Saad says. In some way, they are like the Jews, or the Muslims, yes? They have difficulties—oppression, discrimination—and they come to the desert. They say this about themselves, maybe.
We are like the Jews!
It is not only these saints, of course. In this country, this always is possible. Enough! we say. We will go to the desert! We will make our own city. For ourselves, for our children. It will be a holy place, and just. We will know ourselves and our God by the shape it takes. So we build it. And people come, and more people. And then one day it is strange to us. No longer what we wanted. It has become, perhaps, the very thing we fled. So we go back into the desert, and we weep and pray that God or Fortune will flood the land, will bring the sea down upon the armies of Pharaoh, will erase our mistakes from the earth. But though the waters may rise, nothing is ever erased, or ever can be. The city is everywhere.

At some point Saad’s voice becomes Stanley’s, and Curtis knows that he’s asleep again, or nearly so: one foot trailing in the current of dreams. He tries to balance as best he can, so Stanley’s words won’t fade, and then he can see them, each word independent and alive, sprouting feather-leafed branches that bear other words, spoken in other voices. He can hear the voice of the old poet, Welles, and the voice of
the Mirror Thief
. His own father’s voice. Walter Kagami’s. Veronica’s. Danielle’s. The voice of the magician called the Nolan. The voice of the god Hermes. The clear quiet voice of the moon itself.

Then another voice, familiar.
My fellow citizens
, it says,
events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision
.

Curtis jerks upright, claps a hand on Saad’s headrest. Shit, he says.

Are you okay, my friend? You were sleeping. We are almost there.

Curtis shakes his head, squints out the window. They’re downtown already, passing under the spaghetti interchange for the Vegas Expressway. A green sign has Charleston Boulevard coming up in a quarter-mile. Curtis’s throat is sore; he was snoring. What’s happening? he says. Did the war start?

The president speaks, Saad says. You are awake, so I will turn it up, okay?

Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraq regime have failed again and again because we are not dealing with peaceful men
, the radio says.
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised
.

Saad exits on Spring Mountain Road. Hey, Curtis says, can we just cruise the Strip for a little while? I’d like to hear this.

Of course, my friend. Whatever you wish. Shall we say one dollar for each five minutes?

Curtis unties the arms of his jacket from his waist, finds the envelope in the inner pocket, opens it. Why don’t I just give you three hundred for the trip, he says, and you can tell me when you need to go home.

The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite
this threat, but we will do everything to defeat it. Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety. Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed
.

When it hits the Boulevard the Honda turns south, past Curtis’s hotel, past the pirate ships and the volcano, past the Bellagio’s dancing fountain. After all the walking Curtis has done it’s nice to be on wheels, nice to see all this stuff—the neon and the incandescents, the signs and the readerboards, the grab-bag casino entrances and the mirrorglass towers behind them, shiny masks with empty eyeholes—and to know that he’s not part of it. It took him a while to find the right table out here, but he figures he broke even.

All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end. Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within forty-eight hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing
.

Okay, Saad, Curtis says. I’ve heard enough. You can turn around.

Saad hangs two lefts and hits the Strip again across from the Luxor, north of the crouching Sphinx. The boulevard seems busy for Monday afternoon. As they roll through the light at Trop Ave, Curtis sees a crowd gathered on the sidewalk by the Statue of Liberty—a keening pipe-and-drum corps, shamrock-green T-shirts and plastic hats—and he remembers what day it is.

Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near
.

On the sidewalk south of his hotel, some motorcycle cops and security officers are arguing with five or six young LaRouche canvassers who’ve been hassling passersby with placards and brochures. The kids
point and shout; one of the cops talks into his radio.
THE METHODOLOGY OF EVIL
, the kids’ placards read.
STOP OLIGARCHS IMPEACH DOGE BUSH
!
CHENEY
’
S NUKES OR GREENSPAN
’
S DOLLAR
–
WHICH WILL
*
BLOW
*
FIRST
? Curtis imagines Walter Kagami in his Cosby sweater, chanting through a bullhorn as the police load him into a paddywagon. Curtis isn’t sure yet how he feels about the war, but he doesn’t envy Walter. It’s got to be hard to hate something so much when you know there’s no chance in hell you’re ever going to stop it.

The speech hasn’t ended by the time they pull into the porte-cochère, but Curtis has gotten the gist. He passes the envelope of bills over Saad’s shoulder and opens the door. Your eye is okay? Saad says. You are sure? I can take you to a doctor.

It’s fine, Curtis says. I’ll fix it when I get topside. You working tomorrow?

Yes, Saad says. Tomorrow I will work.

You might hear from me again. I may need a ride to the airport.

You have my number. Good luck, my friend. Stay out of the casino!

Thanks! Curtis calls. Keep off your roof! But Saad is already pulling away, and can’t hear him.

When he slides the keycard and opens the door, Curtis spots a steady flash on the nightstand: the phone’s message-light. Jersey cops, no doubt. They’ve been waiting three hours, probably, for a callback. Curtis figures another few minutes won’t kill them. Or anybody else.

He throws his jacket on the bed, opens his suitcase, unzips the mesh pouch on the underside of its lid and removes the Ziploc that hold his saline and peroxide and suction device. Then he carries the bag into the head and turns on the light.

He takes off his safety glasses, washes his hands, washes his face. Then he scrubs his hands again, past the elbow this time. When he’s done, he unwraps a glass tumbler and spreads one of the hotel’s fluffy white towels over the sink.

The spotless mirror and the bright overhead lights don’t make it any easier to see where the problem is. Could be an allergic reaction, or maybe he’s just dehydrated. He pulls back the lids to take a good look.

It’s still amazing to him: the tiny pink fibers in the offwhite sclera, the individual cords in the mouse-gray iris. The ocularist at Bethesda did a hell of a job. Between the bumpy ride south from Gnjilane and waking up blind and terrified in Landstuhl he remembers next to nothing, certainly nothing of the accident. Things get a little clearer later: sitting on the runway at Ramstein, trying to understand through the painkiller haze why the plane wasn’t taking off.
We are not flying, Gunnery Sergeant, because nothing is flying. The FAA ordered a ground stop of all flights, civilian and military, within or bound for U.S. airspace. No sir, nobody knows, because this has never happened before
. At the time it seemed like everything was wrecked, like nothing would ever be the same. And nothing has been, really. But it’s been surprisingly easy to forget the specifics of what’s changed, to forget exactly how he got hurt, to forget what he can and cannot see.