confined to the limited areas of flesh accessible without removing further layers. They all seem to move to some unspoken timetable. By the time the fluorescent strip light on the ceiling flickers out, they are already lying still.
Clementine stares at the ceiling in the darkness. She can feel the eyes of the men and hear their thoughts. Still, this is the safest she’s been for months, since before leaving France. She thinks of the people she left behind. How many survived? Most would be dead, the bravest. If there were any survivors, they’d likely been sent to join the punishment battalions in the east. Not everybody got the chance to disappear. She was lucky, lying here in a hard bed amongst the hopeless. Still, sleep would not come.
A rustle of cloth and a stifled gasp is the sound of a man masturbating in the dark. Clementine pushes her bedcovers aside and walks to the door, picking her way faultlessly through the pitch black, the path and distance memorized through instinct honed by months of training. In the corridor, she blinks three times rapidly and a film descends over her eyes. Monochrome outlines appear out of what was total blackness and she retraces her steps through the warren until she reaches the smoked glass of Hilda’s door and knocks.
A light blossoms behind the glass and the older woman gestures her inside wordlessly. She doesn’t seem surprised. Even roused from sleep, she still wears the same gentle, slightly calculating expression. Clementine slips out of her robe and crawls into the recently vacated bed, still warm from Hilda’s body. The older woman smiles as she leans down to pull the blanket across to cover her nakedness. The light flicks off, the door clicks closed, and she is gone. Tears of relief and gratitude well in Clementine’s eyes. She has to blink three times before they can fall.
Yusuf is pretending to be busy when I get back, chin on his elbow, bodyweight pushing a dent into the clouded zinc of the bar while he listens to some no-hoper trying to sell knock-off shisha tobacco from India. If the guy bothered to look at Yusuf’s face he’d know he wasn’t making a sale, but he just keeps talking, stuck on a script that won’t work without a clean data feed he can’t get this deep in the Old City. Any other week, Yus wouldn’t be giving this schmuck the time of day, but he’s still smarting at getting cut out of the Silas deal. He makes out like it’s all a big fuck-up, but jealousy is what it is. This is the kind of petty shit he does as payback. The tobacco guy only lets up after Yusuf promises to try a sample batch, which is never going to happen. Through me he gets Zanzibar gold leaf at closer to wholesale than is decent or reasonable. That’s the other part of our agreement.
The door curtain rattles behind the tobacco guy. Yusuf gives me a look while the rainbow beads swing and slow to a stop; then he moves to the door, fingers picking at the knot of his apron as he walks. Smoke swirls through the chink of light striping his face while he watches the guy disappear down the street. ‘So?’
‘So what?’
He sits opposite, bulk filling half the table. The way he moves, quick, crisp, he’s excited about something. ‘So you’re still here. It can’t have gone that bad.’
‘Yeah, it went pretty good actually.’
‘You got yourself a cheap thief?’ There’s an edge in his voice, like I put a little dent in his excitement.
‘Not that good.’
‘Have you thought about …’
‘I am not going to Gaza! Will you shut up about Gaza?’
‘Ya rab, Levi! Forget about Gaza. Did you hear about your girlfriend?’
‘Again with this?’ It’s the girl. I should have known. His ability to drop things is zero.
‘Hear me out. A few people saw her come in here. You expect that. Well, it turns out she had a little trouble on her way over: a couple of boys from the Safar crew thought she looked like fun, followed her into the souk.’
‘Yeah? That’s too bad, but shit like that’s going to happen. What’s your point?’
‘It didn’t exactly turn out how they expected.’ He’s got his fists clenched, he’s so excited.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She ditched them.’ He watches my face, waiting for a reaction.
‘Ditched them? Ditched them like how? Like she ran away? I mean, good for her, but that doesn’t qualify her for shit, Yus.’
‘I’ll tell you what Omar told me. He was there; his stall’s right across the street. She turned into the alley opposite the arcade, you know the one with the carpets hanging out front, and the Safar boys followed her. Two minutes later, she comes out, heads straight in here like nothing happened, and get this – the boys don’t show their faces for ten minutes after that.’
‘So what? She beat them up?’
‘Come on, be serious! Omar’s friends with those guys – they talk to him, and they say she disappeared! They turn the corner, it’s a dead end, but there’s nobody there.’
‘You are full of it, my friend. Or they are. It doesn’t add up.’
‘So she’s perfect for you.’
‘Ha, ha, you kill me.’ A certain percentage of everything Yusuf says is bullshit. If it’s second-hand, like from his friend Omar, you can double that percentage, but, by the law of averages, every so often he comes up with something. Safar’s boys are just kids, but they’re a serious proposition on home turf. If she got away, she did something right. ‘OK, you made your point. For the sake of argument, let’s say that’s interesting. If she disappeared, how would I even find her?’
‘Oh, that’s easy. She followed your advice. Smart girl.’
‘My advice? I didn’t give any.’
‘Sure you did. One of the regulars saw her at the Mission. Looks like she’s working there now.’
I look over my shoulder at where the three old guys are still taking turns sucking at the pipe. ‘One of them? I didn’t realize they ever moved.’
‘You’re a piece of work, you know that, Levi? Old Yash has been scoring his dinners at the Mission ever since his wife died.’
‘Hold on a minute. Are you telling me one of those guys at the pipe is a different person than was here when I left?’
‘And you’re supposed to be the sharp one. You think I only have three paying customers? How do you think my business works?’
‘I’m not an accountant.’
‘No, you leave the adding up to me.’ The dome of that big bald head glistens as he shakes it at me. ‘You got into this mess because you owe too much money to the wrong people, and now you’re at the wrong end of a bad deal. You’ve got to fix this.’
‘Look, OK, I get it. A strange woman came in; she was kinda hot, in a skinny
