Narcopolis

Bull didn’t realize the new guy was missing until they were seated and he had a chance to do a head count. He did a second count but the result was the same, ten turkeys, where was number eleven? He looked around at the congregation, the usual collection of users and losers and old people, aunties in house dresses, sickly parishioners, and at the very back a group of boys in camos and basketball shoes, looking severely out of place. He asked Charlie, We lost the new turkey, what’s his name, Ramesh? Charlie also did a head count. He’ll be back, he said. Where’s he going to go? Bull shook his head because the room was filling up and they couldn’t talk without being overheard. But the front row was made up entirely of Safer inmates, all of whom seemed to know that the newest turkey had flown, was out there right now getting wasted, and though no one said anything, some looked to the exit and wished they were on the street, free to do what they pleased, including fuck themselves up, because that was the real meaning of freedom, wasn’t it, choice, the perfect adult liberation of being able to decide for yourself as to right and wrong and to choose wrong if that was what you wanted? Bull experienced it himself when he imagined throwing it away, all the months of odd sobriety, for one last stab at craziness, and he knew Charlie felt it too: a rush of blood that felt like happiness. Is there time for a quick smoke? Jean-Luc asked, and Bull would normally have said yes, but they’d just had a runner and who knew what kind of impulses that had set off in the Frenchman? He hesitated and the hesitation was enough for Jean-Luc to know exactly what was passing through the bulldog’s head. Just then Father Fo cleared his throat.

*

He walked with a group of people who were headed to a coffee shop on the corner. It was part of a new chain, with big windows and a burned-orange colour scheme designed to make patrons feel warm and fuzzy, and filled him instead with rage. He crossed the street to Nikita Ladies & Gents Beauty Salon, and went in quickly and shut the door behind him and bolted it before the girl had a chance to protest. There was no one else in the shop. He drew the curtains and told her to take off her blouse and she didn’t argue. She was young and dark and her breasts were heavy and she lifted them inexpertly from the cups. He pulled down her slacks and let them fall around her ankles and he told her to stay where she was and look at her reflection in the mirror and to touch her nipples and cunt and do nothing else. Don’t move, he said. Don’t move anything except your fingers. Then he went around the small room, opening drawers and taking out herbal massage oils and towels and hair dye and waxing utensils, and dropping them on the floor. A jar of henna shattered, though the bottles of massage oil did not, and Rumi continued his rampage, opening and shutting, throwing shit around. There was a sudden smell, sharp body odour mixed with the unmistakable stink of fear. Ooh, he thought, when he saw that the girl’s eyes had filled with tears and a fingernail-sized scar on her forehead had turned dark. She was not pretty: when teary-eyed she was ugly. Tell me where it is, he said. But the girl’s eyes rolled up in her head and her hands fell to her sides. Don’t stop touching yourself, he told her, and hit her on the ass with his open hand. She was too frightened to speak but she was trying to tell him something, the rolling of the eyes was a message, not a prelude to a fainting fit. He looked to the side and found a shrine. Behind a portrait of Ganesh and a stick of incense was a box with three thousand six hundred rupees. Is this all? There’s nothing more, said the girl in Hindi. What about in your pockets? She shook her head. He found a hundred and ninety rupees in the back pocket of her slacks, which he transferred to his wallet. Maybe I’ll give you a good-luck tip, he said, but first I want a full-body massage. Put a fresh towel on the cot for me. The order cleared her head because it put his presence in the parlour on a professional footing: he was a client and she the masseuse. She felt she knew what was expected of her, though the knowledge did nothing to lessen her fear. She asked him to change and averted her head as he stripped to his underwear.

She said, ‘Aapka naam, sir?’

‘Rumi, I mean Ramesh.’

‘Aap Mohammedan hai?’

‘No.’

‘My name is Zoya.’

‘Zoya.’

‘Zoya Shaukat Ali, Mohammedan.’

‘One minute, Zoya, I asked for your name?’

‘Ji, nahi.’

‘Then why tell me? You think I care? Why you asked if I’m Mohammedan?’

‘Aapka naam, sir. Sorry.’

‘My name is Ramesh. Understand?’

‘Haan, ji.’

‘You have coconut oil?’

‘Ji, sir.’

‘Take this off, and this, put oil. Go on, put more, more.’

‘Ji, sir.’

‘You smell bad.’

‘Ji?’

‘Your sweat smells bad, in fact it’s horrible. Why is that?’

‘Nahi, sir.’

‘Tell me why.’

‘Nahi.’

‘Because you eat too much meat.’

‘I, no, sir, I don’t eat too much.’

‘Not no, sir. Yes, sir.’

‘Yes, sir.’