CHAPTER ELEVEN

We rode in silence. Hootan didn’t talk to me, didn’t even turn on the Honda’s Real Engine Sound™. Every time a light flashed through the rear windshield, I thought: Gloria. But no. And no Ollie, either. Back in the apartment, Hootan had pointed to her and Bobby and said, “If you follow, I will shoot her.” Ollie growled. I’d never heard her make a sound like that, and never seen that kind of hate on her face.

Hootan drove toward the Millie neighborhood. I’d started to sweat. Couldn’t help it. The human palm has three thousand sweat glands per square inch, and every one of them has a mind of its own. I’d told Fayza I would have the results by Saturday—two days ago. She’d clearly run out of patience.

A few blocks before Tyndall Avenue, Hootan pulled in at a flat-roofed, one-story building. The wooden sign out front said “Elegant Lady Salon” in pink script. The windows and front door were protected by iron grates.

Hootan drove around back and parked next to a late model Garand S3. “Go in,” he said.

His headlights illuminated the back door of the shop. The windows facing the back lot were shuttered.

My body went into Full Norepinephrine Clench: tight chest, closed throat, cinched asshole. I couldn’t move.

“Fine,” Hootan said. He got out of the car, moved around to my door, and yanked it open.

“Okay, okay,” I said. I pulled myself out of his Honda, then made my way up the short steps to the door. My stomach and knees felt like glass. Images flashed in my brain: Pastor Rudy, hogtied on the floor with a metal spike in his neck. Skinny Luke, with a garbage bag over his head.

“For Christ’s sake,” I said under my breath. “Get your ass over here.”

Dr. Gloria, however, refused to appear. I looked back, and Hootan was watching me. He made a shooing gesture.

The door was unlocked. I pushed inside and slammed the door shut behind me. If I couldn’t have calm, I thought, at least I could use anger.

The back room was dark and narrow, crowded with dimly seen supplies. A short hallway led to the front of the salon, where the lights were on. I stood for a long moment, listening, but I heard nothing but a faint mechanical sound. I walked forward.

The salon proper looked as garish and migraine-inducing as a Bollywood set: pink swivel chairs, lime green tile floors, neon orange trim. Every stylist station was done up like a Hollywood makeup table, with a big mirror surrounded by lights. Fayza sat in one of the swivel chairs, reading a magazine. Behind her, snipping at the back of Fayza’s head with a pair of narrow scissors, was a dark-haired girl who looked to be in her twenties. She wore a beaded emerald dress that looked like traditional Afghan costume, but on her feet were chunky black combat boots. Her glittery head scarf and bangle earrings looked more Gypsy than Muslim to me, but what did I know?

Fayza looked up from her magazine and saw me in the mirror. “Lyda, thank you for meeting me at such a late hour.”

I forced a smile that felt like a crack in my skull. “Odd time for a haircut.”

“You wouldn’t believe my schedule,” she said. She turned to face me, and the stylist stepped back. Fayza frowned at me. “I cannot decide if you die.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it.

“You have such lovely red hair,” she continued. “It looks natural, but you know what tricks women can play.”

Oh. If you dye. I choked out a reply. “I used to get highlights. Not lately.”

She nodded. “When you get older you have to hide the gray with lowlights—a sad reversal. Look at Aaqila’s hair. So dark.”

The girl, Aaqila, didn’t answer. Her head was slightly bowed, and she looked at me through black bangs. She was tall, well over six feet in those boots, with pale skin, full lips, a pointed chin. She was beautiful, but her strong, narrow nose pushed her out of TV-pretty-land into more interesting territory.

“You have too much volume,” Fayza said to me. “You look like a wild woman. When was the last time you were in a decent salon?”

It had been years since I’d been in a decent salon. I hadn’t cut my hair at all since before entering the hospital. “Is it that bad?” I asked.

“Aaqila, do you have time for a walk-in?”

The girl shrugged as if to say, Why not? She gestured toward an alcove where two shampoo stations were set up.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m good.”

Aaqila took me by the elbow. When I didn’t move, the girl slid her hand down to my wrist and pressed; the pain was sharp, as if small bones were ready to snap, and I dropped to one knee. Good God she was strong. And she still held the scissors in her other hand.

“Please,” Fayza said to me. “You need this.”

I lowered myself into the shampoo chair. The back reclined so that my head hung over the sink. I was acutely aware of each step of this simple process: the tightness in my hips; the creak of the vinyl padding as my ass settled into the seat; the cold ceramic against my neck. I stared at the ceiling, my throat bared.

The girl did something behind me, then returned with hot towels. “To open the pores,” she said. She placed the towels over my face, covering my eyes, nose, and mouth. My heart thumped in panic, but I tried to steady myself.

The sink thrummed loudly as she turned on the water, but the sprayer had not been aimed at me yet.

“You haven’t been answering the phone I gave you,” Fayza said from somewhere close.

I started to lift my head but Aaqila pushed it back down. “Hold still,” she said in a soft voice.

“Yeah, about that…,” I said, my voice muffled.

I felt a palm against my forehead. Hot water—very hot water—struck the crown of my head, ran down my hair, the weight tugging me back. I smelled mint shampoo.

“The wafers were just wafers,” Fayza said.

“Right,” I said. My original plan was to play dumb. Really, the wafers were substance-free? Huh! I decided to abandon that scheme.

“Do you have the sample?” Fayza asked.

“No,” I said truthfully. I’d had the sample—but that was in Rovil’s hands now.

The hand on my forehead pressed down, forcing my skull back. The rim of the sink knifed into the back of my neck, directly on the C4 vertebra. I clenched the armrests. If I moved fast I might be able to grab one of the girl’s arms, but then what? In an instant she could bring her full weight down on my neck. Maybe it wouldn’t kill me. Maybe I’d only be paralyzed from the arms down.

“Please…,” I said. I wasn’t talking to Aaqila or Fayza.

Fayza said, “Who are you working for, Lyda?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I’m not working for anyone,” I said. “I swear it.”

“You are too convenient,” Fayza said. “A week after I discover a new drug in the city, you appear. The creator herself, propositioning one of my employees. I direct you to a location where this drug is sold, and a day later—a single day—two men are dead. One of them my customer. I think you were trying to plug a leak.”

“You didn’t kill them?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself; I tried to raise my head. Quickly it was shoved back and I cried out.

“Why would I kill them?” Fayza asked.

“Competition?”

“How can I compete with these people? I don’t even know who they are.”

“Mafia,” I said. “Mexican Mafia.”

A moment of silence. God how I wished I could see her face. Aaqila continued to comb my hair with her fingers.

Fayza asked, “How do you know this?”

“The pastor,” I said. “He had gang tattoos.”

“I see. And you would have me believe that the La eMe, or their African bosses, are now selling designer drugs in my town. Or, perhaps, someone would like to goad me into believing that. An old-fashioned war that would make room for a third player. Is that who you’re working for—a third party?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m not working for anyone, just—”

I suddenly felt a weight pinning my forearms to the chair. “Who do you work for?” Fayza asked, very close to me now.

“I told you, no one.”

Something like a wire tightened around my left forearm, securing my arm to the chair. I yelled, but Fayza’s weight was all on my other arm now. A moment later that side was tied down, too. Panic swept through me in a white wave.

“Jesus, no—”

Suddenly hot water filled my nose and entered my mouth. The sprayer had soaked straight through the towel. I clamped my mouth shut, but inside I was screaming.

The spray kept coming. I tried to open my lips a fraction and suck air, but water filled my mouth, entered my lungs. My chest seized because there was no air to push the water out. My back arched, the mammalian drowning response kicking in to force my head above water—but of course there was no surface to break through.

Someone clutched the front of my shirt and jerked me to a sitting position. I retched, coughing and hacking, fighting for air.

The towels had fallen to my lap. Fayza stood in front of me, looking annoyed. “Who are you working for, Lyda? Who are you going to sell it to?”

I used my arm to wipe the moisture from my eyes, a good portion of which were my tears. I couldn’t believe how fast the drowning had worked. The death-panic was almost immediate.

I would like to say that I was filled with rage, that the torture provoked me into an action hero’s steely resolve. But the drowning had broken something in me. I was scared, and aching to get out of that room at all costs.

“Please,” I said. “No one. I’m not working for—”

Aaqila pushed me back again and I screamed. The towel covered my face again. I tried to suck in air but the water came too fast. I couldn’t breathe.

My mind began to shut down like a city under a blackout, whole neighborhoods going offline. My consciousness coalesced around a single thought: I am going to die.

And then, light.

*   *   *

The towels covering my face burned away like flash paper. Dr. Gloria stood over me, her wings stretched impossibly long, filling the room with coruscating light. In her right hand she held a flaming sword—eight feet long, the flames trembling at the edge of the silver—and in her left she held her clipboard, the text upon it shivering with meaning.

“Thank God,” I said.

I could not see Fayza or Aaqila. Her brilliance masked the rest of the room.

“Keep your eyes on me,” Dr. Gloria said. Her wings snapped like white sails. I focused on her face, and the flames reflected in the lenses of her eyeglasses. The wings sealed off the world behind a curtain of alabaster.

My chest ached with relief, and shame. Oh, I was crazy. Deep crazy. Dr. Gloria did not exist, but I was so relieved to see her.

“We are not reconciled,” the angel said. “I still don’t approve of the way you’re treating Ollie. She’s fragile, and you’re using her.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. I promise I’ll—”

“Oh please,” Dr. G said. “You’re in a terrible state yourself. I’m not going to extract promises from you in this situation—that would make me as bad as these waterboarding Afghan bitches.” She shook her head. “I blame the Americans for this.”

We seemed to be talking in a bubble of frozen time. We weren’t. The brain cannot stop the clock, or even slow it. The mind cannot, despite Roger Penrose’s cockamamie quantum theories, access a timeless, platonic realm of pure thought. The brain can’t even process data faster when under duress. That moment you slipped off the garage roof, and you seemed to hang in the air forever; that first kiss, when the planet shrieked to a halt and your heart composed symphonies between heartbeats; that endless, jellied moment you spent in the glare of the truck lights, your life scrolling past you?

All illusions. We only remember some moments as lasting forever, because when we are frightened or thrilled the amygdala stamps every last detail with emotion, marking it as vital, worthy of instant retrieval. Our ancient ancestors could forget a thousand days of gathering berries, but remembering every detail of the saber-tooth’s attack was worth its weight in evolutionary gold. Only when we recall that moment (days or even seconds later) does it seem to have happened in slow motion. The huge volume of data messes with the brain’s rule of thumb (and when it comes to math, the brain is all thumbs): X Amount of Sensory Memory = Y Amount of Time.

I knew all that. But I also knew that under the shelter of Dr. Gloria’s wings, I experienced not just grace but a grace period, and I was thankful for it.

The doctor said to me, “I can get you out of this. But you’re going to have to say exactly what I tell you—and with conviction.”

“How? What are you going to say?”

“Do you trust me, Lyda?”

Of course I did. More than I trusted myself. “Just stay with me,” I said.

“That’s the spirit.” She tucked the sword away—into whatever nonexistent scabbard holds imaginary swords—and folded her wings around my head. The black was gone now; I saw white and only white. Her feathers were soft and dry.

Aaqila pulled me up again. The room was the same, except that now Dr. Gloria stood at my right side.

I coughed water for almost a minute, my chest heaving. Fayza grew impatient. “Get a hold of yourself,” she said.

The angel bent and whispered into my ear. Then I said the words she had given me: “I can get you a sample.”

“You said you didn’t have one,” Fayza said.

Gloria whispered again, and I said, “I don’t—but I know where to get it.” I coughed again, a grating bark of lungs trying to expel the last of the liquid. Aaqila handed me another towel.

“I know who sold it to the pastor,” I said. “And I’ve set up a deal to get my own.”

“Go on,” Fayza said.

“After the church—the church I went to with Hootan—I realized that the wafers weren’t the delivery system.” I coughed into the towel, a distraction that allowed time for Gloria to speak to me. “I didn’t have to send them off for testing, because I just swallowed them. I figured I could stand the dose. And they were nothing. No effect.”

The lie was delivered with all the physiological sincerity I could muster. Racked by the aftereffects of the drowning, it was easy to let my voice break with emotion, to allow my body to adopt the bent and heaving attitude of the penitent. The rest of the lie depended on Fayza not being the one who killed the pastor and Luke. If she was lying about that, then I was a dead woman.

Gloria nodded approvingly. “Keep going,” she said.

“The next night I went back to the church,” I said. “I broke in the back door. That’s when I discovered that Rudy and Luke had been killed.”

Fayza said, “You weren’t going to tell me this?”

I looked up at her. I didn’t have to force new tears. “I thought you had killed them. And I was sure I was next.”

Aaqila said something under her breath. Fayza ignored her and asked, “If they were dead, how did you find out where they got the drug?”

“They had a chemjet printer hidden in the bathroom. All the c-packs had been taken—I assumed you’d gotten your sample. But there was something else in the room I couldn’t figure out at first. Cigarettes. Boxes of them. Wrapped in plastic, no cartons.”

Dr. G placed a cool hand on my shoulder. “Let her get there.”

Fayza frowned. “He was getting it from the Indians.”

I nodded, and listened to Gloria. “I have a friend of mine, somebody I met in the hospital, who used to do a lot of business with the Six Nations. She knows the people who run the smoke shacks. She said they smuggled all kinds of things, not just cigarettes. She reached out to them, and we met them tonight to set up a buy.”

“For what?” Fayza asked.

“The whole thing. A new chemjet, and a full set of ingredient packs.”

“And you are receiving these when?”

“Tomorrow night. In Cornwall.”

Dr. Gloria said, “Here is where we make her part of the solution.” She told me what to say next, and I almost rebelled. “Trust me,” Gloria said.

Fortunately, my hesitation could be interpreted as shame. “There’s only one problem,” I said. “They want forty-thousand Yuan.”

“And you don’t have this money?”

I shook my head. It felt so heavy from the water. “Not yet.”

Fayza leaned in, squinting, as if she didn’t hear me correctly: one of the library of power moves that adults used to signal that other adults were fucking idiots. “You arranged to buy from these people,” she said, “and you don’t have the money?”

“I was going to call everyone I knew,” I said. “Uncles, cousins, old friends. Open credit lines. Go in with loan sharks if I had to.”

“Unbelievable,” Fayza said. She walked away from me, thinking. After thirty seconds of silence she turned and said, “Hootan and Aaqila will go with you. And if you’re lying, they will kill you. You know this to be true, yes?”

Aaqila stared at me. She seemed to be already imagining it.

“I understand,” I said. I didn’t need any prompting from Gloria.

“Good,” Fayza said. “Until we leave, you’ll be staying with Aaqila.”

“What? No. I’m not—”

“Do not press me, Lyda.”

Dr. Gloria bristled. “We are so going to smite her ass,” she said. “At the first Goddamn opportunity.”

My angel. My protector. Keeper of my rage.

*   *   *

Aaqila lived in one of the two-story houses on Tyndall Avenue. The drive over in Hootan’s car was ridiculously short, like a golf cart ride from green to tee. Hootan didn’t have time to ask about my wet hair or what had happened inside the salon. Or maybe he didn’t dare; he seemed in awe of Aaqila, or maybe infatuated with her. Aaqila barely acknowledged him.

The house was dark, and Aaqila didn’t turn on any lights. In a distant room, someone snored vigorously. I imagined sleeping parents and grandparents, rooms crowded with immigrant cousins. But in the dimness it was difficult to make out any details of the home. Dr. Gloria walked with me, but her artificial glow was no help because we hadn’t been in this house before. Fauxtons, I called them; they could not illuminate what I hadn’t already seen.

Aaqila led me up to a bedroom, unlocked the door, and woke up a little girl who was sleeping inside. The child was dressed in pink nylon pajamas, and her hair was long and frizzy, almost an afro.

My chest tightened. I stepped back, but Aaqila didn’t notice.

“Sleep in my room,” Aaqila told the girl. She climbed out of bed without a fuss and walked sleepily past us.

“How old is she?” I asked. “Nine? Ten?”

“None of your business,” Aaqila said.

Inside the room, Aaqila patted me down and told me to empty my pockets. I complied as automatically as the little girl, handing over my nylon wallet, a wad of bills, some change. When I touched the pen I hesitated. I needed that to get in touch with Ollie. If we didn’t talk before tomorrow night, the plan would fall apart, and they would kill me.

Aaqila took the pen. “Now your boots.”

“You’re kidding me,” Dr. Gloria said.

She wasn’t. Aaqila dumped the smaller articles into one of the boots and stepped out of the room with the pair. Then she shut the door and locked it.

I thought, who locks a kids’ bedroom door from the outside? What about fires? I went to the single window and opened the drapes. They were blocked by steel bars, like the grates that had sealed off the Elegant Lady salon. So either the parents were afraid of the little girls running away, or were terrified of rapists. Or maybe the Millies required that every house in the neighborhood included a room that could double as a cell.

The girl’s taste in décor indicated a future as an Elegant Lady; the walls and the bedclothes all vibrated in the same annoying end of the spectrum as the salon. The covers of the twin bed were pulled back, leaving an empty space where the girl had slept in a nest of stuffed animals.

Dr. G said, “Have you noticed there are no electronics? No screens, no pens. Even the stuffed animals are nonrobotic. And look, books! Paper books.” She was trying to distract me.

“That little girl,” I said. “She was so pretty.”

“I didn’t notice. Now, about tomorrow—”

“Please, just … stop talking.” I lay down in the bed. It was still warm.

Dr. Gloria took a seat across the room. My personal night-light. I rolled away from her and pulled one of the pillows to my belly.