Lalla was quite pleased with herself. True, she was only bringing back Nedim, but the other guy, Diamantis, the one Gaby was so eager to see, would be sure to show up when he saw her message. At least, that was what Lalla had hoped would happen. She wasn’t so sure now. Nedim had just told her that Diamantis hadn’t been back during the night.
“If you want my opinion, he’s found himself a girl. If that’s the case, he won’t be back tonight, either. But we don’t need him, do we?”
He glanced at Lalla. In profile she was just as sexy as full face. That was rare. A good profile was important in a woman. He’d known so many women who, as soon as they turned their heads, revealed a huge nose or a protruding chin. But Lalla’s profile was perfect from top to bottom, and Nedim couldn’t stop looking at it. This girl deserved better than the dim lighting of a night club.
He was especially drawn to her thighs. She was wearing an extremely short, tight-fitting black skirt. Whenever she moved her legs, to brake or disengage the clutch, it sent shivers down his spine. He was dying to put his hands on them. But he reasoned with himself. Shit, just because she had come to find him didn’t mean he could do what he liked. Later, maybe. In fact, he was sure of it. He was convinced he would have her eventually. And that nutcase Abdul Aziz could shove his dominoes up his ass tonight.
They had played three more games, drinking whisky. Nedim had lost all three.
“How about piping down for a while, huh?” Abdul had said.
Nedim talked too much, which made it hard for him to concentrate. But it was Nedim’s nature, dammit. “If we don’t talk, what the hell’s the point of having a tongue?” he’d wanted to answer. But he’d kept his mouth shut. Abdul was playing to win and Nedim to talk. Two worlds that would never meet. That was why Abdul was so gullible. He didn’t speak a lot and thought too much.
“Why don’t you get out of here?” he couldn’t help asking him.
They were starting the fourth game.
“Because,” Abdul replied.
“And what does your wife think of you hanging around here?”
“You’re pissing me off, Nedim! Do I ask you questions?”
“Well, that’s just it . . . If you did ask me, I’d tell you the shit I’m in. It’s true! Hell, I even phoned my mother. I’m coming back, I said. It’s over, mum, I won’t leave again. You understand? So now the whole village is waiting for me. Especially my fiancée . . .”
“You could have been there by now, Nedim.”
“Yes . . . I agree. But I’m not. So what do I do now? I’m asking you. You really don’t think I’m going to clear that fucking pile of shit on deck, do you? No fucking way . . .”
He had grabbed the bottle and filled both their glasses.
“Listen,” he had said, leaning over the dominoes. “We can cheat a bit. Say I got robbed, by Arabs, something like that . . .”
“Arabs?”
“Whatever. You know what I mean. We’ll make up something. Then they give me a little money, or a train ticket, and I get out of here. Bye-bye, Nedim. Simple as that.”
A train ticket, his hundred dollars, three or four hundred francs he could screw out of Abdul Aziz if he played the idiot to the hilt, and maybe as much from Diamantis by crying on his shoulder. With that he could go back to the village without looking like too much of a loser. He’d show the dollars to his mother, and Aysel and her father, and his friends. Everyone would think he was rolling in it. They’d take him seriously. It was a good plan.
Abdul hadn’t replied, the fucking dingbat.
“Play” was all he’d said. “Play, and shut up.”
“Where are we going?” he asked Lalla when they reached the Vieux-Port and she turned onto Quai de Rive Neuve, heading for the Corniche.
“We’re meeting Gaby in a bar. Hey, you’re not very talkative today.”
Nedim laughed out loud. For once he was quiet, and he was being criticized for it. By a girl, to make matters worse! That was the last straw. Now he’d heard everything.
“Could I have a cigarette?”
Lalla’s cigarettes and lighter were on her lap.
“Help yourself,” she said.
He immediately had a hard-on. Of course, when he put the pack of cigarettes back on her lap, Nedim couldn’t stop his fingers from brushing against the top of her thigh. Lalla smiled. She could do anything she wanted with this guy. She understood why Gaby had been so eager to have him.
“If Diamantis isn’t there, fetch the other one, Nedim. And leave a message for Diamantis, so he can find us.”
Lalla hadn’t asked any questions. She had showed up at gate 3A, in her tiny skirt, her blouse slightly open, all smiles for the watchman. Leaning over the desk so he could get as much of an eyeful of her breasts as possible, she said she wanted to speak to Diamantis, a sailor on the Aldebaran. It was quite urgent.
“Diamantis is a first mate, not a sailor. And he isn’t there. There’s only one sailor on board. The captain left a while ago. Is it to do with the crew?”
Lalla had lit a cigarette, her eyes fixed on him. When she took a long drag at her cigarette like that, she was irresistible. A guy had told her that once, and she had no reason to doubt it.
“What’s your first name?”
“Vincent,” he replied. He was getting excited, and his eyes kept moving from Lalla’s lips to her blouse.
“All right, Vincent, can I talk to Taksim? Nedim Taksim?”
“The Turkish guy?”
“That’s right.”
“Well . . .”
“It’s urgent, Vincent. Since Diamantis isn’t here . . .”
He had locked the barrier, got in his company car, a Renault 5, and driven off to find Nedim.
“If anyone comes, tell them I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t worry, Vincent.”
She could have let ten trucks come in and empty all the containers in the harbor. The thought of it made her smile.
As she drove, Lalla was thinking of Gaby. She hadn’t been the same since Diamantis had turned up at the Habana. More nervous, more distracted. Distant. Lost in thought. That wasn’t like her. She knew how to wear men down and make them pay. Coldly, like a technician. In Nedim, she had seen the perfect sucker, at first glance.
She had taken a step back. “Oh, my God!”
“What’s the matter?” Lalla had asked.
Gaby had collapsed onto a chair, in a state of shock. “The guy out there. With Doug.”
Lalla had gone to check out the man, discreetly, then had come back to Gaby, who was puffing furiously at a cigarette.
“Who is he?”
“A guy I loved a long time ago. He probably doesn’t even remember me.”
“What of it?”
“What of it? You don’t realize, Lalla. We hustle some asshole, and I bump into him. Diamantis.”
No, Lalla didn’t realize. “What did this guy do to you?”
“What did he do to me?”
Gaby eyes had a distant look in them. She was remembering that happy, all too brief time when her name was still Amina. Or rather, one particular moment. When Diamantis had gently lifted the sweat shirt she wore next to her skin. His fingers had caressed her stomach with such tenderness, she couldn’t feel her body anymore. Then he had entered her. An eternity later. And she had known that she belonged to him forever. Her life since then had been full of rottenness, but in her heart she had remained faithful to that moment.
“Take me away,” she had whispered in Diamantis’s ear. “Take me away.”
Just before his sperm had flooded into her.
Gaby had looked at Lalla, more tenderly than ever. “Call Doug.”
Gaby wasn’t the manager of the Habana. But she was the one who kept it ticking over. She and Lalla. They were the best at wearing men down. Head and shoulders above the three other girls who worked there. That must have been because Gaby and Lalla enjoyed doing what they did, because neither of them believed in the miracle man who would take them away from here, and, above all, because they refused to sleep with the customers.
Doug could still remember the time Lalla confessed to Gaby that she had gone to a hotel with a customer. Lalla had only been there two months. She had come back at noon, looking sheepish. Gaby, in whose apartment she was staying, was waiting for her at the Habana. She was furious.
“How much did he give you?”
“A thousand.”
No, she wasn’t proud of herself. The guy in question, a journalist from Paris, had promised her triple that.
“A thousand for a trick?”
“For the night.”
She had slapped her. “In one night, any hooker in the area easily makes five or six times that.”
“He promised—”
Another slap.
“You take their money first, then you fuck them. That’s the rule, Lalla. So if you want to be a hooker, fine, but learn to do it properly.”
Doug had come in to see Gaby, as obedient as a dog. Reluctantly, he’d let Diamantis go. He’d wanted to beat him up. But Doug was afraid of Gaby. And even more afraid of Ricardo. Ricardo owned the Habana. He owned Gaby, too.
They drove along the Corniche. Nedim managed to take his eyes off Lalla’s thighs to look at the harbor. Surprised by so much beauty. The sky and the sea melted into one another, and you couldn’t tell exactly where the horizon was.
Nedim had never come as far as this. Marseilles, for him, was the Vieux-Port and half the Canebière. He’d never even taken the trouble to go farther than that. Cities didn’t exist for him. This one or any one. He just passed through them, indifferently. A city was just a collection of bars, night clubs, and hookers. The cities he loved were those where he’d had a good time. Istanbul was the only one that really existed.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Lalla said.
“Do you know Istanbul?”
She didn’t. She had never left Marseilles. She wasn’t even all that familiar with Marseilles. She had grown up outside the center of the city. In Beaumont, an Italian neighborhood to the east, where she’d lived with her grandmother on Rue Tosca. A village of apartment blocks with gardens, where everyone grew tomatoes and whistled arias from the operas that the streets of the neighborhood were named for: Lakmé, Aida, Manon, Norma.
“If you saw Istanbul, you wouldn’t be able to resist it.”
He told her about the streets and avenues. The roar of the buses, the car horns, the brakes, the hubbub of voices, the crowds.
“Just like here,” Lalla said.
“This is nothing. Do you know what they used to call Istanbul?”
“Constantinople.”
He was surprised. He’d forgotten it was called Constantinople. “Yes, that’s true. But there’s a better name than that . . .”
He looked at Lalla. He’d caught her out.
“The Gate of Felicity.”
Constantinople meant nothing to Nedim. But the Gate of Felicity brought back lots of good memories. The first time he drank a beer, the first time he smoked a cigarette. And the first time he went with a hooker. All those things. The Gate of Felicity. He had never found a better expression for having a fuck.
“Yes, the Gate of Felicity.” He laughed long and hard.
“What’s so funny?” Lalla asked.
“Nothing, nothing . . . You’d be a great hit over there.”
“Oh yes?” she said, evasively, switching on the turn signal.
She turned left onto Chemin du Vallon de l’Oriol and looked for a parking space.
Nedim’s mind was working overtime. He’d take Lalla with him to Istanbul and open a club like the Habana. On Well Street, at the end of the crowded Yuksekkaldarim Street. Lalla would teach other girls what to do. They’d easily find a fucking nigger like Doug. He’d be a millionaire before long. He’d build a superb house for Aysel. He’d get his mother to live there, too. To keep an eye on her. Because obviously he wouldn’t spend much time in the village. Especially at first, when he had to see that the business got off to a good start. Afterwards, he would find a partner. Or a manager. What if he made Lalla his manager? Women are often more honest than men.
By the time Lalla finally found somewhere to park, Nedim had abandoned this idea. There were too many unknown factors. Lalla, for example. He wasn’t really convinced she would agree to follow him. Or join him. He’d found a simpler idea. Steal Lalla’s car and papers and get out of here as quickly as possible. In three hours tops, he could be in Italy. He’d better make sure there was enough gas in the tank.
Well, best see how this afternoon panned out first. With Lalla and Gaby—and Diamantis, if he resurfaced. Because, shit, if there was any chance of having this girl before he left, he didn’t want to miss it.
“Are you coming?” she said.
Gaby was waiting for them on the Prophète Beach. On the terrace of a bar. The Flots Bleus. She was drinking a Coke. The beach and the sea were both packed with people.
She smiled at Nedim. “How have you been since the other night?”
This woman cast a spell over him. She intimidated him, made him uncomfortable. In her presence, he felt naked and defenseless.
“Good, I’ve been good,” he stammered, sitting down next to her, exhausted all of a sudden.
She smiled again. “What are you drinking? My treat,” she added, with a laugh.
Clearly, she’d called a truce, he thought. Things were back to normal. Thanks to Diamantis. She must have taken a fancy to the fucking Greek. That was the only explanation for all this. Being here with the two girls. He didn’t have a cent, he didn’t know how he was going to get out of this fucking city, but hey, there were people worse off than him.
“Er . . . I’ll have the same as you’re having. A Coke.”
“You can have a gin, if you like,” she said, with a touch of irony.
He looked at his watch. “Well . . . Maybe it’s a little early.”
“A Coke, then?”
“No, I know what, I’ll have a beer.”
“How about you?”
Lalla had sat down opposite Nedim, and was touching up her lipstick.
“Peppermint cordial. Can you hold this for me, Nedim?” She handed him a little mirror. As she did so, her knees touched his, and he quivered slightly.
“Hey, don’t move!” she said.
She put away her makeup, and looked at him with a little amused smile.
“Am I O.K. like this?”
“Great.”
“You mustn’t be angry at us for the other night,” Gaby said. “We were just working. If we don’t make enough, we get punished.”
“They hit you?”
“Like the lady said,” Lalla replied.
Nedim turned back to Gaby. “What about that?” he said, pointing to the scar under her eye. “Is that because of what you do? Because of your job?”
He was dying to know what a woman as beautiful as her could have done to deserve being marked like that. He still thought it was a knife wound.
“It’s not recent, is it?”
Asking the question helped him to keep Gaby at a distance. To force her to change her tone. He could sense that she despised him. So it didn’t bother him that he was touching a sore spot.
“Well, that’s a whole other story.”
He didn’t insist.