hesitate before starting to cook again. Thomas sat down across from him in a high-backed chair and the woman walked to the balcony and stood outside.
“That’s Jalani,” Thomas said, taking a pipe out of his breast pocket and putting it between his lips though he didn’t light it. “She helps me on my hunts and tours. I found her when she was young in Africa. Her parents were killed by a rival tribe and she escaped and lived on the plains.” “How’d you find me?” “Your mother. She said you haven’t called her in over two months and she’s worried.” “I told her not to tell anyone where I am.” “As I said, she’s worried.” “Why’d she call you?”
Thomas crossed his legs and looked out the sliding glass doors at the sky. With the pipe in between his lips and his eyes turned upward, Eric thought he looked like a sitting Buddha in contemplation.
“I knew your mother before your father. That’s how I and your father met actually, though, that’s a story for another time.”
Eric filled the hypodermic and stuck it in between his toes on his right foot. The drug warmed him, but, something he’d realized only recently, brought him no pleasure. It didn’t make him happy in any way but he couldn’t go more than a handful of hours without it. “What do you want?”
Thomas took the pipe out of his mouth and held it in his hand. “The truth of it is boy that I owe your father a life, and I intend to pay him back by saving yours.”
Eric chuckled softly as he fell back on the couch, warm and content. “I don’t need saving.”
“Oh? Pardon me, but I beg to differ. I’ve seen men where you are and they don’t last very long.” They watched each other and Thomas rose to his feet and walked toward the balcony, looking over the city through the open sliding glass door. He leaned against the wall with one hand and put the pipe back into his mouth. “I came to this city once before you were even born. It’s far different now; crueler. Perhaps that’s just what happens when large masses of people live together.” He turned toward Eric. “We are a malicious species boy, and I don’t normally care for us outside of those close to me, but I repay my debts.”
Jalani walked in and Eric got a good look at her. Everything about her permeated sensuality, from the way she crossed her feet in a relaxed stance, to the smell of jasmine emanating from her wrists and neck. She stared at Eric with a detached curiosity. Then, abruptly, she walked out of the hotel room. Thomas sat back down and filled his pipe with tobacco from a small cherry wood carrying case he kept in his pocket. He lit it with a silver lighter and the sweet smell of tobacco filled the air.
Eric was nodding off, his head bobbing painfully slow up and down in an effort to stay awake. He didn’t notice when Jalani walked back in carrying a length of chain and cuffs and threw Lily out of the room.
Thomas and Jalani picked Eric up and he only nominally protested.
They lay him down on the bed and shackled his right wrist and then ran the chain around the bed, locking the two ends together with a padlock. Thomas tore the phone line from the wall, tearing apart the wires and rendering them useless.
They walked out of the room together, neither looking back.
CHAPTER
27
Eric slept for six hours and woke in the afternoon. The sound of the river was in the distance, fleets of car engines beyond that. He thought he’d dreamed of Thomas coming to his room and smiled at the dream. When he went to itch his arms, he heard the rattle of chains.
He was shackled tightly with a thick metal cuff halfway up his wrist. He followed the chain with his eyes and saw that it was wrapped around the bed. Leaning down and looking underneath, he saw that it ran around the bed frame, locking him to the bed.
Eric scrambled and tried tearing at the cuff and then pulling on the chain. He reached down and tried to pull the chain off the bed-frame and then started trying to open the padlock. He stood and was almost growling as he violently yanked the chain over and over. Finally he sat down on the floor, his arms exhausted and heavy. He had enough length to reach the bathroom and halfway into the living room, but no more. The phone was disconnected.
He walked into the living room. His money was still on the coffee table, untouched, but his drugs were gone. Panic gripped him and he began pulling on the chain again, trying to break apart the bed. He was too weak for anything more than making a loud clanking sound, and gave up.
He lay on the floor until nightfall. He was starting to feel sick. It was making him jittery and he felt sharp stabs in his stomach. As he lay flat on his back staring out at the glittering lights past the balcony, the door opened and Thomas walked in. He held a small brown bag and a large jug of water and placed them next to Eric.
“There’s some turkey and plums in the bag.”
“Fuck you!” Eric screamed.
Thomas seemed not to notice and only walked into the kitchen, checking to see if anything useful was in the fridge. Finding only beer, he took the bottles out and poured the golden liquid down the sink, throwing the empty ones in the garbage and walking out the door.
Eric was on the floor all night, unable to sleep. There were waves of pain that came and went like electric shocks. Drops of sweat covered his body and formed a wet ring around him on the carpet. He tried to pull on the chains again and when he failed, he simply curled on the floor and cried.
The next few days Eric was in full withdrawal. He was vomiting constantly and had diarrhea. Stomach pains toppled him over whenever he’d try to stand and he found himself screaming for help, but no help came. His tongue bled from the multiple times his shivering caused him to bite it and he’d go between extremes of freezing cold and scalding hot.
The days slowly melted into each other; images and sounds and sensations. Thomas or Jalani would bring food and water and juice in the morning and at night, but otherwise they kept away. On several occasions Eric had screamed himself hoarse but no one from the hotel came.
He spent his days watching television or staring out the balcony doors. He woke once to find a few books next to the nightstand, some Hemingway and a dog-eared copy of The Iliad, but he was usually too sick to concentrate long enough to read. The apartment stunk like a sewer, but after a couple weeks the craving started to subside. He thought about shooting up but it wasn’t as urgent anymore. But he had a new enemy to contend with as well: boredom.
Eric got out of bed to go to the bathroom one night and saw Thomas sitting in a chair with his pipe looking out at the city. The gray smoke formed a tunnel above him and slowly made its way to the open doors of the balcony and out into the night air. “How do you feel?” Thomas asked. “I didn’t need to be saved.” Thomas gave a wise grin. “You’re welcome.”
Eric urinated in the bathroom and came back out, sitting in the living room and leaning against a wall. “When you gonna let me go?” “A couple more days. You look much better.” “You know I’ll just use again as soon as you let me outta here. There’s nothing you can do to stop me.” Thomas shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’ll at least know I did all I could.” “I don’t suppose I could have some of that?” Thomas looked down at the pipe, and then handed it to Eric. “It’s tobash caruit from Herat. A very special kind of tobacco.” Eric took a puff and felt the smoke going down into his lungs, silky with almost a cherry flavor. “It’s good.” Thomas nodded as he took the pipe back. They sat in silence, enjoying the smell of the smoke mingling with the salty air. “You said you knew my mother,” Eric said. “I did.” “How?” “We were lovers, a long time ago. Before she met your father.” “What happened?”
Thomas handed the pipe back to Eric. “I was always away on my hunts; it’s no life for marriage. Your mother and I parted ways and she met your father. I came back to the States after a particularly long tour and wanted her back, but she was already married by then. But, she did introduce me to your father and we became friends. One of my most loyal clients as well.” Thomas put a little more tobacco into the pipe. “The animal that killed your father is becoming quite the legend.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s killed at least thirty others, mostly children from the more remote villages who wander off. I’ve been hired to kill it. I want you to come with me.”
