Rats

Done my work, my back was broke
My back was a bridge for you to cross
–ANOHNI, ‘You Be Free’

I got fired from the restaurant.

Could’ve been any number of reasons.

Maybe it was the new haircut that made me look like a boy. Or the way I dozed off with my eyes open, freaking customers out. Or the way I’d stand at the water cooler, letting my glass overflow, totally hypnotised. Or the money I was stealing every week, chump change. In the end, hell I think it was the haircut. Combo-ed with my voice, management really hated that shit.

For a month I didn’t leave my sister’s one bedroom in the daytime. But at night I’d throw on a tight tee and a hoodie and a jacket in the suffocating heat, and sketch little strands of hair above my lip. Then I’d take the train back to the restaurant to meet my only friend Nadeem.

He got off at 11 so we’d link up for adventures.

He didn’t ask me stupid shit like ‘How are you?’ and he always had treats for me. That night he stuffed his pockets with meth stolen from a line cook.

We rode his scooter to a late show of a hit movie. Twenty days of night had made me sensitive to the light, and I didn’t care for it. We inhaled amphetamines in the void of the back rows. It was election year so all the movies were about killing minorities. I don’t know how Nadeem enjoyed it. The sad thing was that they couldn’t even figure out creative ways of killing. The same guns, knives, bombs and cars exploding.

During a pause in the bloodlust my eyeballs flickered wildly and I thought I saw my dead sister’s silhouette at the end of the row, whispering something I immediately forgot. I plugged my ears and enjoyed the full blast of the air conditioning.

This was as comfortable as I would get tonight. Nadeem whistled for the hero’s entry.

Later he asked “What do you wanna do?” and I said I wanted pot. “Perfect!” he said.

I liked him. He never asked me what I was doing now, or why I dressed like a guy.

He didn’t care. To be honest, he was less of a person and more of a collection of vices. And you could go along for the ride. As long as you didn’t make him wait too long in one place, he liked you too. And it was comforting that he hated sex. “Too sticky!” he said.

We swerved into the chawl in a way that made me feel alive. He dialed his dealer while I drew in the wet mud with my finger. I drew a fruit tree laden with every kind of fruit. “That’s fucking sick,” he said, still on the phone. Two boys slumped against a house door played video games on their phones and cussed each other out.

I wondered where the night would take me.

Must a man have his own designs? It seemed that even when you did nothing, something was happening to you. Like aging, getting fat, growing hair, losing hair, getting pale, getting tan, getting horny, getting hungry … I was killing time till it killed me. Certainly a more interesting method to end it all than my sister’s.

At the prayer meeting, my social worker aunt told me about suicide contagion. That it tends to spread like a virus, and you didn’t even have to be family to catch it. Some sad bitch down the road could hear about it and catch it. Death was creative like that. If only my aunt had narrated this to an idiot filmmaker instead.

I packed us a joint and we sped off again.

He was confused about what to do next, and I didn’t nudge him in any direction.

His shirt fluttered, the wind whipped against my face and my sweat dried through the fabric. I blew smoke into a BMW with the windows rolled down and laughed. “You SHIT!” the driver yelled. “You CRAZY FUCK!”

Nadeem yelled and zoomed forward, almost rolling me off. The streetlights wriggled past me as the driver honked all crazy behind us. We zig-zagged past giant pyramids of trash, obstacle course-style, in the middle of the road. I gasped, “No!” because my sister materialised in front of us but Nadeem didn’t hear me through the helmet and we rushed through her. I cried softly, staining his shirt, muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Twenty-foot dust devils scattered into the night sky. There were shapes here that existed nowhere else. I remembered that time last week when we were warned not to step outside because mosquito tornadoes were tearing through the area. Mosquito tornadoes.

I needed to talk to somebody. My whole body seemed to cramp up with the thought. I had to talk to somebody. Something had to change. Then we heard sirens and the paranoia took over. We didn’t know what we were afraid of getting caught for, but there was a certainty that someday we’d be put an end to. I almost wished for it. Nadeem pulled into a quiet lane where the crickets chirped and a distant TV laughed. I gripped what remained of the joint in my sweaty fingers so hard that I might’ve crushed it. Nadeem zoned out, staring at a small yellow flower growing from a crack in the pavement. “What a miraculous thing …”

We heard rustling nearby, and two masked men fell off a barbed wire wall.

They were examining a large rectangular thing wrapped in a black sheet. “Burglars!” I whispered, my excitement barely contained. They hadn’t spotted us under the cover of a barren tree. “What do you think it is?” Nadeem asked. Inside me some kind of animal was clawing to be released. “Let’s find out,” I said. “Could be worth something.” He grinned. “Really?”

“Really.” I said firmly.

“Okay … when I run, start the Activa.”

Nadeem, grizzled hair, six foot two with shoulders like a rugby star, charged full force at the men. A beast from the shadows. One of them screamed and dropped the loot. The other hardened himself and held up a knife, only to be tackled into the next life. The scared one ran. Nadeem strained to lift the rectangle and jogged back to the scooter. I revved it up and took off. My heart was slamming against my chest and the droning machine felt like it would give out under me, or explode, or shut down. But we got away like it was nothing. He was practically squealing with joy.

“Let’s ride to the ONE STAR! Let’s celebrate!”

I navigated to the One Star Bar. It used to be two stars till someone figured there was pigeon meat in the starters, so when it reopened they called it the one star. It was all a big joke to the owner Andre. I was usually high as a kite and barely ate, so I was good. Nadeem took the rectangle into the back entrance while I scratched the stray dog outside.

A sleepy crescent moon watched over us. The rush of the heist had subsided. “Hi doggy!” I said in a high pitched voice, and felt someone’s eyes on me. I whipped around and a lanky teenage boy smiled and walked past me into the bar. He had a nasty air about him. “HEY! GET IN HERE!” Nadeem screamed. I rushed in to find him in the backroom with Andre, black cloth on the floor, and a painting laid out on the wooden table.

Well, damn. She was really something. Nothing like those modern art shitstains.

A woman in a white dress on a beach, with windswept hair and an incredible smile.

A smile I’d only seen on rich chicks at the restaurant. It was radiant.

“Doesn’t she make you feel good?” Nadeem added, as if he could hear my thoughts.
The frame had chipped at the edge, from the fall.

“Wanna feel even better?” Andre asked with a shit-eating grin. He held out his palm, with a bunch of colourful pills. “1500 a pop.” We counted our cash and figured we could get one and split it. So Nadeem crushed it at the edge of the table and we washed it down with bottled water. “Come, let’s get a drink.”

We sat down at our usual shadowy booth. 3 am but buzzing. The One Star was for junkies and career criminals who had blown up their careers. I lay low and took it all in. The peeling wallpaper. The fake cameras. The busted jukebox. The wall-mounted TV. They were showing the Olympics. A slender woman won a gold medal for swimming, with an entire arena cheering for her. I wondered if she felt anything. If it was worth it. While we waited for our whiskey I itched under my jacket. Sweat ran down my ass. Nadeem hummed quietly.

We drank slow and talked about the painting.

Tomorrow we would figure out what it was and what we could get for it. Tonight we were just gonna rage. And when the pills hit, I began to feel as if there was a future. In that artificial clarity the bar transformed into a place of great beauty. The grainy texture of the wallpaper flowed down like water. Laughter from a poker game at another table warmed my heart, and golden reflections in my glass promised another world, a secret world that had been around me all along. I was sweating even harder now, dripping into my drink but I didn’t care. I was even happy for the crowds on TV. Sweet families out at the games.

I said to Nadeem, “Let’s bring her out. Let’s share her light with the one star. What do you say?”

He brought out the painting and laid it on the bar for all to see. Wow.

I wished I could reach into it and touch her. To caress her skin, play in the sand and smell the sea. Even the others seemed to be swooning. There was a lot of chatter. I felt chatty too. Nadeem introduced me to people as Akhil. It was the name I went by when we stepped out. Among them were Andre’s cousin Melvin and Chirag, the nineteen year old kid who had seen me outside the bar.

They joined us at our table and started loudly talking politics. Nadeem nudged me and I rolled my eyes. I wanted to thank him for everything he’d done for me and it felt like the words were right there, beating against my teeth. But Melvin and Chirag were sucking up all the energy in the room. They were proclaiming that if we voted right, in two years this city would be a paradise. That the government had uplifted the poor already, and now they would stop the riots, end corruption, rebuild the forests, fix the roads, and there would be jobs squirting from every orifice.

These people watched too many movies. It made them manic and delusional. I thought, if I could shut down the theatres, hide the TVs and phones and papers for a month and people had to go outside and actually look at the world they had created, it would destroy them. Then maybe something could happen. I pressed the ice cold glass against my forehead. I just wanted to strip off all my clothes and lie with the girl in the painting.

I realised that Chirag had been staring at me the whole time. When we made eye contact he snickered. “What is it?” I asked.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Akhil.”

“Sure.” He gave me that shitty smile again, and something hollowed out inside me. I stopped speaking.
“Why you dressed like that in the middle of a heatwave? Hiding something?”

Nadeem said, “Take it easy, man.” He plugged up but continued staring. I excused myself to go to the bathroom while Melvin continued his rant. On the shitter I thought about my sister. She’d never let me come to a place like this.

She’d protect me. She did everything right. I did everything wrong. And yet …

My vision was getting all wiggly.

“Are you here?” I asked, and I heard her reply in a muffled voice, from somewhere beyond the stickered, weathered door. “Are you?”

She said something again. So I opened the door, and Chirag was standing outside, his face melting.

“Calling for me?” he said.

“No.”

“I heard you. You’re a girl, aren’t you? That’s what you’re hiding under there?”

“No. Leave me alone.”

I pushed past him towards the bar and he tried to pull off my jacket. “Aha!”

I picked up a bottle from the counter and smashed it into his face. Purple blood sprayed from a constellation of wounds.

He screamed and when he came into focus a little I saw a shard sticking right out of his eye. I heard footsteps and a warfare of voices. There was blood on my hands too. I pulled out some glass and wiped it on my forearm. It felt nice to touch wet, warm skin.

Andre grabbed me and yelled, “What did you do? You crazy bitch!” and Nadeem held Melvin back. Suddenly all eyes were on me. They were talking about … talking to me, but I couldn’t make out any words. Just low, squeaking noises. Suddenly I felt as if I had disappointed the girl in the painting, by bringing her to a room that now looked as if it was made of melting brown sludge. She didn’t belong here.

Chirag was wailing now and it sounded like a song you would hear at the opera or a funeral. I forgot where I was and sat down on the grimy floor, my head reeling. My sister was here. She was stroking my hair. I felt figures closing in on me … then as if through divine intervention, there was a crazed rattling of the bar shutter.
Andre floated away to check on it and I heard cops swearing.

The lights came on and the rats scurried away. My dilated, bloodshot eyes couldn’t take it either. I balled up on the floor on top of the mystery fluids and peeked through my fingers.

I saw a swarm of uniformed thugs gather around the painting. I almost thought, yes! They love it too. They get it! They’ll mellow out and have a drink with us. One pig dusted it off and started carrying it away, while two lunged at Nadeem with batons. They made contact and a portion of his skull shifted inward.

A moment of silence, then they hovered towards me, badges and steel twinkling in the harsh yellow lights. There it was. I’d reached the end of my mission. I wanted to see the worst, and I’d surely find it now. One moustached officer brought his beautiful instrument down in slow motion. Andre yelled, “She’s just a girl!” This shit again. I’m not a fucking girl. But the officer stopped and stared, puzzled. He spotted the fake cameras and backed away. Nadeem was out cold on the floor and he looked like a majestic mountain range from here. I think I was sobbing but the sound seemed to come from somewhere else, carried by the breeze. But there was no real ventilation in here, just a creaky table fan. The smiling girl was gone.

Andre dragged me out to the back entrance and kicked me. He said, “Get out! GO!” so I broke into a sprint. I ran for a long time. I hit the highway with its wide roads and a funny little sliver of a sidewalk. It was like walking a tightrope. What a joke, I thought. I was dying of the heat and the exhaustion. I didn’t know what time it was. I was afraid that the sun would emerge and burn me clean off the earth like a vampire. I sped up again. I pulled off my jacket. This time my sister was gliding beside me, urging me to go on home. In the amorphous light I could make out her pleading eyes.

“You’re a dumb fucking bitch, you know that?” I said. “If I was a ghost and I didn’t have a body or responsibilities I would float to fucking … Italy … or something. Haunt a beach mansion. You’re hanging around all these nasty joints … for fucking WHAT?”

Her eyes softened and dissolved back into the fuzz.

“… why don’t you enjoy the afterlife like a normal fucking dead person instead of dangling from my useless ass? This is messy. This is too messy for you, Arya.”

My nose felt hot and I sneezed embers. I felt bad yelling at the ghost, after her already having gone through a death and watching me wreck my life.

“Alright.” I said. “You wanna stick around? Okay.”

The birds were starting to make a big fuss about a new day.

I threw up and some of it got on my sneakers.

Cyclists in tight spandex passed me by, making faces.

“Listen,” I said, and the light pulsed. “If you won’t leave me … we can’t go on like this, okay? I’m gonna figure things out. If I survive this … I’ll take you somewhere beautiful. Where we can do everything you like. But not Italy. Don’t get too excited.”

I knew I would never see Nadeem again. Or Andre, or Chirag, or the girl, or the rats.

I couldn’t imagine the shape of my fate. I was far from God. But Arya was here, holding on to my promise. I peeled off my hoodie and flung it over the bridge.