Ganges
The coruscating light of the bare bulb overhead burned into his eyes.
He was lying flat, probably on a concrete floor, although he couldn't feel its chill through the tee shirt's flimsy cotton.
He couldn't move his arms or legs and his torso felt heavy. He could hear labored breathing, raspy and distant. He figured it was his own, but he couldn't be sure who else was in the room.
"Back so soon, lover?" Kara Stanton's voice above him and to the right crawled into his ear.
He tried to shift his head in the direction of the voice, but couldn't move or turn anything except his eyes.
"Did you miss me?"
Her face, gargoyle angles and gaping mouth, suddenly loomed into view. From the angle of her head above him, he assumed she was sitting on his pelvis, but he couldn't feel any pressure from her weight.
"Mark is coming back soon with a surprise treat just for you."
Her mouth widened but no laugh came out. The breath blowing across his nostrils was sugary sweet.
She rucked up his tee shirt until it was jammed under his armpits. He watched her fingers meander through the hair on his chest, stroking and ruffling it as she passed over his flesh. He couldn't feel if the fingers were cool or heated; he only registered their irregular movements by sight.
"White hairs? How poignant, John. You've grown old in the service of your country." He saw her fingers hover in a familiar pattern over his right nipple, first flicking, then twisting it roughly.
Her brow creased in a mockery of puzzlement.
"Nothing? Huh! You used to like that, John. What changed?" Her eyes narrowed in pretend concern.
"New lover not treating you right? Mark told me all about her. Spies are such gossips, you know."
She sighed and shook her head.
"A cop, really? What happened? All the Girl Scouts taken? The Ebony and Ivory act is cute though. You're a real equal opportunity lover, aren't you, John?"
She pressed her dry lips to his mouth and drew her tongue over his lips. Using her thin fingers, she pried his jaw open and slipped the tip of her tongue into his mouth. She felt sticky and clammy like a rancid oyster as she filled him.
He kept his eyes open and saw hers hardened; she pulled the tee shirt back down to cover his navel and tucked it into his belt.
"Remember what I told you about being the dark? You didn't really think you could change who you are just by fucking some new girl, did you John?"
She lowered her face close to his again, not touching him this time.
"You didn't wait for me. Why didn't you? You left me all alone to rot in Ordos and you didn't wait, John. I would have waited for you, you know."
He heard dry scrabbling like cockroaches in a corner of the room and Kara lifted her body from his. A door hinge groaned softly and footsteps approached from the left.
"Look who's back with all sorts of party favors!"
He couldn't see her any longer but her voice sounded cheerful and light again.
"Bring me another syringe, Mark. Our friend here is trying to wake up early."
The next time the dark curtains parted, he was jostling on a city bus headed to hell.
xxxxxxxxx
The day after he was rescued from Kara Stanton, Reese imagined he was happy.
Harold was happy, Bear was happy, so he must be too. He had slept the sleep of the dead, arose and returned to the library the following morning, all in a giddy haze of relief and gratitude.
But as the morning of the second day stretched on, after the first coffee was savored and the first doughnut was devoured, he sensed looming doubt gathering inside him.
Like a sand storm barreling in off the Sahara, he felt it mushroom from a rusty cloud on the horizon, no bigger than a fist, to a towering red avalanche of dust, grit, and silica. Doubt invaded every pore and crevice: his eyes, his mouth, his ears, the creases at his armpits and groin. Rubbing, pricking, scratching, salting every crack until he was smothered beneath its dusty weight.
This wasn't a distant red sky, or a blink of crimson behind your closed lids. This was the thick bloody atmosphere of life itself, inflamed pollution sucked in with every breath until you choked on it.
"I need to get out, go for a walk, clear my head."
Harold was kind, accommodating.
"Good. Bear needs a long run too."
"No, he stays here with you, Harold. If you get a new number, call me. I'll be right there."
The briskness of the winter morning felt cleansing at first, so Reese pushed on through the icy sunshine for blocks and blocks.
But the red cloud of pollution and grit still enveloped him.
Eventually his wanderings brought him to a block far from mid-town, to a neighborhood he recognized as home.
xxxxxxxxx
Two days after he was rescued from Kara Stanton, Reese retreated to his bolt-hole in the Bowery in search of clean water.
When he first arrived, the familiar women lounging in the matchbook vestibule of the hotel, grandiosely named The Taj Majal, didn't let him get to the staircase without a barrage of comment.
"Hey, look who showed up again, girls!"
"Well, Johnny-who-ain't-a-john! Good to see ya, beautiful! Where ya been keeping yaself?"
"I call dibs."
"Naw, Magda, the Priest of the Taj never puts out. And anyway, you'd be at the bottom of the list if'n he ever did!"
Patty and Magda and Shelley and LaKeisha clucked and adjusted their wigs. The ruby leatherette chairs creaked under them as they shifted to track his passage across the lobby.
He knew he could get away with a shrug and a raised eyebrow in response to their friendly ribbing. The pattern was long established and they would be shocked if he gave them anything more.
xxxxxxxxx
Secure in the asylum of the bath near his room, Reese exhausted the hotel's water supply every afternoon and again every night.
He would stand rigid in the shower stream for thirty minutes at a stretch, until the water dripped cold and impotent and the girls down the hall banged on the thin partition pleading for their turn.
On the fifth day the night manager, Larry the Worm, knocked on his door to register the complaints of the other tenants, but Reese sent him slithering away with a scowl.
The decrepit flophouse occupied four stories in a narrow red-brick building on a quiet block near Cooper Square. The Taj Mahal was a relic of more interesting times, when World War One doughboys, card sharps, panhandlers, rural refugees, over-aged urchins, pimps, and clueless travelers had gathered there, lucky to be one step removed from the gutter.
The Taj had managed to evade the attention of twenty-first century city building inspectors through a lively application of bribes and other inducements. Some of the most effective offers were in-kind: personal services arranged by Larry and provided by the tired women who were the primary occupants of The Taj Mahal.
Reese rented his room by the month, although Patty to the north and Magda to the south on the third floor corridor rented by the night at nine dollars and fifty cents a pop.
He paid twice the going rate, which secured him a double-wide cubicle with a sink hanging precariously off one wall and a six foot long rope stretched over the window from which he hung his white shirts and black trousers. The suspended clothing worked as a curtain of sorts, since the original drapery had been lost years before. Sway-backed and groaning piteously, the bed sagged in the middle when he lay down and the grimy green carpet was worn through where his feet touched each morning when he arose.
The water closet with its enclosed shower stall at the end of the corridor was shared by all the third floor occupants. This usually was not a problem for Reese who rarely stayed more than two days in a row at The Taj and avoided taking a shower there when he did.
But now, after his ordeal, he needed the shower.
He wanted to get clean again, to wash off the stench and defilement of his captivity. The red marks on his chest under the nipples chafed where the vest buckles had sliced the skin even through his tee shirt. The indentations on his shoulders had eased after two days, but scabs and abrasions on his chest, waist, and back bore relentless witness to Kara Stanton's bomb vest.
She had been determined to brand him with some permanent mark of her will and the vest was her final step in that decade long effort.
The bomb was gone. For that he would be eternally grateful to Finch and his determination and bravery. Kara too had vanished. Snow's revenge had been definitive certainly, but its gaudy violence had left him feeling dirtier than before.
And the insinuating sense of violation persisted.
Each night at The Taj, he would awaken around three, scratching at his stomach, rubbing at his throat trying to erase the filth of that bomb, of what its dreadful weight said about him, about his vile ties to his old partner.
Each night he would leave his bed to take another shower, creeping down the hallway in his unlaced shoes, sometimes wearing only his dress shirt half buttoned over his nakedness.
He would duck his eyes and grunt a vague salute when one of the rabbity clients stumbled out of a Patty's door or Magda's, clutching at his belt and blinking pink-eyed in the stark light.
Before Reese would have ignored these pitiful men, but he supposed they were his comrades in shame now, unsanitary inside and out.
After a bit of experimentation, he found that a lukewarm shower soothed his skin and eased his mind the best. The wall tiles had been vanilla once, but now crackled and seamed, they took on a dun shade that made him slightly queasy if he stared too long at a corner. So he closed his eyes and raised his face to the nozzle and let the pinpricks of water pelt his forehead and mouth.
Under the stream, he could imagine the dirt and degradation sluicing off his shoulders and back. Straddling the rusted drain, he watched as the dingy torrent disappeared, swirling away all the mire and culpability of his confinement with Kara.
For an hour, maybe two, the ritual worked and he felt clean and sleepy again. The red sand storm blew away.
But by the next afternoon when he awoke sweating in the itchy sheets, he could sense the contamination growing once more like a gritty culture on his arms and legs.
He turned slowly on the bed, hoping to muffle its creaking by avoiding abrupt movements, hoping to reduce the revolt in his stomach.
He couldn't refuse to answer Finch's daily phone calls.
He owed his friend everything, all over again. But as if sensing his agitated state, each day Finch claimed that there were no new cases. Reese took this for a generous lie, but he was glad for the transparent deception and for the respite from the numbers. He knew he would need occupation for his restless mind eventually, but not this first week.
He could refuse calls from Fusco.
He was thankful for so much that Fusco had done for him. He would work with him again at some point, but not this week, not this month. Let Finch deal with him for now, make the assignments, assess the intel, dodge the questions.
He would refuse to call Joss.
He wasn't ready to see her, wouldn't be for a long while.
He had known for some time that he was dragging her down into the muck with him. She couldn't see it, but he could. Anyone who knew him could see it.
Their liaison, with sex or without, was a perversion and he could see it needed to end.
Finch, who had loathed their connection from the start, had seen it all along, he must be against it.
Fusco had seen it, he was firmly in opposition, always had been, always would be.
Even Donnelly, who barely knew him beyond the fake documents on a computer screen, could see he was a monster.
Kara, even she saw it.
"Remember what I told you about being the dark? You didn't really think you could change who you are just by fucking some new girl, did you, John?"
The dilapidated bed complained as he turned again. Afternoon sunlight pulsed weakly through the greasy window, peering around the legs of his black trousers and the limp sleeves of his shirts.
If he moved quickly he could get in another shower now, before Finch's call, before the Taj women got up for their night's work, before the mire swallowed him whole.
xxxxxxxxx
Six days after he was rescued from Kara Stanton, Reese returned to his loft near Chinatown.
The bright space looked fresh and new after the long absence. Maybe the cleanliness here would purify him.
He walked once around the room, grazing every surface, running his fingers over the marble kitchen counters, touching the stainless steel face of the refrigerator and then wiping off the prints, letting his palm drift over the leather backs of the chairs as they crouched in the warm sunlight.
He took off his shoes and socks to walk barefoot across the soft blonde wood. Bounding up the spiral stairs two at a time, he wanted to see his futon sprawled on the overhead sleeping platform. The cleaning service had removed the sheets and left fresh ones folded primly on the mattress, replacing cloud gray linens with dusky mink colored ones.
He made up the bed, creasing the corners with precision, and placed his watch and phone on the floor beside the futon.
He could outrun the red sand storm here, find sleep here, he was sure.
Back down the stairs to the bathroom. Its dark green surfaces glinted with familiar welcome, the marble floor chilling his toes and arches, the rough-hewn green wooden stool piled high with white towels waiting for him. The cavernous enclosure of the shower stall, with its panels of nozzles on two sides, beckoned.
But when he turned to the expanse of mirror, raising a hand to unbutton his shirt, the hollowed out eyes and cheeks there arrested him. He leaned over the dark sink for a moment and then drew back.
It looked as though someone had been clawing at his eye sockets, bruising the skin until only plum-colored shadows remained. He could measure the missed meals in the twin depressions under his cheekbones. He thought he had shaved during his week at the Taj Mahal but the white bristles on his jaw told a different story.
His tongue was caked with a white film, putrid and thick, and the taste of sea salt coated his gums.
He fled the bathroom.
xxxxxxxxx
Twilight cast a murky shadow over the loft. Reese sat in the amber gloom without illuminating the lamp that arched over his shoulder. If he slumped a little he could catch the final intimations of sunset through the trees in the park catty-corner from his apartment. He imagined that his friend Mr. Han was packing up his chess pieces, dropping the round markers into their soft deer skin sack and preparing to leave the park after a day in the chilly sun.
His cell phone buzzed in the distance, but he wouldn't answer it, not yet. He hoped he would go to the library tomorrow to get a new assignment from Finch.
He didn't sleep, lying there, but the time must have evaporated without his noticing it because the broad window panes had turned into black mirrors when he next looked at them. If he lay low enough, he wouldn't have to see his reflection.
A knock, familiar in its military precision, disrupted his reverie.
Not Finch, not Fusco, not Joss.
He didn't want to let Mrs. Soni come in, but he knew she knew he was here and he couldn't figure out a polite way of ignoring her.
"You shouldn't have come." Reese stood back from the open door and studied the planks between his bare feet.
"But I have, haven't I? And a good evening to you too, John."
His landlady was going to stand on ceremony this night of all nights. She refused to cross the threshold without an invitation.
"Alright then, come in, won't you?" He flung out his hand to indicate the expanse of the loft was open to her.
He wanted to sound churlish, to cut this visit as short as possible. But Mrs. Soni beamed in reply and barreled past him, heading straight for the kitchen.
Even before throwing off her brown overcoat, she set a three-tiered metal container on the countertop next to the stove. This was a tiffin, an aluminum lunch pail of Indian design, in which she delivered the meals she served to him each night he occupied his room above her restaurant, Pooja's.
The smells wafting from the tiffin were gorgeous and Reese's stomach rumbled in happy anticipation.
But his mood was foul and ruled out any physical indulgences, even the simplest.
"I'm not hungry, Mrs. Soni, thank you anyway."
"Good, then I will only serve up a single spoonful of each dish and you can save the rest for tomorrow."
She did exactly as she said she would.
Carefully ladling onto a little blue plate a tiny portion of the rice, she topped it with equally minute servings of the fragrant spinach laced over chickpeas in her special yoghurt sauce, the bright red tomatoes and bell peppers, the savory mash of potatoes and cauliflower.
The plate, so laden and arranged, was irresistible. Reese took it to the table near the window and ate the meal in silence. He had expected Mrs. Soni to join him, to quietly gloat over her victory. But she didn't come near.
After a while, he could hear the rush of water from the bathroom: she was filling the tub.
Like a little boy at the end of an afternoon of backyard play, he waited for her to call him to come bathe. But when she didn't, he gave in and went to find her. Annoyance blended with curiosity inside him, a mix of feelings he often experienced in Mrs. Soni's unpredictable company.
The bathroom was dim when he opened the door, the only light shining from the overhead lamps in the cavernous shower. The mighty canoe tub loomed ghostly white in the middle of the space, and when he entered, Mrs. Soni turned off the faucet and bent over to test the water's temperature.
Reese was surprised to see that she had only run the water two inches deep, not even enough to cover his knees.
Next to the tub, she had arranged a deep white moat of fluffy towels on the floor around the rustic wooden stool.
"What are you doing, Mrs. Soni?" A glance in the mirror showed his mouth gaping and his eyes wide in astonishment. He clapped his mouth shut, then revised the question.
"What do you want from me?"
"I want you to take off those filthy clothes, John. And then sit down here." She pointed to the stool.
Wrapping an enormous green towel like an apron over her sari, Mrs. Soni tilted her head to one side, as if this command were the most reasonable order she had issued all day.
Reese knew he was going to do as she instructed.
There was no doubt in his mind. He could not remember a time when he had disobeyed a direct order from Mrs. Soni and he did not see how he could start doing so now.
As he undressed, she tore the wrapping from a new bar of Palmolive soap and dropped it in the tub and then draped two white face towels over the edge.
When he was naked, he sat on the stool facing away from the mirror, and stared up at her.
She seemed immense to him now, her brown eyes solemn but soft as she peered into his. They were so close now, he could see the little curlicues of white hairs sprouting among the black in her eyebrows and the sheen of sweat that glistened on her nose and forehead.
Suddenly Mrs. Soni bent over the tub, swirling a cloth in the steaming water and bringing it without warning to his face.
Reese jerked back, but her hand at the back of his neck held his head in place.
She ran the cloth gently across his forehead and both eyes and over his cheeks, pulling at the corners of his mouth as she went. She patted the cloth over the gash above his left eyebrow and clucked a sympathetic note when he hissed in pain.
She passed the cloth a second time over his face, with more vigor, and leaned back to check her work.
"Mrs. Soni, why did you come here? Who sent you?"
"No one sent me. Mr. Burdett called earlier this evening to ask if you were with me at Pooja's. He said you were not answering your phone. When I said you were not, he sounded worried. But he didn't ask anything more."
She turned back to the tub to recharge her cloth with water.
Drawing the sodden fabric over his throat and down his chest, she paused at the faint red marks below his nipple where the buckles of Kara's bomb vest had cut into his skin.
"Who did this, John?"
He hesitated, but gave in to her directness.
"Someone I once knew. A former partner. She's gone now."
"But she hurt you."
"Yes, she did."
"She used you against your will for her own purposes."
"Yes."
"That is violation."
He said nothing. There was nothing to say. But he was grateful that she had said it out loud at last.
Mrs. Soni moved around behind him and in long sweeping motions, cupped water in her hands to pour it over his shoulders and back.
The rough nubs of the terrycloth, the rhythmic movements against his skin, the liquid streaming down his body cleansed him as the thousand and one showers of the past week had failed to do.
She was speaking again, singing really, in a language he didn't understand. The key was minor, and the words jostled along in a rush, cascading one after the other, clearing his mind.
"Mrs. Soni, she took something from me. Something from inside me. I don't know if I can get it back again."
"You can. You will. But it will take time, John. Patience and time mixed together."
Mrs. Soni lifted his right arm by the wrist and held it straight out while she stroked the liquid over its length. As she worked over the left arm, his muscles felt languid and open, stretching in response to her touch.
"Your skin is like that of my child, pale like milk."
He thought about her four tall sons with their nut brown skin and frowned.
"Your child?"
"My daughter, Avani."
"I've never met her."
"No. Cholera took her when she was four years old. She was my first-born."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Soni."
"She was as pale as milk, tiny veins showing blue under her skin, like yours."
Mrs. Soni laughed abruptly.
"What's funny?"
"My husband was suspicious at first. Why was this child so pale, when he and I were not? But I showed him a photograph of my grandmother. Her skin too was milky. Just like the baby's. And so Mr. Soni was mollified. We named her after my grandmother. Avani."
She fell silent, turning her attention to splashing water across his chest and stomach again.
"When Avani died, I died too. I had a baby in arms and another one on the way, but I wanted to die when she was taken. Instead I lived. Time and patience gathered me up and I lived."
He said the next words in a whisper.
"And now you have another Avani, your granddaughter."
"Yes, come back to comfort me. It is the way of the world, you know."
She began humming the minor key song again, then singing a phrase or two as she slid the cloth over his thighs and hips.
She passed the cloth twice over his groin and penis, tenderly but without fuss or hesitation. He was O.K. that she touched him there. Grateful really that she treated him as a man whole and unblemished.
She spent long minutes over each calf and foot, massaging, stretching, stroking until he felt as if the water was lapping inside his bones instead of washing over his skin. Singing, reciting, then singing again as she worked.
When she was done, when all the impurities had been rinsed away, Reese wrapped a white towel around his waist and climbed the spiral stairs to his sleeping loft. He found a clean white tee shirt and a soft draw-string pajama in blue stripes and put them on.
xxxxxxxxx
He knew Mrs. Soni wouldn't climb up the narrow stairs so he descended to stretch out on the giant divan under the windows in the living quarters. He was lying on his back with his hands folded behind his head, his legs crossed at the ankles, when she emerged from the bathroom at last.
He watched her glide around the kitchen boiling a small pot of water and steeping leaves for tea. Jasmine curled sweetly through the air toward him.
This was Joss's scent and his throat tightened as he inhaled it now.
When he sat up and folded his legs under him, Mrs. Soni brought two cups of the tea and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed near his knee.
He sipped the fragrant liquid, letting the memory of Joss roll over his tongue, before speaking. He wanted her, wanted to see her. Wanted to explain. But not yet.
"What was that song you were singing, Mrs. Soni?"
"An old poem from home."
"About what?"
"It is a popular verse to the sacred River Ganges. We recite it in praise of the purifying powers of the waters."
"Do you know the words in English?"
"Yes. This is the Ganga Lahiri."
She squared her shoulders toward him and opened her mouth to recite the ancient phrases:
I come to you as a child to his mother.
I come as an orphan to you, moist with love.
I come without refuge to you, giver of sacred rest.
I come a fallen man to you, uplifter of all.
I come undone by disease to you, the perfect physician.
I come, my heart dry with thirst, to you, ocean of sweet wine.
Do with me whatever you will.
Reese sat the cup on the floor beside the bed and lay down again, his hands clasped behind his head.
"Thank you, Mrs. Soni, for the poem. For everything."
"You need to see Detective Carter again, you know." She was blunt as always. "It does no good to avoid her, John."
"I know that, but I can't just now. It's not right. I'm not right."
Mrs. Soni exhaled a soft sweet breath of jasmine. A two frown lines creased the space between her liquid eyes.
"Then let me tell you how this poem came to be. It was written by Jagannatha, a great Indian poet of the seventeenth century. He was expelled from his Brahmin caste because he fell in love with a Muslim woman. He tried every kind of appeal to the Hindu elders. But he was rejected and the mismatched lovers were sent into exile."
Reese closed his eyes as the story rippled over him.
"Then in his despair, Jagannatha appealed directly to the River Ganges, the hope of the hopeless, seeking comfort there when all other sources were exhausted. The poet and his beautiful beloved sat on the top of a flight of steps leading down to the great river, their arms around one another."
Mrs. Soni's voice was low and melodic as she came to the climax of her story.
"As the poet recited each verse, the healing waters of the Ganges rose up one step, then the next step and the next and the next. Until in the end the river embraced the lovers and carried them away to its purifying bosom."
There on the soft verge, drifting off to sleep with images of lapping water soothing his mind, Reese felt an urgency pulling him back from the precipice. He wondered if the story's lesson could apply to him.
"But Joss has risked too much for me. I'm a danger to her, I know that now."
"Does she feel that way?"
He turned on his side to look Mrs. Soni directly in the face. He searched his heart then and remembered the vile light of Kara's bomb gleaming on his chest, those final words to Joss in the hallway, the beseeching look in her eyes as Fusco dragged her away.
"No. I know she doesn't."
"Then you will come back to her. In time and with patience, you will come back together."
He couldn't contradict her, didn't want to at any rate. He wanted Mrs. Soni to be right. To make him right and whole again.
Do with me whatever you will, the poet said. Do with me whatever you will.
Reese fell asleep with the old woman humming the wordless tune beside him.