The Mirror Thief(115)

Curtis slumps in his seat. He’s worn out. He doesn’t want to think anymore. The early morning excitement and the long dry hike and the irritation in his eyesocket have ground him down to a nub. No, he says. It sure didn’t.

So you left the city, Saad says, and came to the desert. Just like Jesus. Yes?

Exactly like Jesus, Curtis says. Or Muhammad. Muhammad went to the desert too, didn’t he? After things got nasty for him in Mecca.

Or Moses! Moses led his people out of Egypt, yes? Led them into the desert. I understand this, you see. I also led my people out of Egypt. Now two of my people are at the university spending my money, and the other of my people, she asks me every day why the roof is not yet fixed. Yes, my friend. It is sometimes good to go to the desert.

Curtis smiles, wipes his cheek, leans his head back. Sleep sucks at him like quicksand; his arms and legs are already numb. I guess I’m more like Jesus than those other two guys, he says. When I went into the desert, nobody followed me.

You are wrong, my friend, Saad says. I followed you. You see? I am very loyal.

The drone of the tires works its way up Curtis’s spine and expands to fill his chest, warm and liquid. He’s seeing the landscape through closed eyes now. To the north, a field of pricklypear and tree-cactus, the cyclone fence of Camp Delta, the blue Caribbean beyond it. To the south, the smoke-curtain over Al Burgan, the blackened long-legged corpses of camels, the lake of burning oil. Curtis hears the crunch of gravel under the Honda’s wheels, imagines it cast from the pavement into his eyes, and jerks awake. Hey, Saad, he says, can you tell me anything about that old town in the lake?

I don’t know what you mean, my friend.

I was just down at the lake. The water’s really low, I guess from the drought, and there’s what looks like a little town that’s come out of the water. You can see streets, chimneys, some of the old foundations.

Oh yes, Saad says. I saw this on the news. They built the Hoover Dam, and then the water came, and this town was covered up. Like Atlantis, yes? Now there is no rain, so it comes back. The people who made this town, they were—how do you call them? The ones who build the white temples.

Mormons?

Yes. Mormons. But there is a different name.

LDS, Curtis says. Latter-Day Saints.

Yes, Saad says. That’s who. I am curious about these people. I meet them sometimes in my taxicab. The young men I see sometimes on their bicycles. Are these Christian people, these Latter-Day Saints?

Depends on who you ask, I guess. My dad’s a Black Muslim and my mom was a Jehovah’s Witness, so I’m not gonna talk any trash about Mormons.

Saad leans down to mess with the radio and coaxes a melody from the speakers: Sonny Rollins, “How High the Moon,” a West Coast session with Barney Kessell and Leroy Vinnegar. A quick regular thrum of static cuts against the swingtime, then fades. Curtis shuts his eyelids again.

These saints, Saad says. In some way, they are like the Jews, or the Muslims, yes? They have difficulties—oppression, discrimination—and they come to the desert. They say this about themselves, maybe. We are like the Jews! It is not only these saints, of course. In this country, this always is possible. Enough! we say. We will go to the desert! We will make our own city. For ourselves, for our children. It will be a holy place, and just. We will know ourselves and our God by the shape it takes. So we build it. And people come, and more people. And then one day it is strange to us. No longer what we wanted. It has become, perhaps, the very thing we fled. So we go back into the desert, and we weep and pray that God or Fortune will flood the land, will bring the sea down upon the armies of Pharaoh, will erase our mistakes from the earth. But though the waters may rise, nothing is ever erased, or ever can be. The city is everywhere.

At some point Saad’s voice becomes Stanley’s, and Curtis knows that he’s asleep again, or nearly so: one foot trailing in the current of dreams. He tries to balance as best he can, so Stanley’s words won’t fade, and then he can see them, each word independent and alive, sprouting feather-leafed branches that bear other words, spoken in other voices. He can hear the voice of the old poet, Welles, and the voice of the Mirror Thief. His own father’s voice. Walter Kagami’s. Veronica’s. Danielle’s. The voice of the magician called the Nolan. The voice of the god Hermes. The clear quiet voice of the moon itself.

Then another voice, familiar. My fellow citizens, it says, events in Iraq have now reached the final days of decision.

Curtis jerks upright, claps a hand on Saad’s headrest. Shit, he says.

Are you okay, my friend? You were sleeping. We are almost there.

Curtis shakes his head, squints out the window. They’re downtown already, passing under the spaghetti interchange for the Vegas Expressway. A green sign has Charleston Boulevard coming up in a quarter-mile. Curtis’s throat is sore; he was snoring. What’s happening? he says. Did the war start?

The president speaks, Saad says. You are awake, so I will turn it up, okay?

Peaceful efforts to disarm the Iraq regime have failed again and again because we are not dealing with peaceful men, the radio says. Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

Saad exits on Spring Mountain Road. Hey, Curtis says, can we just cruise the Strip for a little while? I’d like to hear this.

Of course, my friend. Whatever you wish. Shall we say one dollar for each five minutes?