Face/Mask (6 page)

Were the danger and other-worldliness of this Sahar enough to entice him into doing something he’d never otherwise consider? Maybe this was what he needed to get him out of his months-long funk. He slipped the ad into a private folder, with the hope that one day he'd get up enough nerve to revisit it. For now he turned his attention back to the orgasmic groaning of the three women who had gotten well into their sex-games without him.

September 14, 2038

Two days later, he found himself in a conversation with Terry that had a tiresome familiarity to it. He’d come home from work on the crowded metro-bus, his fall coat covered with a thin layer of the silt that floated in the air. Terry usually kept the family wagon when he was at work so she could ferry the kids to school, get the groceries and run myriad errands. As an administration director he was supposed to set an example by using public transport, as if this was somehow going to save the planet from choking to death.

He tossed his soiled clothes into the laundry chute and headed for the bathroom to wash off the air-mask’s outline on his face. Terry came into the bedroom and stood in the bathroom doorway, wearing the smile that told him she’d had a particularly pleasant experience to share with him. He tried to match her smile, but the day he’d had at work had been anything but pleasant.

“Hey, hon,” he said, taking her cue. “Anything special happen today?”

“I guess you could tell. It was Uncle Joe; he’s really too much sometimes.”

Janus should have known. She was always telling him about some great thing her uncle had done. He didn’t know why but each time Joe did something special for them Janus felt it reflected negatively on him. Terry had never given him any reason to believe that, but that just meant that she did a good job of disguising her feelings.

“So, what did good old Uncle Joe do today?”

“Remember that old CD player you got me from the antique shop? The one you couldn’t get to work? Joe had one just like it in Italy and he fixed it. Isn’t that something?”

“Yeah, great,” he said. As he spoke he wondered how often they’d played this game since Joe had moved in. “I was going to get around to fixing it. It’s just it’s been crazy at work.”

“I know, so don’t worry about it. Joe was happy to do it. You know he’s really good at fixing things.”

“Yeah, so it seems. So you played some discs on it?”

“Some real classics. Not like today’s junk. Even the kids listened.”

“The kids?  Richard too?”

“Sure. You know he loves everything Uncle Joe does. It’s like he’s adopted a new grandfather.”

Janus dried his face and wondered how an old immigrant who spoke stilted English was able to connect with his sulky teenage son. Richard rarely spent more than two minutes with him, wasting all his free time face-to-facing his friends. And now listening to actual CDs on an antique player with the well-loved Uncle Joe.

“I’m hungry,” Janus said, changing the subject. “What’s to eat?”

“Joe made a great lasagna and-”

“Jesus, does Joe do everything here?”

“Hon, you know how much they need me at the hospital. Joe loves to cook for us, and it beats eating frozen.”

“Well, I don’t feel like lasagna.”

“But it’s yummy.”

“I don’t care if it’s
yummy
. I don’t want to eat it.”

“Fine. You can make yourself a sandwich then. And you’re just being ungrateful.”

She spun around and walked out of the bedroom. Janus knew she was right. But he wasn’t merely ungrateful; he was fed up with good old Uncle Joe’s involvement in every aspect of his family’s life. Of
his
life.

Not involvement
, he told himself.
Interference
.
That’s exactly what he’s doing, butting into everything we do until Terry and the kids can’t do anything without him. Meantime nobody ever expresses any gratitude to me for getting up every morning and riding an over-crowded metro-bus through the poison air of the city to get to my crap job just to make sure they get food on the table.

He decided to make himself a sandwich. Then he’d go on-line and look up that woman whose ad he’d seen the other day. She had an exotic name, Arabic he was sure, assuming it was her real name. The idea of talking to a strange woman sent a nervous thrill through Janus’s body. Her Muslim origins added an element of the forbidden. He didn’t know much about Arabs except what he saw on the news. Did he have the nerve to find out more?

September 16, 2038:

Janus remembered that Laval had once been a prosperous bedroom community, just over the bridge from Montreal, with a population of various ethnic groups. But it was in the late teens that the Arab population began to grow. Between the constant stream of immigrants, both legal and otherwise, as well as a higher than average birthrate, the Arabs began to outstrip all other groups. There were Lebanese, Egyptians, Moroccans, and others that Janus couldn't remember.

He supposed that made it easier to choose Laval when they set up what was essentially an open-air prison
.
They’d chosen the eastern half of the island (originally called
Île Jésus
in French, although nobody told the Muslims that) which had parcels of undeveloped land where the immigrants could settle. They built checkpoints along the bridges on and off the island, and put up fences with guard towers and auto-drones flying overhead.

Soon after the US sent in the military advisers in late 2018 people with Islamic-sounding names began moving to the large island north of Montreal. In the first year they’d been offered financial incentives to move there; then they were strongly urged, and finally they were rounded up and shipped en masse to this ghetto. Ontario had two similar restricted zones, and B.C. one. As for the U.S., there were an unknown number of these communities scattered across the country.

The administration had divided Laval in two, with non-Muslims who’d been living in the east being resettled in the western half. Their houses and apartment buildings were expropriated “in the national interest” and the new Muslim arrivals found themselves living three or four families at a time in large, upper-middle class homes. Newer developments were smaller, designed as single-family units, the better to squeeze in as many internees as possible. The place that some called “Little Gaza” was soon born.

It had been years since Janus had taken the one remaining highway which ran north across Laval to the Laurentian Mountains. All ramps leading off the highway were guarded by road blocks, preventing unauthorized residents from leaving. Non-Muslims were allowed to enter Laval with written permission, although their entries and exits were registered and their vehicles searched in both directions. Several large signs at the off-ramp made it clear that safety couldn’t be guaranteed for anyone travelling alone.

After his latest argument with Terry about Uncle Joe, Janus had locked the door of his basement office and tried to read some news reports. Once he was certain his family had gone to sleep, he’d switched away from the news and pulled the ad from its private folder, and punched in her site code. Within a minute he’d received, and accepted, Sahar’s invitation for an on-line conversation.

She appeared in front of him, wearing a knowing smile and a sheer, half-open bathrobe. She looked young and full-bodied, as he imagined a character from The Arabian Nights might look. She told him that Sahar was Arabic for enchantment, and he had no doubt that she’d been aptly named. She spoke with a Middle Eastern accent that he didn't recognize, and her syntax was broken just enough to make it charming. He could almost smell her foreignness, and wild fantasies were already racing through his mind.

She explained that there were certain border guards, at the first entrance to Laval off Highway 15, who could be bribed to allow him through without too many questions. There was, naturally, an element of risk, especially for someone in Janus’s position, but that added to his excitement.

On Thursday evening he told Terry he had to work late. He was willing to risk going into the restricted zone just to find a prostitute. The comfort workers were readily available, many of them in better parts of the city, and just a touch on the P-screen away. But when he’d responded to Sahar’s ad he knew he was looking for something more than quick, impersonal sex to calm his increasing restiveness. This little adventure would allow him to sweep aside his highly-regimented life, if only temporarily.

Janus drove slowly along the busy highway, his thoughts and heartbeat racing. He had an envelope full of twenties in his pocket, and his air-mask hid his face as effectively as any veil. He’d checked the car out of the Department motor pool, punching his name onto the requisition chit without a second thought.

He was surprised at how easily a hundred dollars got him through, and wondered if the guard made his money on sheer volume. There must have been many “Sahars” making their living this way.

From the checkpoint off the Cartier Street Exit on Highway 15, he followed the directions she’d given him. She had suggested that he not plug her address into the memory of the car’s GPS lest it be accidentally discovered; surely a lesson learned by previous clients.

The streets of Laval were heavy with old cars and buses. One road was partially closed by a group of masked workers repairing a sewer, wearing hip-high waders in a large, chemical green puddle. Further on a truck was double-parked with its engine running, while men carried large boxes out of its open back. Other drivers honked as they tried squeezing past, but Janus sat patiently in his car, taking in the sights and sounds. Until that moment it had never occurred to him that inside this forbidden zone life could look so normal.

He’d expected it to look like the prison he knew it to be, but there were few outward indications that people’s movements were restricted. There were cameras peering down on every street, an intrusion into people’s lives that existed throughout North America. Take away the guard towers in the distance and a few long-robed women and he could have been in downtown Montreal. The air-masks that rendered society anonymous also rendered it homogenous.

He got to a large apartment building, twenty storeys high, and checked the address on his wrist-pod. There was parking around the back, she’d told him. He parked in one of the spaces marked “visitors only,” next to a spot reserved for pregnant women. The lot was full of mini-vans and family wagons, none of them recent models.

He walked around to the front entrance, held the door open as an elderly couple carried in plastic shopping bags printed in Arabic, then entered the cubicle.

The names of the residents, printed in a glass display case, were also written in Arabic, but she had provided him with the code.

He was going to be Sahar’s last client that night, and for that she was thankful. Ahmed, her previous customer, had been more aggressive than usual today, and she wanted nothing more than to finish up and get some rest.

She rubbed her upper arm, still sore from where Ahmed had grabbed her, and hoped her new client wouldn’t mind some marks on her body. At least Ahmed hadn’t hit her in the face this time; he’d done that once a year earlier and she’d locked her door to him for three months. The poor man had begged her and apologized until she’d relented, but only after he’d promised never to strike her again and to pay triple her rate.

She knew it wasn’t easy for him. As the Imam of Laval’s biggest mosque consorting with a prostitute would have caused a massive scandal. But he had needs that his wife of thirty years could no longer fulfill, especially since the difficult birth of their seventh child. He came to see her twice a week, despite his own
fatwa
which limited her and her colleagues to serving a heathen clientele.

She had no doubt that he was, in his own way, a truly pious man; the tortured guilt on his face when they had sex was proof of that. When his conscience got the better of him he squeezed her too hard, like today. But he never hit her again.

Beggars can’t be choosers
, she told herself toweling away the sweat from her armpits. She remembered a passage she’d learned as a child, from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

Sometimes marriage isn’t enough
, she thought, aware that she’d become more cynical than when she’d been a girl who memorized passages from the Bible for her Catechism classes.

Only this Canadian remained tonight. He’d looked so nervous on the P-screen she didn’t expect he’d be there long, unless he was a talker. Some men couldn’t help but share their family troubles, as if she were a bartender.

At least I’m not on my feet all day
, she thought with a tired smile.

A glance in the mirror confirmed that her hair had that mussed, “just got out of bed” look. She smacked her lips and smiled at the bright red lipstick that was so much a part of her image.   

Cheap, yet exotic. Sexy, yet roughly used. After twenty years in the profession she knew what her clients expected.

The buzzer interrupted her reverie. She touched the picture frame on the table next to her bed and the image of a tall, slightly heavy-set man came into view.