Gardens of Water (63 page)

“Who’s this?” the girl said, pointing at
rem with her burning cigarette.

Everyone stopped and looked at her. She felt her face go red.

“My girlfriend,” Dylan said, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her against his thigh.

Girlfriend! He had never called her that before. The girl looked her up and down and
rem was embarrassed by her long skirt, the silly flowers on her blouse bought for a million lira at the Gölcük outdoor market.

One of the boys, the one with a hoop pierced through his eyebrow, leaned forward and offered her his hand. “Serkan,” he said, and she took his hand even though she shouldn’t.

“This is Attila,” Serkan said.

Attila jumped forward. In a flourish, he grabbed her hand, bowed, and gave her knuckles a very ceremonious kiss.

“Hey, lay off,” Dylan said.

Attila came up smiling, and Serkan playfully pushed him.

“Sorry about your mom,” Serkan said to Dylan.

“Yeah,” Dylan said. He took his hands from her waist and shoved them into his pockets. “Thanks.” He nodded his head and looked down at the ground.

“May your pain pass quickly.”

“Yeah.”

The girl flicked her cigarette on the ground and hugged him, her breasts pressed against his stomach. He returned the hug, the tips of his fingers pressing into her back.

“What’re we doing?” Dylan finally said, pulling away from the girl.

“Not much’s happening,” Attila said. “Because of the quake.”

“People are dead,” Dylan said. “Staying at home’s not going to change that.”

“They’re just being respectful,” Serkan said.

“Seventh House is shut down for who knows how long,” Attila said, lighting a cigarette now and dramatically blowing the smoke into the sky. “Club 2019 is closed tonight.”

“Secret Garden’s got something going on,” the girl said. “There’s a guy spinning there tonight who used to work with Murat Uncuo
lu. Produced one of his records or something. Some guy from his London days.”

rem had no idea what they were talking about, but the way they spoke made her feel stupid.

Down an alleyway—past darkly lit cafés with empty tables set out on the cobblestone street, past a church gate and a statue of Mary with her eyes downcast and yellow sun rays shooting out from her head—stood a blue door with trash set on the steps for collection. From the outside, the building looked abandoned—the stonework stained with centuries of lipid coal smoke, the windows darkened and reflecting the violet sky. She wondered what they were doing here, but then Dylan opened the door and inside, placed on the steps of the circular stairway, stood flickering candles lighting the way to the top. As they neared the fifth-floor entrance, the stairway shook and her heart jumped before she realized that it was just the thumping of the music.

Inside, the walls glowed green as though lit from inside and every corner of the room was filled with plants—ferns, tall ficus trees, others that looked like short palm trees, their leaves like huge wings spread above tables of candles. They had to brush greenery aside to sit at a table, and behind them, through the leaves of a fern bush, a man pressed his lips against the soft part of a woman’s neck. Dylan nodded to a bartender, held up five fingers, and said, “Efes.” In a moment, five bottles arrived, held between the fingers of a woman with dyed orange hair.

“
Serefe,
” Dylan said. He and everyone else held the bottles up and clinked the glasses together. She didn’t touch hers.

“How cute,” the girl said. “She’s not going to drink.”

Dylan shot a glance at the girl, but didn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” Dylan said, turning to
rem now. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” He took the bottle and placed it in front of him. “I’ll drink it.”

“To being back in the city,” Attila said. They took sips.

“It’s too damn depressing down there,” Dylan said. “My dad’s trying to convert everyone.”

“Your dad’s like the crazy fundamentalists in the Fazilat party,” Serkan said. He had his arm wrapped around Attila, who smoked a cigarette—he seemed always to be smoking a cigarette—and nervously jerked his knee up and down. “Those stupid people’ll turn this country into Iran.”

“My dad’s just an asshole.”

The girl laughed.
rem still didn’t know her name, and she wondered if this was on purpose.

“He thinks he’s always right. Thinks if I spend enough time down in the camps I’ll ‘feel the spirit of God’ or some stupid shit like that. Thinks it’s more important than keeping me in school my senior year.”

“School’s still out,” the girl said. “They’ve got to check all the schools for damage. Education Ministry says two weeks, but you know how that goes.”

“Yeah, three or four, probably.”

“My parents have me going to
dershane
already,” Attila said.

“Shit, Attila,” the girl said. “Fucking University Exam already?”

“Yeah, two hours a day after school, studying math problem after math problem,” Attila said. “My parents’ll disown me if I don’t get into Bo
aziçi.”

“My parents’ll murder me if I don’t get into Harvard,” Serkan said.

“Serkan, you’re not going to America,” Attila said, suddenly passionate. “I’ll kidnap you on the day of exams if I have to. We can be male belly dancers or something crazy like that.”

Serkan gave him a pathetic look.

“Boston’s too cold,” Attila said. “You hate the cold.”

“You been going?” the girl asked.

“To
dershane
? No. I keep ending up at Akmerkez, trying on shoes.” He touched Serkan’s cheek and smiled. “My parents are in Vienna. My dad might be taking over Coca-Cola Europe.”

“Shit,” the girl said, and turned to watch a man near the bar with headphones clasped over his ears.

“You going with them?” Dylan asked.

“No,” he said. “Not unless Serkan comes. They don’t want me there anyway. My father says I’ll embarrass him.”

The music stopped briefly and then rose with a whirling sound of oud strings that sounded like the traditional songs her father sometimes played on old cassette tapes. Then the strings were overtaken by a thumping beat again. She felt the floor shake beneath her feet.

“This guy,” the girl explained, “started mixing Sufi music with Jamaican beats.”

“It works,” Serkan said. “It’s like dub but more Middle Eastern, more mystical-sounding.”

“Yeah,” Attila said. “It’s like religion stoned on hashish.”

Everybody laughed and
rem pretended to understand.