Gardens of Water (64 page)

“So,” the girl said, turning to
rem. “Where’s your chaperone?”

“Stop it, Berna,” Dylan said.

“Seriously, aren’t you supposed to be chaperoned until your wedding night?”

Dylan spoke sharply to Berna in English, and stabbed the table with an index finger. Berna yelled back at him in English and he turned his face away from her.
rem could see the muscles working in his jaw.

“Your father probably wants you to be some kind of slave,” Berna said to her now. “Washing, cleaning, cooking.”

“No. He just doesn’t want me to be like you,”
rem said, wanting to slap this girl.

“Oh, okay, I get it now,” Berna said.

“Stop it,” Dylan said.

“So an American boy.” She lit a cigarette, nodding. This girl was mean like a man—meaner than a man. “I get it, of course, meet an American guy, go to America, get your freedom.”

“This is boring,” Attila said. “Leave her alone, Berna.”

“Oh God,” Berna said. “You think he’s taking you to America and turning you into some fairy-tale princess, don’t you?”

“Shut the hell up, Berna,” Dylan said. “I swear, just because your father wanted a son.”

“Allah, Allah,” Attila said. “If I knew I was going to be hanging out with a bunch of Arabs I would have brought a gun to shoot you all with.”

Berna was taking a sip of her beer when he said it and she burst out laughing, spraying the beer out of the corners of her mouth.

“Forget about it,” Dylan said. “C’mon.”

He grabbed
rem’s hand and he took her into the crowd of people dancing in front of the man pushing records on the player. She loved him at that moment, as he took her hand, having defended her against his friends. He found a table on the terrace, behind a huge vine lacing up a trellis. Through the vine a few stars shone weakly in the city sky. Beyond the rooftops, the Bosporus was streaked with reflected city lights.

“I don’t get it,” he said, his brow creased, his hands combing through his hair. “I don’t get it, shit!” He kicked the table. “Everyone wants you to be someone.”

“Shh,” she said and touched his wrist.

He sat back in his chair and looked at her, water in his eyes, and she felt her heart would break for him. He was so fragile, so easily hurt.

“Everyone wants you to be something,” he said. “Except my mom. She never wanted me to be anything. I was fine as I was.”

“Shh,” she said again. “I don’t want you to be anything.”

“Sure you do,” he said. “Berna’s right.”

“Berna’s jealous,” she said. “Any woman can see that.”

He laughed and pressed his palms against his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”

A flare burst in the sky, drenching the rooftops red as it arced toward the water.

Berna
was
jealous. Jealous of her!

The flare disappeared beneath the rooflines of Beyo
lu, but a streak of smoke remained as a pink smudge in the sky. She smiled. It was the greatest feeling she had ever experienced in her life. She was someone. She could make a woman jealous!

Hollow explosions echoed from the water and soon fireworks bloomed purple and blue and silver in the sky.

Dylan turned to watch.

“A wedding,” he said.

“A wedding.”

The fireworks fell in arcs above their heads and burned out.

Dylan turned around, suddenly excited. He pulled his chair in close and touched her cheek. “It’s just you and me now,” he said, his blue eyes bouncing back and forth, as though searching her out, as though she were the most important thing in the world to him.

A waiter slid two small glasses between them. They were filled with a deep crimson liquid.

“What’s this?” Dylan said.

The waiter pointed back toward the bar, toward Attila, who was holding up his own red glass. “
Serefe,
” he yelled. “To young love!”

Serkan burst out laughing, as though this was the funniest thing in the world, but Berna just turned her back.

Dylan laughed and held up his glass in a long-distance toast. “Asshole!” he said, and took a sip.

rem looked at the glass; the liquid was a beautiful red, as though it were a newly polished jewel.

“Tastes like red licorice,” Dylan said. “You’ll like it.”

She put her mouth to the glass and let the liquid seep through her lips. She half expected it to burn her lips or strip the skin from her throat. Her father had suggested such a thing. Alcohol was poison, he had said to her once. But Dylan was right; it tasted like candy, like the gumdrops she used to steal from the bins at her father’s store.

SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT
everyone must have made up, because she found herself wedged into a corner in the backseat of Attila’s sports car. The car raced through a cavern of apartment buildings and squares of window light melted into streams of color. Attila had the radio turned up and the backseat rattled with the beating bass. Dylan, his arm wrapped around her, took a drag from a cigarette and blew the smoke out the open window. He kept the beat with his other hand and between songs his fingers fell below her shoulder where the slight curve of her breast began and she was aware of his fingers but she didn’t mind.

She didn’t know where they were going and each turn Attila made was like going deeper into a maze until she saw the bridge appear above the hills of the city. Everything else was a blur, her head swimming in what felt like a warm, lazy sea, but the bridge anchored her focus and as long as she stared at it she could remember flashes from the night—she and Dylan dancing, his mouth on her neck; more little red drinks; a brief and tender kiss between Attila and Serkan; Berna lighting a cigarette for her and, smiling, telling her Dylan was “a shit.” These moments of clarity, though, were lost in fragmented images of colored lights and bodies and laughing faces and the thumping of music and the flash of matchsticks and bottles shining on shelves and the remembered feeling that this was freedom, that this, because it seemed to have no rules, was perfect and she had felt light and warm and lost and she liked being lost.

The car now sped around a corner and Dylan’s body pressed against hers.

“Take it easy,” Dylan said to Attila. “You’re drunk.”

“You’re a genius,” Attila said, and she could feel him shift gears and the car raced up a hill, past the darkness of a cemetery on one side and the brilliant brightness of hanging open bulbs on a row of
kokoreç
shops.

They came to a house on a steep hillside, the glimmering water of the Bosporus below, the arc of the bridge, like a hovering cement shadow, above. Dylan helped her out and she could hear the roar of cars above. They entered a dark courtyard through a gate and were met by a man with a German shepherd. The dog barked and she jumped. Dylan laughed and gripped the back of her neck.

“It’s me, Yusef,” Attila said.

“Attila Bey,” the man said. “Good morning.”

“Günayd
n.”

“Your father doesn’t like friends, Attila Bey.”

“My father doesn’t like Serkan and I don’t care.”

“I’ll have to tell him. He likes to know.”

“Your girlfriend visiting tonight?”

The man said nothing, but cleared his throat and moved out of the way.