Man of the Hour (21 page)

“I wonder if this is so.” Dr. Ahmed kept limping around him, faster and faster, as if he were trying to make Nasser dizzy. The black coffee swirled and smoldered in his cup. “I wonder if you know what it means to have
jihad
. To have a Holy War.”

“Yes, I know.”

He stopped and put his face right next to Nasser’s. He smelled like stale crackers and airport lounges. “This means we don’t stop. Okay? We kill all the bad ones and make them afraid every minute of their lives.”

“It’s what I tried to do.”

“You failed. This is not
jihad
. It’s humiliation.” Dr. Ahmed’s nostrils flared, as if he could actually smell failure. Nasser wondered if the little man was about to throw the hot coffee in his face.

“I know. It won’t happen again.”

“Well, it’s okay,” Dr. Ahmed said with an expression that suggested the opposite. “Some of our supposed leaders make mistakes too and don’t acknowledge the warriors who’ve done and sacrificed the most for them.” He paused and looked bitter. “But all of that is going to end now. So are you going to be part of this?”

“Yes, but …” Nasser began.

“No God but God,” the doctor cut him off, starting to limp in a circle again, his fingers tensing on the cup. “This fight we have has been going on for fourteen hundred years. Okay? Maybe you know a guy, an American guy, and you get to be friends with him. All right? So you fight once and then you get along, and you’re friends again. But it’s not like that with us. Okay? We fight to the end. This next thing we do won’t be just one school bus. Many, many more people will be involved. Bodies and bodies everywhere. We kill as many as we can. Do you understand? Even the women and children die. Okay? They’ll be lying in the street with their arms and legs blown off. Just like at the Jerusalem mall.”

“Of course,” said Nasser, trying to ignore the shaking in his knees.

“Some people will say, ‘This is not right, this is
haram
. The Koran forbids this. You should not kill the innocent.’ But this is not a regular war with the soldiers. This is
jihad
, this is Holy War. And everyone is a soldier in the Holy War. We could kill their mothers and fuck their sisters nine hundred thousand times and it wouldn’t make up for what they’ve done to us. Am I right?”

“No God but God,” Nasser said.

“Insh’allah.”
Dr. Ahmed nodded and sipped his coffee some more.

“Allahu akbar,”
Youssef added.

Nasser hesitated, not sure if it was his turn to praise God or not.

He found himself imagining what it must have been like when the doctor shot the tourists on the bus in Cairo. He could picture this angry little man curling his lip at a wounded woman begging for her life, letting her crawl away a little, and then pulling the trigger. He was afraid to associate with such a man, but even more afraid not to associate with him. His fate had been decided the other day with the girl in the back of the cab. If God had a better path for him, He would have revealed it by now.

“So do you have the heart of steel?” Dr. Ahmed stopped and looked down into his cup, as if wondering whether the coffee was still hot enough to scald anyone.

“Yes, I do,” said Nasser.

“God is greatest!” said Youssef.

But for some reason, Nasser found he could no longer look at the Great Bear. In a very small way, he felt his friend had betrayed him by not doing more to defend him. On the other hand, he had survived it on his own and was that much closer to being accepted by this man Dr. Ahmed.

“So you’re going to be ready to do whatever I ask you, right?” said the doctor, finishing the coffee and circling one last time. “You’re going to be a soldier in the Holy War, so no sacrifice is too much. You do whatever it takes. And you don’t get scared about people dying. Understand?”

“I understand.” Though as he said this, a part of Nasser was still struggling, still wanting to back away from all the destruction.

Somehow Dr. Ahmed seemed to pick up on his lingering reluctance. He paused to the right of Nasser and carefully put his cup down on a white saucer with a delicate blue border. “Of course, if this is not okay with you, you should just walk away,” he said. “Nothing will happen.”

Nasser noticed a stillness in the room, a quiet hissing awareness of death. The doctor was weaving in and out of his peripheral vision. “It’s all right,” he said. “If it’s God will, I’ll do it.”

23

THE WEEKEND WITH ARTHUR
had so far been full of joy and apprehension for David. Everywhere he went with the boy, people recognized him from the news. Two passengers on crowded subway cars offered him their seats, a waitress at a restaurant called Lucky’s on 57th Street brought Arthur a special ice-cream dessert with luscious cherries and extra fudge on top, and guys in a Con Ed work crew on Columbus and 86th climbed out of a hole in the street to ask for David’s autograph. As he signed their newspapers, Arthur hopped up and down next to him, declaring, “That’s my daddy! One day I’m going to do what he does!”

Back at his apartment on 112th Street, his answering machine was bursting with manic energy. He sat on the rug, eating potato chips with Arthur, while Matt Lauer’s people asked if he’d be available to play golf next week; Geraldo invited him to dinner; Barbara Walters’s people wanted to put him up at the Waldorf for a few days. He knew it couldn’t last, this orgy of attention. But still it was hard not to get caught up in it, as he sat in his cramped apartment surrounded by half-painted walls, books falling off shelves, and the few pieces of ratty furniture he’d managed to salvage from the old place.

On the other hand, there was Renee to deal with. When David called her Friday night to talk about the conversation he’d had with Arthur at the museum that afternoon, she’d sounded tense and distracted. And when he repeated Arthur’s comment about wanting to live with him full-time, she hung up the phone.

Now, at a special Saturday session, sitting next to her in the Upper East Side office of Dr. Allan Ferry, he was full of dread.

Dr. Ferry wore a white Paul Stuart shirt with red stripes that alarmingly matched the color of his office walls and carpet. His tie had pictures of small panda bears on it, and when he smiled his teeth looked slightly brown. He was a forensic psychiatrist, whose job was to interview both David and Renee before consulting with the judge about custody arrangements. Originally this was just supposed to be a formality. Husband and wife were going to work this out on their own.

“I thought I’d start off by asking the two of you what brought you here today,” the doctor said.

David tensed up in his seat, anxious to impress this man, yet not wanting to show how desperate he was.

Renee was sitting a yard away in one of the doctor’s other hardback leather chairs, her shoes off, her long legs drawn up in front of her, and an empty Diet Coke can balanced on the armrest for her cigarette ashes. She was in her hunkered-down, defensive mode, the one David found hardest to contend with. A light red welt appeared on the back of her left wrist, as if she had indeed burned herself there, as Arthur had said.

“I don’t know,” she said nervously, rubbing her leg. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, anymore. I got this call last night from David, accusing me of not taking care of our son! It’s crazy. Crazy.” She took another drag on her cigarette, dribbling ashes on the doctor’s red carpet. “He wants to take Arthur away from me.”

The doctor studied her a moment, trying to put together the nattering bag-lady voice with Renee’s high-fashion cheekbones and willowy figure. She definitely was deteriorating, David noticed. What happened to the pills she was taking? The thought of Arthur going home with her today made him deeply uneasy. The boy was playing peacefully with the doctor’s wooden blocks in the other room.

“I’m just concerned about you, Renee,” David said evenly. “That’s all.”

“Oh, you’re so concerned, David.
You’re so concerned.
Is that why you’re divorcing me?”

“I didn’t think
I
was divorcing
you
, Renee.” He turned his chair toward her, trying to catch her eye. “I thought we’d made that decision together.”

“Yeah, right!” Renee took another hard drag on her cigarette. “Tell me about it!”

Dr. Ferry smiled his brown smile. “Well, okay. Maybe that’s a good place to start. Perhaps we can talk about what brought you and Renee to this point in your marriage in the first place?”

“But I don’t know. See?” Renee flicked more ashes into her soda can, as her mood softened for a moment. “One minute I was married and I was happy and then I wasn’t. I don’t know what happened. It all blew away, like a dandelion. You ever think of that, Doctor? Love is like a dandelion. I just looked around one day and David wasn’t there. You sure you don’t have a real ashtray?”

What was driving her today? David couldn’t get a feel for it. When they’d been living together, he could anticipate her wild moods sometimes and prepare for them, like pushing chairs out of the way for an epileptic. But with the separation, he’d lost that sense of continuity and he had no idea what she would do next. He teetered between feeling sorry for her and being a little afraid of her.

“Okay!” said Dr. Ferry, trying to get back on track. “Let’s try to focus on some issues here …”

“The issues?” Renee exclaimed, her hands fluttering. “The issues? The issue is David thinks he can take care of Arthur all alone, but
he can’t even take care of himself
. Have you seen his apartment? Have you seen his Visa bill? He can’t finish his doctorate and get his Ph.D.! You ever see that sign over his desk? ‘God keep me from ever completing anything.’ That’s him!”

“Okay, hold that thought!” The doctor cut her off with a referee gesture. “I’m thinking maybe it would be more constructive if I continued these conversations with each of you separately. Renee, would you—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She was already gathering up her shoes and papers and going off to sit in the waiting room with Arthur.
“Take your pills, Renee. Take your pills.”

She left her cigarette burning on top of her soda can. Their marriage had always been a coiled and fragile thing. And Renee had always been her own worst enemy.

“Well!” Dr. Ferry took a deep breath and relaxed into his chair. “What were we talking about?”

“The divorce and why it’s happening.” David checked the doctor’s degree on the wall. Forensic psychiatrist. Wasn’t forensics about dead people?
We’re waiting to get the evidence back from forensics, said the detective.

“Sometimes I think the more key question is why a couple got married in the first place.” The doctor drew a circle in the air with a yellow pencil.

“Interesting.” David paused for a second and listened as Renee started talking to Arthur in the waiting room.

“So why did you get married in the first place?” the doctor prompted him.

“I don’t know.” David smiled in spite of himself, remembering more hopeful days. “She was in a section I was teaching at grad school at Columbia and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She had this magnetism. She kind of moved like a dancer. It was like the air cut around her in a special way.”

“So it was a physical thing.” The doctor’s tone was pleasant, soothing.

“No, there was more than that.” David stroked his beard. “We fit together.”

“How’s that?”

“She had this burning need to be an artist of some sort because her mother was this failed big band singer and never gave her any attention. You know, ‘Come-On-A-My-House.’ And I, of course, wanted to be this big writer. So we kind of supported each other in our delusions. You know how it is when you first get together with somebody? It’s like the two of you are in a conspiracy against the rest of the world.”

“So what happened?” The doctor raised his eyebrows.

“I guess our conspiracy broke down.” David stopped and stared at his hands for a moment. “The world found out about us and wasn’t that impressed.”

“And how did each of you deal with that disappointment?” The doctor rolled the pencil against his lips.

“In our own way.” David shrugged. “It was probably easier for me, because I had teaching and my kids to fall back on. But with Renee, it was different. I remember she went to audition for this Madame Cecile or something, this famous ballet teacher who had a studio on Columbus Avenue, and she came back
devastated
. This was supposed to be her big break, like it was her mother who was finally going to accept her. And instead, this Madame Cecile videotaped her performance and then made fun of her afterwards, saying she was too old and heavy to be a real dancer. And from that point on, Renee just got worse and worse. She kept trying things and when they didn’t work out, she wouldn’t come back from them. She’d just get deeper and deeper into her hole. I don’t want to oversimplify—there were all these other underlying problems you can’t totally explain away by circumstance … But she just … kind of …”—he toyed with the words, trying to come up with the right expression—“got them old Kozmic Blues, mama.”

A series of images flashed through his mind. Renee having a fit at her thirtieth birthday party and smashing a glass at an expensive midtown restaurant. Renee pregnant and weeping on the couch, under Margot Fonteyn’s blazing eyes. Renee locked in the bathroom, with Arthur six months old, soiled and screaming in his crib. David grimaced, remembering how he accidentally gave her a black eye when he tried to break the door down.

“Bi-polar is the technical term,” said the doctor, glancing down at a file.

“I didn’t know that at the time.” David frowned. “I just knew she was unhappy.”

“So how did you try to help her?”

“Well, at first, I did everything I could.” David turned halfway around in his chair, uncomfortable with this part. “I tried to get her to see a psychiatrist. I listened to her, I rehearsed with her, I told her I loved her … anything I could think of.” He sighed. “But then after a while, I guess I just sort of got tired and started tuning her out. You know, I’d just sit in the kitchen, drinking bourbon and correcting papers when she was having her moods. Or I’d throw Arthur in the stroller and take him for a two-mile walk, just so I wouldn’t have to deal with her.” He looked down at his hands. “That wasn’t very heroic of me, was it?”