Read Online When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger - Free Book Online Page A

clumsiness.
    “I wish I’d been with you last night,” she said at last. She didn’t realize how hard she was squeezing my hand. “I had a date, Marîd, some guy from the club. He’s been coming in to see me for weeks, and finally last night he offered me two hundred kiam to go out with him. He’s a nice guy, I suppose, but—”
    I raised a hand. I didn’t need to hear this. I didn’t care how she paid her rent. I would have liked to have had her with me last night, too. I would have liked to have held her between the nightmares. “It’s all over now, I guess,” I said. “Let me blow the rest of my fifty kiam on this dinner, and then let’s go for a long walk.”
    “Do you really think it’s all over?”
    I chewed my lip. “Except for Nikki. I wish I knew what that phone call meant. I just can’t understand her running out on me like that, sticking me for Abdoulaye’s three thousand. I mean, in the Budayeen, you can never be sure how loyal your friends are; but I’d gotten Nikki out of one or two scrapes before. I thought that might have counted for something with her.”
    Yasmin’s eyes opened wider, then she laughed. I couldn’t see what she thought was so humorous. My face still looked swollen and bruised, and by ribs still hurt like the devil. The day before had been anything but clownish. “I saw Nikki yesterday morning,” said Yasmin.
    “You did?” Then I remembered that Chiriga had seen Nikki about ten o’clock, and that Nikki had left Chili’s to find Yasmin. I hadn’t connected that visit to Chiri with Nikki’s later skip-out.
    “Nikki looked very nervous,” said Yasmin, “and she told me she’d quit her job and had to move out of Tami’s apartment. She wouldn’t tell me why. She said she’d tried to call you again and again, but there wasn’t any answer.” Of course not; when Nikki was trying to call me, I was lying unconscious on my floor. “She gave me this envelope and told me to be sure you got it.”
    “Why didn’t she just leave it with Chiri?” That would have saved a lot of mental and physical anguish.
    “Don’t you remember? Nikki worked in Chili’s club, oh, a year ago, maybe longer. Chiri caught Nikki shortchanging customers and stealing from the other girls’ tip jars.”
    I nodded; now I recalled that Nikki and Chiri left each other pretty much alone. “So Nikki went to Chiri just to get your address?”
    “I asked her a lot of questions, but she wouldn’t answer a thing. She just kept saying, ‘Make sure Marîd gets this,’ over and over.”
    I hoped it was a letter, an apology maybe, with an address where I could reach her. I wanted my money back. I took the envelope from Yasmin and tore it open. Inside was my three thousand kiam, and a note written in French. Nikki wrote:
     
    My dearest Marîd:
    I so much wanted to give you the money in person. I called many times, but you did not answer. I am leaving this with Yasmin, but if you never get it, how will you know? You will hate me forever, then. When we meet again, I will not understand. My feelings are so confused.
    I am going to live with an old friend of my family. He is a wealthy businessman from Germany, who always brought me presents whenever he visited. That was when I was a shy, introverted little boy. Now that I am, well, what I am, the German businessman has discovered that he is even more inclined to give me presents. I was always fond of him, Marîd, although I can’t love him. But being with him will be so much more pleasant than staying with Tamiko.
    The gentleman’s name is Herr Lutz Seipolt. He lives in a magnificent house on the far side of the city, and you must ask the driver to take you to (I have to copy this down for you) Bayt il-Simsaar il-Almaani Seipolt. That ought to get you to the villa.
    Give my love to Yasmin and to everyone. I will visit the Budayeen when I can, but I think I will enjoy playing the mistress of such an estate for a while. I am sure you, of all people,