The Liminal People Read online

  An Al Hoceima whore plays housewife and offers me tea before scampering into the back room. He’s always got a parade of them. As he reclines on his floor pillows with shirt proudly open I can almost see why. I don’t know how old he is, but he looks to be able to give the nineteen-year-old a challenge. The tea I use like a prop, downing it quickly and healing my scalded throat before the shock has time to set in. It’s the type of subtle move only he’ll notice.

  “You almost broke Omar’s jaw for mentioning your brother,” he says in the Rif tongue, and I’m mad. Of course he wants to talk business first. I’m gonna sidestep it, then remember he knows when I’m lying.

  “He had three men on a ridge for an ambush.” True. I’ve never told him about my brother.

  “You handled them?” A question. Luckily I can answer without lying.

  “Put them to sleep right before he came. I needed to give him something to know me by. If I used my . . . thing, in that scenario I’d have to . . .”

  “The youngster.” He smiles, finally putting down the French fashion magazine he was reading. “How’d he fare?”

  “Stupid and young. But followed directions well enough. We’d both appreciate any dental care he could get. Pretty sure the Geneva Conventions outlawed that breath.” My boss laughs, and I know I’m not in the doghouse for the arrangement I’d reached with Omar.

  “I doubt we’ll see Omar again. The deal’s gone sour with his people. But the parting gift of the cash was appreciated. Now, what’s this recording all about?”

  “I’m asking for permission to take the razor off temporarily.” I don’t dare meet his eyes when I ask. Membership in the razor-neck crew is for life. We all have small nicks and scratches on our breastbones from where the razor scrapes our chest. They’re never to be taken off. Even when we’re having sex. I’m scared shitless that somehow he knows whenever we even think about trying to take them off.

  “Ya’llah.” If that’s all the mangled Arabic I get in this consultation I might make it out of Morocco. But I know enough of my boss to know that if he ever decides I need to go, it won’t be him that’ll do it. He owes me too much.

  “Tell me about it.” He says. Good. Not a question.

  “I don’t know what it is. Maybe something minor, but I doubt it. In any case, it predates my association with you and the crew. I don’t want to track mud through your house.” I use French because it sounds prettier. He knows I’m not French and appreciates the sentiment.

  “What will you do?”

  “Find the sender. Do what I can. Get back to my life here as soon as possible.” All truth. I’m not gone yet and already I’m missing my house—my fried-fish dinners every night, tea on Suleiman’s porch, fantasies about Fou-Fou’s past. All of it. I don’t want my world to change. I’m hating Yasmine right now. But she dialed a number I swore she’d never use.

  “The one who called. She is like us?” The question I was hoping he wouldn’t ask. There’s no way out of it.

  “Yes.” This time I’m looking him in his eyes. Any more questions about Yasmine and I’m out the door and dodging bullets. Nordeen has an unusual obsession with people like us. I’ve never met anyone else who knows more about people with our type of abilities. I don’t want to know how he came to his knowledge. But he’s not getting any more from me about Yasmine than the sound of her voice and that she’s got power.

  “Keep the razor on,” he says with no change in his face. “Fou-Fou will give you sixty thousand euros from the take. Call back if you need more.” He beckons me close, and I’m scared. I’ve healed him three times from lethal gunshot wounds. Those were the only times I was allowed to touch him. I keep low, making sure my head is never higher than his. I’m expecting a hand to kiss; his deceptively powerful arms embrace my body. Even so, I still can’t see him or feel him like I do everyone else. It’s like hugging a ghost.

  “Remember, what we have is rare.” I realize he’s speaking English in that no-accent way he does when he’s trying to show me compassion. “People like us tend to stay away from each other.” I nod. I’m like a cat being held by a kid known to abuse animals. I can’t give him any reason to be pissed at me or he’ll kill me. I don’t know how he’ll do it, but it’ll be bloody and sadistic. I know because I’ve been his instrument for such tortures in the past, waiting in shadows and silence for him to finish an embrace just like this before I struck.

  “But before you go”—Nordeen breaks his lips apart in an attempt to smile and reclines back to his pillows—“tell me about your brother.”

  Fifteen muscles in my back spasm, arguing the pros and cons of flight and fight until I consciously remind my body that neither is truly an option. This is Nordeen at his worst, picking at my scabs. And I’ve just asked for a favor and been given finance and permission for it. All he requires is a story. By the ancient rules of friendship and service, Nordeen is in his rights to hear the whole story. I’m too tired, physically and emotionally, to think of any way out of this. So I speak the truth.

  “My brother was like us,” I say and wait for a response. Nordeen takes a drag from a nearby hookah. “Only, he could push things with his mind. Make things move. He was strong with his power but weak in morality. I . . . he was four years older than me. I idolized him. Despite what he did to my family. . . .”

  “What did he do?” Nordeen asks with the voice of a sadistic psychotherapist.

  “He was a bully. My father couldn’t stand against him and wouldn’t report to anyone what my brother could do. My mother was sick. Depressed. She spent her days washing down Thorazine and Seconal with gin and tonics. But it wasn’t just my parents that suffered. The whole town quietly cowered in front of my brother.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “I did!” I say, realizing I’m way too excited by what I’m saying. “I cowered until he ignored me. Then I tried reintroducing myself into his vision, making myself useful. But I had nothing to offer until the day he ‘pushed’ me out of the second-story window of our house. I broke my arm, then instinctively healed it. He felt it, felt me use my power, and became interested in me.” I pause, hoping it’s enough. Another damn drag off his hookah, and he’s still waiting for more.

  “He let me follow him around for a few years. The understanding was simple: I healed him and only him from whatever hurts his bullying got him, and I would get his discards—money, girls, drugs, whatever. None of that mattered. I . . . he let me hang out with him. His company was the biggest prize. At fifteen, I thought I was on top of the world—”

  “Until you healed your mother?” Nordeen interrupts me with a truth I’ve never told him. I know what it feels like when someone picks up a stray thought from my brain: this is not that. I can’t get bogged down wondering how Nordeen knows. He does.

  “Yes. It was a tumor resting in her brain, causing pain and confusion. I didn’t mean to go against my brother. It was just an instinctual healing once I had cultivated my eyes to see illness. The tumor was the size of a quarter and took five minutes to dissipate. My mother’s tongue-lashing afterward took longer.”

  “She chastised you for being morally weak,” Nordeen says looking into the corner of nowhere, eyes now milky white, voice now the sound of a whale’s cry. “She was disgusted that her womb could produce such bastards, such powerful creatures incapable of compassion.” His voice changes, as does the air in the room. My mother’s voice comes from his mouth. “Shut up. You bully. You . . . my mind is finally clear. I don’t understand any of this. But I know bad, wrong, when I see it. I could barely see for the pain I was in every half an hour for . . . years. But even in that state I knew evil when I saw it. Your brother is definitely evil. But you are not exempt, Taggert. Do you hear me?”

  He waits until I wipe the tears from my face before silently demanding I go on. “She went out on her own for the first time in about ten years that day. My dad, a military man, was at the base. I waited in the dark until my brother got home, the whole time breaking
and healing my bones, compacting them to be as dense as they could get. I grew extra layers of skin around my knees, knuckles, neck, anywhere my body thought calluses could grow. I hardened my body. And when my brother came home I set about beating him. I punched and kicked and battered him while he threw every part of the house at me. But as quick as he wounded me, I healed and was back on him. In his final fit of rage he brought the house down on both of us.”

  “He survived.” Nordeen speaks. Knowing, not asking.

  “Yes, but it takes a team of specialists to teach him how to tie his shoes each day. I caused permanent brain damage.” Nordeen nods, giving me tacit permission to leave. I hear his closing sentiment as I walk through his door.

  “People like us tend to stay away from each other for good reason, Taggert.”

  I’m out the house and I’m still alive. What does it mean? Nothing. Only that he doesn’t care if Suleiman knows that he wants me dead. Most likely he’ll have Suleiman do the deed. If not him then the stink mouthed kid. Doesn’t matter. If they come, I’ll feel them. And if they come I’ll kill them. I’ll have to.

  My house feels less secure now. The walls are just as sturdy. There’s food in the fridge. I could watch satellite TV if I wanted. The crew got it as a gift for me last year. I try to read comics. I try and smoke the product that keeps us all fed. Nothing. I even think about drinking. I could ride into Al Hoceima and hit one of the hotels. Or one of the local whores, even. It wouldn’t be the first time, just something I haven’t done in a few years. But alcohol just makes it harder for me to use my power. And whores, now they just make me sad. It’s too late to get on the road now, even if I wanted to. And with sixty thousand euros in my pocket, I don’t even need to pack. I need to just relax in my home, say good-bye to it. I’ll need lots of sleep for whatever comes next, and this is the only place I know I can rest well. So I’ll sleep because I won’t be back here for a while.

  The sun came before I realized the moon had left. All hopes of sleep were dashed by memories. And thanks to Nordeen, my memories of Yasmine were clashing with my memories of my brother. Both people like me, but both rejected me. Maybe both for valid reasons. Maybe my brother rejected me because somewhere he knew our relationship had to come down to some serious sibling rivalry. And maybe Yasmine knew I was a freak all along.

  Suleiman calls ten minutes after my girl comes through with some apricots, juice, and nuts for breakfast. He lets me know Fou-Fou just dropped off a cash card for me, along with a set of keys. He’s asking where he’s supposed to take me. If Nordeen is setting me up, he’s doing a lot to make sure I don’t suspect it. I tell the right-hand man to grub with his family and then pick me up when he’s ready.

  We’re about twenty minutes away from Europe. But it’s a different type of Europe. It’s filled with hash and illegal immigrants. I could get to Yasmine that way, but then I’m under the radar and still identifiable as Nordeen’s. So I take my breakfast slow and then go to the drawer I never use. The drawer from my past, in the closet. It holds the last Italian suit I ever bought and my American passport, the real one. I put both of them on, and it feels like I’m regressing a good ten years. Yasmine better be in real trouble.

  Suleiman enters my house with a pulse that’s pounding so hard I’m thinking I’m hearing it with my ears. I can imagine his thought process. Maybe Omar made some deal that required Suleiman’s head and maybe I was the one who had to do it. It’s that kind of thinking that makes him Nordeen’s Number 1.

  “How do I look?” I ask, showing him open hands as soon as he comes in. It relaxes him somewhat.

  “Like a bullshit Frenchie.” He’s never seen me in civilian gear. “What’s the plan?”

  “I’ve got to catch a flight from Fez.”

  “And then?” Like I know.

  I don’t even pretend to sleep until I’m installed on the plane. It’s less than an hour flight to Marseilles, but it feels like another planet. Planet Old Life.

  Chapter Four

  I met this kid once. He was maybe twelve years old. His dad owned the biggest telecommunications network in Mogadishu. Don’t laugh; those Africans will kill for wireless, literally. The kid was like me, only he talked to the land. Once his hands were in the dirt he could make things grow: enrich soil, deplete it, whatever he wanted. After I showed him what I could do, we became friends. I asked him one time if he wanted to get out of the Mog. He told me even if his father would let him, he wouldn’t leave.

  “I will die without this land.” He said “this” land like he was talking about the plot directly below him. I was still kind of fucked up at the time over Yasmine, so I just chalked it up to his youth—some kid not wanting to have a new experience of the world. But now, as I’m sitting on this plane, leaving Africa for the first time in five years under my real name, I’m realizing how much I had in common with that kid. I’m afraid I’m going to die on this little journey and never come back. It’s the never coming back part that’s hitting me more than the dying.

  After Yasmine wrote me off I went on this ironic death journey around the world, trying to save as many lives as I could. I didn’t put myself in danger’s way; I pulled up a chair in front of the death TV and started in on a bowl of cocoa crisps like it was Saturday morning and I was a kid again. At first I went through official channels. Somewhere, I think I still even have my Red Cross jacket. Wherever medics were being fired upon, that’s where I went. And once there I broke the rules and went into the no-fly zones. Shit, if suicide by terrorist bullet didn’t get me, this trip shouldn’t be so hard.

  Strange that it feels the same. When Yasmine left, I was alone again. My parents and I had worked out a nonverbal agreement: they would pay for college and never mention my brother or the house they had to sell, so long as I never came home or asked them for anything. Even after she left, I always filled out Yasmine’s name and address in the place marked for next of kin. Working my trick on a young village boy or girl torn up by automatic fire as bullets whiz by me and all I can think about is what Yasmine going to do when she finds herself the proud owner of my headless corpse? Never happened.

  I can’t say a few bullets didn’t catch me, or that my ambulance never hit a stray landmine, but my body has an automatic healing effect. It’s autonomic—hell, it happens even faster when I black out. It only took four fatal gunshot wounds to realize that. And I couldn’t even get drunk enough to mourn my inability to commit suicide—my body wouldn’t let me. So instead I got immoral.

  Turns out an EMT is like a street doctor for those who can’t afford a hospital visit. As I was about to go back to London from Sri Lanka, an African with a British accent approached me about doing some fieldwork in the Continent. He was looking for field-trained medics unafraid of bullets. And he definitely paid more than the Red Cross. So to Somalia I went, working for a warlord. I ordered enough supplies I didn’t need and made sure to not heal anyone too quickly. Still, I got a reputation for being able to handle almost anything after the warlord got cancer in his foot and I “saved” him without chemo. You’d think he’d be appreciative. Instead the bastard started renting me out. First to a Liberian friend of his and then to some Colombians he knew. But the cash was good and I was treated like a king. I liked the life and would’ve stayed in it if not for the mother who brought her daughter to me one night begging that I heal her. The girl was nine years old and had more herpes sores covering her hairless vagina than zits covering her face. The mother pleaded with me to heal her as she was my warlord’s favorite and he didn’t know the mother had been renting the girl out to other people. I healed the girl in silence. No tricks, no fake medications, no examination. I just laid my hands on the sides of her head and spent my rage on every cell of that virus in her body. The sores literally fell off of her. And I fell off the planet.

  I’m not going to say I was innocent back then. But I knew less of what people were willing to live with, to put up with, to invite, in order to survive than I do now. Had I seen babi
es turned out as prostitutes before? Of course. Had I seen them ravaged by S.T.I.’s? Most definitely. Had I seen creatures disguised as mothers pimping their kids out previous to that? Yes. But to see it all together, at once, staring at me with hopeful eyes filled with understanding, inviting me to join their compromised way of life, it was too much for a younger me to bear. How was I to know I was just delaying the inevitable?

  I figured someone would come for me. I couldn’t just walk out of the Mog. But that’s what I did. Out of Mogadishu into Kenya up to Ethiopia and then across the Sudan, Chad, and the Niger. My dark skin helped me blend in. Anyone who came at me with guns, I healed. When I needed shelter I healed people for it. The same with food. There are a lot of sick people in Africa. I became a bit of a legend. I never spoke to anyone and never rested more than one day in any place. It took me a year and a half, but I walked from Mogadishu to Bandiagara, Mali. Why there? No idea. The place pulled me to it. The people there, the Dogon, were the only ones that reacted to my healings with absolutely no surprise. I stayed amongst them for a month, learning their language, helping them find a way to eke out a survival in the poorest country in the world, crying about all I had seen . . . before they kicked me out.