Djibouti

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

XAVIER CROSSED THE ROOF to Dara's dining room and kitchen, stuck his head in the door and said, "Billy's on the webcam, and Muffie."

"Why didn't you call me?"

"I want to smell whatever you cookin."

Dara lived on the top floor, had her studio on the second floor, and kept the first floor full of movies, books and music, tapes of almost everything she'd ever seen since she was twelve.

It looked like she was getting ready to fix a trout, court-bouillon it in white wine, some spices. Or she might go meuniere with it. No aromas yet, he followed Dara down the wood stairs to the studio, her big desktop Mac with a thirty-inch screen waiting on the worktable. "It's ready," Xavier said. Dara waved him over next to her and clicked the pad. Now Billy's face filled the screen.

"There you are," Billy said. "Xavier told us you cookin. What y'all havin?"

"You get home," Dara said, "you turn up your Texas sound?"

"I'm away from here too long, I start sounding like a Yankee." He said, "Here's Muff," sat back in the sofa and there she was, her hand sticking out of her blouse.

"Hey, y'all, I'm pickin it up too, being around this good ole boy too long. As you can see, I'm still laid up, but nobody here asks me how my hand's doing. They've all fallen off horses. You know what he's gonna have me doing next?"

"Lemme guess," Dara said. "Riding?"

"Chasin after hounds. They do that here." Helene ran a hand over her breasts. "This tape is itching me to death."

Dara watched Billy lean in saying something to her. Helene punched him in a girlish way. "I think I'm marrying a sex fiend."

"Where are you, still in Texas?"

"Near Houston. At one of Billy's winter places. The rest are in other countries."

Dara said, "Xavier and I are trying to find a movie in all the footage we've shot." She turned to him saying, "He wants me to write a feature motion picture and make up stuff we don't have. I still want to do the real thing, a documentary." She said to Helene, "You remember Jama? I showed you shots of him in his Brown University T-shirt?"

"Yeah, and I said he looks like Will Smith."

"That's right," Dara said, "you did," remembering it now.

"I bet Will Smith would sell his soul to dress up like an Arab."

"What are you doing," Dara said, "besides healing?"

"Nothing much. Billy sent a crew to bring Pegaso home. But we're not gonna continue the cruise right away, darn it."

"That's a shame," Dara said.

"He can be a meany sometimes," Helene said. "He knows how much I love sailing around the entire fucking world."

Dara watched him say something to her again and Helene hit him with her free elbow. "Billy kids around but he's sick over losing Buck. He says he was a stand-up guy I would have liked a lot."

"And respected," Billy said, "like a brother."

"You know I was talking to Buck," Dara said, "when Jama pulled up in the car and shot him."

"The first time," Billy said, "then shot him on the boat, twice. Xavier's right, you make this a documentary, how you gonna show all the action stuff happened you don't have?"

"Jama takin out five people with five shots," Xavier said, "one each. That's movies. But you have to shoot it. Dara can make a feature anytime she wants."

Billy said, "How much would it cost?"

"Fifteen million," Dara said, "below the line."

"That's like fixed expenses, the ones you know you gonna have," Xavier said. "The camera equipment, all the lights, the best boys and their grips and gaffers, the camera crew…What else? The pirate boats and people we use as extras."

Dara said, "We've got pirate boats."

"Not with actors in 'em. We have long shots we can use, the skiffs racin out to board some kind of vessel."

Billy said, "How much for actors?"

Dara said, "How much can you spend?"

Billy said, "I'm in the picture?"

"In this instance," Dara said, "if you put up the cost of the picture, you're the producer."

"What if I want to be in it?"

Xavier said, "Play yourself?"

"I bet I could do it," Billy said. He looked at his watch. "But right now Muff's due for a workout with her trainer. We'll talk at you later."

"He means my therapist," Muff said, rolling her eyes at Dara. DARA HAD A WHEELED cart with a glass top she used as a bar, bottles of different kinds of spirits, even a siphon for zapping the drink with a hit of soda, always on hand in sophisticated 1930s movies, sitting on the bar while William Powell stirred Myrna Loy's martini. Xavier couldn't recall Dara ever using the siphon, but saw it as a cool touch for a bar.

Ever since they got home they'd been talking about their movie, four days now: Xavier pointing out holes where good stuff was missing. Xavier telling her, Girl, you know how to make a feature, you've seen every one ever made.

This evening they were slouched at either end of Dara's tan corduroy-covered couch with its ochre and orange pillows. On the coffee table two glasses of after-supper port, hadn't been touched yet.

"I bet," Xavier said, "you can make a real movie without anyone in it sayin 'besides.'"

"Or waste time with backstories. What you see is what happened. We do have to hire a few stunt people. You know what holds me back, don't you? Making up an ending."

"You'll think of one. Beginnin, the pirates; middle, Djibouti stuff; end, maybe end it on that island, the ship burnin. Say the right words over it, Muffin blows up the tanker and stops al Qaeda from blowin up Djibouti. Lake Charles'd be better, save a port in the U.S."

"We're making a comedy?"

"Get the right girl to play Muff. All her lines she says straight, not puttin on anything. The audience can laugh, it's all right. But Muffin's real."

"I asked her who she saw as Jama."

"Will Smith. I heard her. He's Jama if you can pay him."

"He opens a picture," Dara said, "earns his money. Who do we see as Idris?"

"I was thinkin of a young Omar Sharif for one of them."

"He's too dark."

"Too serious."

"That's what I mean."

"You know who'd kill to play Harry?"

"Harry," Dara said.

"Man loves to act. You wouldn't have to direct him much."

"I'd have to hold him down," Dara said. "But he might not be bad. Harry wants to be known."

"We can get actors from over there, stars. One of the guys in Clooney's picture Syriana."

"The ship blowing up," Dara said, "is documentary footage."

"The black Toyotas," Xavier said, "crossin the desert from Eyl to Djibouti, what did Idris tell Jama? Qasim? What did Harry say to 'em. I think that trip can be a trip."

Dara was nodding. "It could move the plot."

"See the boys get out and take a leak."

"Talking to each other now," Dara said, "Idris and Harry."

"Where are they when the boys escaped. I bet they arguin."

"Harry's having a drink."

"They at a bar in the African part. Harry's nerves are showin." Xavier handed Dara a glass of port and picked up the other one. "I bet you go into Jama's backstory some. How he became a Muslim-"

"In prison."

"Most likely. Went over to Djibouti and got into jihads for al Qaeda. He can tell it in two lines."

"But not why."

"He don't even know why. He joined 'cause he's fucked up, likes to show off, fire guns at people, the sound. Loves it. That's as deep as he is," Xavier said. "You still thinkin doc-u-men-tary, start cuttin what you have, wishin you had things you heard about. In Bosnia wishin you had women gettin beat up by their hubbies for gettin raped. You got more of what you don't have in this one, you shoot it documentary."

"All right, let's say we're casting a feature."

"What we been talkin about."

"I write a script-"

"Scenes with Dara and Jama," Xavier said, "somethin stirrin between them. This other nigga's sittin on the sidelines; he wants to go home, but Dara decides to hang around, see what happens. She's reachin too far, gonna hurt herself."

"I fall for Jama?"

"Girl, he falls for you. You the star, he tells you everything you want to know about him and al Qaeda. You get me to watch him, he don't disappear on us. We go to that island 'cause he told you it's where he's blowin up the LNG ship from. Helene's the only one could play herself. She's been actin all her life. Billy, you won't have to pay him you let him do Billy. Idris and Harry, get a pair of young Arab stars."

"And who plays Xavier, the old seafarer," Dara getting with it, "some young buck?"

"Not too old, but never heard of Goat Weed."

Xavier got up from the couch with his glass of port. "If I'm spendin the night, you mind I use your shower?"

"I'd be grateful," Dara said.

"Who you see playin you?" He waited for her to tell him. Something she likely hadn't thought of. "You the lead," Xavier said. "There a lot of good women in the business gonna want this part. Watch that movie again, all the Italian chicks goin after Daniel Day Lewis. It's Eight and a Half with music and comes out Nine."

Going into the bathroom with his port he heard the phone ring.

A few minutes later Dara opened the door to the shower, Xavier filling the tiled space, body soaped, his face raised to the spray.

"That was a friend of Harry's. He's here to read for a part in a zombie picture. Would like to stop by and say hi."

"You have to read to play one of the undead?"

"All I know is Harry told him I make movies. He'll be here in a few minutes."

"What's his name?"

"Hunter Newhouse." THE FIRST THING JAMA did he got to New Orleans, he phoned Coleman Correctional in Florida and said he was calling about a death in the family of one of their inmates, Tariq Bosaso, and gave them a number for Tariq to call, saying he was Hunter New house, a lawyer representing the family.

Tariq called saying, "Who is this? Who's dead? I don't have no people anymore, all died on me."

Jama said, "You remember a boy read the Koran and could recite it from memory? Don't say my name."

"This is you speaking to me?"

"Home on leave from the jihad. You read about a gas ship blowing up off East Africa?"

"Man, it played on TV a week. Was al Qaeda done it?"

"Young fella name of James phoned the ship and she blew. You ever hear anything like that?"

"Come and visit me, I want to hear what you been doing."

"I will I have time. First I got to take care of bidness," James said. "Tell me where I get a piece in this town."

"What kind you need?"

"One I can slide out of my pants."

"Gonna cost you."

"I flew here first-class from Paris. Tell me where to get the gun and I'll tell you who I'm gonna shoot." DARA'S BUZZER BUZZED AND she pressed the switch to open the door downstairs-two doors on Chartres, one for the first floor and the other for upstairs. She opened the door and looked straight down the stairway she would fall down in dreams until she'd won her first award. She saw a figure come in the same time Xavier called, "Dara…?" She turned from the door, open now, and heard, "Where's my Aqua Velva?" She told him it was in the cabinet, turned back to the door and Jama was a few steps below her looking the same, grinning at her.

"Who's that, your nigga? You live together?"

"Tonight's his sleep-out."

"Likes Aqua Velva means he's got cheap skin. Tell him that, we have time. You gonna invite me in?"

"Yeah, Xavier'll want to see you."

Jama said, "You want to know something? You aren't as different as I thought. You live with that nigga, he contaminates you."

"What did you think I was," Dara said, "a virgin?"

"You were yourself, always you every minute. Different than other women."

"Tell me what you've been up to."

"I blew up that ship."

"I thought Helene did. It doesn't matter." She saw Xavier come out of the bedroom in his white briefs looking right at Jama.

"He says he blew up the gas ship."

"He might think he did," Xavier said. "Was Helene blew that ship up. With a rifle, fired it and the ship blew."

Jama said, "Listen to me. There were explosives with a cell phone we planted. I call the number…It was in the newspapers they found it was explosive charges blew open the pods of lethal gas."

"But was Helene must've touched it off," Xavier said.

They were standing in the living room, Jama in front of the coffee table, Dara and Xavier a couple of strides from him.

"You don't combust a combustible ship," Jama said, "with a rifle."

"You do this one. Had steel-cuttin rounds in it. You still usin a Walther?"

Jama unzipped his jacket to show them a new Walther stuck in the waist of his pants.

"You must've got it here," Xavier said. "Don't let it slip down in your pants."

"I can pull it before you move."

"You practice in front of a mirror like Bobby De Niro in that picture?"

Jama said, "'You talkin to me?'"

"That's the one. You see a lot of movies?"

"In Arabic, with French subtitles, or English."

"Bobby De Niro speakin Arabic."

"It looks real."

Xavier said, "Dara…?" and saw Jama's eyes shift and his hand go to his gun. He didn't pull it. "You want to offer Jama Russell a glass of port?"

"No, I don't," Dara said. "He comes here to shoot us 'cause we know his name."

"Everybody knows his name," Xavier said. "He's got to think up a new reason to shoot people."

"We have to watch him pose and swagger, act like an asshole," Dara said, "and I want to hit him with something." She turned looking around and picked up a sculpture from a lamp table: two girls sitting on a toadstool back-to-back, a brass piece six and a half inches high, but heavy. Dara raised it looking right at Jama.

And Xavier said, "Why don't you throw it at him?" IT WAS THE SAME way he pulled it on Buck: drew the Walther as he sailed the flight bag at him like a Frisbee. Only it was aimed at Jama this time. Jama saw the brass statue coming at him and threw up his hand and rolled his shoulder the same way Buck did-giving Jama time to shoot him-giving Xavier the moment he needed to come at him with bare hands and take the Walther by the barrel sliding out of his pants and twist it hard and shove it into him, Jama pulling on the gun and it fired. Xavier held on to him face-to-face and said, "Boy, I think you just killed yourself."

Dara came over as Xavier laid him on the coffee table and pulled on his legs so his head would lie flat on the glass.

She said, "He's still alive."

"Can't believe it happen to him."

"Look at his eyes," Dara said. "He's thinking, But I was holding the gun."

Xavier said, "I didn't mean it to happen this way."

"What do we tell the police," Dara said, "he committed suicide?"

"He's been tryin to all his poor-ass life," Xavier said. "It finally took."

Dara said, "Is this how it ends?"

"What, your movie?"

"Djibouti."

"We must be close to it."