The Outcast Hours Read online

  She shook her head. “No boyfriends or uncles, not that I ever knew about. We don’t even know if it was planned or a crime of opportunity.”

  “I can’t even imagine how you feel.”

  “Thanks. It’s just… it’s Karachi. People move on, you know? I just… I just can’t…” There was something building between them, something tangible, Ra could almost feel it. Was he going to kiss her? He looked like he wanted to. He was certainly looking at her intently enough. Did she want him to? Another time maybe, another time when she so dreadfully sad. Besides, her head felt pleasantly fuzzy, she felt like she was floating above her body, rather than in it. Why couldn’t she feel her tongue?

  “Do you want to see something really special?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I have a bigger collection of antiquities in the basement. There’s some stuff I think you’ll really love.”

  “You keep your antiquities in your basement? Why?”

  “It keeps them cool,” he said simply. “I’ve only been here for a few weeks and I can already say that Karachi heat is unbearable.”

  She laughed again, pleased by the distraction. “It’s winter. Just wait until the real heat kicks in.”

  He took her hand and she let him, and he guided her down a corridor, and then opened a door. There were steps, leading down. “There’s no light,” she complained. Really, it was getting hard to focus.

  “The bulb’s blown. Don’t worry, there’s a switch at the bottom of the stairs.”

  He was right. It was cool. The air smelt damper here, and… full of chemicals. When he turned on the light she could see grey concrete walls. And then…

  “No.” She simply said. “It can’t be.”

  He smiled. “Would you like to see?”

  “How is this possible?” Because there, right in front of her was a sarcophagus. The colours were dull and worn, but it was definitely adorned with a painted image of a woman. The woman had long black hair and kohl rimmed eyes. Her face was impassive, and she was bedecked with jewels. Along her body there were images—not hieroglyphics exactly, but pictures of people and gods and birds and things that even Ra, with her limited exposure, knew were Egyptian.

  She moved away. It was one thing for the man to drink pink cocktails, but to keep a sarcophagus in his basement? “I…I think we should go back up now. I’m actually not feeling very well.” It was true, she wasn’t. Her whole body felt stiff, and slow.

  “Relax,” he said, walking towards the sarcophagus. “It’s not here permanently. This little lady is in transit. She’s going to a wealthy American. He has a collection. You’d be amazed at how many artefacts are actually in wealthy people’s homes.”

  “It would be great if we could go back up now.”

  “In a minute,” he said pleasantly. “Wait until I show you what’s inside.”

  She felt her legs buckle under her. “Saqib, I’m not kidding, I think there’s something really wrong with me. Please, help me up the stairs. Can we go find Ahmed?”

  He ignored her, and reached over the sarcophagus, lifting its lid. “Can you see? No? You could at least try to lift yourself up a bit.”

  She was panting now. “Are you drunk? Why aren’t you listening to me? For God’s sake do something.” Her fingers were tingling; she couldn’t feel their tips. What the hell was happening to her? She tried hard to focus, but the room turned upside down.

  “Not until you see.”

  He reached and pulled her up. “Hurry, please,” she muttered, as her world spun. But instead of turning towards the stairs, he moved towards the sarcophagus.

  “I’ve lifted the lid. Aren’t you curious to see what’s inside?”

  She leaned over the sarcophagus, and then felt the vomit come, so fast she couldn’t stop it. Batul. It was Batul. Or what was left of her, anyway. Her face was a shrunken grey husk, her jaw open, teeth grinning back at her. Her hair was the only unaltered piece of her, thick and long and still in springy waves around her shoulders. “What… what is this? How did she get here?” And then, as it sunk in. “What have you done to her?”

  He giggled. “She’s in the first stages of mummification. It will be another two months before she’s completely dried out. Don’t worry about the vomit. I can wipe that off the sides.”

  “Oh my god. Oh my god.” She felt the tears come, hot and fast. “Who are you? What are you?”

  He shrugged, pulling her away from the body. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Ra. I make my money from forgeries. It’s easy to forge things, on the black market. It’s not as though the buyers can openly admit to owning what they have, or get stuff carbon dated. Yet everyone wants to be special, don’t they? To own what others covet, to have their secrets that make them feel superior. The losers don’t even know they’re getting played.”

  She half listened to him, through the thudding in her head. He was saying something about his father now… not an antiquities dealer after all, no, but actually a drunken immigrant taxi driver in New Jersey who disgusted Saqib. Saqib was saying something about his childhood, about the hot shame of his beefy thick-fisted father who couldn’t even speak English, about his own gift for copying things, his ability to break art down into each individual brush stroke, each indent of clay. When he got older he put those skills to use, creating miniature bowls and figurines from various ancient civilisations. A two-year affair with an archaeology student in Brooklyn had helped him learn the business.

  “I actually had quite a passing trade going, but it was small bucks. I wanted to make it big, you know? What was the point, otherwise? It took me a while to realise all my efforts would be in vain if I didn’t smarten myself up, didn’t learn to look and act the part and reinvent myself. To be honest, that was the hardest bit. When you don’t grow up summering on Martha’s vineyard you really have to work at it. It’s the little things that give you away. But I find I can mimic people as well as I can reproduce things.” He paused. “Are you still listening to me? I hope so, ‘cause this bit’s important, Ra, to your future. You see, I upped my game. Do you know how much a mummy sells for? Let me tell you. $11 million, easy. I only have to sell one or two of these a year and I’m solid. I’m one of you now, rich, indolent, full of affected ennui. It won’t take me long before they accept me at your Club, before I’m on the board of all your charities. All for the price of some clay and camphor and a dead body.”

  “Why?” she moaned, desperate now. “Why did you do this to her? Why did you even come here?”

  He grunted as he pulled her to the corner of the room. “It was an unfortunate error. A year ago, I became friendly with a man named Charles. He was rich, entitled, and useless. Just like half this society of yours. Charles was an addict; he had really messed up his life. But… he was connected to some of the old New York families, and he helped cement my social standing. Then his family disowned him and I figured, why not put him to good use? It wasn’t as though anyone was going to miss him, and a Qatari royal had already requested that I help him find a mummy. I miscalculated though. His rich absentee Daddy was really upset when he went AWOL. He started tearing the city apart, looking for his son. So I left New York, before anyone came asking questions. It’s easier to operate undetected in a city like Karachi. You were right, Ra. Money is everything in this town. It hasn’t been particularly challenging to pay the right people to look the other way. I’ve set up a hell of an operation already, and, once I’m on the board of all your charities and president of the Club with my new identity firmly in place, I will be well and truly insulated from the events of New York. You all do like to protect your own, don’t you?”

  “You’re psychotic.” She tried to move away from him, but her body was like lead. She couldn’t feel her legs now, and her lips were numb too. Think! She had to think. Why was it so hard to think?

  He placed her on the floor in the corner where she sank, incapable of moving. “I met Batul at an exhibition at Mohatta Palace, did she never tell yo
u? She was quite the flirt, you know. We hung out a couple of times, talking about archaeology, and then I brought her back here—she wanted to buy the Minoan mask—or at least that was the excuse she used for coming back to my place. I figured we’d hook up, and I’d make a quick sale. Two birds with one stone, type of thing. Unfortunately, she was smarter than she looked, questioning the authenticity of all my pieces. She was asking too many questions, so she had to go.”

  His voice was growing fainter. “If you look closely at her, you’ll see that I wasn’t gentle enough with extracting her brain—her whole left eye is saggy—see?”

  “I can’t see,” she whispered. “I can’t see anything.” It was true, she realised with a shock. The world had gone black. She tried to lift herself up but fell back, her limbs refusing to obey her anymore. “What have you done to me?”

  “Oh that’s just the toxin,” he replied casually. She could hear him moving around, dragging something along the floor of the basement. He was breathing heavily. “It’s temporary, don’t worry. You’ll be unconscious soon. You won’t feel a thing, I promise.”

  “What… what will you do?”

  “Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve been saying? Batul talked about you so much, in between begging for her life and asking me to end her parent’s suffering by letting her contact them. After I killed her and her eye socket started to droop, I thought, it was meant to be. I probably can’t sell her now, she’s too damaged. But I can start again, put another body in the sarcophagus. I have an eager buyer lined up in Austin already. $11 million! Enough to buy plenty of Karachi real estate.”

  She could hear his footsteps, getting closer.

  “You can replace her. I already have three of my servants upstairs ready to swear that you left the party and got into a white Corolla that was driven by a girl of Batul’s description. The police will have a field day with that, don’t you think? The two of you running away together?” He giggled. “Maybe your parents will think you were secret lovers. Don’t be sad, Ra. You’ll be reunited with her. Won’t that be nice, at least?”

  She tried to scream, but she couldn’t take in enough air.

  He leaned over her, peering. “Are you still awake? I need you to be unconscious, I don’t want to leave any marks when I kill you, it’s not good for the process. Blink if you can hear me.”

  She couldn’t see. She couldn’t move. She could barely breathe. But she could hear him, somewhere in the distance.

  And then she was in the air, lifted and swung over his shoulders, and the smell of fresh laundry and spicy cologne intermingled with chemicals made her want to gag, but she was so tired, and everything was numb.

  “Christ you’re heavier than I thought you would be. Big boned, are we? Easy does it. I just need… uff what did you eat for dinner? I’ve moved Batul out of the sarcophagus, I just need to see how well you fit in here. Egyptian women were smaller, back then. Oh… great, it’s a tight squeeze but you just about fit. See? It was meant to be.”

  Was he whistling? She could hear whistling, or roaring, or something rushing past her ears.

  “I’m just going to close this lid for a bit, okay? Bend your knees a bit more, that’s a girl. It’ll be dark in there, but you won’t mind, will you? It’s not like you can see anything. A few minutes in here, and you will run out of air. It will be peaceful, I promise you that, Ra.”

  The roaring was gone now, she could hear scraping, wood against wood.

  “Good night, Ra. Tell Batul I’m sorry about her eye, when you see her.”

  And even though she couldn’t see, she could feel it then. A different kind of darkness. She closed her eyes.

  (I was astonished by the broken window I saw when I visited the city, because the hole between its cracks was so absolutely perfect an image of a flying crow. I took a lot of pictures of it, sure that what I was looking at was a happy accident.

  On my second visit to the same neighbourhood, however, I stopped by a mattress warehouse. In one pane of its main window was a hole in the shape of a stylized gorilla, pounding its chest.

  ‘It’s a dying art,’ my guide said, when she realised what I was gawping at. ‘Today they do it on ladders, with very fine hammers. Back in the day the best practitioners used to pride themselves on being able to render pretty much any animal you ordered with a single thrown stone.’

  Nowadays they mass-produce windows with careful perforations in the glass, so if you hit them right you’ll have your tiger, your trout, your dancing bear. In the church of the main square, the stained-glass head of Mary Magdalene—which was certainly not pre-prepared like that—is broken by a hole in the shape of a badger. It was a kid who did it, the priest said, 40 years ago, with one stone, one throw, the old way. He smiled when I asked him if he’d known the culprit, in such a way as to imply that it had been him.)

  Swipe Left

  Daniel Polansky

  Andrea, 27. First shot is a close up of blonde hair and blue eyes and so is the second. Always a reason if they won’t let you see below the shoulders. Swipe left.

  Jean, 25. Red haired and chubby, but that kind of chubby where you know they like sex. Swipe right.

  Maddy, 32. In a group in all her pictures, and so it takes thirty seconds to discover that she’s the least pretty one in all of them. Always make sure to stand next to an ugly cousin, that’s amateur hour. Swipe left.

  Erin, 28. Apple-cheeked, strange eyes, alone in all her pictures. Why apple and not tomato? Both red. Both about the same size. Tomatoes aren’t a fruit, obviously. I mean they’re a fruit but they aren’t sweet. Swipe right cause my thumb was moving that way anyhow.

  Moonflower, 30, not her fault she has horrible hippie parents, swipe right in sympathy of what must have been a difficult upbringing, also because she has pretty hair.

  Interrupted by a happy buzz and some upbeat graphics, the usual Skinner box bells and whistles. Erin is quick on the draw.

  Hi!

  Hi. How’s your Tuesday?

  Fine. You’ve got great hair.

  I do in my photo. That’s why I made it my photo. Thanks. I comb it.

  ROTFL.

  But she isn’t, really.

  Where do you live?

  Brooklyn.

  Me too!!!

  One exclamation point wasn’t sufficient? At least she didn’t add an emoji. I hate emojis. I mean, a smiley face here or there to offer some context, fine, but the—

  How’s your day been?

  —thing where you have to have to dress up every sentence like it was an adolescent’s notebook, smiling panda bears and party hats; just the worst. Good, how was yours?

  OK! Where are you in Brooklyn?

  Abby, 29. Christ, are people still dressing up as Rosie the Riveter? In 2018? Seriously? Swipe left.

  Jasmine, 33. Sphinx-like and sexy in pictures one and two, but in the third she’s smiling and her smile is all crooked. Everyone is as pretty as their ugliest picture. Swipe left.

  I’m in Fort Greene. Bed-Stuy, technically, actually, but Fort Greene sounds sexier. Where are you?

  I’m in Bed-Stuy!!

  !!!!! total and we’re not even through the preliminaries. Fun.

  You want to meet for a drink?

  Do I? This is all getting a little bit real for an evening where I ate takeout Indian and have a Game of Thrones episode waiting in the queue. What’s the best-case scenario, really? She’s perfect and amazing and we get married and have happy children and die in the same bed?

  Gertrude, 34. I like that hair bun, but three of Gertrude’s five pictures appear to be from Burning Man, that’s going to be a hard pass. Swipe left.

  Is there a bar you like?

  On the other hands, that’s an auspicious sort of enthusiasm, and what’s the point of living in New York if you can’t get a drink with a strange girl on a weekday? Provided it’s a close drink. The Admiral? On Washington.

  Perfect! See you in 40?

  Cool.

  Can’t wait!
/>
  I take a shower and debate what shoes to wear. The suede ones are nice, but it might rain. It probably won’t rain. It might rain, though. I settle for sneakers and newish jeans and my second-best shirt. In the summer in the city the heat sticks around till midnight and I end the walk to the bar sweat-stained. She said forty minutes, but I get there early to grab a seat in the back, hate having to do one of these at the front counter, every quip and shudder on public display.

  Yaela, 35. What is Yaela? Russian? Israeli? Whatever, foreign chicks are my kryptonite. Swipe right.

  Kiki, 33. I like the kimono in the second picture, but she looks too much like that girl I was seeing last winter, the one who—

  I’m Erin.

  Hi, I’m Matt.

  Due fairness, she looks like her pictures, she just doesn’t look like her pictures the way I wanted her to. Her forehead goes on a long time before reaching hair, and she’s wearing a perfume that smells like candy or like fruit-flavored candy but isn’t quite masking whatever’s beneath it.

  This place is great!

  It’s OK, actually, there are five on the block that look just like it, and the pricier ones I save for second dates. Thanks, yeah, I come here a lot. Can I get you something?

  White wine?

  One sec.

  The barman smirks at me. Bartenders are the smuggest fucking people alive, you’d think they were performing open heart surgery rather than mixing cocktails. A can of Narragansett and your house white.

  Got you.

  At the other end of the counter a guy is doing what I was doing ninety seconds ago, looking up at the door every time it opens, oozing anxious anticipation.

  Twelve bucks.

  I thought it’s happy hour.

  It’s not.

  By four minutes. Asshole. Tip him anyway, that’s just basic humanity, I’d give Goebbels a buck a drink.

  Erin is smiling broadly when I turn back around.

  Here you go.

  Thanks!

  My pleasure.

  Her makeup is inexpertly applied. Makeup is so weird, when you think about it, like here I’m going to put big black rings around my eyes, that’ll attract a mate. But it works, though, which is even weirder. At least it does if you do it right. Find the place OK?