“Wha’ are you needin’ it for anyway, cousin of Mr. Nassim,” the Cockney wanted to know.
“Li watani,” Elias replied. “For my homeland.”
The man’s dark eyes were quiet. “Awright,” he said after a pause. “I’ve a name for you. If ’e likes you, ’e’ll ’ave anofer name for you.”
Elias would stake his fortune that the man at the very top of this crime pyramid was a local, with good connections to the Metropolitan Police and the mayor, and he’d reside in a town house in the most expensive street. It always was so. A note with an address was exchanged for a small but heavy purse, and the Cockney wished him best of luck.
After they parted, the only intelligible sensation Elias felt was a hollowness right behind his ribs. While his plan was successfully set in motion, its trajectory would carry him in the opposite direction of more private desires. Instead of going to the nearest telegraph office to send news of his progress to Nassim, he briskly walked the short distance to the Thames. The area was busy with working people. A few street boys immediately recognized him as a foreigner and buzzed around him, cheeky and annoying like flies, imitating his gait and asking if he wanted to see tricks. Westerners had a name for their city urchins—Street Arabs, owed to dubious ideas about the Bedouins, whom they considered homeless, roaming, and possibly thieving. Perhaps that was why Elias indulged the boys; he spun his walking stick and tossed a few pennies to the smallest in the group, and their gratitude was repressed under a thick layer of mockery. When he reached Westminster Bridge, a horse-drawn omnibus rolled past and the boys lost interest in him; they ran after the vehicle and tried to cling to it.
Elias stopped at the middle of the bridge and turned east to watch the river on its way to the sea. Gulls balanced above him, throwing their yearning cries into the wind, and the stink of bilge water hung in the air. A short distance ahead at the southern side of the river, the brown brick buildings of the wharves lined the banks next to clusters of bobbing ship masts. London. All the world was not here, Mr. Leighton, son of a dog, but it was still the richest city in the world. And the largest. It kept growing, too, stacking people atop one another and spilling over old borders at a quicker pace than booming Beirut. Despite death on every shadowed corner, the place was rapaciously alive, its hungry pulse reverberated through the railing under his hands in a cacophony of crowded omnibuses and busy cogwheels, of ship horns, steel hammers, and telegraph keys. Just behind him in the palatial building of Westminster, policies that shaped the world were made during strolls down a corridor. Where else other than America would an Irishman—or any man—go, if not here, where it felt as though anything might be possible?
The cruel irony that the displaced turned to the shores of the displacer was not lost on him, but the truth was that a home without a future felt like a graveyard to the young. A man only lived once. His mind was whirring, here on this bridge, examining potential opportunities, as it happened when he was immersed in a stimulating environment. El watan. The homeland. It had given him such rich and strong roots—and yet it kept denying him the full span of his wings. On the mountain, the head of the family had assigned him a role that left him treading water. At the coast, imperial soldiers roamed and might harass his kind at random, and retaliation could necessitate exile for the whole family. With the glint of the river in his eyes, a long diffuse confession revealed itself to him: that he did feel homeless. He knew very well where he came from, but where should he settle? Lately, whenever he was in any one location, he missed parts of the places where he was not. Nowhere was whole these days. He had accepted this about himself almost unconsciously; given that his origins lay somewhere between mountains and sea, he had always been destined for the places in between. It still left him feeling restless. A sense of what next? had become a rather constant companion.
Except for last night.
His grip around the railing tightened. He saw the quiet form curled up on the bed. The tears of bliss glistening in her eyes. In the lucid moment a man knew after passion, he had rested his head on her soft breasts and felt the rhythm of her heart against his cheek, and a deep sense of peace, as though time itself had stopped, had settled in his body. This was how it felt in his imagination: home. Perhaps it was why London began to look like an opportunity, not because of its gigantic port and international merchant class, but because of her. He stared into the glare of the sun on the water without blinking, as if that would cure the brain rot. A moment later, he was striding back to the street, overtaking pedestrians and horse carts. The house might be empty upon his return; she seemed like the type who would simply disappear when frightened. He stepped in front of a cab, causing the driver to holler at him. He cursed the driver throughout the ride for creeping toward Cadogan Place slow like a snail.
* * *
—
She emerged from the reception room silent like a cat while he was still in the hallway, taking off his gloves. Her eyes were huge in her face, and it made him think she was surprised to see him.
“You’re back,” she said. It sounded scratchy, as though she was using her voice for the first time today.
“I never left you,” he replied.
They regarded each other warily.
One moment they were separated by half the length of the hallway.
Then they were not.
She was flat against him, chest to chest, her arms twining around his neck with an urgency as though he had come home from a battle. They groped haphazardly, gasping between kisses. He pressed her against the wall, his thigh wedged between hers, her bodice already on the parquet. It was a relief to feel her bare shoulders under his fingers. It wasn’t enough. He scooped her up and carried her up the stairs. When he crossed the threshold to the bedroom, he realized he was holding her like a groom would carry his bride into her new home, and it was jarring like an off-key tune in an otherwise perfect harmony. Face-to-face with her, tasting her, feeling her glassy-smooth skin, his revelation on the bridge took on a different quality, because the woman in his arms was, in fact, reluctant to give more than her body. She could slip through his fingers like the wind. Instead of slowing the seduction to a more tender pace, his hands moved quickly. A button skittered over the floor, which made her laugh.
He was straddling her on the bed, trapped her nicely rounded hips between his thighs and pressed her deeper into the mattress with his weight.
She smiled up at him, a little uncertain but drunk on erotic arousal.
He slid his palms up over her ribs, and they groaned together when he filled his hands with the soft round weight of her breasts.
“I think of them every day,” he said, squeezing lightly, then a bit rougher. “I imagine doing this.”