The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III

then put two tiny pills and the cup of water on Jean’s bed tray. “Your heart rate’s up. How do you feel?” She pressed two fingers to Jean’s wrist.
    “Fine. I just need to go home. I have things to do.”
    “It’ll have to wait. Here, your doctor’s prescribed something to help you rest.” The nurse brushed the pills into the palm of her hand and placed them into Jean’s.
    “I’d rather not.”
    “C’mon, now.” She smiled even wider, handing Jean the paper cup of water. She turned to reach for the blood pressure cuff behind her and Jean lifted her hip, wedged the pills and a fold of sheet under her rear, and drank down the water. Her deception made her heart go faster. Her nurse opened the cuff, pausing to look at the monitor.
    “Are you upset about something?”
    “I have a granddaughter. I really need to get home.”
    “Oh, you will. Just not tonight, okay?” She cinched the cuff around Jean’s upper arm and began to squeeze the bulb, the cuff tightening like a serpent. “You need to calm yourself. Those pills will help.”
    Slowly she let the air out of the cuff, and Jean looked at her. She was younger than she’d thought, her skin smooth and unblemished, her lips pursed in concentration. Her watch was thin and gold but there were no rings on her fingers. No real human complications yet.That’s how she’d always put it to herself when it was long clear she and Harry would never have kids of their own, that it freed her life up to be less complicated, that they’d be freer than their friends ever would. But free of what? This dark, urgent pull inside her that she was needed badly right now by someone precious?

HE SEES HER . She leads men one at a time to the soft chairs. Her face is raised, and each kafir pays for one song, or two. Bassam sees only her back as she dances, her long hair, her hips. He looks away. He drinks his vodka, so new to him but already so old. He is ready to leave it behind. But not yet. Not yet.
    Many whores come to him. Their eyes and teeth and warm skin he can smell, but he waves them away. He will wait. He will watch those on the stage and he will wait for her to come to him and if she does not he will accept this as what is deemed to happen, Insha’Allah.
    The bills push tightly against both his legs. It makes him feel he has enough fuel for a long trip when, in fact, this trip is nearly over. This is not something he thinks but feels. An end approaching. And a beginning. Everyone here in a shadow world.
    This dancing woman upon the stage wears nothing but the hat of cowboys. He sits far enough away she does not attempt to seduce anybills from him, just the kufar seated near her. Her qus is shaved and she spreads her knees apart and Bassam can see it, her folds opening slightly, and he should look away for a yearning rises in him that leaves him only alone. He no longer sees the sin that will condemn her. He sees only the flowering herbs and dusty streets of Khamis Mushayt, feels again the nothing he was as Bassam, son of Ahmed al-Jizani, brother to Khalid and fourteen more, brother to two sisters whose eyes smiled at him from behind their abayas. Good girls, good Muslims. Not like he was. Not like Khalid was, though they lived across from the mosque built by their father and his many workers from Yemen and Sudan, each day the five calls to prayer from the loudspeakers. So many times during the day, working as a stock boy like any Arab, not a Saudi, not an al-Jizani, working in the housewares shop behind Al Jazeera Paints, he had to handle and store cheaply made incense burners, rolled carpets, lamps, crates of dishware and tea glasses, even having to clean away the reddish dust from the street that settled upon everything, having to bear the commands of Ali al-Fahd, who smelled of body odor and the hunger for nothing but more and more riyals, his thawb stretching across his belly, his breath old cardamom and coffee, then Bassam would use the Dhuhr and ‘Asr