The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [197]
As though feeling Jimmy’s eyes on him, George turned toward the younger man. There was a pregnant pause. "I can’t feel my lips," George announced, and then he giggled.
"Me neither. But I do feel something." Jimmy pondered this feeling. It required the entirety of his concentration to identify it. "I feel meself suddenly overcoom with a startlin’ desire to sing ’Danny Boy."’
George rolled himself into a ball laughing, fists pounding the cushion on either side of his knees with uncoordinated appreciation. Jimmy sat up and snaked out a long arm to snare another jellied thing from a passing tray. He frowned at it with unfocused but mighty scientific interest. "Jaysus, Mary an’ Joseph! What d’ fook is this stuff?"
"Alien Jell-O shots!" George sang breathlessly. He leaned toward Jimmy to whisper something but misjudged his center of gravity and fell over. "Bill Cosby would be so proud!" he said, sideways.
"And who d’ fook would Bill Cosby be?" Jimmy demanded. Not waiting for an answer, he blinked at George with owlish deliberation and confided in his own South Boston accent, "I am hammahd."
George Edwards spoke fair Ruanja, good Spanish and excellent standard English. He considered "hammahd." He compared the sound to many mental templates. He found a match. "Hammered!" George cried triumphantly, still sideways. "Trashed. Destroyed. Totaled. Wiped. Bombed. Smashed. Wrecked."
Jimmy stared down at the small gelatinous timebomb shimmering innocently in his limp hand. "This stuff is great," he declared to no one in particular, since George continued to chant his litany of synonyms, unperturbed by the lack of attentive audience. "You don’t even have to take time off from the party to pee."
And Awijan, who had not understood a single word her howling guests were saying, nevertheless gazed upon them with beneficent pleasure. For Awijan was wholly relaxed and utterly unconcerned about her peculiar life and its almost unremitting tensions: quietly and intentionally and magnificently drunk, among friends.
SUPAARI WAS AWARE of his secretary’s occasional need to dissipate the uneasiness she fell prey to, and although he was surprised that she had taken the foreigners with her to the club, he was not angry. Truth be told, he enjoyed the almost complete silence that prevailed during their first day’s journey back to Kashan.
The second day was a little more animated but now the foreigners were thoughtful. Supaari suspected that they would have a great deal to say to one another when they reached the privacy of their homes and companions in Kashan. He knew from their meals together and their questions and comments that Gayjur had not disappointed them and that his hospitality had been appreciated. This pleased him. He now looked forward to doing the same for Ha’an and the others, more confident that he could control the situation in the city.
Supaari recognized that the silence on their last day of travel was of a different quality, although he could not have known why. In fact, as they came around the last bend of the river and Supaari tied up to the Kashan dock, Marc Robichaux, George Edwards and Jimmy Quinn were preparing themselves to be met by people in mourning.
Knowing that D.W. was close to the end, they’d offered to postpone the trip to Gayjur but he’d insisted they go on, not trusting Supaari to make the offer a second time after stalling them a whole year. So they had said their good-byes before they left. Now, they could see Sofia spot them from her terrace and watched as she and Sandoz picked their way down the cliffside to the dock. The ravaged faces of Emilio and Sofia told them, they thought, all they needed to know. Climbing out