House of Sand and Fog (9 page)

Lester put his hand over mine on the table. It was warm and heavy. “He’s a fool.”

I looked down at his hand. “Have you been watching me, Officer Burdon?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“It is?”

“That you didn’t lie.”

He took a breath. “I haven’t stopped thinking of you since the eviction, Kathy.” I looked at him now. His voice was quiet, but there was something like boldness in his eyes. My right foot ached but our knees were touching. He lowered his eyes, but then, as if he’d made himself do it, he looked back at me, his brown eyes not bold anymore. He reminded me of me. He squeezed my hand and I suddenly felt so close to him that kissing him didn’t even feel like a forward movement. His mustache was prickly and soft against my upper lip and I let my mouth open and I tasted his sweet Coke. I held his back and he held mine and the kiss went on for a long time, it seemed, until we finally took a breath and pulled apart and the fog was floating in close to the beach and it was getting hard to see the water. I looked at him, at his small straight nose, his lower lip beneath his mustache, his shaved chin. When I got to his eyes that were taking me in so completely, my mouth felt funny so I focused on his gold star badge, his name etched on the tag beneath it, and I wanted to run my fingertips over the letters. The temperature had dropped and I had goose pimples on my arms and legs.

“Let’s find you a place to stay.” Les stood up and grabbed our empty cups, and as he helped me over the sand to his car, I didn’t say anything. We rode quietly through Corona into San Bruno, where he turned north just before the El Camino Real Highway. Under the gray sky we passed one-story houses with small grass lawns. Behind them was the highway, and I could see the cars and long trucks going south for towns like Hillsborough, I guessed, San Carlos, Menlo Park, Los Altos, and Sunnyvale, towns I’d driven through alone for months now, telling myself I wasn’t looking for Nicky’s gray Honda. Les was quiet behind the wheel and even though we were in his police cruiser, it was so familiar to be sitting on the passenger’s side of a car with a man driving again that I felt sort of up and down all at once. Then we were away from houses and in a neighborhood of gas stations, fast-food restaurants, and a shopping center right next to the highway. “So where’re we going, Les?”

He looked at me, then rested his hand on my knee and turned left, driving past the shopping center to a stretch of motel and travel inns on a grassy hill along the El Camino Real Highway.

“You want a pool?”

Without waiting for me to answer he turned into the small parking lot of the Eureka Motor Lodge, a two-story white brick building with a fake-looking terra-cotta roof. Outside the office door were two Coke machines and an ice machine. A carved wooden sign hung over its window:
Eureka: I have found it!

“This neighborhood’s better than the other one, Kathy. I can’t let you sleep in your car.”

“I’ll have to pay you back.”

“Shh.” He put his finger close to my lips. I pretended to bite it and he smiled, then went into the office, all uniform, gun, and wedding ring. For a second I asked myself just what I was doing anyway, but then I concentrated on how good a bath would feel, a firm bed with clean sheets.

The room was in the back, away from the highway, facing the pool. Les helped me in, then excused himself to go to the bathroom. I sat at the foot of a queen-size bed covered with a periwinkle spread. The floor was carpeted and clean. Against the curtained window were two cushioned chairs on each side of a small glass-topped table. In front of me was a color TV on a stand next to a walnut dresser and mirror. I couldn’t see my reflection from where I sat, so I started to stand on my good foot when the toilet flushed, the water ran, and Les walked back into the room drying his hands on a towel he dropped on the dresser.

“Looks like you’ve done this before,” I said.

“Why do you say that?” He stood where he was, a hurt look on his face, his hands resting on his gun belt.

“Sorry, it was just a joke.”

He opened his mouth like he was going to say more, then he squatted at a mini-fridge on the other side of the dresser and pulled out two cans of Michelob, handing me one. It was cold in my hands and I looked down at it in my lap, like I was seeing an old Polaroid of somebody I used to know and for a second didn’t know why I didn’t anymore. Les opened his and drank from it right there, standing over me. But I couldn’t even look up at him. I let the can drop to the floor and I flopped back on the bed and covered my face. What was I
doing?
My foot hurt, hanging off the bed like that, and I actually wondered if my thighs looked fat from where he stood. I heard him rest his beer can on the dresser, then squat to pick up the other, the leather of his gun belt creaking. The mattress sank with his weight and I lowered my hands and he was looking into my face, leaning on one arm so his shoulder moved up to his ear. He looked almost feminine that way, and for some reason it made me want to kiss him again. He was moving his middle finger over my wrist and forearm, and his eyes didn’t have that boldness in them anymore, but they didn’t look sad either.

“You have no idea who I am, Lester.”

“I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

I put my hand on his warm hairy arm and he leaned down and kissed me. His tongue was cool from the beer and I could taste it and that did something to me. I scooted away from him and sat back against the headboard.

“What, Kathy?”

I wanted a cigarette, but didn’t know where I’d left them. I crossed my arms in front of me. Les sat at the foot of the bed looking at me like I was about to say something deep. “I haven’t had a drink in almost three years, Lester.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t, but you don’t know much about me, do you?”

His lips were parted beneath his mustache and he looked away, stood, then walked over and took his can of beer into the bathroom and I could hear him pouring it down the sink. I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to do that, but I didn’t trust my voice not to sound bitchy. The air conditioner in the wall came on, though the room was already too cool, but my foot felt squeezed and hot and I leaned forward and undid the safety pin the Arab woman had put in the Ace bandage. It felt good to unwrap it, and as I pulled it off Les came out of the bathroom and I was afraid my foot would smell a little. It did. Lester squatted and looked at the sole.

“You should soak it.” There was a new look to his face now; distracted, like he was late for being somewhere else but wasn’t quite sure where that place was, or if it even existed.

“You didn’t have to dump that beer, Les. It’s not like that.”

His eyes caught mine. “What’s it like then, Kathy? I’d like to know.”

“You would?”

“Yes. I would.”

I believed him, and I didn’t like him standing over my smelly foot like that. I put my hand on the spread. “Come here.” He hesitated a half-second, as if he didn’t know what I had in mind, and truthfully, I don’t think I had anything in mind. I just wanted him to get away from my foot. But when he sat on the bed beside me, then leaned over and kissed my forehead, my cheek, my lips, his hand pressed to my rib cage, the other stroking my hair back, it was like I was an empty well and didn’t know it until just now when he uncovered me and it started to rain and I pulled him on me and opened my mouth and I held the sides of his head and kissed him so hard our teeth knocked together; I kissed his cheeks, his eyes, his nose; I licked his mustache and kissed him open-mouthed again. I began to unbutton his shirt and he pulled my T-shirt over my head, then everything slowed down as he touched my breasts. A change came over him, and me too. He looked into my eyes, checking on something one last time, then he sat up and very slowly untied his shoes. He put them aside, unsnapped his pistol from its holster, and laid it on the bedside table. When he pulled his shirttails from his pants, I swung my legs to the other side of the bed, unsnapped my shorts, and pulled them and my underpants off. My fingers were shaking, and I was thirsty, but now the throbbing heat of my punctured foot had moved up between my legs and I lay back on the bed just as Les stepped out of his boxer shorts, his rear small and dark. He turned to face me and I made myself look up at his crooked mustache, at his messed-up hair, his narrow shoulders. I was sixteen all over again, Ma gone shopping, Dad at work, plenty of time before we get caught. I gripped his shoulders, drew my heels up along the backs of his legs, and pulled him forward.

E
ARLIER THERE WAS FOG, BUT NOW THE SKY IS THE COLOR OF PEACHES
and the sun is low over the ocean I cannot yet see from our home. The najars have for two hours been gone. Before leaving, they cleaned up the area well, covering the new lumber with a large green canvas they weighted with old wood from the roof. I sit upon the front step and view my son using the rake to gather the cut grass in the yard. He wears what is called a tank shirt, and short pants which are quite loose, and I see the long muscles beginning to show in his arms and legs, his shoulders as well. Set over his head are the yellow earphones of his Walkman radio Nadi purchased for him in Japantown. I am certain he is listening to California rock and roll music that to me sounds as pleasant as five F-16s flying over one’s head. In this final light of day his skin is a lovely golden brown and for a moment I find myself thinking of our dead Shah Pahlavi.

It is not often I take alcohol, but last evening Nadi and I drank only one glass of champagne each and the bottle cost over thirty-five dollars. Now it is somewhat flat, but I do not care, frekresh neestam, and I drink from one of the crystal flutes we acquired on the Rue de Touraine in Paris. I tell to myself I am not allowing waste by drinking this champagne, but I know I am simply attempting to prolong the feeling of celebration I had when I purchased it; for inside my head I continue to hear what the najar told me of the young lady, saying she was the owner of this bungalow, and I try to replace his words with those of his colleague who insisted she seemed crazy, deevoonay, and she is likely claiming ownership all over the town.

After cutting the grasses, I thought of phoning the gentleman at the county tax office who supervised the auction, perhaps make an inquiry of this woman, but I was not able to pick up the telephone; if there is no snake at your feet, do not lift rocks at the side of the road.

Through the screened door at my back I smell the meat broth and stewing tomatoes of obgoosht, the steaming rice and tadiq. As she works in the kitchen, Nadereh is singing softly to herself one of Googoosh’s songs of love. Of course I have said nothing to her of what the najars informed me. Instead I asked her to prepare a menu and shopping list for the dinner party we will host for our daughter, new son-in-law, and his family. My wife’s face became so lighted with happiness at this, at the modest fashion in which our lives appear to be returning to the old ways, that she pinched my cheek and said, “Oh, Jujeh-man,” my little chicken, something she has not said to me in many years.

My son bags the cut grass and moves his head up and down to the music only he hears, my wife hums contentedly in the kitchen, and I feel foolish for worrying more than God ever wants us to. I call out to Esmail that he dances like a rooster, but he does not hear me and I begin to think of Soraya, of how tightly I will hold her upon her return. And I am thinking so deeply of this moment, of the love I hold for that dear girl, that when the small white automobile drives up the hill and stops in front of the woodland across the street I stand, thinking it is them returning early, surprising us at our new home. But written on the driver’s door is Bay Area Couriers, and soon I am holding in my hand a sealed envelope from a Society of Legal Aid, Lambert & Walsh, Attorneys at Law. My name is misspelled upon the front. I tear open the paper, but I must go indoors for my glasses, and I close the office door and sit at my desk.

Three times I read the letter, and I begin a fourth time to read it when my hands tear the paper to pieces and I throw them at the trash basket where they scatter and fall to the floor. My heart beats as if I have just climbed a mountain. I pick up a pen and break it, the blue ink spraying once into the air. Oh, this
country,
this
terrible
place; what manner of society is it when one cannot expect a business transaction to be completed once the papers have been signed and the money deposited? What do they
think?
No, it is clear they do
not
think; they are idiots; and they are weak; and they are stupid. And what of the widow’s walk? What of
that?
Will they return my eleven hundred dollars? Will they return to me my forty-five thousand dollars? But I must not even
think
of such an event, for I will not accept the return of
anything!
I will proceed as planned; I will sell this bungalow for the profit to which I am entitled, and may God damn them all to hell:
a sale is a sale.
They cannot stop it now. It is too late. How can this be a legal practice? I must phone them immediately.

I lower myself to my knees and search through the bits of paper for the letterhead of this lawyer. Nadi steps into the room, polishing a silver serving bowl she holds with two hands.

“Chee kar meekonee, Massoud?”

“Heechee, nothing, I am doing nothing.” But she must see something in my face for her eyes darken and she stops passing the rag over the bowl. I begin to gather the letter pieces from the floor.

In Farsi she asks: “What is wrong, Massoud? What is this mess?”

“I missed the container, that is all. Is it time for eating? I feel a bit weak.”

This answer seems for her enough, and she tells to me she said not to stay in the sun so long. “And the champagne, Massoud. Come, you must eat. Come.”

I stand and she takes my hand and leads me down the hallway but I pull free and say I must wash my hands, then I am coming.

“You must hurry. Esmail is hungry.”

In the office I fold the lawyer’s envelope into my pants pocket. It is too late to call these leeches, these modargendehs, these mother whores, but tomorrow I will drive there myself. I do not want them telephoning here; Nadereh must know nothing of this. Nothing. In the bathroom I wash my hands and arms with hot water and some of Nadi’s lavender soap. The water is very hot and I let it grow hotter still and I fill my hands with it. I want to open them but I lower my head and splash my face, scalding my nose and cheeks, the lids of my closed eyes. I shut the water and leave the bathroom, sitting upon the floor at the dinner sofreh with my wife and son. In Farsi, Nadi to me says: “Eh Massoud, your face is wet. Why did you not dry yourself?” She rises and brings to me a towel. “What is wrong with you, Behrani? Sometimes you act like a child.”