“It’s Saturday?” he said.
“I hope you’re right, or I’m late for work,” she said.
“So you don’t — Shabbat?”
“To synagogue? Not every Saturday, no. Some Saturdays. My mother’s problem. I pick and choose.”
“Why aren’t you going today?” he said.
“Because I’m happy right here.”
Slava looked up at the ceiling. “Who are you?” he said.
“I know,” she laughed.
“Where did you come from?” he said.
“Los Angeles,” she said. “City out west.”
“What did you think when you got off the plane that first time?”
“Well, I’d been here before.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I thought: Here is a place where everything will be different tomorrow.”
“I think that’s why I dislike it,” Slava said.
“You don’t know anything except your neighborhood,” she said.
“That’s why I don’t,” he said.
“Something tells me that’s not why.”
“Let’s talk about you,” he said.
“It was lonely,” she said. “For some reason, I couldn’t talk to anyone in school. Sometimes you feel things very strongly and you need to follow it even if you don’t know why you feel that way. And I didn’t want to talk to anyone. It’s like all this was my secret and I didn’t want to share it with anyone.”
“You sat on the windowsill and smoked cigarettes.”
“Yeah. But then it stopped one day. I got tired of cigarettes. I really wanted to be healthy. The day I had that thought for the first time, I went to a yoga class. When I was finished, I went to another one. And when that one ended—”
“You did a third.”
“I went to half of a third. In the middle, I was done. I got up and walked out.”
“You’re enlightened.”
“Hardly. I just stopped wanting to dig around.” Her dead fingertip indicated the spot between her eyebrows. “I’ll come back to it. There are things I don’t have, and that’s all right. There are things I want that my mother also wants for me, and that’s all right, too. Do you know what I want?”
“Tell me.”
“For you to make breakfast.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Pourquoi?” she said, drawing back. “I thought we’d have the day.”
“We’ve had the week? I have an errand.”
“What do you have to do at ten A.M. on a Saturday morning?”
“Just something,” he said, looking away. “Some of us work on the weekend.”
“Don’t, Slava,” she said, and rolled off. They lay without speaking as she checked her phone. The crown molding near the ceiling was beginning to peel in one corner.
“How did you start fact-checking?” he said cautiously.
She looked over at him. “Why is this so important to you?” she said.
“Oh, I just hear you every day,” he said. “‘Mr. Maloney, is your bar made of pine or aspen? Can you call the manufacturer?’”
“Yeah, I guess it sounds strange from the side.”
“Mr. Maloney’s gone his whole life without knowing is it pine or aspen. When has anyone asked him what that bar’s made of?”
“What’s your point?”
“Does it really matter?” he said.
“I guess,” she said, putting down her phone. “But think about it. Maloney’s is in New Jersey. Let’s say they don’t have aspens in New Jersey. I mean, they do — I checked. But let’s say. Somebody happens to know that, they see that wrong, they say, What else is wrong? They lose trust. You can’t give a reader a reason to lose trust.”
“Okay,” he said. “But it’s not always an either/or situation.”
“Meaning?” Her eyebrows gathered.
“Let’s say Century didn’t hire women. You’d raise hell.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Now, take — I don’t know — an Arab woman. An Arab woman might say, ‘God willing, they will hire women at some point.’ Which strikes you as—”
“Fear-based naïveté.”
“Right. She’s… unenlightened. But she might not see it that way. She may be happier than you.”
“Because she doesn’t know better.”
“But to her it’s a fact all the same.”
“So you report that American women and Arab women see it differently.”
“Would you be a stay-at-home mother?”
“No.”
“But you aren’t having your direction chosen for you like the Arab woman? If you have a story that says, ‘Arab women are unfree,’ that may be factually true from an American standpoint. But it’s not true from a Moroccan standpoint. Or at least not a yes/no proposition.”
“She may be happier than me, but she’s still not free, however you look at it. I don’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, and let’s say it’s a mechanical response to how it was with my mother, but I’m free to choose. I won’t be harassed for it.”
“Not physically,” Slava said.
She rolled onto her back. “Slava!”
“During the war,” Slava said, “my grandfather ran away. World War II. When he turned conscription age, he had his identity card revised down by a year. Then he got on a train and ran off again, even farther east. If he hadn’t, he would probably be dead. And I wouldn’t be here. Which would make you less happy.” He peered over at her, but his attempt at levity failed. “Is he a hero or a coward? Which is it?”
“I don’t know. A bit of both, I guess. A hero to you, a coward to somebody else. A hero to me.”
“Pick and choose,” Slava said.
“Why not.”
“When does ‘pick and choose’ become ‘ignore inconvenient facts’?”
“When you’re trying to get at me.”
He waved her away. After a moment, he said, “I don’t get it. The witness in the box has put his hand on the Bible, so everything that comes out of his mouth is treated as fact unless there’s proof that he lied? Talk about naïveté! Because he’s put his hand on the Bible? Now lightning has struck and all of a sudden he’s unable to lie?”
“You can still check that a woman has two children, not three,” she said. “This village was founded in 1673 but that one in 1725. Chickens lay eggs. We landed on the moon. There’s video!” She stared at him. “You have to see the limit of your point.”
He shrugged and watched the fan spin above them. Arianna did not have air-conditioning. Outside, the sun dimmed under passing clouds.
“Maybe it’ll be cooler today,” he said.
“You’re actually going to talk about the weather.”
“It’s the stuff of poetry,” he said bitterly. The cat cocked its head, sensing an opening.
“This is nice,” she said. “It isn’t for real until you’re fighting. Why is it you can’t make me breakfast?”
“I have to run an errand,” he said flatly. Then he added: “For my grandmother.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sure. I’m sorry. You’ll come back here after?”
“No, I need to go home.”
“Okay, I can come there later.”
“Arianna.”
“Day apart,” she said. “Got it.”
“Not that I—”
“It’s okay. You’re right.”
“Tomorrow—”
“Just give me five minutes.”
She cantilevered her left leg over his right and lifted herself above him. He could feel on his groin the thin thread of hair between her legs. Even soured by sleep, her breath was fragrant — soap, musk, sunflower seeds. She cradled him in her hand as her lips descended on his. Quickly, he was hard, and she lowered herself on top of him, closing her eyes. She rocked above him steadily, as if he weren’t there. As she neared orgasm, she leaned forward until their chests touched, both sweating. The pallor of her breasts was translucent against his chest. Coming close, she placed her palms around his head and began to thrust herself into him. He had never been fucked that way before. He had never been fucked.