I rested my right foot on the hump in the middle of the floor beneath the console. The ache wasn’t as sharp, but now there was a warm throbbing that came with my heartbeats which were faster than normal because I was smoking practically one cigarette after another. I was also thinking of Lester Burdon again, his sad eyes and crooked mustache, his little station wagon driving off into the fog. I knew I’d been thinking of him off and on since then; I kept seeing that dark need in his face as he sat across from me at Carl Jr.’s. Men who have that look usually want to bite into you like you’re a fresh cool plum; and after they’ve bitten, sucked, and chewed they expect your juices to come back and stay sweet. But Lester’s need seemed different than that. There was a gentleness there too, a patience. So maybe it wasn’t really a need at all, but a wanting. Maybe he wanted.
In Daly City, I pulled into a gas station and hopped to the rest room with my makeup bag and toothbrush, a clean T-shirt and pair of underwear. I cleaned myself up, climbed back into my Bonneville with my wrapped foot, then dug through my pocketbook for Lester Burdon’s card. It had slipped into my checkbook between two blank checks: Lester was something called a field training officer and his office was at the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department in Redwood City. I put the car in gear, used my left foot for the gas, and drove onto the Bayshore Freeway, heading south.
T HE SUN IS WARM UPON MY ARMS AS I PUSH THE BRIGHT RED LAWNcutter that started with one pull of its rope and I smell benzine and that American scent of green grass that is cut in the heat. The engine is loud but still I hear the work of the najars upon the bungalow. The afternoon remains in their first workday, but already they have completed building the frame of the widow’s walk into the roof and I push the cutter from one end of the property to the next and I see them lay new boards of lumber across the structure and drive nails with their steel hammers in the sun.
The tall grass falls away beneath my machine like dead soldiers, and I am grateful for the silly blue hat upon my head, for it keeps the skin there in the shade, and even my forehead and eyes are protected. But I am grateful for so much more than this; after a lunch of chicken, tadiq, and radishes, I gave to Esmail permission to ride his skateboard down to the BART train to go visit his friends until early evening. The young najars had left in their truck to purchase building materials, and I sat at the kitchen counter reviewing the real estate pages of the newspaper when my Nadi paused in her cleaning and kissed me on my cheek. She stood close to me, holding the folded sofreh to her breasts. “Why did you not stay with me last night, Massoud?”
My wife has fifty years, but she spoke as would a young girl, a new bride. I thought perhaps she was disappointed in me, but then I regarded her smile, the fashion in which she held her chin low, looking up at me with those gavehee eyes, and as she took my hand and led me back down the corridor to her room, my heart was a flat stone moving over water and my breath was held like the boy counting the skips of his good fortune.
Afterward, as the najars resumed their work above us, Nadi put the blue colah upon my head and laughed as I stepped out into the midday sun. I laughed as well, for except for an occasional television show she barely understands, Nadi has not laughed. Not in the pooldar apartments, she has not. But here is different; here she seems to be living as if she is no longer waiting for life. Here she is free of our own masquerade, our own lies.
I continue to cut down the tall grass with ease, making straight and orderly lines of the dead green, and I make the decision, yes, we must stay here for the summer season; it will be good for us, a good rest. I will continue to work daily for securing a buyer, but I will enter into the contract that the property will not be available until autumn. This will also give me the necessary time for finding new properties to purchase, for it is clear I must buy only bungalows such as this, homes that are auctioned by county or bank. Perhaps I will discover a pleasant home or apartment we can rent while I continue to buy and sell for a profit.
These have been my thoughts, and they have been most pleasing thoughts for I feel once again like a man with his hands on the reins of his own beast. The najar tells me the platform overlooking Corona and the sea will be ready in two more days’ time. Soraya and her new husband end their honeymoon trip on Friday and so we must invite them and the groom’s family to our home for a small celebration. I will instruct Nadi to prepare her best chelo kebab, both barg and the tender meat of the kubehdeh. I will purchase champagne and arrange chairs on the widow’s walk, and we will all toast the health of the bride and groom, to our own health, salomahti.
At the street, I extinguish the engine, leaving the rows of cut grass for Esmail to rake into a bag upon his return. I wipe the sweat from my face. I am unable to cut the grass at the side of the house due to the najar’s ladders, tools, and the new lumber they have stacked neatly upon the ground beside the small section of old roof. As I push the cutter past all of this, a najar calls down to me.
I raise my face to the two young men, but the sky is bright and even with the new colah upon my head I must further shade my eyes with my hand.
“Yes sirs, you are doing a superior job.”
“Thank you,” replies the one with the tattoo of a restaurant upon his shoulder. “Did you get everything settled with that woman?”
“Excuse me. To what woman are you referring?”
“The lady who cut her foot. She didn’t talk to you?”
“If you please, come down here so my neck does not freeze this way.”
The najar descends the ladder with his leather apron of tools hanging over his short pants. He is not wearing a shirt and I see his back is almost the color of a Bombay Indian. When he reaches the ground he turns to me and wipes the sweat from his forehead.
“I just wanted to make sure she talked to you. She said she would.”
“Oh yes, my wife told to me your girlfriend cut her foot. I am sorry to hear this.”
“Girlfriend? I never saw her before. She came up to the roof this morning all upset because we were doing this job. She said she’sthe owner.”
My hands become heavy and my voice trembles. “What are you talking, young man? Iam the owner of this home. I have for it paid cash. Who is this woman?”
“She looked nutty to me,” the other najar says from the roof, smoking a cigarette. “She’s swimming with one fin. She’s probably down the street telling somebody she owns their house, too.”
The najar beside me laughs and I smile, but I do not quite believe in this smile and stop. “In my country crazy people are put in hospitals, but here you let them wander as free as sheep.”
“This is true,” the young najar says, picking up from the ground a paper bag of nails, then climbing back up the ladder to his work. The other one extinguishes his cigarette beneath his foot upon the new boards.
“Please tell to me if the woman returns, thank you very much.” I continue pushing my grass cutter to the rear lawn that is completely in the shadow of the house. There is only a thin line of sun upon the ground at the base of the tall hedge trees and it is there I stop to pull the cutter’s rope two times before the engine starts. I give it as much benzine as it can drink, and I feel thankful for all the noise it makes.
F OR ALMOST THIRTY MINUTES I SAT IN THE CAR PARKED ACROSS THEstreet from the Hall of Justice building in Redwood City. It was eight or nine stories high, and the concrete sidewalk was so white under the sun I had to lower the visor and put on Nick’s old Ray-Bans that were too big for my face. Across the street from the Hall of Justice was an old courthouse building with a huge dome of stained glass, and there were no trees on either side of the main street, just parking meters and shining cars. Every few minutes I got the urge to open the door to go find Lester for a possible lunch date, but then I’d think of that ring on his finger, that sadness in his eyes, and I’d smoke a cigarette, tap my own wedding ring on the wheel, and wonder just what it was I thought I was doing.