We drank the second bottle in the bath. Les sat back against the faucet, his black hair so wet his ears stuck out and his mustache dripped water. I laughed and couldn’t stop until he snapped me out of it by singing a Mexican song he’d learned as a boy. He sang it in Spanish, looking right at me, like he were trying to caress me with each beautiful foreign word. Then he paused to sip from the bottle of Great Western and recited the last verse to me in English, his small brown eyes a little bloodshot.
“Your love was lightning on the mountain—
Your love was a river in the trees—
Your love was sun upon the desert—
Oh, but where is your smoke,
Your stream, your salt?
Why are the coyotes silent?
When will they call your name?”
Friday morning we woke up hungover. The curtains were closed and the room was dark. Les sat naked at the edge of the bed, called the front desk for coffee, then took his watch from the bedstand and held it up in the pale light. My mouth was dry, my head ached above the ears.
“I should’ve been home two hours ago.” He fell back on the mattress and I scooted over and let his neck rest between my hip and ribs. He looked up at me. “I’m sure she called the department and I’m sure they asked her if I was feeling any better.” He laughed, but it sounded like air forced out of a box.
“Do you really feel like laughing?” I let my fingers rest in his hair.
“No, but things are finally in motion. Maybe I’m relieved in a way.”
There was a knock at the door. Lester answered it with a towel wrapped around his waist and took our coffee from a blond teenage girl in baggy shorts. He handed her a five and told her to keep it. I put on my robe and used the bathroom before opening the drapes to a much too bright day, the sunshine reflecting off the cars in the parking lot, the white concrete beside the pool, and I sat at the table with the pint of chocolate ice cream from the mini-fridge that overnight had melted. Lester and I took turns eating it with the tiny plastic spoons that had come with our coffee. But he didn’t seem to be in the same room with me; he was looking at a spot on the table and he would take a bite and shake his head, then sip his coffee and shake his head again. My eyes hurt and I had to squint against all the light coming through the window. I got up and limped to the dresser and put on Nick’s Ray-Bans. Lester was looking outside now, the hair at the back of his head sticking out like dog’s ears. I was getting that off-the-ground feeling again, a little shaky about things between him and his wife coming to some sort of a head. I hadn’t planned on that; I hadn’t planned on anything. I suddenly wanted to be alone, alone in my father’s house on the hill of Bisgrove Street. But then Lester turned and said I looked like a movie star standing there in that robe with those sunglasses, my hair all loose around the shoulders. He came over and kissed me. He tasted cool and sweet from the chocolate, and I hugged his bare back, wanting to say something but I didn’t know what. Lester said: “Tell you the truth, I feel more scared than relieved.”
“Me too.”
“You?” He stepped back to get a look at me, his hands on my shoulders. “Why?”
I shrugged and took a breath. “I don’t know, I feel lost; I just—feel lost.”I started to cry. He pulled me to him, turning slowly from side to side, kissing the top of my head.
“You’ll feel better once you get back into your house. Why don’t you call your lawyer and ask her to tell you when you can rent the U-Haul?”
I went to the bathroom and blew my nose. My mouth was dry and I ran cold water in the sink and drank out of my hand again and again. Lester was dressed when I came out. He sat at the foot of the bed pulling on his boots. Behind him, the sunlight through the window made him look like nothing but a shadow. Then the shadow sat up straight and looked at me. “I’m going to go get it over with, Kathy.”
“It?”
“Telling her the truth. Stopping this masquerade ball I’ve been at for years.” He stood. “It’s strange, isn’t it? You feel lost, but I feel found. I do; I’m scared, but I feel found.”On his way out the door he turned back to me: “And you will too, Kathy, I promise. I’ll move you back in myself.”
THERE’S A HARDNESS that happens, this dulling of everything that leaves you feeling minus instead of plus, hollow instead of solid, cool instead of warm; men always hear everything so wrong. I told Lester I felt lost and he instantly thought it’s because I’m living out of a suitcase. I didn’t know this until he said that, but I guess I was expecting more from him, from his sad eyes and crooked mustache, his narrow shoulders and dark skin, the Mexican songs of his youth; maybe I expected some kind of wisdom. But what I got was a distracted cop on his way home to maybe leave his wife, which left me feeling like some witch waiting for her brew to take effect miles away and I wanted to get up and run as far as I could, but the inside of my head was too dry for my brain and every time I moved it hurt. I lay down on the mattress and placed a pillow over my eyes, but then the coffee and ice cream seemed to spread out level behind my ribs and I felt queasy and sat up. Why did we drink bothbottles? But the question left me in a black cave. I picked up the phone and called Connie Walsh. I was going to ask her when I could start hauling my boxes and bags, and I guess a part of me wasn’t surprised when she got on the phone and gave me the news in her flat lawyer’s voice; I guess I was really expecting something like this, that the new owner was asking an impossible price and not only would I not be moving back into my house this weekend, but she wasn’t even sure it would happen anytime soon.
“When then, Connie?” I was looking at the two empty champagne bottles, one upside down in the waste basket, the other on its side on the floor, the label hidden. Connie was saying something.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I said I think you should come down to my office, Kathy. Drive over today.”
S ATURDAY AFTERNOON I DRIVE MY NADEREH TO SAN FRANCISCO TOhave her hair done by an Italian kunee who charges more than we should pay. His business is located in Ghirardelli Square amongst all the specialty shops, restaurants, cafés, and galleries whose doors are open to touring people from all over the world. In the morning I trimmed the rear hedge bushes and I am still dressed in the cargar clothes I before would wear only for the Highway Department, so I do not enter the Italian’s shop, knowing, as I do, the many Persian wives who make appointments with him.
I sit upon a bench in one of the lower courtyards and watch the people pass by. Over our bungalow in Corona the sun was shining, but here in the city, in that area of large piers and wharfs they call North Beach, there is cool summer fog, a fine mist in the air, and many of the tourists look out of place in their short pants, sandals, and shirts with no sleeves that show the undisciplined flesh of their bodies. Many of them pause in their shopping, asking one another to take their photograph as they stand beneath a shop sign or in the center of the courtyard, dozens of strangers walking by them. I hear the speech of Orientals, Greeks, Germans, and French. But the majority are the more large, more fed, pink-in-the-face Americans, who carry their shopping bags, eating ice cream cones or drinking sweet sodas from cups as they walk past, their small loud children leading them.
I sit and I regard these cows, these radishes, and I again think to myself: These people do not deserve what they have.When I first came to these United States, I expected to see more of the caliber of men I met in my business dealings in Tehran, the disciplined gentlemen of the American military, the usually fit and well-dressed executives of the defense industry, their wives who were perfect hostesses in our most lavish homes. And of course the films and television programs imported from here showed to us only successful people: they were all attractive to the eye, they dressed in the latest fashion, they drove new automobiles and were forever behaving like ladies and gentlemen, even when sinning against their God.