And so I did.
In one fluid motion I put the gas can in and pulled the coiled leather snake out, kept it tucked under my arm as I unlocked my door, rested it on the seat beside me, what Lester left behind before we went into the truck-stop bar for our last dance, his sheriffness, his sword, like a gift he’d willed me, a piece of him to carry and remember him by. I thought of us making love on the banks of the Purisima, him pulling out of me and coming all over my stomach, hedging his bets. I thought how a man’s dried come smells like dead shrimp, how I’d never even shot a gun before, just held one, a small one my first husband owned for about a month when the white snake wriggled through us and in the fluorescent light of the bathroom he had me hold it loaded, point it at my reflection in the mirror.
I drove north on the Camino Real, the King’s Highway. I reached over and rested my hand on the gun, felt its steel indifference. I kept my fingers on it as I drove the two miles to San Bruno, passing ugly housing developments on each side of the freeway, their hot top lanes broken up by an occasional grove of eucalyptus trees that looked olive in the gray light of the beach fog. I pushed in the Tom Petty cassette and turned him up almost all the way, turned into a mini-mall, placing the gun and holster on the floor, locking the Bonneville and walking into a package store next to a hair salon. I bought three Bacardi nips and two Diet Cokes, a pack of spearmint gum. Back in the car, I didn’t remember who had sold me these things—a man? A woman? I parked in the far corner of the lot near a row of manzanita brush, dumped half of one soda out the window, poured in two of the nips, sipped pure Caribbean heat, smoking, listening to Tom Petty on the cassette player but keeping it low, not wanting to draw any attention to myself, feeling like a cop in a parked cruiser, looking out the window at cars, people going in and out of stores. I was waiting for something to happen.
Through the brush to my right was a self-serve gas station. I started the car, took a huge drink of my Diet Rum, but the bubbles were too much and I coughed and started to gag and had to lean out the window but nothing came. I smoked two cigarettes before I noticed the music had stopped. I flipped over the tape, turned up the volume, and drove around to one of the pump islands of the gas station. I freed my gas can from the trunk and pressed the pump button promising I would pay inside and I started to fill the can, my cassette player loud through my open windows—louder than I had thought it was. Lester’s gun was still on the floor where anyone could see it, but there was no one around, just a woman in the pay booth reading something, her glasses pinching the end of her nose, her chin fat, Tom Petty singing, “Break down, it’s all right,” his voice as high and over the edge as everything I felt, what the rational would call an enemy voice, I knew, but to me the sound of him was good company, a warm drunk hand on my back, encouragement for what I had to do, the inevitability of it even. But the woman kept looking up from whatever she was reading, watching me with her head tilted back slightly so she could see me better through her glasses, so she could purse her lips at me like my own mother, already concluding just who I was and what I was up to before I even did. The pump clicked off, gasoline foaming up out of the can at my feet, the fumes so strong it was all I could smell or taste. I leaned into the car, Petty’s singing a smear of sound, and I pulled a few bills from my pocketbook, but I didn’t know if it was enough and I didn’t stop to count, the music so loud the cigarette butts vibrated in the ashtray and all I could smell was gas and I didn’t want to leave Lester’s gun exposed in the car so I unsnapped it from its holster and slid it out, black with a square barrel, lighter than I thought it would be.
I stuffed it into my pocketbook I hardly ever carried, hooked the strap over my shoulder, and walked under the bay to the lady in the glass booth. I could see my reflection in the window glass, my lips parted like I was sleeping, my face as still as a nun’s before she prays. The lady’s glasses were halfway down her nose, pinching the flesh, and she had her fingers on the short microphone in front of her, saying something, but it was just nagging static to me, nothing I could hear over my cassette player blasting from the Bonneville, Petty pleading Break down, it’s all right, it’s all right,the pay drawer sliding out and me dropping in my money, my left hand still in my pocketbook, resting on the hard checkered grip of Lester’s gun. The woman unfolded and counted the bills, three dollars. She shook her head, the drawer pushed out empty, and she sat there looking at me, waiting, her head tilted slightly, her face in a squint, her eyes narrowed like she couldn’t bear me or the noise coming from my car another second. She shook her head again, quickly. She put her lips to the microphone, but then I stepped back, felt myself pulling out the gun, saw myself pointing it at her through the glass, her hands jerking up in front of her as she sucked her lips in as if she were holding her breath, her pinched nostrils trying to flare, her eyes filling up behind the glasses. I watched her, surprised, I suppose, at how suddenly things had changed between the two of us. I wanted to tell her it’s all right; it’s all right. Her lips were trembling and her fingers were straightening into a church steeple. I lowered my arm, but her eyes weren’t on me, they were on the gun, so I stuffed it into my pocketbook and walked back to my car, a pickup truck pulling into the opposite bay as I got in behind the wheel, turned the music down and drove slowly back onto the street, my entire body as thin and light as the fog moving in around us, my trunk lid open, my full gas can still at the pumps.
I KNEEL UPON NEWSPAPERS APPLYING GLUE TO THE BROKEN LEGS OFNadereh’s mother’s table. It has been a very tiring afternoon; I have yet to nap, or take tea, and there persists an ache in my head between my eyes and ears, a sharp pulling in my neck. After the gendeh Kathy Nicolo drove away weeping, and my wife and I were back inside the bungalow, Nadi pushed into my hand a note written by this woman who is content to rob us of our future. Nadereh stood upon the carpet, her eyes shining with anger and distrust of me, and I saw there was no keeping the truth of all this from her any longer.
“Yes,” I said in Farsi, placing the woman’s note upon the counter. “These are our circumstances. What of it?”
Nadereh was quiet a moment, her eyes upon me but her face unchanged, her head leaning downwards to the side as if attempting to hear again what I had said. Then in Farsi she cursed me, calling me a thief, a dog, and a man with no father. She became ugly, zesht, her eyes turning small, the flesh between them deeply creased. But my own fury had been spent forcing this Nicolo woman from our home and I felt quite fatigued, empty of any emotion of any sort. Enough of these emotions.
I moved aside the broken table and sat upon the sofa, my hands heavy and loose in my lap, and I felt quite far away as I waited for Nadereh to finish insulting me and my judgment, my capabilities, my lack of forthrightness with her. All of these things I let pass over me like training jets with no ammunition, for I could see she was close to the tears of fear that have ruled her since the fall of our society. And yes, soon enough she was weeping, exposing to me her ignorant belief we would now be deported from this country for stealing the young woman’s home.