“What happened?”
I hesitate, for I do not know if he is inquiring of my reporting of him, or if he is referring simply to Kathy Nicolo.
“When did she come here?”
“Late in the afternoon. My son was with friends. My wife was resting. I do not know how long her automobile was in the drive before I saw it.”
He inquires what she was doing, asking this quickly, as if testing my story for the soft ground of a lie.
“She was weeping.” I lower my eyes to the loaded pistol in his waistband. “And she was aiming that at her heart. She was attempting to pull the trigger, but its safety mechanism was engaged, you see. I took it from her and helped her into the home.”
Burdon’s eyes have softened, and he looks directly into my own but I do not believe he is viewing me, but something else, a memory perhaps, a memory of him and Kathy Nicolo, or perhaps simply a vision of what I have just reported to him.
“That’s what happened,” Esmail says. “My father wouldn’t lie. He never lies.”
Burdon regards Esmail. It appears he wishes to tell to my son something, but he does not speak. Nadereh places a cup of hot tea before Mr. Burdon, then serves us as well. I put a sugar cube into my mouth and drink. I then remove the sugar so that Mr. Burdon will not think me rude when I must speak again. I see the question he is perhaps ashamed to ask.
I answer it for him. “She was quite drunk.”
“How drunk?”
I can see he does not like my use of words. His eyes become hard again and I tell to myself I must stay cautious and respectful. I am thinking I have never seen a woman as mast as Kathy Nicolo, only prostitutes, gendehs in South Tehran. “She could not walk without help, nor could she speak very well, sir.” I look down at the sofreh, but only for the briefest of moments; I do not wish Lester V. Burdon to mistake my gesture of respect as one of shame for the young woman. Nadereh sits beside me. She drinks her tea quite slowly. But when Mr. Burdon speaks again it is in a tone less interrogating. He inquires when Kathy Nicolo took the Halcion pills and I tell to him after she slept in my son’s room. “It was my wife who discovered her in the bath and she forced her to lose her stomach immediately.”
Mr. Burdon looks at Nadi beside me. I cannot read his face, for it is full of light and shadow from the candle flames. Nadi lowers her head. I regard my son. His elbows rest upon his legs, his chin upon the knuckles of his hands. He appears as if is watching a game of chess or backgammon between two professional players. I feel some irritation at this, but ebnadereh, it makes no difference.
I drink more tea and I wait for Mr. Burdon to say something or perhaps do something, for surely, the next move is his.
T HE ROOM FELT TOO SMALL, AND LESTER NEEDED TO MOVE, THOUGHhe had no idea where he could move to—the couch? One of the stools? What he should really do was carry Kathy to his car and drive her home to rest and wake up beside him. But where was home? The fish camp? A motel room over in San Bruno? And she shouldn’t be disturbed anyway. Disturbed. The word seemed to linger in his head like a shred of silk on barbed wire.
And she had no home because of this colonel, who kept glancing over at his son, then his wife beside him, then he would look at Lester, but only very briefly. He would drink his tea and look back down at the burning candles. Sometimes the colonel’s eyes shifted to the gun protruding from Lester’s waistband, and Lester didn’t like him looking at it; it was as if he was keeping an eye on the only true thing he had to fear, and Lester wanted to feel the pistol back in his hand, to let the colonel know one went with the other. But did it? Lester wasn’t so sure. Part of him wanted to apologize profusely for kicking his way into this house—breaking and entering, in fact—and he wanted to take his service pistol, walk out the front door, and just come by in the morning for Kathy. She would probably be clear enough to drive her car then, and she could follow him to wherever it was they were going. But this part of him was a small voice up against one larger: he couldn’t imagine leaving Kathy here for the night without him, not when he felt so shut out from Kathy herself, from the series of decisions she’d apparently made today that didn’t seem to take him into account at all. From taking his gun to taking the pills in the bathroom, what could have happened since this morning to put her over the line like that? And all he could think of was her and alcohol. Lester still felt the dulled edge of his own hangover from last night and he couldn’t imagine having another drink today. But she had gotten drunk, and he was beginning to think that had to be the missing piece of things. He’d seen it time after time in his work, people doing things deep under the influence they wouldn’t have even given a thought to sober, all the traffic fatalities, the petty thievery and arson. And she hadn’t made things any easier for him. Did she give him any thought at all when she took his gun from the trunk? Did she carehow entangled he’d become in this thing with her? And once he and she left this place, what was to keep this slimy officer from dialing the department, or even the Corona police? The Iranian had new charges on him now: B&E, and Brandishing a Weapon. And there were still the departmental code violations, any of which the colonel could pursue.
Lester was thirsty and he wanted to drink from the tea the colonel’s wife had served him, but to do so at this moment would feel like a conciliatory move, as if he were a dog exposing his throat to one stronger. He glanced again at the framed photograph on the wall of Behrani addressing the Shah of Iran, a man who years ago Carol had told Lester all about, a man who had hundreds, maybe thousands, gunned down in one afternoon for daring an unarmed protest against him and his entourage. And Behrani was smiling at some kind of party with him, and now the colonel’s eyes were again on the gun probably just visible in Lester’s waistband behind him.
Lester stared at him. Behrani looked back down at his tea and slowly, almost casually, he stirred it with only his thumb and forefinger. It was such a self-assured gesture, a man adapting easily to his new circumstances, and it left Lester feeling outmatched in some sort of game he hadn’t known he was playing. He began to feel afraid, and he wanted to kick the colonel in the teeth, this friend of dictators, this man who had refused to sell Kathy back her house.
Lester pulled the pistol from his waistband and set it loudly on the counter. “Go do something. All of you.”
The boy stood first, then the colonel and his wife. She avoided looking in Lester’s direction and she squatted and blew out the candles. Then she picked up from the couch the lamp the boy had knocked over and she placed it back on the end table, turned it on, and began clearing the remaining plates and glasses from the rug. The colonel stood there while his wife worked around him. The boy looked from his father to Lester’s gun to Lester’s face.