“Go to your room, joon-am,” the colonel said, and the boy began to move down the hall.
“Wait.” Lester turned to him and asked him his name.
“Esmail.”
“Do you have a phone in there, Esmail?”
“No.”
Lester glanced at the colonel, who was standing straight now, his chin up, his eyes on his child. In the kitchen Mrs. Behrani picked up a dirty plate and held it. Lester took a breath, this logical, inevitable next step gathering in his chest, and he ordered all three of them back into the hallway and the boy’s room.
There was no phone, just a bedside lamp near a framed photograph. Tacked to the wall was the color poster of a skateboarder in midair, no sign of the ground anywhere, his arms spread wide, both knees bent. On a desk at the foot of the bed was a computer terminal, keyboard, and a modem, its Internet and E-mail cable plugged into the phone jack under the desk. Lester nodded his head toward the boy and told him to unplug the modem on both ends and give it to him. It took him only a few seconds and when the boy handed it over he glanced down at the pistol Lester was careful not to point at him.
“Esmail, I want you to stay in this room until I say otherwise, all right? If you have to go to the bathroom, I want you to ask me first.”
The boy looked over at his father and mother, Mrs. Behrani holding first the fingers of one hand, then the fingers of the other, and Lester heard himself order them back to the front of the house. He put the computer modem and its cables on the lamp table beside the couch, and Mrs. Behrani seemed to distract herself with work, with clearing the dining rug and rolling it up, her husband stepping to the side to allow her room, and Lester could hear the sounds of a video game coming from down the hall, a series of manic, off-key computerized musical notes followed by the scattered static of a simulated explosion. The colonel turned to Lester, his arms still folded in front of his chest. In the light from the kitchen he looked old and thin, an exiled patriarch.
“We have done nothing to you. What do you intend here?”
Lester had no idea. None. He sat down on the couch. It was soft and deep, covered with an expensive fabric. Everything in this house seemed expensive: the new brass bed Kathy slept on; the wine-red Persian carpets; the mosaic-framed picture of Persian horsemen on the wall; the heavy silver samovar on the kitchen counter; the gold lamp and shade the boy had nearly broken when Lester kicked in the door; even the late-model Buick out in the driveway. Again, Lester felt he was up against something larger than himself. His mouth was dry and he rested his weapon flat on the arm of the couch, running his index finger over the tiny ridges of the safety tab, his eyes on the carpet. “Who did you talk to in Redwood City, Colonel?”
“A lieutenant.”
“What was his name?”
“Alvarez. His name is Lieutenant Alvarez.”
Lester flushed on hearing what he had already assumed, and he tried to swallow but couldn’t. The sofa felt too soft, as if he were sinking more deeply into it.
“Certainly you would have done the same, Mr. Burdon.”
The colonel’s wife was running water in the sink so Lester wasn’t sure if he’d heard a challenge in this man’s voice or had only inferred it because he’d just used Lester’s name, but something shifted forward inside him—it wasn’t Kathy; she wasn’t to blame for any of this; she hadn’t done anything that couldn’t be traced to this prick, this man who was looking down at his hand resting on his leg, at a gold ring there with a red stone in the center. A ruby?Lester could feel the muscles tightening around his eyes and mouth. He sat up. “When do you plan to give this house back, Colonel?”
Mrs. Behrani was still at the sink drying plates with a white cloth, her face turned slightly toward the counter where her husband sat, though he remained silent, sitting with his back straight, as if he was above having to respond to Lester’s question at all.
Lester took a breath. “Do you really needthis tiny place?”
“This is none of your business, sir.”
Lester pushed himself from the couch and was at the counter before he could even get a full grip on his pistol. He told himself to keep the weapon at his side, no need to dig a deeper hole, but the colonel’s face was so still, so impassive, the whites of his eyes yellowed with age and a world-weariness that seemed to reduce Lester instantly to no real threat at all, only a mere nuisance, like Kathy, like the dispute over this house; Lester had no choice but to push the square barrel up under the colonel’s chin. His heart fluttered behind his ribs, and his organs seemed to float inside him. He pulled the hammer all the way back, but kept the final safety on, and he could smell radish on the colonel’s breath. The Iranian’s lips began to purse like he was getting ready to speak, but Lester pushed the pistol harder into the underside of his chin. “That woman sleeping back there is my business. Everything about her is my business. Do you understandme? Now I want you to start thinking how we’re going to solve all this.”
The colonel’s wife was crying softly, and in his peripheral vision Lester could see her standing there in the kitchen holding the white dishcloth in both her hands as if she were praying with it. “Please, please, we have nothing. Nothing. My husband only is good. Our son must to go university. That is all. Please, we are good people.” She kept crying, quietly, taking in long shuddering breaths of air. The colonel’s eyes were wet, though Lester didn’t know if this was from fear or the fact he wasn’t blinking. Lester thumbed the hammer back to quarter-lock, edged the pistol from under the colonel’s jaw, and sat down on the stool next to him, facing him. He rested his gun on the countertop and he seemed to be waiting for the colonel’s wife to continue, but she only sniffled and pressed her finger discreetly to her nose. The notes of the boy’s computer video game sped into a high-pitched victory tune that soon faded into electronic space, and Lester’s back and head felt suddenly too exposed to possibility and he stood and moved to the end of the counter, but the hallway was empty and the iron crowbar was still leaning against the door casing where the colonel had left it. Lester’s arms and legs were heavy and there was a slight tremor in the forearm of his gun hand. He wanted to see Kathy, to check on her, but now he couldn’t leave these people alone to do it.
“Tell to him, Massoud,” the wife said. “To him explain.”
But the colonel didn’t seem to be listening. He was looking straight at Lester, the cheeks of his face empty of color, his eyes narrowed slightly, his lips a straight line, and Lester knew he’d just crossed a border not only in himself, but in the colonel as well. Lester waved his pistol in their general direction, then stood to the side of the hallway’s entrance, told them to go first. “We’re going to see how the owner of this house is doing.” But the words came out sounding hollow to him, like there was a lie in what he’d just said, and as the colonel and his wife moved past him into the hallway, the wife still sniffling, Lester followed with his pistol hanging heavily at his side and he had a sudden wish for the colonel to do something, to grab the crowbar and try to swing it at him, to run, anything, anything that might make this gun in his hand feel less like the burdensome overreaction it had become.
M OMENTS HAVE PASSED SINCE LESTER V. BURDON PRESSED TO MYflesh his loaded weapon, yet still I am feeling it against my skin and it is no effort to imagine the large-caliber bullet tearing through my head like a missile, and I want only to kill this man who has broken into our home to do this after we saved his gendeh’s pitiful life.
But I can of course do nothing with this desire, and my body has become quite stiff, the muscles of my neck, back, and legs as tight as if bound with rusted chain. The man orders us to Nadereh’s bedroom. I move slowly. Nadi is to my back, Burdon to hers. I enter the room first. The gendeh sleeps peacefully, her thick hair a nest around her small face. Burdon orders us to the far side of the bed and with his free hand he puts his fingers to the artery beneath the woman’s jaw. After a moment, he places his palm over her forehead. And he no longer appears confused. He touches her cheek, then tells to us we will visit our son, and he follows us. Again, I enter first. Esmail sits upon the bed in which Kathy Nicolo slept. The video game’s remote control panel is backwards upon his lap, and the window behind him is open widely, the screen as well, the outdoors light shining upon the mist over the grasses, and Esmail’s eyes are quite large and I feel in my hands the pounds of my heart; in Farsi I whisper to him to close it immediately: “Holah, holah.”He jumps to the task, the remote control box falling to the floor. I cough quite loudly but we are too late; Lester V. Burdon pushes past Nadi and me and with one hand upon my son’s shoulder he pulls him from the window. Esmail nearly falls backwards from the bed but Burdon stops him with the side of his body, the weapon in his hand at his leg. It is within one step of me. I can reach and grasp it, twist it from him, but I do nothing for I imagine the gun firing, my son or wife hurt or worse.