Burdon pulls Esmail from the bed, forcing him to stand beside us. My arm extends instantly around my son’s shoulders. And I hold Nadi’s small, warm arm. She is trembling, or perhaps it is I who tremble. I am surprised to feel my body standing at full attention.
“What am I going to do with you people?” He asks this of all of us but he is regarding only our child. “What were you going to do, Ishmael?”
“Esmail,” my son tells to him. I squeeze his shoulder and I am hoping he does not misunderstand this as encouragement to continue with any belligerence.
Lester V. Burdon inhales a deep breath, exhaling it without turning his head. “Did you leave this house, Esmail?”
Against my arm upon his back I feel the beating of my son’s heart. He shakes his head no, he did not. The video game emits the electronic music of alien aircraft flying off to battle in space, its refrain repeating itself every few seconds. Burdon regards the entire room, then he looks once more at my son. “Were you planning to use a neighbor’s phone, Esmail?”
Esmail does not answer. Our captor rests his unarmed hand against his hip. In his other hand the weapon hangs straight at his side, his shoulders seeming to droop as if under a great weight. Burdon’s face is lowered, but his eyes are leveled at our son.
“I am losing my patience, Esmail.”
I again squeeze my son’s shoulder. “Give to him answer, joon-am.”
“Yeah, I was going to leave.”
The refrain of the video game continues, repeating itself every five seconds; it is the music of the microchip, as automatic and insincere as lies.
“Did you leave?”
“No.”
Esmail has answered too quickly. Lester V. Burdon’s eyes become smaller, and he draws in his lower lip. He regards first me, then Nadi, the computer game repeating itself again and yet again.
“This isn’t working out,” says Lester V. Burdon. “It just isn’t.” He orders us into the bathroom that still smells of Kathy Nicolo’s vomit. The carpet is moist from her bath. The tub is full of her water. As my family stands close together between the sink and toilet and bath, Burdon looks behind and above us at the small window set high into the tile wall, his eyes passing quickly over Esmail and Nadi, then at the panjare once more before he nods his head to himself and touches the door’s handle. “I don’t want to see this move. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I to him say. “We understand.”
Then Burdon stands more straight, as if has just slipped a heavy pack from his shoulders. He regards us once more, then he pulls shut the door behind him.
L ESTER LOOKED AT THE DOOR A MOMENT LONGER, THEN TOOK THEchance and hurried to the front of the house. He stuck the pistol back into the rear waistband of his pants, switched off the exterior light, and stepped outside onto the front stoop. The nearest home was on the other side of the cars in the driveway, its screened porch light on, one in the family room too. Lester could see the corner of a TV set, the color flicker of its screen, then a man’s wrist as he lowered a cigarette or cigar into an ashtray on the table beneath the window. No one stood on the porch, no one stood at any of the other windows looking in this direction. He glanced to his right, but the small stucco house there looked equally quiet and undisturbed, just a few lights on downstairs, no one peering through darkened or lit windows waiting for an emergency phone call to bear fruit.
He went back inside to Kathy’s room. Her color wasn’t any better; her cheeks still had a yellowish cast to them, but her pulse was steady and strong, and when he put his hand to her forehead it felt cool and dry and she raised her chin slightly and kept sleeping. He stood and slid open the closet door. He was looking for one of the colonel’s neckties, but in this closet were only women’s clothes, elegant-looking wool gowns covered in long sheets of dry-cleaning plastic, silk blouses and wool jackets; on the shelf above were oval hat boxes with French words embossed on their sides; and on the floor were twenty or thirty pairs of ladies’ shoes, most of them stuffed with tissue paper. He could still hear the colonel’s wife saying they have nothing, nothing, and it angered him further because he knew they had had at least enough to buy this place with cash at a county auction. From shelf hooks hung dress belts—silver, gold, black patent leather, one a brown alligator skin. Lester took that one, wrapped it around both fists, and pulled, but there was too much give in it and he put it back, glanced at Kathy again, her hair fanned out on the pillow, her lips parted slightly, and he went back into the hall and picked up the long iron pry bar.
He could hear the Behrani family whispering in Farsi inside the bathroom, and he walked into what looked like the colonel’s office. There was a desk, chair, and typewriter. On newspapers on the floor was a silver coffee table on its side, two of its legs wrapped in masking tape. And hanging in the closet were twenty or thirty suits, some in fine leather garment bags. On the floor was a brass shoe rack six feet long and three levels high and it was full of dress shoes, loafers, white tennis and athletic shoes, three pairs of cashmere slippers, even a pair of worn work boots. The colonel’s ties hung over the closet pole between a dark double-breasted and a military uniform, cobalt blue with garish gold epaulets, both breast pockets covered with brightly colored ribbons and tags.
Lester took two silk neckties, then went back into the hallway, stood at the closed bathroom door, and began tying both around the base of the doorknob. On the other side the foreign whispering stopped and Lester held the pry bar horizontally against the pine trim to the right and left of the door, wrapping both ties around it before securing them with two double slipknots. He pulled until the iron was snug against the door casings, then stepped back to survey what he’d just done. He took a deep breath and let it out, then went into the boy’s room, shut down the computer, and moved to turn off the boy’s bedside lamp. On the table beside it was a framed color photograph of the colonel in full uniform holding a toddler boy on his lap in a deep leather office chair, the green, white, and red stripes of the Iranian flag encased in glass on the wall behind them, the man and little boy smiling widely into the camera. Lester looked away quickly and switched off the light.
In the living room, he locked the front door and pulled down the shades. Then he looked through the kitchen cabinets for coffee, even instant, but there was none, so he took a clean cup from the dishrack and put it under the spigot of the silver samovar. It was strong black tea, steaming hot, and he carried it into the bedroom where Kathy slept, the room, he assumed, that had probably been hers in the first place.
He put the tea on the bedside table next to a new-looking cassette player. “Kathy?” He touched her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Kath?” He had never called her that before, shortened her name like that, and it made him feel momentarily as if they had more of a history between them than they did. Her mouth had opened a bit, her face was turned to the side, and a thin line of saliva had run into the pillow, leaving a wet spot. Lester put his hand on her forehead and smoothed her hair back. It was thick and dry, and when his fingers touched the pillowcase she turned her head and let out a small sound, almost a whimper. Lester spoke her name again, but her mouth had gone slack and her eyes stayed closed. Her pulse was fine, though, and he sat on the bed and took off his shoes, the pistol barrel in his rear waistband pressing hard against his lower back. He could hear the muffled voices of the Iranians coming from the bathroom down the hall. The colonel seemed to be doing most of the talking, his Farsi sounding low and full of authority. A cool sweat came out on Lester’s forehead and the back of his neck.