Lester took in Doug’s face, his friend’s forehead all ridged with concern, his eyes blue and bright and earnest as he’d ever seen them. But naive too. It’s what Lester had always liked and disliked about him. “I don’t look at it that way.” Lester turned to open one of the doors, letting Doug’s hand fall away. He could feel the echo of his heart in his veins, and he was thirstier than ever. “I appreciate you looking out for me, Doug, but tell you what: you go patrol your territory and I’ll patrol mine, okay, man?”
Lester turned and walked into the air-conditioned Hall of Justice. Three lawyers in dark suits stood at the elevators with their briefcases and paperwork. He glanced at his watch and decided to skip the Coke. Maybe Alvarez would offer him coffee, or water. He stood and waited, his hands crossed in front of him, his eyes on the polished brass elevator doors. He could see his reflection there, taller than the lawyers, but divided by the center line where the doors met. Then the tone sounded, the doors began to part, and as Lester moved forward he watched his own image spread out from the middle then disappear.
T HERE WAS JUST WHAT WAS IN FRONT OF ME, THINGS I KNEW BUTdidn’t: an empty chair facing the side of my bed; an open door with a brass-plated knob, the knob of all the doors of all the rooms I’d ever lived in; lamplight across the blanket that covered me completely, even my arms—it looked like wool, as brown and purple as eggplant, and I was too warm under it, but I didn’t move.
My throat was dry and sore, and my face and head felt flat, part of the pillow underneath. I was sweating. I could taste the salt in my throat, and I was waiting for my mother to walk through the doorway to get me up for the busride to school. But this is where I lay and sometimes watched Nick walk in from the bathroom. He’d come back naked or wrapped in a towel, his love handles hidden beneath the terry cloth, then he’d dress quietly in front of the closet so he wouldn’t wake me, stepping into his underwear, tucking his bobbing penis under the waistband, pulling on his suit pants and leaving them unbuttoned and unzipped until he found the right shirt. I’d sit up and light a cigarette, smoke it and watch him put on the costume he couldn’t wait to shed each night when he came home to eat too much, then smoke too much while he played bass in his practice room till I made him come watch TV with me, or make love.
Now I heard muffled voices coming from behind a wall, an ancient language, the colonel’s and then his wife’s, and I sat up in their brass bed in a robe I didn’t remember putting on. I held it closed at my throat though I was sweating and I felt suddenly queasy. The window shade was pulled, but a crack of white sunlight showed on one side of the heavy curtains I never hung. I remembered kiwi fruit sliced in half on a tray of tea, the colonel’s wife on her knees beside me, holding my forehead.
I swung the blanket and sheet away and sat up for my clothes. But there was just the empty chair. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, smelled tea. My mouth was so dry and it tasted terrible and I didn’t want to step out of this room. I heard the front screen door open and shut, and I got up to close the bedroom door, but Lester walked in from the hallway and looked at me like he wasn’t sure it was really me. Then he hugged me, pulling me to him, his neck wet with sweat. I put my arms around him and felt the gun handle sticking out the back of his pants, remembered my cupped hands under the faucet in the fluorescent light. Lester was hugging me hard, turning from side to side. I couldn’t breathe. I pushed myself away from him and stood there looking at him. His eyes were small and bloodshot, and there was a scratch on his nose, a small cut on his chin, his mustache crooked as ever. He stood so still, his long arms hanging there, that gun hidden behind him; he was every boy I had ever fallen for—lean and dark and over the edge—and I started to cry, covering my mouth and putting my hand out so he wouldn’t step any closer. I sat down on the bed and let it come.
Lester sat on the edge of the chair in front of me and rested both hands on my knees. They were big, his fingers so long I felt like a little girl, and I didn’t know if this was a good feeling or not. Then he got up and left the room, came back with tissues. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. I couldn’t look at him and I didn’t want him looking at me. My bare feet looked blurred against the carpet, my toenails chipped.
“Tell me what happened, Kathy.” His voice was thin, exhausted. I could still hear the murmur of the Behranis in another room. “Do they know you just walked into their house?”
“Theirhouse?” He looked behind him at the door, then down at the carpet. There was a piece of paper there and he picked it up, unfolded it, and handed it to me. I read it, my face turning hot, my stomach cold and hollow.
“They’re in the bathroom?”
He nodded.
I thought of the colonel’s wife bringing me tea and fruit, her lined, beautiful face giving me all her attention. “Shit.”
“Yep.” He took the note from me, folded it tightly, and stuffed it into his front jeans pocket. “I waited for you at the camp, but when you didn’t show up, I went looking for you and ended up here. I looked through the window and saw my gun on the counter and you weren’t anywhere so I guess I just feared the worst.” He kept his eyes on me a second, then looked away. He told me how he heard me moan, how he kicked in the back door and grabbed his gun, then saw me on the floor, and as he said all this, his voice steady, my head started to feel too heavy for my neck.
Now Les was using legal language about what he’d done: B&E, Brandishing a Weapon, False Imprisonment, all the real trouble he could be in. He sat in the chair with his elbows on the armrests, his shoulders hunched, his long fingers hanging there. I said: “I didn’t think you’d come back.”
“Why, Kathy? Why’d you think that?” He leaned forward and rested his hands on my knees.
“I don’t know.” I looked down at his arms, a long blue vein in the belly of his forearm. I told him about yesterday, when I started thinking for the first time how much he must love his kids and how they must love him, and how bad I felt squeezing myself into that picture. And so I made a sort of vow to myself to try and solve my problems without fucking up anyone else’s life, drove here to talk to the colonel’s wife woman to woman, but her husband came home and forced me into my car, and as I told Les this I felt angry again. I kept my eyes on the veins in Lester’s arm the whole time I spoke. His foot was bouncing slightly, then it stopped.
“When did you drink, Kathy?”
I told him, but I couldn’t remember what came first and what came later. I almost didn’t tell him about the woman at the gas station, but then I did and he asked if she got a good look at me, at the plates of my car.
“I don’t know.”
We were both quiet. He got up and sat on the bed next to me, put his arm around my back. His body odor was strong and his breath was bad, like old coffee, and this made me feel a little better, the fact his smell wasn’t pure and clean. Then I thought of my own teeth coated with dried stomach acid, and I kept my face down. There was a knocking on the inside of the bathroom door down the hall, the colonel’s muffled voice calling Lester “sir,” asking to be let out so his family could eat.
“This is crazy, Les.”
“Crazy?” He was holding me against him, his voice hot in my ear. “What about trying to kill yourself, Kathy? What do we call that?” He let go of me and stood, the pistol handle sticking out his waistband. “Just tell me this: was it drinking too much on a really bad day? Or do you really want to die?”
The colonel knocked on the bathroom door again. I looked back down at the Persian carpet, at all those dark reds and purples. My throat began to close up. “I just—”