The helicopter powered off and the blades stopped, and Mike helped Mr. Schrub exit. I jumped down without aid, which was foolish because I slightly hurt my ankle. Mr. Schrub asked Mike to take my luggage inside after he checked over the helicopter and to leave it with someone named Irma. Then we walked off the concrete and onto a path of small stones on a grass field and toward the house.
His house was not as big as some of the other houses I saw from the air. Its walls were white stone and it had a white roof which in a few areas was conical. In the rear, white columns extended from a wooden floor and formed a shelter, and we bypassed an empty swimming pool and a tennis court. It was like a larger version of Mr. Schrub’s apartment building: very luxurious but not boastful.
Mr. Schrub promised that I would get a full tour later but that for now he was hungry. When we approached the rear of his house, a black man in a blue uniform was sitting on a chair. “Hello, Thomas. This is Karim Issar,” said Mr. Schrub, and I shook hands with him. “He has full clearance this weekend.”
Thomas opened a heavy black door for us and we entered the house. The room had as much space as a hall for concerts, with a crystal-and-gold object with false candles attached to the high ceiling, a staircase with a gold railing, dark wood furniture I could see my face in, and a large carpet with a pattern like an expensive tie.
Mr. Schrub led me into the kitchen, which was the size of my living room, and a man who looked Eastern European was sitting at the marble counter in the middle and reading a magazine. His name was Andre, and Mr. Schrub told me I could ask him to fix me anything I wanted. While he waited for me to decide, Mr. Schrub said he was in the mood for a steak and potatoes and salad. I was craving lamb kofta, but if I ordered it I would have to ask if the lamb was halal, which it probably wasn’t, and it would take a long time to prepare and possibly Andre didn’t have all the ingredients, so I ordered a salad.
“That’s all you want?” Mr. Schrub asked. I said I had eaten a filling lunch and was not very hungry.
Andre told Mr. Schrub that Mrs. Schrub was dressing for dinner and would be down soon. “I’m afraid it’ll be a casual affair tonight — just the three of us,” Mr. Schrub said. “The boys will be joining us tomorrow.” Then he told me I could wash myself in the restroom in my bedroom, and the maid Irma showed me where it was upstairs. My luggage was already present and the bedroom was larger than the bedroom in my apartment even though it was for guests. When I was finishing, someone knocked on my door. It was Mrs. Schrub, and I recognized her from pictures on the Internet of the Schrubs at social events. They looked as if they could be siblings, because they were both very tall (although she is approximately ten years younger), except that she had short blonde hair. She wore a pearl necklace and a long gray dress and high heels. I was glad I was in one of my nice suits.
She shook my hand. “You must be Karim,” she said.
“You are definitely Mrs. Schrub,” I said.
She smiled and looked as if she didn’t know what to say for a moment, then told me to call her Helena and offered to tour the house with me before dinner. She displayed many rooms to me, and after seeing all the expensive furniture in them, they looked similar to me, but possibly that’s because I don’t have mastery in interior decoration, e.g., in the same way that Mrs. Schrub couldn’t observe differences between C++ and JavaScript. But Mrs. Schrub informed me she had decorated the house herself and described the objects in detail, e.g., a “Louis the 13th armoire” in the master bedroom she had acquired from an antique dealer in Vermont, so I said each room was beautiful, which was true, except I was also afraid to touch anything in the rooms, and if you’re afraid or unable to touch or utilize something it makes it less beautiful to me, and although the rooms were littered with decorations, in some ways they still seemed dead.
Then it was time for dinner, and we moved to the dining room, where we sat at one end of a rectangular wooden table that had 16 seats. Mr. Schrub said he hoped I wasn’t too bored during the tour, and I quickly said that Mrs. Schrub was an informative guide and I especially liked the armoire. Mr. Schrub laughed and said, “Helena, do you think Karim really cares about the armoire?”
“Not everyone is allergic to interior decoration. And Karim has a good eye for design,” she said, which was friendly but false, unless you consider theoretical design.
Andre served our dinners, and Mrs. Schrub had exclusively the salad. She apologized that we couldn’t use vegetables from their garden because of the weather. Mr. Schrub said, “Andre, would you bring up the ’93 Burgundy?”
After he left through a door in the dining room, Mrs. Schrub said, “Derek.”
His eyes linked with hers, and I looked at my plate to let them communicate in privacy, and then Mr. Schrub said, “Karim, do you like wine? Or would you prefer something else?”
I said, “I do not normally drink wine, but I would enjoy some tonight.”
Mrs. Schrub quickly asked me where I grew up, and I told her about Doha. She also asked about my family, which I valued, as the only other people who have truly inquired about them here were Rebecca and slightly Barron. Then she asked if I was “experiencing any difficulty acclimating” to life in the U.S. as “a citizen from an Arab country.”
I took a few moments to strategize an answer, as I didn’t want them to think I was ungrateful for being here or make them uncomfortable around me. So I said, “Americans are hospitable, although sometimes they do not know as much as they should know about the rest of the world considering how powerful they are.”
“I agree.” Mrs. Schrub put her fork down. “I very much support the Palestinians.”
Mr. Schrub smiled to himself as he cut his steak. “The lion’s share of people from my country agree with you,” I said.
Mr. Schrub laughed loudly and turned to his wife. “You support the Palestinians? That would be like someone from Qatar saying to you, ‘Just so you’re aware, I deeply support the IRA.’”
“I simply wanted Karim to know that not all Americans are willfully ignorant about foreign affairs,” she said, and I wished I hadn’t responded to her statement.
“You hear that, Karim?” Mr. Schrub said. “Not all of us regurgitate our opinions from TV news. Some of us do it from NPR.”
Mrs. Schrub looked down at her salad and Mr. Schrub leaned over to her. “Honey, I’m just joking.” He kissed her cheek. “Still love me?”
“If I have to,” she said. For a few seconds I had a mental image of Rebecca’s hair creating a tunnel over my head, but then I forced myself to focus on the Schrubs.
Andre returned with a bottle of wine. He showed it to Mr. Schrub, who nodded, and then utilized a corkscrew made of black rubber that depressed itself into the cork and removed it with ease. Its efficiency and reduction of human error and labor was impressive.
Andre poured a small amount of wine into Mr. Schrub’s glass. Mr. Schrub made a circular motion with the glass on his personal white tablecloth and the wine centripetally orbited around the interior. He inhaled the scent of the wine, then tasted it and gargled as if it were mouthwash. He said “Very good,” and Andre poured him a full glass and the same amount for Mrs. Schrub and me. He also poured water for us, which made me feel like when the doormen at my building perform a service (opening a door) that I prefer to do independently.
Mrs. Schrub didn’t drink her portion yet, so I wasn’t sure if it was rude merely to drink the wine without copying Mr. Schrub’s routine. I made the circular motion with my wineglass, but some of the wine spilled over the edge and stained my white tablecloth.