“You had him,” Jeromy said.
“No one ever has me, ha ha ha,” Wilson said, and he put Jeromy’s head inside his angled arm and depressed his fist over the top of his head.
“I am sorry,” I said as I looked at the red half of the monitor and Jeromy pushed Wilson off and called him a motherfucker. “I will go upstairs now and allow you two to play.” They said good-bye to me and restarted the game.
I resumed The Grapes of Wrath, which I enjoyed for two reasons: (1) It taught me about U.S. history during the Great Depression through a stimulating story (e.g., there was no minimum wage in the time period of the novel, which causes problems for the workers on the free market), and (2) I liked partnering with the main character, Tom Joad. He attempts to provide for his family and has strong values, and he has an intriguing way of speaking to boot.
Then Irma knocked quietly on my door and told me dinner was ready. In fact it wasn’t dinner yet, but Andre carried a tray with a bottle of wine and crackers and several cheeses into the living room. Wilson and Jeromy wore higher-quality clothing now, and I felt foolish in my hiking clothing, but it was too late to change.
When Andre deposited the tray on a small table, Wilson reached for the knife and cut multiple large cubes of cheese for his plate and ate ASAP without crackers. Jeromy ate more slowly and with crackers.
“Save some room for dinner, boys,” Mrs. Schrub said.
Mr. Schrub watched them mutely and looked as if he were truly watching something in his brain. “Maybe we’ll have the ’94 Burgundy tonight,” he finally said.
“We had that last night,” Mrs. Schrub said.
“We had the ’93.”
“Dear,” she said as she put her hand on his leg, “I think you may be having a senior moment.”
“Do you want me to go down and bring up the inventory?”
Mrs. Schrub smiled and petted his head. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“You think I’m wrong, don’t you?” Mr. Schrub said. “That’s it, I’m getting it.”
“Derek!” she said. “Do you always have to be right?”
I remembered also that it was the ’93 and that he was right, and I also dislike it when someone thinks my memory has a glitch, so I said, “I think I can prove that Mr. Schrub is correct.”
Everyone looked at me. “I use a voice recorder to learn English.” I showed it to them. “If you give me a few minutes, I will locate the part when Mr. Schrub asked for the wine.”
They all observed me as I set the voice recorder on rewind and listened at different points on low volume so only I could hear. It was high pressure with everyone watching me, but I felt confident that I remembered. Then I put it on the table and played it for everyone to hear Mr. Schrub’s voice: “Andre, would you bring up the ’93 Burgundy?”
“Much appreciated, Karim,” Mr. Schrub said, and he picked up the voice recorder and inspected it before returning it to the table. He turned to his wife. “Do you have anything you would like to add?”
“I think it’s very admirable that Karim is so industrious about improving his English.” She kissed Mr. Schrub on the cheek. “We could all learn from his example of trying to better himself.”
Mr. Schrub looked at his sons. “Indeed,” he said.
I turned my face away from them all, especially Wilson and Jeromy, but a corner of my mouth curved up despite my attempts at restriction.
Then Andre told us dinner was ready, and Mrs. Schrub said they had a special treat for me. The dinner table had two lines of silver trays like expensive buttons on a coat, and when Andre opened them I saw kebabs, hummus and baba ghanoush, tabouleh, a lentil salad, and other Middle Eastern dishes.
It reminded me of when Rebecca invited me to see Three Kings. However, I was a guest, and once I saw it I did desire authentic Middle Eastern food, and I briefly felt my eyes hydrate like they did in the car with Barron, so I thanked them and quickly estimated the cost of all the food to reroute my thoughts.
The food was delicious. During the meal Wilson and Jeromy ate mostly the meat and didn’t try the lentil salad or the baba ghanoush. Mrs. Schrub asked them questions about their progress at Princeton. I didn’t ask anything, even though I wanted to know what a cream of the cream U.S. university was like, e.g., how the research facilities were and what class of visiting lecturers they host and if they could access the professors easily. That last subject is the area I especially wish I had in Doha.
Mr. Schrub asked about infrastructural development in Qatar, and I talked as intelligently as possible without appearing to be boastful, as I deciphered that Jeromy and Wilson weren’t interested and Mrs. Schrub was interested only to be polite.
As we finished the main course, Wilson and Jeromy argued over the last kebab. Jeromy said he had “called dibs” on it first, and Wilson said he had. When Jeromy pulled the kebab away from his brother, he crashed his elbow into mine, and it made me spill my spoon of cucumber soup. It landed on my shirt, which was my second eating accident with the Schrubs, although this time it wasn’t my fault and it stained my own material.
Mr. Schrub yelled at his sons for fighting, and when Jeromy saw my shirt, he said, “Shit, I’m sorry, man.” Wilson didn’t say anything.
Mrs. Schrub directed me to the nearest restroom to clean my shirt. “Actually, that one’s having plumbing trouble. You can use the one in Derek’s office.”
I left the dining room and walked down a long hallway to Mr. Schrub’s office and rotated the brass handle. I stepped onto a thick red carpet. In front of me was a dark wooden desk, and behind it a spacious window displayed a yard and the forest, and the walls contained bookshelves with hundreds of books. It looked simultaneously like an ideal and intimidating place to work.
I cleaned my shirt in the office’s restroom, and when I exited I noticed the trash bin next to the desk had a paper shredder on top of it and fully contained shredded paper. This was in some ways how Mr. Schrub presented himself to me: He gave indications of who he was but he shredded the data so I could not fully decipher him. There was much more about him that I was curious to learn, but I could not gain access. He said that this weekend would enable us to get to know each other more, but nearly all he had talked about so far was birds, and he worked nonstop. I had observed his relationships with his family, but I still did not know what he was truly like.
And I considered that I am most truly like myself when I am working and in my office, and this was where Mr. Schrub was so frequently, and without 100 % thinking through my actions, I took out my voice recorder and went to a bookshelf near the door and deposited it on a shelf at my height behind a thick book titled Democracy Through Prosperity.
I let my hand go. The voice recorder was hidden, and it would now record the hidden Mr. Schrub.
I exited the office and returned to the dining room. Without my voice recorder I felt naked, as I do when, e.g., I am away from computers for several days, but this was a different class of naked.
Only when I sat down did I consider what I had done. In addition to possibly being illegal, it was unethical. I had disobeyed Mr. Schrub’s trust, and if he found out, then I merited being fired and ejected to Qatar early. And it was not even intelligent: The only data it would record would be telephone conversations, which are not when people are truly themselves. My foot started vibrating on the floor and I felt dizzy, parallel to when I had smoked marijuana. I couldn’t believe I had acted so foolishly.
I had to return to his office for the voice recorder, but I couldn’t go right away again, and it was too risky to enter his office if others were around. And of course I couldn’t leave it there, because if he found it later he would know it was mine. The solitary possible time would be that night when everyone was asleep.