Hadji was lying on his side in the shadow of a shrub, the dark leaves touching him.
“Hello, Hadji. How are you?” He stopped to talk as if to a person. There was a faint movement near the dog’s rump, a beat of the missing tail. “What are you, having a rest?”
He entered the house confident but correct, like a relative who knows his place. He respected Viri’s knowledge, his background, the people he knew. He had dressed carefully, in the gray pants one finds in chain department stores, an ascot, a white shirt.
“Hello, Franca,” he said. He kissed her naturally. “Hello, Dan.” He smiled as he extended his hand to Viri.
“Let me take the wine,” Viri offered. He examined the label. “Mirassou. I don’t know it.”
“A friend of mine in California told me about it,” Jivan said. “He has a restaurant. You know how the Lebanese are; when they come to a place, the first thing they do is find a good restaurant, and then they always go there, they don’t go anywhere else. That’s how I know him. I used to eat there. When I was in California, I was there every night.”
“We’re having lamb for dinner.”
“It should be very good with lamb.”
“Would you like a San Raphael?” Nedra asked.
“That would be nice,” he said. He sat down. “Well,” he said to Danny, “what have you been doing?” He was less at ease with them when their father was present.
“I want to show you something I’m making,” she said.
“What is it?”
“It’s a forest.”
“What kind of forest?”
“I’ll show you,” she said, taking his hand.
“No,” Viri said. “Bring it here.”
They were almost the same size, the two men, the same age. Jivan had less assurance. They sat like the owner of a great house and his gardener. The one waited for the other to introduce a subject, to permit him to speak.
“It’s getting cold,” Viri remarked.
“Yes, the leaves are beginning to turn,” Jivan agreed.
“It won’t be long. I like the winter,” Viri said. “I like the sense of its closing in on you.”
“How is Perruchio?” Franca asked.
“I’m teaching him to hang upside down.”
“How do you do that?”
“Like a bat,” Jivan added.
“I’d like to see that.”
“Well, when he learns.”
Nedra brought his drink.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Would you like more ice?”
“No, this is fine.”
She was easily kind, Nedra, easily or not at all. Jivan sipped the drink. He wiped the bottom of the glass before setting it down. He owned a moving and storage company, quite small. His truck was immaculate. The quilts were piled neatly, the fenders undented.
At noon, twice a week, sometimes more, she lay in his bed in the quiet room in back. On the table near her head were two empty glasses, her bracelets, her rings. She wore nothing; her hands were naked, her wrists.
“I love the taste of this,” she said.
“Yes,” Jivan said. “It’s funny, no one else serves it.”
“It’s our favorite.”
Noon, the sun beyond the ceiling, the doors closed tight. She was lost, she was weeping. He was doing it in the same, steady rhythm, like a monologue, like the creaking of oars. Her cries were unending, her breasts hard. She was flinging out the sounds of a mare, a dog, a woman fleeing for her life. Her hair was spilled about her. He did not alter his pace.
“Viri, light the fire, would you?”
“Let me do it,” Jivan offered.
“I think there’s some kindling in the basket,” Viri said.
She saw him far above her. Her hands were clutching the sheets. In three, four, five vast strokes that rang along the great meridians of her body, he came in one huge splash, like a tumbler of water. They lay in silence. For a long time he remained without moving, as on a horse in the autumn, holding to her, exhausted, dreaming. They were together in a deep, limb-heavy sleep, sprawled in it. Her nipples were larger, more soft, as if she were pregnant.
The fire took hold, crackling, curling between the heavy pieces of wood, Jivan kneeling before it. Franca watched. She said nothing. She knew already, as a cat knows, as any beast; it was beating in her blood. Of course, she was still a child; her glances were brief, inconsequential. She had no power, only the buds of it, the vacancy where it would appear. She had already learned what it meant to say his name, artlessly pausing. Her mother was fond of him, she knew that, and she felt a warmth in him, not like her father’s but less familiar, less bland. Even when he was doing something with Danny, as he was now, looking at the miniature landscape she had made of pine twigs and stones, his attention and thoughts were not far off, she was sure of it.
Nedra woke slowly to dreamlike, feathery touches. She struggled to come to the surface, to regain herself. It took half an hour. The afternoon sun was on the curtains, the voice of the day had changed. He held up an arm as if to the light. She held hers beside it. They stared at these arms with a vague, mutual interest.
“Your hand is smaller.”
It moved closer to his, as if for comparison.
“You have better fingers,” he said. They were pale, long, the bone within them showing. “Mine are square.”
“Mine are square, too,” she said.
“Mine are squarer.”
Lunch, brandy, coffee. She loved the isolation, one side on a rising street, of this store that had been abandoned. She was filled with a sense of peace, of accomplishment. She had received goodness, now she radiated it, like a stone warmed for bed in the evening. She left by the side door. The ancient trees had burst the sidewalk, enormous trees, their trunks scarred like reptiles. Only a few leaves had fallen. It was still mild, the last hour of summer.
He was slight, Jivan, inconsequential. He was devoted to those American emblems of drab middle class, shoes, pastel sweaters, knit ties. She drove his car when her own was broken down. He scolded her for her carelessness with it, the papers it was strewn with, the dents that appeared in the side. She smiled at him, she apologized. She did as she pleased.
His ambition was to be a man of property. He had the cunning for it. He owned the storefront in which he lived, he was buying a house on ten acres near New City. He accumulated quietly, patiently, like a woman.
“I’m interested in your house,” Nedra said.
“Yes, where is it, exactly?” Viri asked.
It was nothing, Jivan said, a very small house, but the land was nice. It was really a studio more than a house. There was a brook, though, with a ruined stone bridge.
They were eating dinner. They drank the Mirassou. Franca had half a glass. Her face seemed exceptionally wise in the soft light, her features indestructible.
“It’s in your blood to have property, isn’t it?” Nedra said.
“I think it’s how you’re brought up. But, in the blood… there could be something there, too. You know, I remember my father,” he said. “He told me, ‘Jivan, I want you to promise me three things.’ I was just a little boy, and he said, ‘Jivan, first of all, promise me you will never gamble. Never.’ I mean, I was seven, eight years old. And he was saying, never gamble. ‘If you must gamble,’ he said, ‘do it with the king of gamblers. You can find him in the streets, he is naked, he’s lost everything, even his clothes.’
“ ‘Secondly’—I was still picturing this king, this beggar, but my father went on, ‘Secondly, never visit whores.’ Excuse me, Franca. I was eight years old, I didn’t know what we were even talking about. ‘Never,’ he said, ‘now promise me. If you do visit them, go only in the morning; that’s when they have no paint, no powder, you can see what they are really like, do you understand?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, Father.’ ‘Good,’ he said, ‘and the third thing, now listen: always paint a house before you sell it.’ ”