“Should I continue to call and text and email Lindsey?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Obviously, I’ll need to know if she responds. But if she’s choosing not to communicate with you, do you have an idea why?”
He ground out his cigarette in my hand-collected clamshell ashtray. “We dated one time. Then she said, No more. She could think I’m stalking her now.”
I thought about that, let the silence sink in. “Tell me about it.”
“Lindsey was one of my son’s teachers,” he said. “At the back-to-school night I saw that she was strong and intelligent and beautiful. She also seemed to be in turmoil. I saw her for parent conferences. I saw her at fundraisers for the school, and some of our son’s athletic events. It was two years later that I asked her to go riding. That was just a few weeks ago.”
“How did it go?”
“I love Arabian horses,” he said. “The more time I spend with them the less time I want to spend with people. I’m not quite half joking. We rode from the stable where I live. It’s beautiful desert. Very Arabian. I was born in the U.S. and I learned English as my first language and modern Arabic as my second. But Arabia is in my blood. Like the horses are. My family spent many weeks there when I was a child. Whole summers. Parts of the American West remind me of the Saudi Peninsula. The weather, the flora, the geology. So we rode. Lindsey and I. She’s very good. We rested the horses. Talked. We shared cheese and salami, drank wine, and watched the sunset. When we rode back, we hardly said a thing. I think we were lost in our own pasts, but something told me this was a beginning. That someday soon, I would be able to introduce Lindsey to Sally. In my heart. You probably know what I’m talking about.”
Burt led Timothy to the Ping-Pong table, and together they lifted off the fitted plastic cover. Burt got the paddles from a hutch and set the box on the table. I could see his bottom-toothed grin as he tightened up the net and big Timothy pawed through the box for the right paddle. Burt is a ferocious player, torqueing his short, muscular body into almost every shot, starting low and ending high. Mid-rally, he’s a lateral blur. Plays far back from the table and lets her rip. I try to crowd the table and hit early. Take away my opponent’s time. I can beat Burt, but not often. Timothy held up a dimpled/smooth two-sided paddle and a ball. Nodded. Lumbered smoothly to one end of the table, bouncing the ball on his paddle.
“Yes,” I answered. “You want to forget and remember. Sometimes, the same things.”
“The daily torture,” said Samara. “I dated a lot after Sally. Many expensive restaurants and destinations. And then I’d had enough. Something broke or healed. I don’t know which. It doesn’t matter. Then I spent three hours with Lindsey Rakes and welcomed myself back into the world again.”
Then came the ticka tocka, ticka tocka of Ping-Pong.
“How long did she live here?” asked Samara.
“One year.”
He studied me, sharp eyes in a sharp face. I thought of the phantom image behind the wheel of the Toyota the night before.
“How many casitas do you rent?”
“Five,” I said. “There are six, but I keep number three available for friends. Emergencies.”
“Which was Lindsey’s?”
“Two.”
Rasha regarded the casitas. Similar shapes. Different-colored doors and window trim. “Are these the rules, or are they a joke?”
He was looking up at my posted rules, framed and protected by clear plastic and screwed to one of the palapa’s thick palm-trunk uprights. When I’d first started renting casitas — two years ago now — I’d been serious about posting rules. It seemed to make good sense, to let everyone know what was expected and what wasn’t. Rules would put me in charge, but I could still be a nice guy. I watched Samara read them, something between a smile and a smirk on his face.
“They started out serious,” I said. “But now I’m not so sure. I haven’t had any rotten renters yet.”
“What about possession of guns and knives?” he asked.
“Implied by rule two,” I said, thinking: Interesting, the knives.
“Alcohol?”
“Rule one.”
“Obscenity and lewd conduct?”
“Rules one and five.”
I smiled, but Rasha didn’t. “Why is it that when I go online and to the Fallbrook Village News, I find no information about rentals here?”
“It’s all word of mouth,” I said. Which was true.
“Casita three is open?”
“Three and four,” I said. “People tend to sit tight for the holidays.”
“May I see one?”
“No. They’re not ready for tenants yet.”
He gave me a dark look. Maybe darker than the moment required. Maybe that was part of Lindsey refusing a second date. As much as fearing her own attraction.
“Do you love her?” asked Rasha.
I’d wondered if that question was coming. “As a friend.”
“But as more, when she was here?”
“Friends then and now.”
“You were so close to her beauty and power,” he said, eyes brightening. “You must have wanted them.”
I remembered the near-total wreck that was Lindsey Rakes when I first saw her at the roulette wheel that night. And the long weeks here as she tried and failed and tried again to put herself back together. She was beautiful in her damage, yes. Powerful? No. She was staggering. I had wanted to help her, and respectful distance was required.
“I tried to help her put herself back together,” I said.
“For yourself?”
“For her.”
“You behaved well.”
I looked out to the barnyard, and the long driveway leading away from Rancho de los Robles, then up to two red-shouldered hawks keening as they circled the pond.
“Now,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me about the UCI frat party in ’98? When you were arrested for brandishing a janbiya.”
22
Samara’s dark look grew darker.
Ticka tocka, ticka tocka.
“How do you know about that?” he asked.
“Anyone with a phone and a little money can find that out.”
Rasha shook his head slightly, then reached out and tapped his fingers on the table. “The party was called ‘Come as Your Own Cliché.’ This was before Nine-Eleven. I wore the knife in its scabbard in plain sight, on a belt, outside of my caftan. The janbiya was a dull family heirloom. I also wore a turban with a big fake diamond and a blue ostrich feather. I grew a crafty little goatee and trimmed my beard down to a thin outline of my jaw. A friend of mine, Anton Webster, came as an Eighteenth Street Crip, dissed me. Called me wooly-headed camel jockey. I drew my knife. He pulled a black plastic squirt gun on me, and I slashed at him. With much playful drama. Our acting was good enough for a call to the campus police from one of the Pi Phi sisters.”
Burt and Timothy had both moved back from their respective ends of the table. Burt moved in bursts, fast and animated. Large Timothy bounced on the balls of his feet, squatting deeply into his shots, easy of swing, head steady. The rhythm of their paddles on the ball slowed, as the ball arched higher across the widening distance, then dropped deep steeply to the table.