Asiya was squinting her eyes at him, not buying a word, but finally, it seemed, getting that this was Zal’s game over.
“It was very nice to meet you,” she said lukewarmly to Hendricks’s tie.
“A pleasure,” he said to her shoulder, patting her on it, just once.
He then embraced Zal as he always did — with every ounce of love in him — and whispered in his ear, “Son, make sure we talk tomorrow.” When Zal pulled away, he saw Hendricks was smiling, but he also thought he detected some genuine concern behind it all, a close cousin of the disdain he had been afraid of.
Zal nodded, wishing he could have disappeared from the earth altogether just over a half hour ago.
He took Asiya’s hand, a show for both of their sakes, and they darted out.
Outside, Asiya was quiet and tense. “Why did you lie about that movie?”
“I didn’t,” he lied again. “But I don’t want to see it anymore. I’m very sleepy suddenly. My place? Yours?”
“It’s not even five,” she said. “He hated me.”
“No, he didn’t,” Zal said, hoping it wasn’t a lie. “It’s all fine. Let’s eat.”
“I thought you wanted to sleep.”
“That would be great! Either, I mean. Let’s just go somewhere and do whatever, you know.”
For a second, he thought he saw her lips quiver in the way they did when she was about to cry.
“What?” said Zal.
“Those men in there,” Asiya hissed. “They were the problem.”
Zal tried to control himself. “They were just men! Look, I’m the one who’s supposed to see the world as something crazy and unreal and weird, not you! If I’m telling you they were just men, they probably really were!”
Asiya stared at him, wide-eyed, a bit stunned. Zal never had outbursts like that; he seldom even talked back, much less chastised her.
She nodded slowly. “Sometimes I know things you don’t, Zal.”
“Asiya, just stop!” He raised his voice, measuredly, trying to control it from becoming something out of his control.
“This was a disaster, wasn’t it?” she asked many minutes later, as the doors of their subway closed.
Zal was still not sure where they were getting off.
He looked down at her. Her eyes looked even more concerned than Hendricks’s had.
By that point he had mastered it: telling her things that were not quite lies, but were very remote possibilities, possibilities he would never bet on, or infuse with faith, but still ones he wouldn’t altogether rule out, and so he looked her straight in the eyes when he said firmly, “Asiya, it was fine, everything is fine.”
Thanks to a deep and yet unsatisfying sleep, tomorrow came all too soon. Zal was awakened by his cell phone: his father, of course. He pried himself from Asiya, who was still asleep or pretending to be, and stepped out on his fire escape for privacy.
“How was the movie?” was Hendricks’s first question.
“We missed it,” Zal stuttered. “We ate instead.”
“Did she get her liquor?” he asked, joking. He sounded amused.
Zal could think of nothing to joke back with. “No,” he replied stiffly.
“Son, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make fun,” Hendricks said. “It was very nice to meet Asiya.”
“It was?” Zal asked. “I mean, she was very happy to meet you, too.”
“Good.”
There was some silence.
“Zal, I am concerned a bit, though,” he said, inevitably.
“Really?”
“Yes, really. She’s interesting, but a few things seem a bit off — just a bit, but since I’m your father and all, I have to say something.”
“Sure, Father.”
“Zal, is she a bit paranoid? Does she think people are after her?”
“Not really,” Zal lied. “Just that day.”
“Okay, fair enough,” he said. “One other question. . Why is her name Asiya? I expected her to be Middle Eastern, but I don’t think she is, right?”
“Well. .” Zal paused. It was something they had never discussed, he realized. “I think she was a Muslim at one point.”
“Well, that’s nice. But she wasn’t born Muslim, was she?”
“No. I mean, I’m not sure.”
“Well, never mind. But I was curious. I just didn’t know if she was open to me asking about it. You know I wouldn’t mind if she was Muslim, of course. It was just surprising, since her last name is McDonald.”
“She’s definitely different,” Zal quipped, trying to sound cheerful. “A good thing for me, no?”
“I suppose, Zal,” he muttered, with a slow carefulness. “While I’m at it, another question then.”
“Shoot, Father.”
“Her physique. . Why on earth is she so thin? She doesn’t have an illness?”
Zal sighed. “I know,” he said. “She’s fine, but she eats almost nothing. It’s weird.”
“That’s not good, Zal. Does she have an eating disorder? No drugs, right?”
“Oh, no. I think she just is picky with food.”
“Well, son, help her out,” he said. “She looks ailing. Her skin, I noticed, was doing that thing, that feathering thing — lanugo, I think it’s called — that happens to the skin of the eating-disordered.”
That feathering thing, as if it was indeed a thing skin could do. He thought to ask further about it, but shelved it for another time. “I know.”
“Well, that’s a bad sign.”
“I’ll talk to her, Father.”
“Okay, good.” He paused again. “Zal, I want you to know that you shouldn’t feel like you have to have a woman in your life to be a man, okay?”
“I know that,” he said.
“Zal, do you love her?”
“Father,” he groaned, channeling some rascally teenage son, annoyed at his prying dad, in a TV show.
“Okay, Zal, okay,” Hendricks said. “I think I should meet her again then.”
“You’re not sure about her, are you, Father?” Zal asked, sighing.
“Well,” Hendricks began, and sighed too. “You know, I’m not, Zal. But that doesn’t mean anything. I just care about you. But I’m not sure of lots of things, even when it comes to you. And that hasn’t always been a bad thing. We’re all learning, Zal, we’re all learning.”
Zal said nothing.
“Anyway, when do you see Rhodes?”
Zal scanned his mental calendar. “In a few days.”
“Good. Talk to him about everything. About her. He can help. See what he thinks.”
“What he thinks about what, Father?”
“About everything that’s happening, Zal. There are some things a father has no right to know, that your therapist can help you with.”
And because lies had become part of his new default setting — what a villain he was becoming, he thought, shuddering with disgust — he told one to his father even: “Well, there’s nothing I wouldn’t tell you, Father.”
Rhodes knew more than he had told him — that Zal could tell. Rhodes had long ago told him what he shared would remain confidential and never divulged to his father, but Zal didn’t altogether buy it. Rhodes and Hendricks were old friends, colleagues from way back when, and they still talked sometimes. Zal could very well have casually entered a recent conversation. In any case, the moment he walked into Rhodes’s office, Zal felt certain Rhodes and his thick, clear-framed glasses were beholding him in a slightly different way.
“Am I a new man or something?” Zal joked.
“You tell me,” Rhodes said and smiled, a bit sinisterly. He wrote down immediate levity àintro, comic greeting, a new thing.
“Well, whether you know it or not,” Zal began, “there are some things to tell.”