House of Sand and Fog (32 page)

I breathe deeply, allowing my answer to come with my breath. “We pretend that man is in charge of the situation, that is what we do. We let him think this, and when he is not looking, we defeat him.”

“How?”

“Courage. He is attempting to frighten us away, but we will not be frightened, will we, joon-am?”

“I’m not scared.” Esmail folds his arms in front of him.

“Good, good. But pesaram, my son, tomorrow I want you to appear frightened. I want you to do whatever that man tells to you.”

“Why?”

I do not tell my son my primary reason, that I fear my child may attempt something youthful and heroic that may provoke Burdon to rash action. “Because if he thinks he has frightened us, he may feel secure to leave us alone.”

“You mean he thinks we’ll be too scared to try anything even when he’s gone?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“No problem, Bawbaw-jahn.”

I kiss my son on his head. His hair smells of the sea. “Good night, my son.” I sit once more upon the floor beside the bath. Esmail is quiet a few moments. Nadereh lies silently down upon her towels.

“Bawbaw?”

“Shh-shh. Sleep. Rest.”

“Soraya’s brother-in-law said the Shah ordered SAVAK to kill families, the kids too, just because the father read certain books.”

“Soraya’s brother-in-law is stupid. He knows nothing. Now please, sleep.”

“But he also said—”

“Saket bosh, sleep.”

“Okay, Bawbaw. Good night.”

Outdoors the night is still and I do not know if the fog has disappeared or not, but I suspect it has not. No sounds of any kind come through the panjare, not the call of a bird, not the working of an insect, not the fall of a dead pine twig in the woodland across the street. Not even the bark of a dog down the hill in the village, or the passing of a lone automobile, and so I of course imagine the entire land covered in a thick fog blanket, one that hides and protects and disguises, one that allows lies to live on untested. How can I tell to my son I have heard dozens of these stories as well? How can I tell to him that I drank vodka with a Savaki at the Pourats’ home? How can I tell to Esmail that I am sorry for yelling at him without my voice betraying this heat in my face, this feeling in my blood that if it was only me in this locked toilet and not my wife and son, then I would finally be receiving what I deserved, that the time had come for Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani to stand at the wall, to stand at full attention and face his accusers.

L
ESTER PULLED INTO THE PARKING COMPOUND BEHIND THE HALL OF
Justice just as Lieutenant Alvarez was locking his jeep, his short hair combed back wet from his postrun shower, his briefcase hanging against his ironed pant leg. Lester parked out of sight in the motor pool between two K-9 cruisers and waited for Alvarez to go inside. It was only a quarter to eight, fifteen minutes before Internal Affairs opened, and Lester wanted to give the lieutenant time to hear his voice mail, to get Lester’s message from last night. He checked himself in the rearview mirror; his own hair was wet from the Purisima spring at the fish camp, and he’d nicked his chin shaving without a mirror. He’d pushed a folded bit of toilet paper against it to catch the blood, and now it was a dry red speck on his face. His eyes were small and bloodshot from no sleep, there was a light scratch on his nose from the backyard hedge he’d shouldered his way through last night, and the slacks he’d pulled from his suitcase needed ironing, though the blue short-sleeved polo shirt he wore looked all right. Anyway, it didn’t matter. This slightly disheveled look might even help his story, which was the truth: My wife and I are having serious problems, Lieutenant. I just couldn’t get away, sir. Though Lester still didn’t know what he was going to say about the colonel.

Just before dawn this morning, while Kathy and his prisoners slept, he sat at her kitchen counter and wrote:

Lester had folded the paper once. On the back was Persian handwriting, and he crossed it out and wrote Kathy’s name in capital letters. He wondered if he’d written too little about what she’d tried to do to herself last night, if his directions on what she should drink would look like he was afraid to go any deeper than that, when the truth was he wanted to know more now than he ever had; he wanted to go so deeply inside her he would hardly even be him anymore. After his last talk with the colonel through the bathroom door, Lester had spent the rest of the night in a chair by Kathy’s bed. Her hair was fanned out on the pillow, and in the lamplight her color was better. There was more pink in her cheeks, her lips didn’t seem as dark, and all he wanted to do was kiss them, to taste again her tongue and teeth, to be inside her completely, all of him.

But first, there was having to slip himself free of his entanglement with this Iranian colonel and his family, coming up with something credible this morning for Alvarez, though the last thing Lester felt comfortable doing was leaving this house. What if Kathy woke and stumbled to the bathroom without reading the note and then let them all out? Or what if she kept them all locked up but the colonel realized Lester and his gun were no longer in the house? Would he encourage the family to start screaming for help? But what was the alternative? Lester had disobeyed a direct order from an LT in Internal Affairs, then left a message on his machine saying he’d be in his office first thing this morning to explain everything. If Lester didn’t show again, then he would absolutely lose all credibility and any chance to talk away his incident with the colonel. What’s more, Alvarez, who got paid to have a nose for worse-case scenarios, could want to speak with the colonel again, could call him or even send out a patrol car.

Lester left Kathy’s note on the bedside table near his empty teacup, then thought better of it and slid half of it into the door casing at what he hoped was her eye level. He thought about kissing her cheek or forehead, but he didn’t want to wake her; so much had happened since they last spoke, it would take too long for them to get things into some kind of even understanding before he could leave. He walked back down the carpeted hall, pressed his ear to the bathroom door, and heard one of them snoring, a light nasal snore that left him feeling he might pull off leaving after all.

He stuck his pistol down the front of his pants, covered it with his shirt, and left the house for the darkness outside. He urinated in the woods across the street. A fog hovered among the black trees, and the sky already was beginning to lighten. He put his car in neutral, left his door open, and pushed until the Toyota was off the soft shoulder and the hill started to take it and he hopped in and coasted silently down toward the sea.

Now the sun was bright off the chain-link fence around the motor pool, and Lester glanced at his watch. Five more minutes and he’d go in. And he was going to have to tell the truth. If he lied he would force Alvarez to call or even visit the Iranian for a follow-up interview. He imagined the Behrani family awake now, having to urinate in each other’s presence, the mother too, a woman from a culture that demanded women cover themselves from face to foot. He pictured the colonel knocking on the door, prepared to do what he must. If Kathy was still asleep and no one answered, would he assume Lester was too and then tell his family they would all have to wait a bit longer? Or would he hear the silence and think the house was empty and begin making noise?

There had to be a better way to proceed, but right now Lester didn’t know what it was, only that there was quite a bit he hadn’t done as well as he could. He thought about Bethany and Nate, how sometime today he was going to have to get them alone for a talk. Maybe early tonight he’d take them out for hamburgers and chocolate shakes at a fast-food shack on the beach somewhere. He imagined Kathy with them too but then he let that one go; his daughter and son wouldn’t be ready for that for a while, and the truth was he wasn’t quite ready for it either. With any luck, Kathy would be moving back into her place at dusk anyway, and he thought of Bethany one sundown when she was four and they were all at the beach. Carol was nursing Nate, and Bethany sat next to him in the sand, her
Star Wars
towel around her shoulders. She turned to him and asked where the new suns come from.

“The new suns? What do you mean, sweetie?”

“The new one that comes out every morning, Daddy.”

“Honey, there’s just one sun.”

“No, ’cause look, Daddy, the ocean’s putting that one out.
See?
It’s getting all wet. They all do, Daddy. Didn’t you know that?”

He’d laughed and pulled her onto his lap, hugged her to him, and kissed her wet sandy hair until his lips started to feel numb.

A truck horn sounded in the traffic out on Broadway, and Lester got out of the Toyota and locked it. His pistol was under the passenger seat and he wished he’d taken his holster from Kathy’s Bonneville at dawn. He thought about how she might feel when she woke. Would the pills and his gun become something from a faraway drunkenness she wouldn’t even need to think about anymore?

He walked across the sunlit lot for the shaded doors at the back of the Hall of Justice, and he had to squint in the light, his head aching slightly at the eyebrows, his legs two long sandbags underneath him. His mouth was dry and he planned on getting a cold Coke from the machines around the corner from the elevators. He took a deep breath and told himself just to speak the truth about Monday night—not a word about last night—but admit everything about Monday. His jacket was positively trouble-free; Alvarez might even let it all go with an oral reprimand.

“Hey,
Les.”

It came from behind him, but Lester stepped into the shade of the building before he turned around. It was Doug, hopping out of his patrol car, leaving the engine running. His uniform was stretched tight at the shoulders and across the chest, and his forearms looked, as always, impossibly thick. He was chewing gum, something he always did on patrol, never any other time. He’d gotten a haircut, his brown hair shorter than Alvarez’s, and Lester could see his scalp glisten in the sunlight just before Doug stepped up into the shade, saying, “I thought you were off.”

“Left a book in my locker. Why aren’t you out on patrol?”

Doug shook his head, said he had to clean up two arrest reports from yesterday. He looked straight into Lester’s face and began to chew his gum with his mouth closed, as if chewing gum was a slightly indecent thing to be doing, under the circumstances.

“Barbara went over to see Carol last night. She stayed pretty late.”

“Yeah?” Lester thought he knew where this was going, and he didn’t like it. He also wanted to hurry inside, get his appointment over with, and get back on the freeway heading north.

“Carol wanted us both to come over, but, tell you the truth, Les, I didn’t feel like hearing you get shitcanned all night. You look like crap, by the way. Sleep at the camp last night?”

“We’re there for now.” Lester looked away and over the chain-link fence to the old courthouse on the other side of the street. Its huge stained-glass dome looked cool and composed under the sun.

“We
still, huh?”

“That’s right, Doug.”

“Listen, I know we’ve already done this little dance, but are you real clear on what you’re doing?”

Real clear.
Doug used that kind of language all the time, a vestige of all the inner healing weekend workshops he took with Barbara. Doug put his hand on Lester’s shoulder, a warm calloused paw. “’Cause you know you’re throwing it all away, right, man? All those years between you two, you’re trashing them. You
do
know that.”

Lester took in Doug’s face, his friend’s forehead all ridged with concern, his eyes blue and bright and earnest as he’d ever seen them. But naive too. It’s what Lester had always liked and disliked about him. “I don’t look at it that way.” Lester turned to open one of the doors, letting Doug’s hand fall away. He could feel the echo of his heart in his veins, and he was thirstier than ever. “I appreciate you looking out for me, Doug, but tell you what: you go patrol your territory and I’ll patrol mine, okay, man?”

Lester turned and walked into the air-conditioned Hall of Justice. Three lawyers in dark suits stood at the elevators with their briefcases and paperwork. He glanced at his watch and decided to skip the Coke. Maybe Alvarez would offer him coffee, or water. He stood and waited, his hands crossed in front of him, his eyes on the polished brass elevator doors. He could see his reflection there, taller than the lawyers, but divided by the center line where the doors met. Then the tone sounded, the doors began to part, and as Lester moved forward he watched his own image spread out from the middle then disappear.

T
HERE WAS JUST WHAT WAS IN FRONT OF ME, THINGS I KNEW BUT
didn’t: an empty chair facing the side of my bed; an open door with a brass-plated knob, the knob of all the doors of all the rooms I’d ever lived in; lamplight across the blanket that covered me completely, even my arms—it looked like wool, as brown and purple as eggplant, and I was too warm under it, but I didn’t move.

My throat was dry and sore, and my face and head felt flat, part of the pillow underneath. I was sweating. I could taste the salt in my throat, and I was waiting for my mother to walk through the doorway to get me up for the busride to school. But this is where I lay and sometimes watched Nick walk in from the bathroom. He’d come back naked or wrapped in a towel, his love handles hidden beneath the terry cloth, then he’d dress quietly in front of the closet so he wouldn’t wake me, stepping into his underwear, tucking his bobbing penis under the waistband, pulling on his suit pants and leaving them unbuttoned and unzipped until he found the right shirt. I’d sit up and light a cigarette, smoke it and watch him put on the costume he couldn’t wait to shed each night when he came home to eat too much, then smoke too much while he played bass in his practice room till I made him come watch TV with me, or make love.

Now I heard muffled voices coming from behind a wall, an ancient language, the colonel’s and then his wife’s, and I sat up in their brass bed in a robe I didn’t remember putting on. I held it closed at my throat though I was sweating and I felt suddenly queasy. The window shade was pulled, but a crack of white sunlight showed on one side of the heavy curtains I never hung. I remembered kiwi fruit sliced in half on a tray of tea, the colonel’s wife on her knees beside me, holding my forehead.

I swung the blanket and sheet away and sat up for my clothes. But there was just the empty chair. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, smelled tea. My mouth was so dry and it tasted terrible and I didn’t want to step out of this room. I heard the front screen door open and shut, and I got up to close the bedroom door, but Lester walked in from the hallway and looked at me like he wasn’t sure it was really me. Then he hugged me, pulling me to him, his neck wet with sweat. I put my arms around him and felt the gun handle sticking out the back of his pants, remembered my cupped hands under the faucet in the fluorescent light. Lester was hugging me hard, turning from side to side. I couldn’t breathe. I pushed myself away from him and stood there looking at him. His eyes were small and bloodshot, and there was a scratch on his nose, a small cut on his chin, his mustache crooked as ever. He stood so still, his long arms hanging there, that gun hidden behind him; he was every boy I had ever fallen for—lean and dark and over the edge—and I started to cry, covering my mouth and putting my hand out so he wouldn’t step any closer. I sat down on the bed and let it come.

Lester sat on the edge of the chair in front of me and rested both hands on my knees. They were big, his fingers so long I felt like a little girl, and I didn’t know if this was a good feeling or not. Then he got up and left the room, came back with tissues. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. I couldn’t look at him and I didn’t want him looking at me. My bare feet looked blurred against the carpet, my toenails chipped.

“Tell me what happened, Kathy.” His voice was thin, exhausted. I could still hear the murmur of the Behranis in another room. “Do they know you just walked into their house?”

“Their
house?” He looked behind him at the door, then down at the carpet. There was a piece of paper there and he picked it up, unfolded it, and handed it to me. I read it, my face turning hot, my stomach cold and hollow.

“They’re in the
bathroom?”

He nodded.

I thought of the colonel’s wife bringing me tea and fruit, her lined, beautiful face giving me all her attention.
“Shit.
”

“Yep.” He took the note from me, folded it tightly, and stuffed it into his front jeans pocket. “I waited for you at the camp, but when you didn’t show up, I went looking for you and ended up here. I looked through the window and saw my gun on the counter and you weren’t anywhere so I guess I just feared the worst.” He kept his eyes on me a second, then looked away. He told me how he heard me moan, how he kicked in the back door and grabbed his gun, then saw me on the floor, and as he said all this, his voice steady, my head started to feel too heavy for my neck.

Now Les was using legal language about what he’d done: B&E, Brandishing a Weapon, False Imprisonment, all the real trouble he could be in. He sat in the chair with his elbows on the armrests, his shoulders hunched, his long fingers hanging there. I said: “I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“Why, Kathy? Why’d you think that?” He leaned forward and rested his hands on my knees.

“I don’t know.” I looked down at his arms, a long blue vein in the belly of his forearm. I told him about yesterday, when I started thinking for the first time how much he must love his kids and how they must love him, and how bad I felt squeezing myself into that picture. And so I made a sort of vow to myself to try and solve my problems without fucking up anyone else’s life, drove here to talk to the colonel’s wife woman to woman, but her husband came home and forced me into my car, and as I told Les this I felt angry again. I kept my eyes on the veins in Lester’s arm the whole time I spoke. His foot was bouncing slightly, then it stopped.

“When did you drink, Kathy?”

I told him, but I couldn’t remember what came first and what came later. I almost didn’t tell him about the woman at the gas station, but then I did and he asked if she got a good look at me, at the plates of my car.

“I don’t know.”

We were both quiet. He got up and sat on the bed next to me, put his arm around my back. His body odor was strong and his breath was bad, like old coffee, and this made me feel a little better, the fact his smell wasn’t pure and clean. Then I thought of my own teeth coated with dried stomach acid, and I kept my face down. There was a knocking on the inside of the bathroom door down the hall, the colonel’s muffled voice calling Lester “sir,” asking to be let out so his family could eat.

“This is crazy, Les.”

“Crazy?” He was holding me against him, his voice hot in my ear. “What about trying to kill yourself, Kathy? What do we call that?” He let go of me and stood, the pistol handle sticking out his waistband. “Just tell me this: was it drinking too much on a really bad day? Or do you really want to die?”

The colonel knocked on the bathroom door again. I looked back down at the Persian carpet, at all those dark reds and purples. My throat began to close up. “I just—”

“Yeah?”

“I just want things to
change.”

The colonel pounded on the door. It sounded like he was using his fist. “You must to allow us food immediately!”

Lester leaped over to the doorway.
“You’ll eat when you call the goddamn county!”

“Yes.” The colonel’s voice was low and dulled behind the closed door but I heard his next words clearly: “I will do as you say. We will sell.”

Lester looked back at me and smiled so wide his mustache went up in a straight black line above his teeth. But I could hardly move. I just sat there not knowing what I’d just won. I put my hand over my lips, and he walked over and squatted on the floor at my feet. “How’s that for a change?” He shook his head. “When I found out what you’d done, I felt stood up. Isn’t that strange? What does that say about
me?”

I didn’t know what that said about him but I knew I felt closer to him when he said it. I reached over and took his hand, rubbing my finger over the ridge of his knuckles, down over his wedding band. “I don’t think I would have done any of this sober, Les. If that helps you.”

“It does.”

The colonel knocked again, this time softly.

“I’m going to have to keep the heat on them until they go, Kathy. Maybe you should leave until then.”

“I’m staying here.”

“Promise?” Les was looking into my face, his dark eyes so warm and full of need I didn’t know if I wanted to kiss him or move away.

He kissed me and one of his mustache whiskers went up my nose. I watched him leave the room, pulling out his pistol as he went. I looked around for my clothes, but they weren’t anywhere. So I got up, stood in the doorway, and watched Lester set a crowbar against the wall, push open the door, and step back with his gun at his side. At his feet on the rug were two neckties, and he told the Behranis to go into the kitchen. As they came out I pulled the robe together at my throat. I felt like stepping back into the bedroom and closing the door, but I knew they’d already seen me. Lester walked backwards in front of them, stepping into the doorway beside me to let them by. The colonel went first, then his wife and son, the colonel looking straight ahead as he passed me, his chin high, like he was marching in a military parade. His shirt was wrinkled and there was a dab of shaving cream just beneath his jawbone. I was impressed by this, the fact he took the time to shave. And looking at him in that moment, Lester standing beside me with his gun at his side, I was glad things were turning out this way, that this hot-tempered shithead was almost Middle Eastern history for me. But then his wife glanced at me without turning her head, and I knew she was scared of Lester and was trying to see where I stood in all this. I looked down at the floor in time to see their teenage son’s big brown feet.

Les nudged my shoulder and nodded for me to go use the bathroom if I needed to, then he followed the boy into the kitchen and I shut myself in my old bathroom, locked the door, and peed as quietly as I could. The room smelled like toothpaste and the colonel’s shaving cream. My clothes were on the towel shelf across from me folded in a neat pile against the wall: my shorts, my client’s daughter’s turquoise T-shirt from Fisherman’s Wharf, a corner of her panties and my bra under both. My Reeboks were set on the floor side by side. On the back of the sink was the empty prescription bottle. I didn’t remember ever holding it in my own hand. But looking at it, I wasn’t filled with the remorse and dread I’d felt before. Or even the dark rush I’d try again. I felt thankful, like the contents of that empty brown bottle had turned things around for me like nothing else could have. While I washed my face and hands with hot water and soap I pictured myself cleaning and returning the girl’s T-shirt and underwear later this week. Today was Wednesday—yes, Wednesday—my Colma River morning, when I was supposed to clean her house anyway, but I’d have to call her father at his office and postpone a day or two because I was moving.
I was moving back into my house.

I took a fresh towel and pat-dried my face, breathed in the clean smell of the thick terry cloth. I still wanted to disappear, but not completely. My mouth tasted horrible. I squeezed an inch of toothpaste onto my forefinger and used that, rinsing six or seven times. Then I drank from the faucet. On the towel shelf was the colonel’s shaving kit but nothing of his wife’s. No brush or comb, not even a compact. I bent over, letting my hair fall over my head. Then I snapped back up and ran my fingers over my scalp, straightening whatever I found, though I only dared to check myself in the mirror for a second.

I slipped out of Mrs. Behrani’s robe and started to get dressed. I was a little dizzy from trying to fix my hair and I could hear the clink of silverware out in the kitchen, Lester’s voice saying something about a phone book. He was talking louder and faster than he usually did, more jumpy. I knew he’d been up all night, that he was doing something now that could really go wrong if anyone found out about it, something he never would’ve done if not for me. But then I remembered his story about planting coke in the wife beater’s bathroom, and I felt a little better as I pulled the T-shirt over my head and caught the faint scent of vomit and gun oil. Me and Lester.

I smelled toast. My stomach had never been so empty and flat. A hunger pain turned over behind my ribs. My body felt light, almost pure, but not my head. It was like I had cotton not in my ears, but in my thoughts. A cigarette and some tea, that’s all I needed. I folded the towel and put it back on the shelf. I heard silverware tink once against a plate out in the kitchen. The colonel cleared his throat, then spoke into the telephone. There was a pulsing in my hand and fingers and I opened the door enough to hear him give his full name and my address to somebody on the other end. I stuck my head out the door and looked down the hall, saw their son sitting at the counter hunched over a bowl of cereal. I could see his mother’s hands buttering a piece of toast as carefully as if it were something living. The colonel stood against the back wall near two or three pots of flowers holding the receiver with two hands. I didn’t see Lester anywhere, but I pictured him standing in the living room with his gun, and as I left my bathroom, running my fingers back through my hair, I hoped he wasn’t pointing it at anyone.