Unaccustomed Earth (28 page)

“I mean, it’s one thing for you to like me, Paul,” she continued. “It’s one thing for you to have a crush. But to make up a story like that—” She stopped, her mouth now straining into something that was not a smile. “It’s pathetic, really. Pathetic!” And she walked out of the room.

When they crossed paths again, she didn’t apologize for the outburst. She didn’t appear angry, only indifferent. He noticed that a copy of the
Phoenix,
which she’d left on top of the microwave, was folded to the real estate section, and that a few of the listings were circled. She came and went from Farouk’s. She looked up at Paul briefly when she happened to see him, with a mechanical little smile, and then she looked away, as if he were invisible.

The next time Sang worked at the bookstore, Paul stayed up in his room until he heard her leave the house. Once she was gone, he went to the kitchen, emptying out the recycling bin, which had not been taken out all winter. He flipped though each magazine, unfolded every newspaper, searching for the sheet of paper with Deirdre’s number. It would be like Sang, he thought, to look for it and not find it. But Paul couldn’t find it, either. He pulled out the White Pages and opened it at random, searching for a Deirdre, not caring how ridiculous he was being. Then he remembered it. Her last name. It swam effortlessly back to his memory, accompanied by the sound of Deirdre’s voice as she introduced herself to him that night on the telephone months ago. He turned to the “F’s,” saw it there, a D. Frain, an address in Belmont. He dragged the nail of his index finger beneath the listing, leaving a faint dent in the paper.

He called the next day. He left a message on her machine, asking her to call him back. He felt giddy, having done it. In a way, it was his fear that Deirdre would not call him back, knowing that she, too, was now keeping her distance, that emboldened him to keep calling, to keep leaving messages. “Deirdre, this is Paul. Please call me,” he said each time.

And then one day she picked up the phone.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

She recognized his voice. “I know. Listen, Paul—”

He cut her off. “It’s not right,” he said. He was sitting in a booth in the lobby of the library, watching as students flashed their ID cards to the security guard. He fished in his pocket for extra quarters.

“I listened to you. I was kind to you. I didn’t have to talk to you.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It was wrong of me.” She no longer sounded drunk or flirtatious or desperate or upset in any way. She was perfectly ordinary, polite but removed.

“I didn’t even tell her the other stuff you told me.” He saw that a student was standing outside the booth, waiting for him to finish. Paul lowered his voice. He felt mildly hysterical. “Remember all that stuff?”

“Look, please, I said I’m sorry. Can you hold on a second?” Paul heard a doorbell ring. After a minute, she came back to the phone. “I have to go now. I’ll call you back.”

“When?” Paul demanded, afraid that she was lying to him, that it was a ploy to be rid of him. In January, when Paul had wanted to get off the phone with Deirdre, she had pleaded with him to stay on the line.

“Later. Tonight,” she said.

“I want to know when.”

She told him she’d call at ten.

The idea came to him immediately after getting off the phone, the receiver still in his hand. He left the library, went to the nearest RadioShack. “I need a phone,” he told the salesman. “And an adapter with two jacks.”

It was a night Sang worked at the bookstore; as usual, she was home by nine. She said nothing to Paul when she came into the kitchen to get her mail.

“I called Deirdre,” Paul said.

“Why don’t you stop involving yourself this way?” Sang said evenly, leafing through a catalogue.

“She’s calling me at ten o’clock,” Paul said. “If you want, you can listen in without her knowing. I got another phone and hooked it up to our line.”

She dropped the catalogue, noticing the second phone. “Jesus, Paul,” she hissed. “I can’t fucking believe you.”

She went into her room; at five to ten she came out and sat next to Paul. He’d set the phones together on the table. At exactly one minute past ten, both phones rang. Paul picked up one. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” Deirdre said.

He nodded, motioning to Sang, and slowly, carefully, Sang picked up the other phone and put it to her ear without allowing it to touch her. She held it unnaturally, the bottom of the receiver turned away from her mouth, pointed toward her shoulder.

“Like I said, Paul, I’m sorry for calling you. I shouldn’t have,” Deirdre said.

She seemed relaxed, willing to talk, in no apparent rush. Paul relaxed a little, too. “But you did.”

“Yes.”

“And you cried about Farouk.”

“Yes.”

“And then you made me into a liar.”

She was silent.

“You denied the whole thing.”

“It was Freddy’s idea.”

“And you went along with it,” Paul said. He was looking at Sang. She was pressing her top teeth into her lower lip in a way that looked painful.

“What was I supposed to do, Paul?” Deirdre said. “He was furious when he found out I’d called you. He refused to see me. He unplugged his phone. He wouldn’t answer the door.”

Sang put a palm against the table’s edge, as if to push it away, but she ended up pushing herself back in her chair, scraping the linoleum. Paul put a finger to his lips, but then he realized that, to Deirdre, it was he who’d made the sound. She kept talking.

“Listen, Paul, I’m sorry you’re in the middle of all this. I really am sorry I called. It was just that Freddy kept telling me Sang was his cousin, and when I asked him to introduce me to her he refused. I didn’t care at first. I figured I wasn’t the only woman in his life. But then I fell in love with him.” She wanted to believe him, she explained. She was a thirty-five-year-old woman, already married and divorced. She didn’t have time for this.

“But I’ve ended it,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You know, there was a point when I actually believed he couldn’t live without me. That’s what he does to women. He depends on them. He asks them to do a hundred things, makes them believe his life won’t function without them. That was him this afternoon when you called, still wanting to see me, still wanting to keep me on the side. He doesn’t have any friends, you see. Only lovers. I think he needs them, the way other people need a family or friends.” She sounded reasonable and reflective now, as if she were describing an affair she’d had years before. Sang’s eyes were closed and she was shaking her head slowly from side to side. The dog was barking.

“That’s my dog,” Deirdre said. “He’s always hated Freddy. He’s the size of a football, but every time Freddy comes over he makes me put a guardrail across the stairs.”

Sang inhaled sharply. She put the receiver down quietly on the table, then she picked it up again.

“I should go,” Paul said.

“Me, too,” Deirdre agreed. “I think you need to tell her now.”

He was startled, afraid Deirdre had discovered his trick, that she knew that Sang was listening in. “Tell her what?”

“Tell her about me and Farouk. She deserves to know. It sounds like you’re a good friend of hers.”

Deirdre hung up, and for a long time Paul and Sang sat there, listening to the silence. He had cleared himself with Sang, and yet he felt no relief, no vindication. Eventually, Sang hung up her phone and stood up, slowly, but made no further movements. She looked sealed off from things, holding herself as if she still needed to be perfectly stealthy, as if the slightest sound or gesture would betray her presence.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said finally.

She nodded and went to her room, shutting the door. After a while he followed her, stood outside. “Sang? Do you need anything?”

He remained there, waiting for her to reply. He heard her moving around the room. When the door opened, he saw that she had changed, into a black top with long tight-fitting sleeves. Her pink raincoat was draped over her arm, her purse hanging over her shoulder. “I need a ride.”

In the car, she directed him, saying what to do and where to turn only at the last possible minute. They drove through Allston and down Storrow Drive. “There,” she said, pointing. It was an ugly high-rise, bereft of charm and yet clearly exclusive, on the Cambridge side of the river. She got out of the car and started walking.

Paul followed her. “What are you doing?”

She speeded up. “I need to talk to him.” She spoke in a monotone.

“I don’t know, Sang.”

She walked even faster, her shoes clicking on the pavement.

The lobby was filled with beige sofas and potted trees. There was an African doorman sitting at the desk who smiled at them, recognizing Sang. He was listening to a radio tuned to the news in French.

“Evening, Miss.”

“Hello, Raymond.”

“Getting cold again, Miss. Maybe rain later.”

“Maybe.”

She kept her finger pressed on the elevator button until it came, while she fixed her hair in the mirror opposite. On the tenth floor, they stopped, then walked to the end of the hallway. The doors were dark brown, thickly varnished. She tapped the door knocker, which was like a small brass picture frame hinged to the surface. Inside, there was the sound of a television. Then there was silence.

“It’s me,” she said.

She tapped it again. Five consecutive taps. Ten. She pressed the top of her head against the door. “I heard her, Farouk. I heard Deirdre. She called Paul, and I heard her.” Sang’s voice was quavering.

“Please open the door.” She tried the knob, a strong metal knob, which would not budge.

There were footsteps, a chain being undone. Farouk opened the door, a day’s stubble on his face. He wore a flecked fisherman’s sweater, corduroy pants, black espadrilles on bare feet. He looked nothing like a philanderer, just bookish and slight. “I did not invite you here,” he said acidly when he saw Paul.

In spite of all he knew, Paul was stung by the words, unable to speak in his own defense.

“Please leave,” Farouk said. “Please, for once, try to respect our privacy.”

“She asked me,” Paul said.

Farouk lurched forward, arms extended rigidly in front of him, pushing Paul away as if he were a large piece of furniture. Paul took a step back, then resisted, grabbing Farouk’s wrists. The two men fell to the floor of the hallway, Paul’s glasses flying onto the carpet. It was easy for Paul to pin Farouk to the ground, to dig his fingers into his shoulders. Paul squeezed them tightly, through the thick wool of the sweater, feeling the give of the tendons, aware that Farouk was no longer resisting. For a moment, Paul lay on top of him fully, subduing him like a lover. He looked up, searching for Sang, but she was nowhere. He looked back at the man beneath him, a man he barely knew, a man he hated. “All she wants is for you to admit it,” Paul said. “I think you owe her that.”

Farouk spat at Paul’s face, a cold spray that made Paul recoil. Farouk pushed him off, went into his apartment, and slammed the door. Other doors along the hallway began to open. Paul could hear Farouk fastening the chain. He found his glasses and stood up, pressed his ear to the varnished wood. He heard crying, then a series of objects falling. At one point he could hear Farouk saying, “Stop it, please, please, it’s not as bad as you think.” And then Sang saying, “How many times? How many times did you do it? Did you do it here on the bed?”

A minute later, the elevator opened and a man walked toward Farouk’s apartment. He was a lean man with gray hair and a big bunch of keys in his hand. “I’m the super in this building. Who are you?” he asked Paul.

“I live with the woman inside,” he said, pointing at Farouk’s door.

“You her husband?”

“No.”

The super knocked on the door, saying neighbors had complained. He continued to knock, rapping the wood with his knuckles until the door opened.

Inside was a hallway illuminated by track lights. Paul glimpsed a bright white kitchen without windows, a stack of cookbooks on the counter. To the right was a dining room, painted the same sage-green as Sang’s room. Paul followed the super into the living room. There was an off-white sofa, a coffee table, a sliding glass door that led to a balcony. In the distance was a view of the Citgo sign, draining and filling with color. There was a bookcase along one wall which had fallen to the floor, its books in a heap. The receiver of a telephone on a side table hung from a cord, beeping faintly, repeatedly. In spite of these things, the room had a barren quality, as if someone were in the process of moving out of it.