I shook my head no. “I want you to call those people in my house, too. They’re already more at home there than I ever was. That’s not right.”

My lawyer tapped her pencil in the palm of her hand. “Did you get their names?”

“I don’t know, Bahroony or Behmini, something like that. They’re Middle Eastern. Please call them up and tell them to put the roof back together and get out.”

She left the room and I heard her tell Gary to draft a letter for the courier service. The pigeons flew off, and I told myself I should feel good the county had sent the sworn statement that would get me back into my and Frankie’s house, but there were four holes of heat in my foot, a stiffness in my neck from sleeping in the car, a tightness in my throat, and for a second I saw myself emptying most of the storage shed into the Bonneville and driving straight back East, just pull into my mother’s driveway and tell her everything, that I had no friends, I was smoking again, I just scrape by cleaning up after other people, all I do is watch movies I don’t remember, my husband left me, and I lost the house, Ma; it’s gone.

“Where are you staying, Kathy?” Connie walked in reading some paperwork. She had on her round glasses.

“Nowhere.”

“You’re not with friends?” She was giving me eyes that were sincere but holding back too, and I pegged her right away for the kind of person who couldn’t live with herself for not doing the right thing, but also the kind who could never say no, so they really wanted you to lie to them so they wouldn’t have to do the right thing like invite me to stay a week with her.

“Yeah, I’m with a friend.”

“You are?”

They always did that too, pushed your lie till it almost broke. “I want to be back in my house by this weekend, Connie, all right?”

“I can’t promise you anything, but we’ll do our best.” She smiled and stood and showed me to the door. As I hopped to the stairs, she said not to worry and she hoped my ankle would feel better soon.

IT’S ALMOST EASIER being down and alone than when you’re up and no one’s there to share the view with you. Not that I was feeling that great as I drove south on Skyline Boulevard through Daly City in the sunshine. Addicts are supposed to be famous for expecting disaster around every corner from good luck, but now I did have my hopes up a little Connie Walsh might have this mess straightened out by the weekend. I needed some distraction.

I rested my right foot on the hump in the middle of the floor beneath the console. The ache wasn’t as sharp, but now there was a warm throbbing that came with my heartbeats which were faster than normal because I was smoking practically one cigarette after another. I was also thinking of Lester Burdon again, his sad eyes and crooked mustache, his little station wagon driving off into the fog. I knew I’d been thinking of him off and on since then; I kept seeing that dark need in his face as he sat across from me at Carl Jr.’s. Men who have that look usually want to bite into you like you’re a fresh cool plum; and after they’ve bitten, sucked, and chewed they expect your juices to come back and stay sweet. But Lester’s need seemed different than that. There was a gentleness there too, a patience. So maybe it wasn’t really a need at all, but a wanting. Maybe he wanted.

In Daly City, I pulled into a gas station and hopped to the rest room with my makeup bag and toothbrush, a clean T-shirt and pair of underwear. I cleaned myself up, climbed back into my Bonneville with my wrapped foot, then dug through my pocketbook for Lester Burdon’s card. It had slipped into my checkbook between two blank checks: Lester was something called a field training officer and his office was at the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department in Redwood City. I put the car in gear, used my left foot for the gas, and drove onto the Bayshore Freeway, heading south.

THE SUN IS WARM UPON MY ARMS AS I PUSH THE BRIGHT RED LAWN cutter that started with one pull of its rope and I smell benzine and that American scent of green grass that is cut in the heat. The engine is loud but still I hear the work of the najars upon the bungalow. The afternoon remains in their first workday, but already they have completed building the frame of the widow’s walk into the roof and I push the cutter from one end of the property to the next and I see them lay new boards of lumber across the structure and drive nails with their steel hammers in the sun.

The tall grass falls away beneath my machine like dead soldiers, and I am grateful for the silly blue hat upon my head, for it keeps the skin there in the shade, and even my forehead and eyes are protected. But I am grateful for so much more than this; after a lunch of chicken, tadiq, and radishes, I gave to Esmail permission to ride his skateboard down to the BART train to go visit his friends until early evening. The young najars had left in their truck to purchase building materials, and I sat at the kitchen counter reviewing the real estate pages of the newspaper when my Nadi paused in her cleaning and kissed me on my cheek. She stood close to me, holding the folded sofreh to her breasts. “Why did you not stay with me last night, Massoud?”

My wife has fifty years, but she spoke as would a young girl, a new bride. I thought perhaps she was disappointed in me, but then I regarded her smile, the fashion in which she held her chin low, looking up at me with those gavehee eyes, and as she took my hand and led me back down the corridor to her room, my heart was a flat stone moving over water and my breath was held like the boy counting the skips of his good fortune.

Afterward, as the najars resumed their work above us, Nadi put the blue colah upon my head and laughed as I stepped out into the midday sun. I laughed as well, for except for an occasional television show she barely understands, Nadi has not laughed. Not in the pooldar apartments, she has not. But here is different; here she seems to be living as if she is no longer waiting for life. Here she is free of our own masquerade, our own lies.

I continue to cut down the tall grass with ease, making straight and orderly lines of the dead green, and I make the decision, yes, we must stay here for the summer season; it will be good for us, a good rest. I will continue to work daily for securing a buyer, but I will enter into the contract that the property will not be available until autumn. This will also give me the necessary time for finding new properties to purchase, for it is clear I must buy only bungalows such as this, homes that are auctioned by county or bank. Perhaps I will discover a pleasant home or apartment we can rent while I continue to buy and sell for a profit.

These have been my thoughts, and they have been most pleasing thoughts for I feel once again like a man with his hands on the reins of his own beast. The najar tells me the platform overlooking Corona and the sea will be ready in two more days’ time. Soraya and her new husband end their honeymoon trip on Friday and so we must invite them and the groom’s family to our home for a small celebration. I will instruct Nadi to prepare her best chelo kebab, both barg and the tender meat of the kubehdeh. I will purchase champagne and arrange chairs on the widow’s walk, and we will all toast the health of the bride and groom, to our own health, salomahti.

At the street, I extinguish the engine, leaving the rows of cut grass for Esmail to rake into a bag upon his return. I wipe the sweat from my face. I am unable to cut the grass at the side of the house due to the najar’s ladders, tools, and the new lumber they have stacked neatly upon the ground beside the small section of old roof. As I push the cutter past all of this, a najar calls down to me.