“Yes, but they’ve already admitted it. They said they’d give you your money back. Look, I know you put a new deck on; I’m sure they’ll pay for that.” The woman pulls from her front pocket a package of cigarettes, lighting one with a cheap plastic lighter. She inhales deeply upon it and I feel a hot impatience begin to move inside me. I hear the water running in the kitchen sink. I look at the window screen beneath the widow stairs, but it is shadowed and I cannot see my wife inside. I step forward, hoping the woman will follow, but she does not move. “I am sorry, miss, but as far as I am concerned I have nothing more to say to anyone. Why should I be penalized for their incompetence? Tell me that. You should sue them for enough money to buy ten homes. I will even sell you this house for the right price. This is all I require.” The rear door to the bungalow opens and shuts and I take the woman’s arm and begin walking her back over the grass. “I am sorry, I do not know where he left his hammers.” The woman begins to pull away, but I squeeze her arm more tightly, stopping in the center of the lawn under the sun. “My family knows nothing of this, miss. There is nothing more to say of it.”

“Let go of me.” She pulls her arm free, her cigarette falling to the grass. She steps backward, an incredulous expression upon her face. “You can’t just move in here and try and make money on this. That’s not right! I look once back at the bungalow, then cross my arms over my chest, feeling the push of my heart against them. The woman shouts at the unfairness of me, and she begins to use profanity, but I only shake my head at her patiently; if Nadereh is watching from the window, she will quickly believe what I tell her, that the najar’s girlfriend is crazy, deevoonay, thinking I am someone I am not.

The woman abruptly stops, as if she has suddenly realized the futility of all she is saying. She pulls her hair free of her face and she regards me for a long moment, then she turns and hobbles back across the street to her expensive sedan. I watch her turn the large car around, and as she drives down the hill, I step on her smoking cigarette, crushing it beneath my shoe.

I DROVE SOUTH ON THE CABRILLO HIGHWAY PAST THE STATE BEACHES, smoking one cigarette after another. I’d forgotten my sunglasses back at the motel and the sun off the water made me squint, but I kept seeing my brother Frank stomp that Middle Eastern prick into the ground. I wanted to drive fast, but the road was crowded with late-afternoon beach traffic, so at Montara I turned into the parking lot of a bike and surf shop and I got out of the car and just leaned against it for a while, the last of the sun on me, my arms folded.

Ten feet away there was an empty phone booth. I wanted to call Frankie so much it made my stomach hurt, but I didn’t move. For all I knew Nick was back on the East Coast by now anyway, showing up at all the old places, and the word had gotten back to my family and that was that; they’d be able to see with their own eyes who left who. But not this; not to have Dad’s house taken from us while I lived in it. Yesterday, Connie Walsh told me in her office that the county had done their part and now it was up to the new owner to go along with the deal, but he wouldn’t and she said the only thing we could do was sue San Mateo County for the value of the house. My champagne hangover had gotten worse as the day went on. My head felt heavy and dry, and the panic I was starting to feel about all of this seemed bigger than me. “You mean sue for damages and just go buy another one?”

“Yes.”

“You mean I can’t legally get my house back?”

“Not unless the owner gives it back to the county and they give it back to you. And I’m sorry, Kathy, but that no longer seems very likely.”

After the call, I canceled my afternoon job, closed the drapes in my motel room, and lay on my bed for a long time. The phone rang and it was Lester. He didn’t sound like himself, his voice up but sad too, like he couldn’t quite believe his own words. He said he and his wife had a long talk, and they’d decided he should move out.

“You mention me?”

“Yes. But Kathy, I told her you’re not the reason. And you aren’t.”

Then he said he would call me today. Who knows? Maybe we’d rent the same U-Haul. I wanted to tell him then, tell him about my house, but there was a weight in his voice, a weight on a thread.

I spent the night in front of the TV smoking, and this morning I sat in my motel room waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for Les to say he was coming to take me to breakfast, for Connie Walsh to say she’d been wrong, everything’s set, go get your stuff out of storage. I just sat there, my lungs sore, thinking of the Arab woman wrapping my foot, the way she smiled at me like I was something to be pitied. I thought of the oriental carpets and the brass bed in my room, of the nomads and horses on the living-room wall, the construction shit in the yard, and I dressed and applied some color to my face; I would just go there and explain things myself.

And now my arm felt bruised from where that Arabic son of a bitch had squeezed it. A warm wind blew from the beach, smelling like seaweed and hot blacktop, and the sun was getting close to the horizon and I had to put my hand over my eyes. The traffic had slowed even more, and I watched a jeep full of teenagers go by. They were tanned. The boys’ heads were practically shaved and their girlfriends’ hair was all loose and rat-nested around their shoulders, though they were moving slow now, the road so wide open in front of them, a hundred free choices to be someplace different.

Les was already back at the motor lodge when I got there. His small station wagon was parked next to a Winnebago with Pennsylvania plates and in the rear of his car were shirts on hangers draped over a suitcase. His uniform hung in dry cleaner’s plastic on a window hook. My hopes went up, but I felt like I was dreading something too, and I got out of the Bonneville and was stepping up under the awning to my door when he called my name behind me. He stood by a chair at the side of the pool wearing jeans and sneakers and that same striped shirt from that first time at Carl Jr.’s. At his feet was a tall Budweiser can. When I got close he smiled.

“Your limp’s getting better.”

I stepped onto the white concrete around the pool. I’d thought I’d go over and hug him, but something was holding me back. We stood there and looked at each other. He seemed taller and thinner to me. Even without the cowboy boots, he seemed taller. “You still feel found?”

Les looked at the pool water, his hands on his hips. “I feel so much I hardly feel anything at all.” He looked back at me, his dark eyes half squinting.

“What did you tell your kids?”

“A lie. I told them a lie, Kathy.” His lips came together in a flat line and I went over to him and hugged him. He smelled like cotton and sweat. He hugged me back and I felt something sort of jolt inside him, but when he spoke his voice was okay: “I don’t want to scare you off, Kathy. I really don’t.”

My cheek was to his chest and I could see the cars go by out on the Camino Real. He stepped back and looked at me.

“I’m not, am I?”

I could smell the beer on his breath and I wanted one. “Oh be quiet, I’m glad you’re here.” It was true; I was. I took his hand and led him across the parking lot and into my room. I squatted at the mini-fridge and grabbed two cold Michelob cans, opening both, handing him one. I held mine up in a quick toast, then drank. It was cold and delicious and I felt reckless and I didn’t care. I told him Connie Walsh’s news, about my trip back to Bisgrove Street, of trying to have a human moment with the fucking Arab who hadn’t even told his family the situation, who squeezed my arm so I’d stay quiet about it.