“He put his hand on you?”

“You could say that, I guess.” I drank and looked at Lester, at the way he was shadowed with the sunlight behind him, only his mustache and eyes darker than the rest. “You remind me of a cowboy.”

“How was it left?” Lester’s voice was high and tight.

I shrugged and drank some more. I never drank beer much, except on days like this, hot days when you’re tired and a little hungry and there’s an edge to everything. Les sat forward in his chair.

“You mean if this guy doesn’t want to sell your house back he doesn’t have to?”

I nodded and let out a short laugh. “Look at us, Les. We’re both homeless.” Then I laughed harder, like maybe I didn’t care about anything at all, and I couldn’t stop.

“That’s not right.”

“What is?” I was smiling now.

“You’re a complicated woman, aren’t you?”

“Nope, I think I’m a simple woman, actually. I’m just good at complicating things.” I finished off my beer, but lowered it back to my lap like it wasn’t quite empty yet.

“Do I complicate things?” Les said.

I looked at him. “No. I mean, yeah, you do a little, but I’m glad you’re here. I really am, Les.”

He stood and pulled me to my feet. He put his arms around me, locking his fingers together at my lower back. “Spend the night with me.”

“I don’t want you paying for this room anymore, Les. You’ve got to think of yourself now, you know.”

He kissed me so I’d shut up, it seemed. “I’ve got a fishing camp south of us. Another deputy’s lending it to me till I know what I’m doing, or, you know, where I’m going.” He kissed me again. “Come help me sweep it out. Then we’ll sit down and figure out how to get your house back. I know so many damn lawyers it isn’t funny.”

I was starting to get that off-the-ground feeling again, like it didn’t matter what I did because I wasn’t connected to anything real in the first place. But I wanted to drive back to Bisgrove hill with this man, to walk right into my house with tall Lester Burdon in front of me, his uniform on, his gun at his belt, some sort of paper in his hand kicking the Arab family right back to the sands of wherever the hell they came from.

“Are they good lawyers?”

“Better than what you have now, I’m sure.”

I don’t know why I thought his lawyers might know more than mine. I did, though. I kissed him and he kissed me back, pushing me onto the bed, but I told him no, let’s wait, let’s wait and make it special.

My hopes were up again, and on the way out of town, sitting in the passenger seat of his car with five cool Budweisers in my lap, I asked him to drive up Bisgrove Street. As we got near the top of the hill, Les drove slowly. In my driveway behind the white Buick was a green Mercedes-Benz, and in front of the lawn was a shining new Saab or something like it. We had our windows rolled down and there was laughing and some kind of tinny music, like Greek or Lebanese. Lester pulled his car over beside the woods. “Jesus,” he said. “Look at them.”

In the last of the sunlight up on my roof on the new deck were seven or eight strangers, the men in suits, the women dressed in reds, peach, and pink. One of them was big and had short hair and a gold necklace so wide I could see it clearly. They were sitting in white chaise lounges, holding champagne flutes, and there was a table up there under a huge white umbrella. Bahrooni was the only one standing, and he wore a black suit, one hand in his pocket. He held up his glass to a sitting couple I couldn’t see too well because of the flower pots on the railing, and he was saying something, his back to the street.

“He’s some kind of colonel, you know. He wanted me to call him Colonel.”

“The hell with these people.” Les turned the car around, meshing the gears once before he gave it gas. Bahrooni and a few others looked out at the street, but I only looked at him, his smile fading right away. Les sped up and we drove down through the one-story shops and stores of Corona, then onto the Cabrillo Highway, the sky plum and green, the sun out of sight, already on its way to shine on Asia, and the Middle East.

NADEREH HAS LIGHTED TEN CANDLES THROUGHOUT THE ROOM AND our family and guests have sat for many hours upon the floor at the sofreh, eating and drinking, talking and laughing. Now we lean back on large crimson cushions from Tabriz, sipping hot tea and sampling pistachios and mints as Googoosh’s music plays from the tape machine. Soraya is telling stories of our old life in Tehran when she was a young girl, of our driver Bahman and how he would allow her and her playmates to sit in the rear of the limousine as he drove throughout the neighborhood and they pretended to drink tea and speak of palace affairs. Nadi has brought into the room our leather-bound photo albums and I watch my daughter’s new family as Soraya shows to them picture after picture. My son-in-law is a quiet, respectful young man. Dressed in a gray pinstripe suit, all the evening long he has stayed at Soraya’s side but he has not once touched her, which is proper. With his eyeglasses and very short hair, he appears older than his thirty years. Both his mother and sister are large women, though they have dressed very tastefully in the latest colorful fashions, and they are quite warm, laughing with ease at the smallest opportunity. The girl’s husband I find more difficult to bear; he is young, with barely twenty-five or-six years, and he owns a jewelry shop in San Francisco. His suit is elegant, but on two fingers of both hands he wears gold, diamond, and ruby rings. And throughout our dinner of chelo kebab, khoresh badamjan, and obgoosht, whenever he reached for his Coca-Cola glass his shirt cuff pulled back to reveal gold chain bracelets on both thin wrists. And when he addressed me it was as Genob Sarhang, Honorable Colonel, but with a tone of such exaggerated respect I did not believe his sincerity. So now it is a relief he has gone into Esmail’s bedroom with my son to play computer video games.

But still, I cannot become fully relaxed. I watch Soraya’s face in the candlelight. She has become such a lovely young woman, now wife. She wears a conservative white blouse with jacket and a skirt that matches, her legs folded like a lady’s beneath her. Her black hair is held up on her head. Around her neck she wears the pearl necklace her mother and I gave her as a wedding gift, and her eyes are alive with flame, her teeth white, but her talk and laughter leave me unable to relax; as soon as she stepped out of her husband’s automobile, she regarded the bungalow and her eyes lost something before she rushed to meet us on the grass. The Dom Pérignon upon the widow’s walk, the fresh flowers and new furniture, the view of the sea, seemed to help relieve her of appearing from a lower station in life. But all the evening long she has been talking of our summer home in Chālūs, our home in the most fashionable section of the capital city, the parties at all the homes of all the high officials of Shahanshah Pahlavi. Our guests have listened politely, and Nadi—who has been a wonderful hostess all evening—has interrupted Soraya to ask her new mother-in-law questions of their family, their health. And now, of course, the photos have Soraya reminiscing all over again. Earlier, as Nadi was serving the tadiq and mastvakhiar, my son-in-law asked me how I was enjoying retirement. Did I have any hobbies? I had anticipated this question even before our guests had arrived and I had prepared myself to speak of my activity in the real estate markets, but at the time of the question Soraya was telling her new mother and sister-in-law of the night our home received a telephone call from the Shah himself, and I felt such an embarrassment I was not able to tell of my buying and selling bungalows without appearing to apologize for the manner in which we find ourselves living at the moment. I told my daughter in a warm voice to please change the subject, beekhoreem, let us eat.