And now, as I sip Persian tea through the sugar cube between my teeth, I am anxious for them all to leave, Soraya as well, but not before I take her aside and scold her for all her grandstanding, not before I hold her to me and tell her not to worry, this little bungalow is only temporary, your mother and I are expecting quite a profit, please do not worry about us.

And I am worried about my son. Nadi’s list of chores was long and the time was short, so I was not able to speak with him about this American woman Kathy Nicolo before the evening began. Esmail is an honest boy, and he sometimes speaks before thinking. I imagine him sitting at his video game he is able to win with closed eyes, perhaps talking out of boredom to the young jeweler, telling to him of the crazy woman who visited today. Nadi and my daughter’s mother-in-law talk now of our home country, how they miss the flowers of Isfahan, the mosques of Qom, how the price of saffron here is not to be believed. Soraya is leaning close to her husband as she smiles and shows him a girlhood photograph of herself, the candlelight reflecting in his eyeglasses. I excuse myself and go to Esmail’s room. The only light comes from the computer screen and they are both sitting at the monitor, their eyes and faces hard with concentration. My son is taller than the jeweler, I notice. I stand in the doorway and listen to the beep beeps of the electronic game. I listen to the voices of the women in the other room, Googoosh singing one of our three-thousand-year-old love songs on the Japanese tape machine, and I suddenly feel I am a mardeh peer, a very old man. Soon it will be Esmail’s new wife we will invite to dinner. But where will Nadi and I be living then? Will we still be in this country? Tonight, I am longing to be back in Chālūs, the Caspian Sea stretched out before us, Pourat and his family alive again and visiting us in our home. Earlier this evening, when the sun was setting into the Pacific and we drank French champagne amongst flowers and family, toasting our health, I began to feel the old ways once again in my blood. But then there was the loud sound of an automobile engine and I turned to see this woman Kathy Nicolo staring at me from the passenger’s seat, a man at the steering wheel, although I could not see him clearly before they drove away and I was left feeling accused of a crime I did not commit.

I feel quite tired and hope our guests will leave very soon. For days I have been looking forward to this dinner, to seeing my only daughter again, but like so many things in this life it is never as you dream it. And it is clear to me my daughter does not respect me as she once did; throughout the evening, in between all of her talking, I would sometimes catch her viewing me with a distant sadness, the fashion in which people regard the blind or very ill. And it is perhaps this more than anything else that leaves my arms and legs so heavy with fatigue. Because Soraya is right: how far it is we have fallen if everything we have is invested in a small bungalow on a hill in California.

Nadereh laughs quite loudly at the sofreh, but it is not a genuine laugh, and I want to sleep now. I want to sleep, and dream of kings.

LAST NIGHT WE STOPPED AT A GROCERY STORE IN HALF MOON BAY, Lester and I walking down the food aisles under all that fluorescent light, stopping to pick out Wheat Thins, steaks, and coffee as quiet and relaxed as if we’d been living together for years. But I wasn’t relaxed and I don’t think he was either. The trip to my house had pissed him off, and he talked about it as we left Corona and drove south through all the beach towns on Highway 1, the sky a bloody mess out over the water. He kept asking me who the hell those people thought they were. What were they celebrating with their pricey cars and clothes? Taking a woman’s house? I kept quiet and we shared a beer while he drove. I teased him about a cop drinking and driving and Lester seemed to calm down and told me how up until a few years ago it was legal in Texas to drink while you drove as long as you weren’t drunk. At the store he acted cheerful again, asking me if I liked this or would I prefer that before he dropped it in our cart. But I still heard a drag in his voice, like he was holding something heavy in his arms. I was hungry and the beer had gone to my head and I didn’t like it. I was tired of feeling like my feet weren’t all the way on the ground, like the real me was waiting for me somewhere outside my body, and I made a vow I wouldn’t drink anymore for the rest of the night.

Five or so miles south of Half Moon Bay Lester turned off the coast highway and we drove along what he said was the Purisima River, a dry bed of stones with a thin ribbon of water moving through the middle, making whitecaps over small boulders as it flowed west for the Pacific. There was a pale green light left in the sky, and I looked out my window at low fields of artichoke plant, then woods and an occasional house or trailer. There were lights on inside, so I guess I expected electricity when we got to where we were going. I had turned on the radio on the highway but now, maybe because of all the trees and the mountain I knew was somewhere ahead of us, not much was coming in, so Les turned it off. He was being very quiet and I wanted him to talk more.

We left the main road for a much more narrow one, the pavement worn to dirt in places. Then Les turned the car onto a trail of flat rocks and pine needles, the woods dense on both sides of us, and he drove slowly and we rocked in and out of shallow ruts in the ground. A couple of times the bottom of the car grated against rock and Les said shit under his breath. When the trail got even more narrow and low pine branches started scraping the top of the roof, Lester stopped the car and we locked it and I followed him along a path as he carried two bags of groceries and I carried one. It was almost too dark to see without a flashlight and the air had gotten cooler and smelled like pine and dried eucalyptus. I could hear the Purisima River through the woods on my left, then Lester walked up three wooden steps and onto a porch with me right behind him. Mosquitoes started to light on my face and hands, and one got his stinger in my back through my blouse. Les put his groceries down, unlocked the door, then felt his way along a wall and struck a match to one of those camping lanterns that hiss and give off the light of a bare bulb. He took the lamp and hung it by its handle from a ceiling hook in the middle of the room, the walls and floors made of pine planks that were weathered or stained a dark brown. I smelled something a little rotten.

Lester took my grocery bag and put it on a three-foot-thick chopping block beneath the hanging lamp. On his way to get the groceries from the porch he stopped and kissed me, hugged me to him. “You hungry?”

“I could eat,” I said into his chest. I could smell his aftershave, and I hugged him tight before he went outside.

Under a wooden staircase against the wall was a black iron woodstove. Les got a fire going in it in no time, and even though it made the room a little too warm, it was nice seeing the flames and smelling the smoke. Next to an army cot in the corner was a plastic ice chest, and Les opened it and found an old chicken carcass floating in the water. “Shit.”

“Nope, I think it’s a chicken, Lester.”

He let out a laugh, carried the cooler down to the river, taking the gas lantern with him. In the firelight I unloaded the groceries onto the chopping block, then looked around for something to cook with. On a crate underneath the stairwell was a short stack of pots and pans, and I dusted off a black iron skillet, put it on the stove above the flames, then unwrapped the steaks and laid them in.