Later, as I cleaned my Monday residential, running the vacuum over carpets, mopping the floor, you’d think my mind would be on my house for most of the day, but it wasn’t; it was Lester, his tall skinny gentleness, his smell—like sweet damp ground—the way he paid such attention to me. And I was thinking of kids again. I wanted to see pictures of his son and daughter. I wanted to know their ages, and their favorite snacks. I knew lots of men who’d started second families, had babies again when their first kids were almost on their own. But I was getting way ahead of us, wasn’t I?

Around noon, I picked up my mail at the post office, then went to a shopping center sandwich shop to sift through it all while I ate. It was only ten days’ worth but it took up all of my table, and I put it in two piles, one for the trash can on the way out, one to keep. The trash pile was mostly junk mail, the other was bills: car insurance, gas, my final phone and electric. The electric bill was the most recent and I opened it and read the cutoff date for the last billing period: just two days ago. I tore into my turkey sandwich and drank down some Diet Coke, and I shook my head at how fucked-up this was. It was the same with the gas bill.

My first thought was to call Connie Walsh again, but I knew she’d only tell me to call the utility companies and set them straight. I didn’t want to hear that. I pushed my sandwich away and lit a cigarette, looked out the window at the shopping center parking lot, at all the cars under the hazy sky. I was reaching for the ashtray when I saw the postcard in my bill pile, a glossy picture of the Hilltop Steak House back in Saugus on Route I. In front of the restaurant was a huge fiberglass cactus maybe fifty feet high, and all around it on a small fenced-in lawn were a dozen life-sized steers. I knew the card was from my mother and I took another drag and drank from my Coke before I started to read it:

Dear K,

Your telephone is out of order. Have you two got an unlisted?

Your aunts won two round-trip tickets to San Francisco. I may go with them Labor Day. Send me your new number.

Mother

I left the sandwich shop and stepped into a drugstore for a notebook. Back in my car, I wrote:

Hi Ma,

I’m sorry I haven’t called you. A bad earth tremor rolled through here last week and a tree hit the phone lines down the street. As soon as they’re fixed I’ll let you know. Also, that’s good news about your coming out here but Nick and I won’t be in town that weekend. He’s taking me on a business trip. Sorry to miss you.

K

I wondered if I should put in anything extra about the tremor, what it feels like to be in one, maybe, but then thought no, she wouldn’t expect that from me.

Then I wrote letters to the gas and electric companies explaining my situation, telling them to bill a Mr. Barmeeny instead of me. I drove back to the post office to mail them but when I dropped my mother’s letter into the box I felt as if I’d just heaved my last sandbag against rising water and there wasn’t much time left.

It was barely one o’clock and I had six hours to kill before I met Les back at the camp. I thought about going there early to make us a nice dinner, surprise him, but then I pictured myself trying to build a fire in the stove, not having an oven to use. And my specialty was casserole dishes; lasagna, veal and eggplant Parmesan. I decided to go to a movie instead, one or two weekday matinees at the mall Cineplex in Millbrae off the Camino Real. Last night, as we were drifting to sleep, my cheek on his shoulder, I asked him his kids’ names again. “Bethany and Nate,” he said, his voice full of gratitude. Then I asked him where his house was and when he said it was in Millbrae, in a housing development you had to drive by to get to the mall, I told him I’d probably driven past his house a dozen times, maybe I’d even seen his wife.

“Carol,” he said.

“Yeah. Carol.”

But now, instead of passing through San Bruno for the highway to Millbrae, I drove into foggy downtown Corona, then right up the long hill of Bisgrove Street. I wanted to pull over beside the woods across from my house and just look at it a few minutes, maybe remind myself of what was mine before I went off to numb my afternoon away in a dark theater. And I guess I didn’t really expect to see anyone there, but a station wagon was parked by the woods so I could only park near the house and I didn’t want to do that because there were people standing in my yard looking at my home: a man and woman and a young boy, maybe eight. He had his hands in his shorts pockets, and he was kicking one foot into the grass. His father’s hand was on his shoulder and they were all looking at what Colonel Barmeeny was pointing out to them, the new deck on my roof. The bald Arab wore a tie and a short-sleeved dress shirt that looked very white in the grayness. He glanced at me in my car, but then turned away as if he hadn’t seen anything. He was talking fast, officially, though I couldn’t hear his exact words through my open window. He looked back at me one more time before he led the young family up the steps to the roof for a view that must be foggy. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and a sick laugh rose up from my stomach: the fucking bastard was trying to sell my house! Then I just honked my horn, leaning on it with both hands. I looked straight ahead and I could feel the steering wheel vibrate. Two houses up, a woman stuck her head out her front door and stared. But I kept my weight on the wheel, letting that sound tear through the air until my wrists started to ache, and I let go and yelled through the window, “He can’t sell you that house! He doesn’t own it! He’s trying to fucking steal it! He’s trying to sell you a stolen house!”

The man was half-smiling like he didn’t know if this was a joke or not. He looked from me to Barmeeny, then back at me again. His wife stepped closer to her son, and the colonel’s face was still as stone. I pushed on the gas, sped up the hill, and turned around at the dead end. I drove back and honked the horn again. The colonel was standing near the railing talking to the man and woman, and now he nodded his head and pointed in my direction as if my noise proved some point he was trying to make. But I didn’t care what he said; I kept going, my hand pressed to the horn all the way down the hill.

NADEREH RETURNED FROM HER AFTERNOON WITH SORAYA IN HIGH spirits. After their luncheon they had shopped, and Nadi was quite excited to show to me my new shirt and tie, the pants and sweatshirt she purchased for Esmail. She also pulled from her bags more tape cassettes of Persian music and she put one of them into the machine while she set about preparing our dinner. The music was most recent, and I did not like it. There were still the old instruments being used—the tar, kamancheh, and domback—but electric guitar as well, and the singer sounded to me like a whining child; I was surprised Nadi had chosen it. I watched her fill the rice pot with water from the sink, moving her head slightly in feeling with the music, and I pressed the machine’s off button. Nadereh turned her head to me immediately. “Nakon, Massoud. What is wrong for you?”

“You must not spend so much money, Nadereh.”

“It is not so much money,” she said in Farsi, smiling. “There are school sales now. Even your clothes, Behrani.” She walked to me, drying her hands upon her apron. She kissed my cheek, then pressed the music on once again and resumed her cooking. And I knew I could not tell her my worries. I knew I would prefer to have her this way, cheerful and innocent as a child.

BUT THERE WERE flames in my stomach, and now, after dinner, I sit upon my widow’s walk at the new table under the umbrella looking down over the rooftops and streets of Corona to the gray fog that enshrouds the beach and the sea. It is two or more hours to nightfall. I drink hot tea, strong from brewing in the samovar since morning, and I can hear my wife in the house below washing dishes in the kitchen sink. The sky and ocean are so gray and white as to be inseparable. I sit and think. I must weigh my options regarding this Kathy Nicolo, but my hand trembles, my mind roaming elsewhere, to Jasmeen, my cousin, who was nineteen years old and very beautiful. Her voice was low for a woman, but her body was long and thin, her hair quite thick and black, and when she thought something was humorous she would laugh without reservation, letting her teeth and bright eyes be seen by anyone. But she had an affair with an American oil executive, who they say was rich and quite handsome. She committed this in a townhouse which one of her own neighbors cleaned three times per week. Soon, all the village women knew she had given her girl’s flower away without marriage, without the blessing of God and the holy mosque, and to a married foreigner from the west. And it took a full month for the news to reach her father, my uncle, and her two brothers. My uncle was a trader in carpets, though not highly successful, while his only brother, my father, was a respected lawyer who would one day become a judge. When my uncle finally heard the gossip of the old khanooms, he did not believe it, but Jasmeen was not capable of telling lies well and so he knew it was the truth and he beat her. For two weeks he kept her locked in the home. He began to drink vodka nightly, at first with the neighborhood men, but he could not bear their silence so he drank alone, usually at his shop in the back room where the carpets hung from the walls or were stacked in long rolls in all four corners. My uncle rolled his own cigarettes and I imagined him smoking his black Turkish tobacco and drinking in the stillness and quiet of his office, the walls threatening to collapse upon him. He would return home very late, often in the early morning, pull Jasmeen from her bed, and beat her with his fists, crying, “Gendeh! Whore!” My aunt would sometimes attempt to stop him, but he would beat her as well, calling her, “Modar gendeh! Mother whore!”