“Deed your friend to leave more tools?”

At first I thought she was referring to Les, but then I understood; she really didn’t know what was going on at all. But the pressure between my legs was bad enough I didn’t think I could start explaining everything without going to the toilet first. I told her my foot was fine and with a pathetic smile on my face asked if I could use her bathroom again. She said yes, yes, of course, holding the door open for me.

When I came back out she had set a plate of red grapes and feta cheese on the counter.

“I am apologize for this mess. I cannot offer you sofa for sitting.”

“That’s okay.” I stood at the counter and reached for a grape, slipping it into my mouth.

“Would you to like tea?”

“No, thank you very much, Mrs. Barmeeny—I need to tell you something; I’m not a friend of the carpenter you hired. I’ve never even seen him before.

“My name is Kathy Nicolo.” I put out my hand and the colonel’s wife took it. Hers was smaller than mine, and so soft I could feel my cleaning calluses against her palm. I let go. “My father was Salvatore Nicolo. This was his house and when he died he left it to me and my brother.”

She stood very still, one small hand resting on the countertop, and she shook her head once. “I do not understand.” Her eyes were a little shiny and there were deep lines around her mouth.

I ate two more grapes, more for the juice than anything else, and looked into her drawn, still face. “See, the county evicted me from this house by mistake. Your husband bought it, but now the county has admitted they screwed up and they’ll give it back to me, but your husband has to sell it back to them first and he won’t.

“They want to give him his money back, but he wants four times what he paid, and I have no place to live. I can’t afford a motel anymore. I can’t. I have no place to live. Do you undestand?”

Slowly she looked away from me, pulled one of the stools out, and sat on it, her back straight, her legs crossed as ladylike as if she were wearing a dress. She rested her hands in her lap and looked right at me. “Will they make us return for our country?” Her voice sounded thicker than before, and higher, like there was phlegm in her throat.

“Who? The county?”

“A policeman came to here last evening. He told to my husband he will deport us.” Her eyes began to shine, but she kept sitting straight and still. “Please, you do not for understand, they will kill us. Please, they will to shoot my children.” She began to blink, then covered her face with both hands and pressed her chin to her chest. At first she made no sound at all; there was just the up and down movement of her shoulders, but when she got her breath she let out a long moan, and I reached over and touched her knee, small as bird bones. There was a box of Kleenex on the lamp table beside their family picture and I took some, and patted her small thin back, telling her not to worry, no one was going to deport her. But she didn’t seem to hear me or understand. She held her hands to her face and cried. I patted and looked around my old living room, at the family portrait, the broken silver coffee table on its side against the couch, the framed painting of the swordsmen on horseback, the black-and-white photograph of the colonel with the Shah of Iran.

She straightened up and thanked me, taking a tissue and wiping under her eyes. I sat across from her, feeling a little hopeful all of this might get worked out after all.

“No one wants to deport anybody, Mrs. Barmeeny. I was just hoping if I talked with you, you might be able to convince your husband to sell the house back to me—I mean the county.”

“Please, you are very nice girl. Please—” She reached behind all the flowers on the counter and pulled out a blank writing pad and pencil. “Write for me everything. I want for to understand for discussing with my husband.”

I thanked her and squeezed her hand, the one with the wet tissue in it, and I started to write everything I’d just said. At the top of the blank page was someone’s Middle Eastern writing. The letters were beautiful, long curving lines and loops and ovals, some with two or three dots marked in or around them, others underlined with a long snakelike curve. It looked exotic to me, and somehow the sight of it gave me even more hope as I wrote in very plain English, in neat block print, my situation. And while I did, she told me how hard it had been for her husband since the family left Persia, that he was a very important man there. He worked his whole life to be in that position and then came the revolution of the people and all was lost. “But he is good man. He wants for his family only the best, this is all. But these things I did not know you have told to me. You are nice girl. We never want cause trouble for people.”

It was hard to write and listen at the same time, but I didn’t want to offend her in any way so I kept looking up every line or two to nod my head. She said she’d called her country today because it was her youngest sister’s birthday, who she hadn’t seen in over fourteen years when her sister was only nineteen and now she is a wife and mother with three children, nieces and nephews she has never met, only received pictures of in the mail. She got quiet then. I glanced up at her and saw she was staring at the broken table on the floor, her eyeliner a faint smear on her cheeks.

I finished writing, and handed her the pad of paper and pencil. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Barmeeny. Am I pronouncing your name correctly?”

“It is Behrani.” She smiled, her dark eyes bottomless, like she’d seen everything in the world at least once. “Do you not have husband? Children?”

I could see she was sincere, the rest of her face still and expressionless, as if I was a small animal she didn’t want to scare away with any sudden movement.

“I was married, but we never had kids.” I glanced over at the family portrait of her and the colonel, the two children in front of them, their handsome young son, their daughter dressed in white, her hair black and shiny, her eyes like her mother’s, her teeth clean and straight as she smiled into the camera. “Yours are beautiful, Mrs. Behrani.”

“You could be twin of our Soraya. You look as her, you see?”

I couldn’t believe she’d said that. I was probably fifteen years older than her daughter, and even at twenty or twenty-one I never had the kind of light this girl let off. And it wasn’t just her physical features; there was an air about her, even in a photograph, of being something special and knowing it, one of the chosen, and at that age I was married to a welder from Charlestown, both of us snorting white snakes until I guess we felt chosen. But every morning the kick was gone and left us thick-tongued and stupid, not even wanting to touch each other. But Mrs. Behrani was smiling at me, and I could see she meant what she said. She asked if my family was Greek, or Armenian.

“Italian.” I stood to see myself to the door. The day had turned gray, the sun gone, but Mrs. Behrani squinted her eyes and held her fingers to her forehead. She was telling me in her thick Middle Eastern accent how much she loved the Italian people: Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, but I was already starting to brood; I would never have what her daughter did, her clean and respectful past, her comfortable present, her promising future; I wanted to get into my car and drive, but Mrs. Behrani was telling me how she once met Sophia Loren at a party on vacation to Italy long ago, so I waited, smiling and nodding my head..

SAN BRUNO WAS UNDER THE SUN, BUT THE STREETS OF CORONA ARE in a fog from the beach, a cool mist whose presence has convinced me to nap as soon as I return to the bungalow. I did not rest well last evening upon the sofa, and I of course was up with the morning birds to wake Esmail for his new newspaper route, so I felt sleep coming for me even as I purchased necessary items at the hardware store; glue for Nadi’s table, three new property for sale signs on wooden stakes, and a long iron wrecking bar. It is a useful tool to own and I believe because of this fact I was able to purchase it without thinking of it as a weapon.