I lay the weapon and its loaded magazine on a folded paper towel and set it against the flower pots upon the counter. Outdoors, in the twilight fog, comes the familiar metallic rolling sound of my son’s skateboard wheels upon the concrete sidewalk. I begin to prepare myself for speaking with him and when he enters the home wearing only shorts and basketball shoes and a loose black T-shirt, I scold him for both underdressing and for dressing too darkly as well. In the doorway he stands as tall as a man. His black hair is matted wet upon his forehead from the fog and his own sweat, and his eyes survey the sofreh, the four plates there instead of three. Nadi is near to the sink preparing the samovar for later and she calls out in Farsi for Esmail to take off his shoes and then come into the kitchen for washing. She regards me, her hands upon the samovar lid, and she motions with her head for me to commence explaining. Esmail removes his shoes, asks me if the automobile in the driveway does not belong to that woman, Bawbaw-jahn? Again I am faced with the moment of not knowing how much of our situation to share with my son. But then I tell to myself it is his situation as well; the woman Kathy Nicolo has slept in his bed. I ask my tall handsome son of fourteen years to the counter where I show him the unloaded weapon and tell him everything.

Esmail’s face looks as it did when he was a small boy, before he had his own television, computer, and video games, when he was still interested in stories of people, of hearing me talk of soldiers and their triumphs or failures, hearing his mother or older sister speak with pity of crippled beggars in the marketplace. His eyes would grow larger, more round, and a bit moist with a curiosity so sharp it became nearly fear as well. He appears this way now, and his eyes linger on the weapon as I speak. Twice he turns and looks down the corridor to the closed bathroom door.

Nadereh approaches him, wiping the samovar lid with a dry cloth. In Farsi she says that the woman is not well. “You must be a gentleman, joon-am. Very kind. Very polite. Very quiet.” She asks him to quickly retrieve long pants, a shirt, and socks from his room and he may dress in her bedroom and wash at the kitchen sink. Our son’s eyes have changed now. They shine with the joy of adventure, and soon he is dressed and clean and sitting upon the floor at the sofreh, the light from the candles in his eyes. I sit there as well, giving to him permission to eat bread, perhaps a toropcheh, a radish. The covered dishes are cooling, the candle sticks burning shorter, and soon the scent of the samovar’s tea will fill the room, so I tell to my wife to please inform Kathy Nicolo of her waiting meal.

Nadi disappears into the hallway, knocks upon the bathroom door. “Please, hello? Your food is to be eating soon. Hello?”

My son and I smile at one another over Nadi’s English. We eat bread and listen to her knock again. But there is only silence. Too much silence. And it is in this silence my heart quickens and I stand. I hear Nadi turn the knob and open the door and I am moving down the darkened corridor in my socks, a prowler against my own knowledge of what is to come: I should have taken more precautions with this woman. I curse myself, and I am not surprised when my wife screams and I enter the bathroom and see in the sink the empty pharmaceutical bottle, Kathy Nicolo lying nude in the clear water, her face as white and still as if she were in the deepest of sleeps. Nadi cries out in Farsi that we must hurry, we must make her lose her stomach! I avert my eyes from the woman’s breasts only to see the darkness between her legs. My face becomes very warm, my limbs clumsy. Nadi pulls on her wet arms and Kathy Nicolo opens her eyes, but they are narrow and quite dark, as if she were blind or seeing us only in a dream. Nadereh appears startled, but she regains herself and without turning around orders me in Farsi to leave the room immediately.

I obey. Esmail is standing there as well and I know he has seen the naked woman but I say nothing of this.

“What happened, Bawbaw?”

I tell to him to return to the sofreh and eat his dinner. My son opens his mouth to speak once more but I shake my head and point my arm to the living-room area. He does nearly as I instruct, except he does not eat at the sofreh. He fills his bowl with rice and obgoosht and sits at the counter bar where he has a view of the corridor and me and the bathroom’s closed door. I stand there listening, but the sound of my own heart fills my ears. I turn the knob and open the door a fraction. My wife speaks softly, half in English, half in Farsi, and the woman Kathy Nicolo speaks as well but I cannot understand her words, for they are in the high bewildered tone of a child.

“Yes, good,” Nadi says. “Een bosheh. Beeah. Very good.”

There is the sloshing of water, the rustle of a towel, and Kathy Nicolo’s voice telling to my wife she is very beautiful, but the words are thick and her statement sounds more to me as a question would. Nadereh thanks her and tells to Kathy Nicolo that she too is beautiful. Khelee zeebah. Then Nadi says, “Bee-ah injah. Come to here, please.” And I hear only silence. Then Nadereh speaks again: “Yes, your mouth to open. Khelee khobe, very good.” Her voice is near the door and I am certain the two women are upon their knees at the toilet. Kathy Nicolo asks a question but once again I cannot understand the words. They are merged one over the other. She begins to cough and retch and there is a contracted silence, then her vomit hitting the toilet water.

I return to the living-room area, but the smells of obgoosht and saffron rice no longer attract me. I sit beside my son at the counter, my heart a presence in my hands, and tell to him to finish eating. He fills his spoon with rice. “Bawbaw-jahn?”

“Yes?”

“She took Maman’s pills, huh?”

“Yes.”

Esmail eats his rice and drinks from his glass of cola. He is excited by all this and I can see he is attempting not to allow this to show upon his face. Perhaps I should telephone an ambulance, but what can they do my Nadi is not already doing? And with them may come policemen as well, more trouble, though we have done nothing wrong. I pull the weapon to me once more, rub my fingers across its black plastic grip.

“Becaw uh thouth?”

“Chew your food before you speak, son. I did not understand.”

Esmail swallows, wiping his face with a napkin. “I said, is it because of the house, Bawbaw? Is that why she keeps trying to kill herself?”

There is a grain of rice on my son’s chin. His eyes look directly into my own. I brush the rice from his face and tell to him the truth: “Man nehmeedoonam. I do not know.”

Esmail looks down the corridor to the closed washroom door, then he regards the food upon his plate, the stewed tomatoes and meat, their juices soiling the white rice. “I feel sorry for her. We should have moved, Bawbaw-jahn.”

I take a deep breath, but my patience is not tested. I am simply very tired, tired of all this turbulence in our life. I want peace. I want peace and silence and no more loud emotion. Esmail does not eat. It is as if he is waiting for my response.

“Beekhore,” I tell to him. “Eat.” And I leave the counter bar and return to the washroom door to see if Nadi has finished saving this young woman’s life, has perhaps even caught it in her own two hands.

IN CORONA THE FOG WAS SO THICK THE STREETLAMPS ABOVE THE sidewalk appeared only as dim approximations of light, and as Lester drove slowly by the beach shops and boutiques on both sides of him, he could only just begin to make out the square glow of their windows. In the ten blanketed miles from Montara only two cars had passed him going in the opposite direction, and one had the heavy axle rumble of a half-ton truck, the other the high-rpm whine of a small foreign car. But no Bonneville. He kept picturing Kathy at the storage shed in San Bruno, all of her possessions there. Maybe she’d loaded more things into her car and then was too spooked by the fog to drive. There was no phone at the camp for her to call. She might be at Carl Jr.’s a mile down the road waiting for the air to clear, or she might have gone inside the truck-stop bar. Lester’s stomach grew hot at this image of Kathy, sitting alone in that dark place full of independent truckers coming off days on the road alone, men who wore their loneliness on their shirtsleeves like a badge in need of a polish. And despite himself, Lester began to imagine one of the younger ones—maybe a lanky kid from San Diego or Phoenix—buying her a drink, or more, asking her for a dance. And he felt almost queasy at this, like a high school kid desperate over his first crush. He was ashamed of feeling this way, and he knew then he wasn’t completely sure he trusted Kathy, did he? Under the right circumstances, would she give herself to someone else as completely and quickly as she had to him? But again, he felt ashamed of himself. Right now everything was floating completely out of proportion. Nothing felt grounded or real. There was no proportion at all.