House of Sand and Fog Read online

  I went outside to my backyard. It was March then, and chilly. The ground was hard and I stared at it. Nicky was a good lover. He didn’t fuck like those men. He didn’t direct me like a rag doll to probe. It had always seemed mutual to me. But what was so clear to me for the first time was this: when all was said and done, Nick Lazaro had to have total control.

  It was close to noon and the sun was getting too hot on my legs and face. I stood and brushed the sand off, and after a fast-food lunch of a fish sandwich and Diet Coke, I drove back to the storage lot to look for that signed tax statement again. But there were no air vents in the shed, and even with the doors swung wide open, it was so hot in there my tank top and shorts were stuck to my skin in just a few minutes and my throat needed another cold drink. I padlocked the door, put the air conditioner on in the car, and just started driving. I was kicking myself for not taking a shower before checking out of the El Rancho. I turned into a gas station, filled the tank on my gas card, and gave myself a cat bath from the sink in the ladies’ room. Then I changed into a clean cotton pullover, bought more cigarettes, and drove twelve miles south on 101 to the mall Cineplex. There were ten movie theaters there and I was planning to sit the afternoon away in at least three of them.

  I DO NOT KNOW IF IT WAS THE GLASS OF CHAMPAGNE MY NADI DRANK, or if it was because Esmail had fallen asleep early before his television in his room, or if it was simply the joyful news of the real estate appraiser who I hired to come here yesterday, the news I thank God for and cannot yet believe, that this bungalow is worth four times what I paid for it and the appraiser sees no difficulty in our finding a buyer for it, especially with the new widow’s walk that will overlook the sea. Perhaps it was that, or the new cassette player I purchased for her at Japantown in San Francisco late yesterday afternoon, I do not know. Man nehmee doonam. All I can be certain of is yesterday God kissed our eyes, and last evening my wife invited me to her room for only the third time in the years we have lived in America.

  We lay together in the darkness listening to a new cassette of a singer reciting the rubaiyats of Fayez Dashtestani. Behind this a man softly played the ney, a shepherd’s flute, and soon she pulled me to her and it was almost too much; I felt I was a young man again, lying with my new bride. Nadi held my back so tightly and I saw again my father on our wedding day carrying the fat sheep to the doorway of our new home. It was summer and very hot and because of the west wind there was dust upon our fine clothes. My father wore a suit of black, and his forehead and cheeks were shining with sweat as he carried the sheep under his left arm, the long knife in his right hand, and he knelt and held the sheep at the open doorway, the sheep beginning to bleat, struggling and kicking beneath my father’s weight, Nadi squeezing my hand in both of hers as my father pushed the blade deep into the sheep’s throat, pulling it free, letting the blood fall onto the threshold of our new home, Nadi’s father squatting and rubbing the blood into the wood with his fingers, behind us the women and men clapping and a hot wind blowing over us all, Nadi’s breath upon my neck, the crowd pushing us into the dark house past the dying sheep, its rear legs twitching and jerking in the dust.

  The shepherd’s flute continued. My wife moved to rest my face upon her shoulder and she rubbed her fingers gently on the skin of my head as if I were her own child.

  Soon the music ended and she was asleep, but I could not sleep. I went to Esmail’s room and turned off the television, then I covered him with his sheet. Even curled there, his body took up nearly all the bed. He is growing so quickly, faster than did his sister Soraya, that standing before him in my robe, I felt proud and frightened all at the same moment.

  And now I wake upon the living-room sofa just before the sun and I feel a sadness that I did not stay in bed with Nadereh, for I do not know if last evening will come again anytime soon. And I remember Soraya when she was a girl. Her legs were long and thin and brown, and her mother forever had her wearing a pretty dress of some kind. One evening upon my return home, when she had no more than seven or eight years, I remember my daughter stepping out onto the rear veranda to greet me. I heard her laughing and I looked up from the auto and saw her standing at attention in her yellow dress, her tiny knees barely touching one another, wearing the visored hat from my old sarvan’s uniform. The captain’s hat was of course so large it fell forward and covered her eyes and I remember that lovely gap between her two front teeth as she laughed and saluted, even though she could not see me or anything else.

  She is now a man’s wife. At this thought I rise from the couch, dress, and take my tea outside to the rear lawn. The tall grass is slightly wet and it begins to itch my bare feet as I walk around the bungalow with my hot cup. It is still quite early. Stars are visible in the sky. Today the young najar begins construction of the widow’s walk, and I do not know if it was perhaps a mistake to begin advertising the sale of the home before the job is complete. I lower my eyes to the dark woodland across the road and I stop still, for parked there beside the trees is the appraiser’s red automobile. I feel a sudden lightness in my chest and a heaviness in my legs; I am certain he has driven here to inform me it is all a mistake, this bungalow is not worth anything. But as I step over the hard cool road I am embarrassed at my fear, at my doubt; the car is quite new-looking and not the appraiser’s at all, and of course he would not drive out for business at so very early in the morning. Pourat many times told to me I was not a man of faith and of course I was forced to agree with him. It is why I am forever expecting disaster around the corner from God’s smile.

  There is a slight movement within the automobile. I approach and peer through the window glass to see a young woman sleeping upon her back in the front seat. She is dressed in short pants and a shirt without sleeves. Her arm rests over her eyes. I look in the rear window, but she is alone. Once again I shake my head at how these American women live. I look once more at her naked legs and feet, then I return to my yard with my tea.

  THE SKY IS DARK AND NICKY IS ON A BROWN HORSE STANDING IN Astream. I’m there too, knee-deep in water. He sits in the saddle, looking down at me the way he did the morning he left, like it’s too late to do anything and he’s made up his mind to leave right away before he gets too sad about it all and won’t be able to move. Except his horse won’t move. It keeps looking at me with its big eyes. Every time Nick jerks on the reins the horse opens its mouth and lets out a high-pitched whir. And when Nick kicks its ribs with his heels it sounds like a rock hitting a hollow tree. I put my hand on the horse’s damp neck and look up at Nick, then everything changes and he and I are sitting on a couch somewhere, both smoking, me pleading about wanting a baby, Nick sitting so still and quiet, looking straight ahead like I’ve just asked him to drink cyanide. I can hear the horse outside, the whirring and knocking. But who’s the rider?

  Who is the rider?

  I opened my eyes and sat up in the front seat of the Bonneville. I could taste last night’s cigarettes and I turned the ignition key halfway to light up the digital clock. It wasn’t quite eight in the morning but already the sun was coming warm through the windshield and on the maroon upholstery and me. The woods were thick and shaded as always, and deep inside were spots of sunlight. Then I heard the sound that had been in my sleep, and I turned and looked across the street at the house. Two carpenters were up on the roof above my kitchen.

  They were both shirtless and one of them was ripping away shingles with the claw of his hammer while the other was using his power saw to cut through my roof, my father’s roof, Frankie’s roof. Their pickup truck was parked in front of the house close to the driveway where last night I saw a new white Buick in the shine of my headlights as I drove up the hill, but now it was gone, and I should’ve listened to Lester Burdon and stayed away from here. But it was the only place I could think to go so late at night after driving around for over an hour, talking myself out of checking into another motel somewhere. Now the two carpenters stood together and used crowbars to pry a huge square of my roof off
. They let it fall to the ground, then they stood on the floor of my attic between the rafters. The one with the saw started cutting right into one of them and I scooted behind the wheel and jerked open the door and ran across the street barefoot. I yelled up at them, but they couldn’t hear me over the saw, so I stepped around my roof and climbed up the ladder. They were both tan and one of them had a tattoo of a diner on his shoulder. The other one stopped cutting and looked from me to the one with the tattoo, then back at me again.

  “What are you doing?”

  The one with the tattoo dropped his hammer into his tool belt. “Excuse me?”

  “Who said you could do this? This is my fucking house!”

  He peered over the roof down at his truck and my car. “And you are?”

  “I own this house. Me. Get off my roof.”

  “Are you Mrs. Behrani?”

  “No.”

  The other carpenter reached into his apron, shook a cigarette from its pack, and lit it. I could feel him looking at my bare arms and legs, and at my hair all ratty from sleep. It was cold last night and now my head felt stopped up and I felt so out of place and wrong.

  “Mr. Behrani hired me. You’ll have to talk to him.”

  I looked from the tattooed carpenter to the one smoking his cigarette. He glanced away from me and took in the view and I turned and saw the rooftops of Corona below, then the green-gray ocean stretching out from the beach to the horizon. Somehow this made me madder and I climbed back down the ladder and began stepping over the shingles and one of the carpenters yelled to watch out for nails just as I stepped on the upside-down plywood where dozens of nail points were sticking out and now four or five of them were sinking into the heel and ball of my foot. I screamed, jerking my knee up, the blood dripping. “Shit.” I hopped and sat down, then twisted my foot up, but there was so much blood I couldn’t see where the holes were. “Fuck.”

  “Here.” The tattooed carpenter squatted in front of me and tied a bandanna tight around my ankle. He helped me stand and guided me to the front steps, my front steps, and he knocked on the screen door. I had my hand on his bare shoulder, my elbow against his back. His skin was warm and damp and I could feel the muscle under it. I was thinking how I hadn’t brushed my teeth or washed my face, that I’d slept in my car last night and now was bleeding on my own doorstep waiting for a stranger to answer.

  A black-haired boy came to the door. He was maybe fifteen and he wore bright orange surfer shorts and a loose T-shirt. He glanced down at my foot I wasn’t letting touch the ground. A woman came up behind him. She had short thick hair and dark eyes with hardly any makeup. She was wearing a designer sweat suit, and there was a big ring on her left hand. I wanted to say that she was in my goddamn house, that she had no fucking right to remodel it, but the carpenter spoke up first and asked her if we could use the bathroom to wash my foot, and if she had something we could use to keep the blood from getting on her rug. And it was her rug. I could see it on the wall-to-wall carpeting behind her, a huge deep red and brown Persian rug. The woman told the boy something in what sounded Arabic or Israeli, and the boy went to the kitchen and came back with a plastic trash bag he handed to the carpenter, who bent down and pulled it loosely over my foot. I felt like throwing up, my stomach contracting. The woman was looking at my hair and face, my wrinkled shirt, and her eyes seemed so full of caring I took a weak breath and didn’t say anything as she stepped back and let the carpenter and me inside.

  I had one arm on the carpenter’s shoulder, the other holding the plastic trash bag onto my foot. We passed a silver coffee table with bowls of nuts and wrapped chocolates set on top of it. There was a plush sofa and expensive-looking lamps. The carpenter stopped at the kitchen and asked the woman where the bathroom was, but before she could talk I told him to go all the way down the hall. I leaned on his shoulder and hopped through a house that didn’t seem like mine anymore; the door to my bedroom was open and I caught a glimpse of a queen-size bed with brass posts. On the floor near the windows were huge potted green plants, and on the carpet around the bed were small rugs, deep purple, green, and black.

  In the bathroom I sat on the edge of the tub and let cold water run over the sole of my foot as I watched the blood swirl down the drain. The carpenter stood beside me with his hands on his hips. He still had his tool belt on and his hammer handle was swaying against his leg.

  “When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

  “Ees she yet bleeding?”

  The woman reached by me, her arm brushing my face, and I smelled lavender and cotton. She knelt on the floor, adjusted the water temperature, then took a bar of soap and washed my foot under hot water. She called to her son in their language, then she sat on the edge of the tub, gently took my foot and swung it to rest in a towel in her lap. It was a white towel, thick and soft, like only five-star hotels use, and I started to pull my bleeding foot from it.

  “Ees it to hurting so much?” She looked into my eyes with hers that were so dark, the lines in her face delicate-looking, like she hadn’t had them long.

  “I don’t want to ruin your towel.”

  She smiled but I don’t think she understood what I said. Her son came to the room with a box of cotton balls and a roll of Ace bandage. He said something to her—Arabic, I decided—then he said to me with no accent at all, “I use it for skateboarding. Don’t worry, I washed it.”

  “Sorry, but I have to know what the story is before I continue the job.” The carpenter stood in the doorway and watched while the woman swabbed the bottom of my foot with a clear liquid that smelled like ginger. My face got hot, and I held my finger up to him to wait a second, though I didn’t know what I was going to say next. The woman pressed a cotton ball to each puncture in my foot and she started to wrap it tight with the Ace bandage. Every turn or so she would glance up at my face to see how I was. Her son left the bathroom and I heard a TV go on in what used to be the room Nicky practiced his bass in. I looked up at the carpenter and said quietly: “I’ll talk to her husband.”

  “Fine. Sorry about your foot.”

  I watched him walk down my hallway with his tool belt and shorts and no shirt. I felt abandoned.

  The woman pulled the last bit of tape up around my ankle, kept it there with her thumb, then held it down with a safety pin. She smiled at me and we both looked at each other a second, which made me pull my leg from her lap and stand up, but I couldn’t put weight on my foot without a burning ache shooting up my shin. She helped me out of the bathroom and I half-leaned on her all the way to the living room, where she guided me to the sofa behind the silver coffee table. I was about to say no but she moved a pillow, slid the bowl of sweets off to the side of the table, then rested the folded towel there for my foot; all I could do was sink into the softness of the couch.

  “I carry you tea and sugar. You must for rest.”

  I watched her walk into my kitchen and reach into a cabinet for a clear glass cup. On the wall across from me were paintings of mountains on a waterfront, of bearded men in robes on horses. On the lamp table beside me was a family portrait of the woman smiling next to a bald man in a military uniform. Sitting in front of them was the same boy who’d answered the door, only he was younger, his face more smooth and round, and beside him was a beautiful young woman with long black hair that went past her shoulders and hung over her white blouse. She had her mother’s eyes and the gentle smile too.

  “That is of course our family pictures.” The woman rested a black breakfast tray on my lap. The tea steamed up into my face as I sipped it, and she went into the kitchen and came back with a small bowl of red grapes.

  “Thank you,” I said. She smiled at the other end of the couch and put a cube of sugar in her mouth before she sipped her tea, placing the cup in a saucer on her lap. She was looking at my bare legs, the high hem of my cotton shorts, her face taking them in like my mother would. My cheeks flushed. I could hear the muffled noise of the carpenters cutting through wood above u
s, then hammering something, then cutting some more. The woman was sucking softly on the sugar in her mouth. The grapes were cold and sweet, but I wished I’d never driven up here last night and I put the tray on the table, sat up, and stood on my good foot.

  “No, you must for rest your foots. Your friend must to the hospital bring you.”

  I made my way around the table and hopped to the door. Draped over the edge of the silver table was the folded white towel, my blood drying all over it. “Thanks for your help, but he’s not my friend. I don’t even know his name.”

  CONNIE WALSH WAS in a meeting when I limped up the stairs above the Café Amaro and told Gary I wanted to see her and I’m not leaving till I do. He looked down at my bandaged foot and asked what happened, but I sat without answering because I felt like killing somebody right then, anybody, but not him, especially when he dragged a chair over for me to rest my foot up on while I waited.