busy with other distractions, so maybe they wouldn’t, and that didn’t matter because by then it would have taken on all the intimacy of a private joke for the benefit of Masoud.
And Jonas felt fine with that. He did.
After a few swipes, he angled the razor under the running water and shaved more and then more, dulling two razors before the right calf felt smooth to his touch, a girl’s leg. Next he spread shaving cream on his shin, where the bone strained against the skin. This part, he knew, was a bit trickier; this was where women often nicked themselves. He knew this because Vic had told him. About a month ago, he’d asked her what was the worst thing about shaving and she’d laughed one of her short, husky laughs that made him ache with longing and said, “You ask the damnedest questions, Jonas.”
“But just tell me,” he insisted. “Like, the first time you ever shaved. What was the worst part?” He was already thinking about today.
So she’d told him. She’d sprawled on her couch, flung a leg on his lap. “My shinbone,” she’d said; “this part here,” and she’d taken his fingers and placed them at her ankle and then drawn them slowly up her dancer’s leg, over that bone so intimate with her cool, smooth flesh, and then beyond her knee, directly toward her heart, and she’d stopped midthigh, her smile wicked, her tone challenging, and teased: “Is your curiosity satisfied, boy?”
God, he would miss her. If missing is possible, afterward. What he felt was so intense, even more intense than with Deirdre. He thought now of changing his mind, running away somewhere to hide until he could figure out how to tell them it was off. That would be the way of a coward, though. That would be throwing everything out: the training, the commitment. He’d already made baty al-ridwan, a pledge not to waver. Besides, though Vic had heightened his joy, she’d also increased his suffering. She’d stopped calling, and it wasn’t a surprise. He was a loner; he’d always been a loner; that was the way life had gone for him. He’d known from the start that someone as solid and wonderful as Vic would eventually weary of his intensity and mood swings and move on, forgetting him.
This way, he would never be forgotten.
The bathroom suddenly felt airless. What would Masoud advise? Don’t think of her would be his counsel. “This kind of personal attachment is not indicated for us,” Jonas imagined him saying. Remember the lessons that must be taught, the sins that must be atoned for. Seek refuge from hypocrisy, and from the love of this world. Remember your good fortune in having been chosen. That was always his mantra, one Jonas did still believe. He knew what had to be reversed, and why and how. He recognized a will and wisdom greater than his own. The personal wasn’t paramount. He was acting out of an obligation larger than himself.
Jonas thought of a line from the Qur’an. O Prophet! Strive hard against the Unbelievers and the Hypocrites, and be firm against them, their abode is Hell—an evil refuge indeed. Sura 9:73. He chanted the line a few times, then added a little extra shaving gel to his leg and, holding his breath, carefully began to draw the razor up against the delicate shinbone. After the first sweep, he exhaled. So far, so good. No blood. No blood yet. No blood and—he tested with a pointed finger—slick as a whale. Why had he thought of a whale? He didn’t know, except that he remembered being told that story countless times in childhood, about Jonas in the belly of the whale. Besides, a whale was strong and vigorous, and that was what he wanted to be: slick, and strong, and headed for purity.
NEW YORK: 4:13 A.M. MECCA: 12:13 P.M.
“Hey, Hirt. Wake up, Sonny, c’mon.” The cop rapped his nightstick on the base of the subway seat, and Sonny Hirt, slouched on his right side with the graffiti-etched window for a pillow, squinted open one reluctant brown eye.
“Officer,” he said in a phlegmy voice, then cleared his throat. “How you be?”
“You know the drill, Hirt. No vagrants sleeping on the subway. Move it.”
“Vagrant? What you mean, officer?” Sonny Hirt allowed for an indignant tone as he sat up, stifling a yawn. “And I ain’t sleeping. Wouldn’t be safe, sleep here.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s right. I just takin’ a little commercial break before game time.”
“Sure.”
“Or a chat at the water cooler, you could be calling it. Man who works on Sundays be entitled to a little breather. By the way,” Sonny rubbed one stubbly cheek, “can you spare any?” Even half-conscious, he slipped into his shtick so easily; he was a master, a preacher with purpose, if he did say so himself. “If you ain’t got it, I understand, ’cause I ain’t got it. But if you have a dime, a quarter, a piece of fruit—”
“C’mon, c’mon. On your feet,” the cop interrupted.
Sonny sat up and groaned, though he wasn’t unhappy to be cut short. He wasn’t quite ready to start spinning yet, anyway. He pulled his fingers through his mustache and beard. “Bones gettin’ too old for this job,” he said. “Gonna have to retire soon, move myself to Puerto Rico. Then you gonna be missing me.”
“Hmmm,” said the cop, though he smiled a little. Sonny didn’t know him well enough to remember his name, but all the cops knew Sonny Hirt; lots of the regular commuters did, too. He’d been panhandling on these subway lines for nearly a decade now. Some of the teenagers who got on at Jay Street or Canal he remembered from when they were tots. These days they rode without their mommas, and they called him Mr. Hirt, and they laughed, but it wasn’t mean laughter. How could anyone take offense at Sonny, who shuffled up and down the subway cars, politely doing his job, delivering his familiar spiel? The riders sure didn’t mind, and the cops cut him slack, mostly speaking, if they caught him taking a little nap during downtime.
Every now and then, some newcomer in blue with a shiny nose and water sitting back of the ears would come down on him a bit. Shoo him away. Tell him he couldn’t, wasn’t allowed, a public nuisance. Even threaten to ticket him, usually in a loud, attention-getting voice. And what trouble was Sonny causing, after all? He was doing a job. A public service, if you thought of it, because it allowed folks to feel a little better about themselves as they headed toward whatever sins awaited them. Used to be, when the cops toyed with him, heat would shoot through Sonny’s body from head to heels, like the Long Island expressway running right through him, and he’d have to work to keep his hands still and the fire clean from his eyes. Their smug looks, the conviction that they were better than ol’ Sonny—when after all, real criminals were right aboveground slitting throats and selling drugs to kids. Besides, this was his place, the subway; they were the visitors.
But less and less was bothering Sonny as the years went on.
“Knew me a little Puerto Rican girl once,” he told the cop now. “Mmm-mmm. She were quiet, but she could move.” He rubbed his scalp underneath his yellow ski cap. “Them days,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” the cop said.
“Should’a stayed with that girl, but you know how it is. Tough for a man like me to be giving up the freelance and be committing to a steady life, that’s what she always said, and I guess she were right some.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Coraly. Sweet Coraly.” He shook his head, feeling a pit in his stomach that came either from remembering Coraly or from hunger. “Sounds like I made her up, but she were real, all right,” he said, tugging the ski cap down to cover more of his ears.
“Here’s
