And Hijack says—he says it’s not a nice war.”
“What’s a nice war?” she asked mildly, not paying much attention. She held the toe of his tennis shoe.
Checker turned on his side away from her, resting his cheek against the warm wood of the bench as if it were a pillow. He felt like a small boy wishing he could clutch a ragged one-eyed bear. Instead, he reached down and stroked the leg of the bench, conscious of how hard it was. Checker almost never felt sorry for himself; it was a funny curled sensation, shaped like a sickle with a point on the end or like a very sharp question mark. “He’s my friend and he’s in trouble.”
“Why should I care?” She pulled her hand away and leaned back. “I met you ten days ago spying on my shop and making a mess of my alley. You’re a total stranger.”
It would be different if she was really trying to give him a reason why the whole idea was ridiculous. But no, she was forcing him instead to make a good case. “I’m not a stranger,” he said muddily, his cheek against the wood. “We’re alike.”
“That’s arrogant.” Yet she didn’t seem offended, and expected him to go on.
He couldn’t. He felt as if soon he’d have to go deeply and dreamlessly to sleep.
“Don’t women usually get paid for this sort of thing?”
“About three thousand dollars.”
“And how much money do you have?”
“Forty.”
“Thousand?”
“Dollars.” Checker sat up and pulled a scrumple of bills from his pocket. “Forty-three. But it’s not all mine, it’s the band’s. My share would be six … fourteen. Plus Hijack’s … $12.28, then.”
“Well. That’s at least six beers. Two apiece. A party.”
“How’s that?”
“For the three of us. You, me, and my husband.” She let him hear the sound of it. Checker winced. “How are you going to pay off any woman with $12.28?”
“And a lifetime’s admission to Plato’s?”
“Well, what’s the cover?”
“Two dollars.”
Syria did a quick calculation. “So, if I went every weekend, I’d start to break even after twenty-seven years.”
“Want to watch me drum that long?”
“Maybe.” Checker kept waiting for this to be a joke.
They both sat facing each other, leaning against opposite posts, their feet on the bench. Sensing they’d reached an impasse, Checker began to cheer up.
“You know, I’ve never much wanted a husband …” said Syria thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t mind a wife.”
“What?”
“I teach all day, do bones at night. I get tired of carrots and bad Astoria pizza. My apartment looks like glacial slag. At the end of the month my clothes have gotten so filthy that I have to throw them away. I’ve lived this way for years. But it might be refreshing to clean up my act. Only, though, if someone else did the cleaning.”
“Are you serious?”
“What else could I possibly get out of this?”
Checker tapped the bench. “What all would you want him to do?”
“Cooking, shopping, picking up. Laundry, phone bills. I would like to see out my windows again, maybe even find the floor. Fresh flowers. I have a little money, can you believe it? The stuff accumulates from neglect, like dust. I wouldn’t mind having someone to spend it, which is only work to me. And once in a while he could have the afternoon off to go to the hairdresser’s or the garden club or to buy a new hat.” She laughed.
“There’s just one person won’t find this funny,” said Check uneasily.
“He’s Muslim, isn’t he?”
“Very.”
“This could be quite an education, then.”
“Maybe,” Checker warned, “for both of you.”
“You are talking about that lean, bright-eyed, dark thing at your heels last Friday, with the pretty teeth? A puppy dog. Needs housetraining.”
“If Hijack is a puppy, he bites. I don’t think he does windows.”
“He could learn.”
“I’m trying to tell you—Hijack has some ideas about women—”
“That can be changed.”
“I’ve never met anyone who was actually more optimistic than I was.”
“Do you think he’d rather clean up the mess his head would make rolling on the runway or my living room?”
“Good point.” Checker was confused. It was lucky for this to work out, wasn’t it? Then why did he feel so depressed? “There’s another thing,” he added. “The INS is getting tougher. You’d have an interview—”
“Sounds entertaining.”
“And you’d have to live together, for a while, anyway.”
“How else would he fix me breakfast?”
Syria, Check was all too aware, didn’t know what she was getting into. He tried to imagine Rahim rising cheerfully in the morning to stand at the stove in a little white apron, making sure to put in the toast so that it would pop up just when the eggs were still loose; maybe in the other room Syria would be ordering more oxides, to stride into the kitchen immediately angry if the coffee wasn’t already dripped. He tried to see the Iraqi cringing and apologizing, slipping a spoon between the cone and the filter to make the coffee drip faster, a little trick he’d picked up from the neighbor next door—
No way.
“Your Iraqi friend, does he have a lover?”
“Only me.”
“Oh?”
“Not like that. But Hijack is—around.”
“He adores you.”
“We’re friends.”
“That must mean a lot to you, then.”
“I tried to explain before. Everything means a lot to me. Bridges. Water. So you can figure how I might feel about human beings.”
“What about yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
