Bright Lines (14 page)

“You never will stop. But seven years, it’s not so long. Try twenty-five.”

“I wish.” Ramona said the words with a touch of sadness.

Anwar wanted to get her back to a kissing mood. Sometimes, talking it out did just the trick. “How did you two meet?”

“We met in 1992. He’d just published his landmark publication,
Coleópteros Británico
(
The Beetles
). Others in the Biology Department were jealous of his success. His attitude was just like any other brilliant man. Ego, humongous. Dick to match. Always unchallenged. So when New York University offered him a tenured position, he accepted, and the night he told me this, he said he couldn’t get me a visa. I asked him to marry me.”

“You asked him to marry you?” Anwar said, incredulous.

“If I didn’t, he never would.”

“He said yes?”

“He didn’t answer me and we spent hours fucking, until we were too dehydrated to keep on. He snuck out while I slept, no good-bye, nothing. From that morning, I had massive headaches. Nothing could help me.
La
migraña
, said the doctor,
es por causo del estrés.
No shit, I told him, of course I’m stressed. The doctor wrote me a prescription for painkillers and told me to think positive. I lay in bed, nibbling codeine, dousing it with tequila. Needless to say, I didn’t get better. This went on for four months; by the end of the term, I had failed every class. Dead broke, couldn’t afford our place, refused to move back to my parents’ house in Zacatecas, so I rode a bus north to Cuautitlán, to live with my cousin Leticia. She’d never been one for school like me, the family nerd, so she toiled at a Kimberly-Clark paper mill. Kotex pads, tampons, diapers—for babies and for old folks when they laugh or sneeze—it was that type of place, where all the girls felt plugged up in others’ shit, piss, and blood, just like nurses. A foreman called Pepe messed with Leticia. He favored his girls short, soft, and brown like caramels.”

“Did you start working there?” asked Anwar.

“Please, of course not. I was not about to start working in a maquiladora for shit money and perverted bastards. I kept trying to convince her to leave that awful place. One evening she agreed, after a treacherous day at the mill. We figured the highway toward Mexico City was a straight shot; all we needed to do was hitch a ride. We set out around four a.m., and scored our lucky break.”

“Isn’t hitchhiking deadly business in Mexico?”

“Not more than any other place. It was safer back then. We found a ride with two boys in a truck—brothers or lovers; we couldn’t tell at first.”

“So, you hitched a ride with these fellows.”

“Yes. So, the platinum blond, called Art, was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. He was studying moles in Oaxaca, where he seduced Paco, a Spanish national and fellow student at their cooking school. They skipped out of that town to play house in Mexico City, renting an apartment in Zona Rosa, but they decided to return to Phoenix to open a restaurant.”

“The Spaniard was an illegal, too?”

“Yes. And they just took a liking to us, I guess. They thought we were lesbians.”

“Oh?”

“My hairdo was short in those days.”

“But how can you ride a car across the border? Don’t the police check everyone’s papers? I took a plane so I’ve no idea.”

“Art, the solo American, drove us a mile south of the Arizona border checkpoint at Nogales. It was around eight o’clock in the evening. Deadly hot if you go any earlier in the day. You risk getting caught. Paco, Leticia, and I walked for three miles in the desert, armed with bottles of water, Paco’s flashlight, and each other’s company. I think we stopped once, when Leticia stepped in some prickly pear and we had to pull out the thorns. I don’t remember being afraid, but it’s easy to die of thirst. I don’t remember much except about the desert itself, for I was too captivated by the millions of stars guiding our way. El Carro guided us, all the way to the access road on Interstate 19, where Art was waiting in his pickup truck. We drove the next couple of hours to Phoenix. Leticia and I waitressed at their new restaurant, Los Amantes. We crashed upstairs, in a one-bedroom with three other waiters, well-bred men who offered
us a curtained-off square, the size of a playground sandbox. Leticia married one of them, Victor, and they moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to start their own Los Amantes. I waited until Leticia left to telephone Hugo in New York. It was December twenty-fourth. I hoped that maybe the season, his birthday, and maybe, my voice, would soften him enough to score a plane ticket to New York.”

“And he married you?”

“Yeah. We loved each other. And I could get my degree.”

“And now, you are no longer married.”

“For now, we’re apart.”

Anwar wanted to feel her as he’d fantasized about her. Without words. He pushed her back onto her bed and straddled her hips. He took a moment to look at her lying beneath him, sprawled open. She put her hands to his cheeks. He scratched her nails along his stubble as if it were an emery board. Her eyes twinkled—was it her story or the tequila? She leaned upward, until they were nose-to-nose. She wasn’t wearing a drop of makeup. There was nothing artificial about her.

“You are beautiful, Ra-mo-na.”

“That’s the tequila talking.”

“No. It isn’t.”

“We shouldn’t be doing this, Anwar.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No.”

The glass honey jar he saw her use every morning was on the nightstand. He grabbed it and struggled to unscrew the lid.

“This would be
no problem
if it were a plastic bear!” he grunted. “One moment—ah!” He rolled off Ramona, onto his back, and she propped up on her elbow, frowning. Trying with all his might,
ek . . . dui . . . teen . . .
finally, he popped open the jar. Debonair and determined, he dipped his finger into the honey, and stroked her collarbone with it. He licked it off her skin. Euphoria.

She shuddered. He pressed his forefinger against her lips to tell her to be quiet. She fell backward onto the bed. He straddled her, feeling himself swell up against her pussy. With his finger, he painted her lips with honey, and bent down to kiss it off. They did this for what seemed like an hour.

He pressed his hand against her crotch, but she shook her head no.

“I guess diapers are the theme of the day,” said Anwar.

He wanted to fuck her for hours and leave her there, begging him for more. He slid his rigid hard-on between her breasts, just as he had pictured—

Ek
,
dui
,
teen
, he counted his thrusts.

Two minutes.

A shudder of ecstasy.

“Been a while?” Ramona asked.

“You’ve no idea.”

“I think I do.”

“I—I must go back home.”

“Of course.”

Anwar crept out of her room. “See you—”

“Soon,” she said.

And once more, he walked through the wall, back to his side.

 * * * 

After a couple of puffs of the old pipe, Anwar passed out on the floor of his studio. A loud pounding beneath stirred him awake. He looked at the wall clock—it was eight p.m.

He opened the door and nearly got hit in the head with a broomstick.

“
Arré!
Watch it, Hashi!”

“You’ll suffocate up there! What if you have a heart attack? We’d never know!”

He checked his body for marks or stains—everything was intact. But just thinking of Ramona stirred his pants. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. “Coming, coming.”

Hashi stood at the foot of the ladder, watching him miss the last rung. She wore a long robe over a silky mint green nightie. It clung limply to her breasts.

He pulled her toward him, and rammed his tongue deep into her mouth. Hashi didn’t resist. He was surprised when she jutted her tongue against his.

“You taste salty,” Hashi whispered.

They collapsed onto the bed. Anwar pinned her down. She raised her backside without any cajoling on his part. He brought her bottom up and down, picturing Ramona until he finished.

 * * * 

Hashi lay naked on the bed, legs splayed open, like when they were first married. “Check the door, please. The girls walk in without knocking.”

Anwar obliged and then rejoined her on the bed. Hashi wrapped her legs around his.

Anwar looked up at the ceiling. “I wonder where all the bits of dust and matter go. Maybe we breathe it in.” He paused. He couldn’t make sense of this: He was able to fuck Hashi, for the first time in a long time.

“Everything becomes dust, I suppose,” said Hashi, leaning her body in harder against him.

Anwar wanted to go back upstairs, take a toke, steal his way into Ramona’s bed.

I
hate Mondays
, was Anwar’s first thought as he awoke to Hashi looming over him. He opened his eyes a sliver—she was whispering a quick protection dua and leaned over to kiss him on the forehead. She shook him. “Anwar? It’s already eight thirty. Aren’t you going to the office today? Do you want anything for breakfast?”

He had never understood why the woman persisted in calling his store an office. “Unnnnh,” he moaned. “No, no breakfast. I am not hungry yet.”

Hashi sat next to his head and started stroking his chin. “I heard your stomach rumbling; I can fix you something—”

“No breakfast.”

“All right, then. I am going downstairs. Bye.”

He waited for another ten minutes, in case Hashi forgot a spool of thread or a face cream. She did not return.

 * * * 

Anwar sprung out of bed to shower. Hot water stripped away last night’s musty scent. He dressed himself in his favorite periwinkle blue polo, khaki pants, and always, his leather Batas. Where was the key? He rummaged through his pockets, conscious that he’d worn the same pants yesterday. No key.

He jumped up to reach the handle of the ceiling door. He pictured himself a basketball player and jumped to pull it open. No use; he was five feet ten (on a good day). He propped up the usual
chair to get into his studio. He knocked on the wall he shared with Ramona.

No answer.

Anwar knocked again. Still, no answer.

He heard a rapping on the wall. “Come!” said Ramona.

Anwar turned the knob to Ramona’s bedroom, but it was locked. “Unlock the door, Ramona.”

She couldn’t hear him.

“Open the door, woman! Unlock!”

“What?”

This could go on forever
, he thought. The key wasn’t next to the refrigerator. Where had he put it after they had made love? He retraced his steps from the door to the chair, where he’d fallen asleep. He knelt down to inspect the ground. Nothing.

“The key, I cannot find the key,” said Anwar. He fumbled in his desk drawer for his Spanish dictionary to find the word for key. Those damned two-
L
words intimidated him.
How on earth do you pronounce
llave
?

He checked his watch—they were wasting precious time. It was already nine thirty. Hashi wouldn’t be so busy today, after a weekend of weddings. She’d come upstairs to check why he hadn’t stopped by for breakfast. He felt his erection would cut a hole in his pants. He began sweating profusely and didn’t want to stink before seeing Ramona. The key was nowhere to be found, not even in the pocket of the pants he’d worn for ten consecutive days.

“Fuck me,” he said. He climbed back down the ladder to search his bedroom for the key, knowing it was not there. Hashi could enter at any moment. He tried to calm his brain. Where could it be? He looked up at the ceiling, to his studio, to a god, a god of love—

He made the bed, which he never did, before he decided to knock on Ramona’s front door.

Ramona opened the door wearing a
NY YANKEES
jersey, bare legs, hair mussed, horrified expression. “Why are you coming in through
here
?”

Anwar stepped inside and tried to kiss her neck.

She swatted him off. “No, you can’t come in this way. This is the stupidest thing you could do.”

“I can’t find the key. I can’t leave without fucking you.” He kicked the door closed behind him.

He rocked her onto the bed and pushed himself upon her. He wanted her to suck his fingers clean. “I want to feel you,” he said, quivering.

“You do feel me,” she said.

He drove himself into her wet, bloody, yawning pussy.
Stop
, he told himself.
This is dangerous, you are stupid, a stupid old man—

“We shouldn’t, we shouldn’t,” moaned Ramona. Each time she said it, she pushed herself harder against him.

My woman, my house
, he thought, unfurling her fingers. In that moment, he shed all of his troubles inside her.

 * * * 

“You could use a shower, Anwar.”

“That’s the word on the streets.”

“Let me make you some tea,” said Ramona, jumping out of bed. “Use the shower if you want.”

“I’ll take a shower at my place. You have mediocre water pressure, correct?”

“Not funny.” She left him and went into the kitchen.

Anwar felt rejuvenated and ready to get to work. It was now eleven o’clock. He had to get out of the house before Hashi took her lunch, which would be at half past one.

“I should get going!” he called to Ramona.

She returned carrying a tray topped with a pink ceramic teapot and two steaming cups. “Do you want milk and sugar? Or honey?”

“I’ll take it as you have it.”

She grabbed the honey jar from the nightstand. She squinted, seeing something in it. “It’s the key!” she exclaimed. She held the jar up to the sunlight. The key was suspended like a fossilized bee in amber. She handed it to Anwar.

“Quite sticky. I’ll wash off the honey. I need to get out of here before Hashi realizes I’ve never left,” he said, sitting up. He grabbed his shirt and started buttoning before realizing the juices on his navel had soiled his clothes. “Shit, this was a fresh shirt!”

“I’ll wash it. Now go!” Ramona opened their shared door. “Hasta luego.”

He looked at her and nodded.

Anwar sighed relief as the door shut behind him.

He showered and rinsed off the key and erased traces of Ramona. He felt giddy and dirty, all at once. He was starving. Would pretending to have come home for lunch as a surprise be wrong?

Yes, you old bastard
, Anwar scolded himself in the mirror.

He tiptoed downstairs, until he made it outside. He hurried away from the sound of Hashi’s laughter and her clients’ gossip.

 * * * 

At the apothecary, Anwar set up a flimsy plywood board to cover the unsightly broken window. He’d have to get Ella to help him fix it, or call a guy, as Bic always said. Bic had dozens of these guys, for accounting, buying property, plumbing—and Anwar couldn’t think of anyone except Ella. He passed the day mindlessly. A customer or two came, but no one bought anything, nor did he try to convince them to.
I’ve crossed an invisible line.
He felt abandoned by his old friend. There was no conjuring Rezwan, even when he smoked. He spoke the beginning of
Surah al-Noor
, a fearsome prologue to the verses on light:

Adulteress and the adulterer—

punish each one of them with a hundred lashes;

and may you not have pity on them.

 * * * 

When Anwar arrived at home around eight, a dim nightlight was plugged into the kitchen wall. The table was set for one person. A plate of cold rice, lentils, mustard oil mashed potatoes, and beef curry lay under a piece of tinfoil. Where was Hashi? The girls? He heard no radio from Hashi’s downstairs, no stuttering from Charu’s sewing machine, no sign of Ella. Anwar ate his meal alone, chewing the rice, which tasted like paper, and the beef, which tasted like rubber. Not for the lack of flavor in Hashi’s food, but for the lack of flavor in his mouth. He wanted to see Ramona. She’d be leaving for her shift soon. He had the key. She was just on the other side of the wall.

He wondered what to do, until he fell asleep sitting up.

An hour later, he felt a tap on his arm, the sort of tap to see if he was warm and alive, and he tried to will himself awake in the dream he was already forgetting.

“
Arré!”
Anwar shouted.

“Uncle? Sorry to wake you.”

“Rezu—forgive me, forgive, I am bad, very bad,” slurred Anwar.

“It’s Ella.”

Anwar’s eyes widened. “Ellaaa? Ella! I was worried. I know you don’t need my worries, but I offer them to you.”

She stood close to him and wiped his nose off with her sleeve. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“Don’t worry about me, child. I’ll be on my way upstairs.”

Ella squinted at him. She appeared unconvinced. Anwar patted her arm and motioned for her to go out to the backyard.

Upstairs, Hashi was not yet in bed. Anwar found himself climbing up to his studio, beckoned by the promise of Ramona on the other side. He said a prayer in front of their door, and kissed the key. Aware that this was a brazen act, he let adrenaline chart his course. He turned the key and walked through the wall.

A candle flickered. He caught two shadows first. Short, yet elegant fingers caressed Ramona’s hair, parting the coffee brown waves in the middle, just along her spine. Each vertebra poked through her back as little stones molded in clay. This man, who must be the brilliant and stout Hugo, smelled as though he’d been soaking in lemony dishwater.

Anwar felt his fist punch her spine before he could stop himself.

“Agh!” yelled Ramona, turning around. “Anwar, what the fuck are you doing? You can’t just come in here—”

Hugo, or who Anwar assumed was Hugo, leapt over Ramona with unpredictable dexterity, and slammed him back toward the door of his annex. Anwar fell to the ground. He crawled to escape the hulking man advancing.

“I—I didn’t mean to hurt you—who are you?” stuttered Anwar.

The man picked him up by his shirt collar and growled, “I’m her husband, you goddamn piece of shit. How dare you put your fucking hands on her? I’ll kill you.” He punched Anwar’s face. Anwar winced at the splitting of skin. He tasted his own blood, for the first time in twenty years. He tried to scratch at Hugo’s face, but felt his
own rage consumed by the man who straddled him, as Anwar had straddled Ramona.

Hugo began squeezing his fingers against Anwar’s throat. His fingers were sticky.

Anwar stuck his tongue out to taste. “Honey?”

“You fucking faggot Indian son of a bitch. How dare you touch my wife?” Hugo struck Anwar’s cheek with the back of his hand a couple of times, and then banged his head up and down against the floor. From far away, Anwar heard,
Stop!

But he couldn’t follow the voice.

“Anwar.”

His eye was already swelling shut. Through the bloody slit, he saw Hashi.

In and out of consciousness, Anwar heard his worst nightmare come to life, as if he were underwater:

“I—I—I think that it is time for you to find another situation, Ramona. All that has happened is something beyond our control. It is not good for me. Or my children,” said Hashi.

“I’m sorry, Hashi.”

“You have two weeks.”

Anwar tried to stir himself up, but couldn’t bear to open his eyes.

“As you wish.”

He didn’t hear anything else.

 * * * 

At midnight, Anwar woke up on the floor of his studio. He’d soaked the dhurrie rug beneath him with blood. “Hashi!” he shouted. He willed himself to roll onto his side. He felt as though he’d broken a rib or two. He propped himself up. Smashed bits of glass were everywhere. The entire kitchen was trashed—bottles of oil broken on the floor. Anwar realized that for the first time in all these years, Hashi had seen his studio, his home away from her.

Anwar summoned the courage to descend to his bedroom, to face Hashi. He took one rung at a time.

Hashi had left the chair for him to land on.

But there was no Hashi. He heard the sound of water from a
faucet. The bathroom door was tipped open, and he let himself inside.

Hashi had lit candles on the four corners of the slate-tiled tub. Her breasts, smallish and deflated, floated over the surface of the water. She leaned against the rim of the tub, her eyes closed. She had a white mask on her face, giving her the countenance of a mummy. He saw himself in the mirror: battered, black-eyed, and ugly.

She didn’t move, didn’t speak. He wet his fingers in the water and dabbed her cheeks in a circular motion. The mask became mud on his fingers. She slipped underwater.

Anwar tried to pull her up, but she resisted. Particles of poppy seed whittled away and floated on the surface. She pulled herself up and out of the bath, splashing him wet. She stepped past him, and walked over to the sink. She rushed through the motion of ablutions; it was time for the last prayer of the night.
Rinse the mouth, thrice. Clean the hands and feet, thrice. Don’t forget behind your ears.

He took in her nakedness, her body slender as a girl’s, at ease.

Anwar hated the wetness of wuzu. Watery pools lay stagnant, breeding mosquitos and disease that killed believers the world over. He followed Hashi out of the bathroom, into their bedroom.

She did not speak or acknowledge him. He took a seat on the bed. Everywhere there were photographs of them throughout the years, from when they’d first arrived to Charu’s last birthday. He didn’t notice these artifacts of their life together anymore. But now, seeing a picture of the four of them posing in front of the home they’d built—it jarred him. He clasped his hands together, as if praying with her.

He watched as she laid her prayer rug on the floor. She pulled out a nightie from the closet, a worn embroidered thing that brought more comfort than he ever could. She stood on the rug and began her prostrations. Each time she knelt, her knees popped. She bent all the way down, touching her forehead to the rug. The soles of her feet were callused and dry. Anwar wished to rub them for her. He was ashamed by his arousal at her surrender. He pinched the tip of his interloper cock to chill out.

Hashi prayed into clasped palms, whispering fervently, until
Anwar realized she was weeping. She collapsed on one side, almost in slow motion. She folded into a fetus position. Anwar knelt to stroke her back, but she became rigid and pulled her body away.

“Let’s go to bed, my darling.”

She shook her head no.

He found a shred of strength, using all the muscle in his legs, to lift her up to the bed. Her body became light and she didn’t try to stop him. He laid her down on her back and hovered over her, though it pained him to sit up. She stared past him at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry.” Anwar wrinkled his forehead in pain. “Please, say . . . anything.”

“All the dust from the ceiling,” whispered Hashi. “We breathe it in. Everything turns to dust.” She pulled something out from under his pillow. “I found this.”