City of Veils (37 page)

She looked as if he’d just made her chicken come back to life. “Um, maybe because whenever we visit the neighbors, I go to one room and he goes to another? Don’t you know that for most of the world, making your wife sit in a separate room is a little strange?”

“You could still go hiking together,” he said rather lamely.

“What about you?” she asked. “You married?”

His appetite fled. “No.”

“Oh.” She seemed surprised. “But you have a girlfriend?”

He couldn’t believe how bold she was being, but he supposed he deserved it, having already learned so much about her. “No,” he said again.

“Oh, come on,” she said, “that woman at the house? I could tell that you liked her.”

Nayir felt himself blushing uncontrollably.

“What was her name?” Miriam asked.

“Katya.”

A small grin played at the corners of her mouth. “Well, Katya is very beautiful. And sweet, the way she took my hand…”

He was nervously wiping grease from his fingers with a half-shredded napkin.

“So I thought there wasn’t really any dating in this country,” she said.

He looked at her then. “It’s improper, yes. But some people do it.”

“Just not you.”

“It’s improper.” He was beginning to feel foolish. How could he explain?

“So when
can
you see her?” she asked.

“We work together, sometimes.”

“But you said you weren’t with the police.”

“She asks for my help sometimes.”

“And that’s it? Just when you drive her around…” Miriam’s mouth hung open, showing a partially chewed piece of chicken. She swallowed. “So that visit to my apartment was like a date for you guys?” He saw it all with clarity then, how it must have seemed to Miriam that his life was freakishly restrictive, backward, even pathetic.

“Is
she
married?” Miriam asked.

“No, of course not.”

She nodded as if concluding something to herself.

“What?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing.” He frowned, and she said, “Oh, all right. It’s just that it’s a shame you can’t at least go out for dinner once in a while. Like this!” She spread her arms at the food. “At least have lunch together or something.”

“We’ve had lunch,” he replied defensively.

“What—once?”

He didn’t reply.

“I mean, you’re having lunch with me now, and I’m practically a stranger.” Something about this seemed to bring her mind back to Eric. “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. You never see Katya, and I never see Eric. There is something very wrong with this place.”

Nayir began to eat his own chicken so he wouldn’t have to answer.

“You think he got sick of me or something.” She stopped chewing and swallowed hard.

“No,” he said.

“Look,” she went on, “ever since we came here, he’s been drifting away. I don’t know why exactly. I’ve blamed myself, too. But I don’t think I’m the reason.” She said this with defiance and a hint of desperation. “In fact, I’m pretty certain that something else was going on.”

“What?”

She took a breath, wiped her hands on a napkin. “Last night,” she said, “I got nervous being in the house all alone, so I spent the night with my neighbor. When I went back to my apartment this morning, there was an odd smell in the house. It was a man’s smell, like aftershave and soap and… it really freaked me out.”

“Was it your husband?” Nayir asked.

“No, it wasn’t his smell. But someone had been there. That’s why I left the house so early this morning. And actually,” she added, pressing her lips together, “that’s kind of why I called you. I mean, the cab company
was
busy, and that whole thing about the landlord’s address being wrong—I wanted you to know that. But when we were talking on the phone, I was so desperate to get out of the neighborhood. I kept thinking, what if whoever broke into my house was still lurking around somewhere?”

Nayir’s eyebrows hurt, and he realized he was frowning deeply. “Was anything missing from your apartment?”

“I didn’t stay to check, but I had my purse with me, and nothing else is really worth taking.” She looked at her tray and tentatively reached for another piece of chicken. “You don’t think it could have been the police in my apartment?”

Nayir shook his head. “They probably would have checked with the neighbors if they were looking for you.”

“There’s one more thing,” she said, setting down her chicken and reaching into her purse. Her hand stopped midway and she looked at him.

“Yes?” he asked.

She drew out a folded sheet of paper. “I have to know that I can trust you.”

He nodded, not sure what to say.

“Just promise me that whatever this is”—she motioned to the piece of paper—“you won’t tell anyone unless I say it’s okay?”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It might be nothing. But please just promise me.”

He could see that she was scared of something. “All right,” he said. “I promise.”

She slid the paper tentatively across the table. “But I can’t read it. Could you just tell me what it says?”

He wiped his hands and opened it, reading it over briefly. It was a marriage document, cheap enough to look like the
misyar
he’d once owned, a temporary marriage license that men and women sometimes used when they didn’t want to commit to a full marriage. The groom’s name was Eric Walker.

“Where did you find this?” he asked, hearing the tension in his voice.

“In Eric’s briefcase. At the house. Why? What is it?”

Nayir looked down at the document. He hated to do this, given everything that Miriam had learned about her husband already, but he forced himself to say: “It’s a fake marriage document. Technically, it’s legal. It’s been signed by an imam. But it says here that your husband was married to a woman named Leila Nawar.”

Miriam’s face had gone a frightening shade of gray. She was staring at him blankly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But this woman —”

“Is the dead girl,” Miriam cut in.

“Yes.” He folded the document, made as if to hand it back to her, then changed his mind. He wanted to tell her to shred the document, but he knew how damaging that would be to the investigation. “This really isn’t something you should —”

“He didn’t do it,” she said mechanically, still frozen and unblinking.

Nayir felt certain that this was a new shade of denial, and that perhaps everything she had said about Eric until now had been tainted by the same impulse. Clearly, Eric was guilty of adultery—or at least guilty of marrying a second wife without the first one’s consent. And his disappearance was making him look like a very good candidate for murderer.

“I have to get out of here,” she said, rising abruptly and pushing her way out of the booth’s plastic doors.

Nayir pocketed the marriage license and went after her, relieved to see that she was heading for the Rover. He caught up with her. “Mrs. Walker…” She stood looking around numbly at the parking lot. “Where can I take you?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was shaking but she was making an effort to control it. “I can’t go home, I don’t feel safe there. I don’t trust Jacob and Patty. I guess I could go to my neighbors’, but if the police come looking for me…”

“Perhaps you should go to the police,” he said.

“No!” she shot back. “Are you crazy? Do you know what they’ll do to me?”

“They might just want to talk —”

“No, they won’t!” she said. “Look, I may not speak your language, but I know a hell of a lot about the police. They’re fucking crazy. They can do whatever they want! Do you know a friend of Eric’s got sent out of the country for
dating?
They caught him with a woman and—
bam!
He didn’t even have twenty-four hours to pack. And—and another guy we know got picked up for wearing a cross around his neck. Don’t look at me like that—he was a Catholic! It was a tiny cross. They held him in prison for six months! I mean, what the hell? And my husband is wanted in connection with a murder investigation. What do you think they’ll do to
me?
”

“But you haven’t done anything wrong,” he said quickly.

“If Eric and this girl were screwing each other, how long do you think it will take them to decide that I might have been jealous enough to kill them both?”

“You weren’t even in the country when she was murdered, yes?”

“I don’t know!”

“Apparently her body was found last Wednesday.”

“All right, I wasn’t there. But will they care? Do you know they arrested this one woman’s housemaid because the father in the family had stolen some money? The housemaid was arrested and
tortured.
And it turned out the housemaid had been on
vacation
when it happened!” She looked frankly stunned. Nayir had to admit that he was surprised as well. He wanted to say that stories like that got passed around because they were so unusual, and that the police were not going to torture Miriam or accuse her of murder when she was obviously out of the country when the murder occurred, but in truth, he couldn’t be certain what the police would do.

“This information could be extremely useful to them,” he said. “At least let me tell them about it.”

“I know what they do,” she said, finding refuge in her anger. “They find a good suspect and torture them into confessing. Don’t tell me they don’t, because I’ve heard it from too many people already. It’s in
books,
for God’s sake.”

“Okay,” he said, trying not to get annoyed, “but at least let me tell them that Eric’s disappearance might have had something to do with Leila’s death, and that Eric might be in jeopardy.”

And as quickly as her energy had gone frenetic, it subsided. “Oh,” she said more calmly. “Yes. Yes, okay, you can tell them. But I’m staying here. I just need…” She put her hand on the car door and steadied herself. “Maybe a hotel,” she said. “Somewhere quiet. I need to think.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll take you somewhere. Mrs. Walker?” He stepped closer, thinking she might faint.

“You’re not going to take me to the police, are you?”

“No,” he said. “But it’s very hot. You should get in the car.”

Warily, she allowed him to open the door. Nayir started the car and took off, half afraid that if he didn’t, she’d leap out again and run down the street. He had no idea where to take her. Obviously, she couldn’t go home. It would surprise him if the police weren’t there already. She couldn’t stay on his boat. It was too small and uncomfortable, and the neighbors would notice her, and if the police found her alone with him, they could charge her with indecency and hold her on that alone. The only woman he knew was Katya, and he couldn’t take Miriam to her—it would put Katya in an uncomfortable position. And if Miriam was afraid to go home, then taking her straight to the police was an even worse idea.

M
iriam was engaged in a silent prayer:
please God, please Jesus, please keep Eric safe.
She had enough trouble imagining him cheating on her without the added horrors of him stealing from his employer, lying about his whereabouts, and then brutally murdering a —

Like an overloaded computer, her mind froze midthought, and she watched houses fly past, a gas station, a supermarket. Everything was shut down for prayer time. And she went back to her prayers.
Please God, please God…

They reached the city center on a one-way street. The buildings were big and boxy, like large gray children’s blocks left on a floor. There was a strip mall on the right, a couple of stunted palm trees, two men in white robes with matching white skullcaps attempting to cross the street. She knew Eric was in trouble. He wasn’t strutting around the city. He wasn’t hiding somewhere. Every part of her resonated with alarm bells. They passed a Hardee’s restaurant and a Kentucky Fried Chicken sharing a building, and she felt a sharp pang of homesickness, even though she seldom went to those places back in the States. She glanced at Nayir. He was lost in thought, and she wondered if he was considering taking her to the police anyway. He didn’t look like it; there was something big and solid and protective about his silence.

“Do you want to pray?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “I’ll do it later.”

“I’m sorry about what I said about the police,” she said. “I know your friend works for them.”

“You have reason,” he said. “You don’t know what they’ll do, and when they become known for doing crazy things, you have no reason to trust them. That’s their fault, not yours.”

“Well, I’m sorry anyway. I’m sure they’re not
all
bad.”

“No, they’re not,” he replied.

Fifteen minutes later noon prayers were finished. They were still driving through the city; it seemed never to end. Men were streaming from a mosque. The street echoed with the clang and clatter of vendors raising the grilles to their shops. An outdoor produce market was doing brisk business. All the shoppers were men, most in white or beige robes, having just come from the mosques; a few men in slacks stood here and there.