Kapitoil (26 page)

I knew she was not proposing a fully authentic marriage, but she would not have done it if her feelings were not at least partially authentic. And my feelings for her were authentic. In fact, except for Zahira, I was most Karim-esque around Rebecca, and to boot, I was even learning to be Rebecca-esque, which was possibly what relationships were about more than they were merely about compromise.

I thought about how happy I would be if I went to sleep and woke up next to her daily, and how much I would learn from her, and possibly how much I could teach her, and what it would be like for her to meet Zahira and for me to meet her brother.

Then I wondered what it would be like for her to meet my father, or for me to meet her mother, or to walk around Doha with her. And we had other differences that might make us incompatible for a long-term partnership.

However, Rebecca and I were both intelligent problem solvers, and even though emotions and relationships were in many ways more complex than programs and mathematics equations, I had developed my skill set significantly in these areas in the last few months. Possibly it could work.

But I put my hand on her arm and said, “I value that idea very much. But Mr. Schrub probably has the power to prevent it from helping anyway, and I do not want this to cause problems for you as well.” She replaced her glasses. “And although it is an idea I like, this is not the method to be together. It is like an arranged marriage.” Then I added, “Love cannot be produced by force. It should come from itself,” which is the idea I had when I smoked marijuana at her party, and it surprised me that I stated it now, because most ideas created with the help of drugs aren’t sound, but I truly believed this one.

She nodded and looked at my hand on her arm. “I’m going to quit, too, by the way. Don’t worry, it’s not just about you. But you finally motivated me to get the hell out of Dodge,” she said. “It’s an idiom for leaving a place you don’t want to be.”

“What will you do?” I asked.

“There’s still enough time to sign up for spring classes in a Master of Ed program somewhere,” she said. “In a couple years I can teach high school history in the city. Some idiot once told me I’d make a good teacher.”

I said, “You should be careful about taking advice from an idiot, but I also support your decision.”

I asked her to sleep over, and we talked for a little longer. When she was half sleeping, I touched her left ear on the soft part above her dolphin earring and said quietly, “I am afraid you will find someone else and forget about me.”

Her eyes were closed and I believe she slightly heard me but she was almost unconscious so she only said something I couldn’t understand and put her arm around me tighter, but I decided it didn’t matter, because if what I said was true, that love comes from itself and is the ultimate self-starter, then if we were meant to be together we would be together, and if she was meant to be with someone else, then I had to be an adult and accept my loss and instead try to remember the additions she made to my life.

When my alarm powered on in the morning, Rebecca and I were still linked and it was dark outside. I told her she could sleep longer and even stay after I left, and prepared in the restroom.

She was standing by the bed when I returned. “I’ll leave with you,” she said.

We went downstairs with my luggage and waited outside as snow fell on us from the gray sky like a shower. We didn’t say very much. It is always difficult when you know you are about to leave someone and you cannot prevent it.

Soon Barron parked his car in front, and he helped me store my luggage and the cardboard box in the trunk. He said hello to Rebecca, then sat in the car and waited.

“I almost forgot this,” she said, and she retrieved from her bag a CD. “I made this over Christmas. It’s a mix.”

She had written “Songs for Karim” on it. I liked how she didn’t have to write “From Rebecca” on it. I told her I would listen to it when I arrived home.

She bit her lip and the skin of her forehead compressed in the middle, and then she removed her own CD player from her bag and gave it to me. “Listen to it on the plane,” she said. I remembered I still had her copy of
The Great Gatsby
and had not finished it yet, but she told me to keep it as well, and I said I felt foolish that I had no gifts for her, but she said she didn’t enjoy receiving gifts anyway although she was framing the picture I made for her and was going to hang it in her room.

“I hate good-byes,” said Rebecca.

“I do as well,” I said.

“I just realized that, even more than I hate good-byes, I hate people who say ‘I hate good-byes.’”

I said, “I do not, but I understand what you mean.”

“You’ll be checking email over there?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “But I will send you a stone with symbols on it.”

“Your sense of humor is getting better,” she said. “I mean, ‘enhancing.’”

I thanked her, but instead of saying “You’re welcome” she said, “I don’t want to watch you go.” So I rotated her glasses on her face asymmetrically, and she put out her hands as if she couldn’t see me for a few seconds, and I laughed, and then she took them off 100% and hugged me and opened the front door of the car and squeezed my hand one more time and kissed it, which no one else has ever done for me, and before she closed the door she said, “Take care of yourself, kiddo.”

We drove away and she walked carefully on the icy sidewalk until she disappeared through the snow and into the subway. Although we said we’d remain in contact, I knew that our emails would decrease in frequency over the next few months, and I wasn’t skilled on the telephone so we wouldn’t converse much, and we would discuss her traveling to Qatar or meeting in another country, although that would probably not happen, and then maybe we would email exclusively on holidays or birthdays, and finally we would go so long without communication that it would be too difficult to relaunch it, and our relationship would terminate.

I didn’t want my last memory of Rebecca to be of her entering the subway with that thought in my brain, so I recalled being with her in Prospect Park in the snow and the odor of her watermelon shampoo in the cold air. I hoped that would be how she would remember me as well. It wasn’t a hard copy, but for this I trusted more the power of my memory.

And possibly my prediction about us was incorrect. Human emotions and behavior often deny conventional analysis. People cannot always be quantified.

Barron was mute until we reached the tunnel for Queens. Then he said, “She’s good people,” and even though he omitted the indefinite article and used the incorrect plural, I said, “That is true.”

“I take it things worked out with that contract?” he asked.

I said, “I am satisfied with the results.”

He exited the tunnel and we accelerated on the highway. In the mirror, Manhattan’s tall buildings minimized until they looked like gray toothpicks. “So, you going back to your old job?”

I remembered what Jefferson had said about Dan: that he had a “narrow worldview.” With experience and training, possibly I could broaden my worldview and utilize computers in a nonfinancial form, as I was trying to do with the epidemiology project. And if Zahira’s skill set deepened with biology, we could even partner in the future.

But that would require me to master new subjects. Now I could afford to enroll in daytime university classes, although it was too late to register for classes in the spring and therefore I could not start until August. While I waited, I would need to find another job. I could do something with computers, but it would be difficult to find an employer who would hire me for just a few months. And my solitary professional experience was in finance.

“No,” I said at a low volume.

We didn’t talk the remainder of the ride as I considered what else I had the qualifications for. The roads weren’t bottlenecked because it was so early, and we arrived at the airport in a few minutes and I took out a $50 bill. Just before he took it, he pushed my hand away and said, “It’s on the house.”

He defined the expression, and I thanked him and said I could retrieve my luggage myself. We shook hands inside the car and said good-bye and I gave him my English business card. “Wait,” I said, and I crossed out my Schrub contact data and wrote my home telephone and personal email address.

I removed my luggage from the rear. As I took out the box with my extra suits and juicer, I had a quick mental tableau of Barron in one of my suits making juice for his daughter, and although I was stimulated to show the juicer to Zahira, the image made me so happy that I took out a pen and wrote, “(4) suits and (1) juicer for Barron and Michelle,” and replaced it. I closed the trunk and stayed where I was and waved at Barron while he drove away so he couldn’t see that I didn’t possess the box anymore.

Inside the airport, the airline employee behind the counter checked me in for my flight. “And would you like to purchase an upgrade to first class, Mr. Issar?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” I said.

She pressed some keys on her computer and observed my suit. “Will you be traveling to Qatar for work?”

All around me, business people in clothing like mine handed over passports and swiped credit cards and deposited pieces of luggage that moved along the rubber tracks before they disappeared into the void.

“No,” I said again.

I know what I will be doing. I will float through the sky one quarter of the earth’s circumference to the east. I will land and retrieve my possessions. I will visit my sister in the hospital that once held my mother. I will sleep at night in the home where she died.

And then, in the morning, I will wake up, eat breakfast, walk to the place where I have spent more hours than at any other job, and go to work for my father.

Cover design and illustration by Milan Bozic