My New American Life (11 page)

Lula put her hands over her ears and lip-read Don saying, “Fucked.”

“It's great you're doing something,” she said. “Or even
trying
to do something.”

“Who knows what I'm accomplishing,” said Don. “Making myself feel better. But what will they let me actually
do
?”

Why were Don and Mister Stanley always asking Lula questions that had no answers? She said, “During our dictatorship these things also happened—”

“Meaning what exactly?” said Don

“Meaning these things happen,” said Lula. She hoped the food here was good. “Human nature, maybe . . .”

Don said, “I don't know what else to do. Once you know, once you've seen . . . So I take my life in my hands from the minute I get on that ridiculous toy plane with rust holes in the fuselage and nowhere even to piss. At least I give these guys some courage, some heart. Let the so-called Justice Department know that someone is paying attention. Then I come back and eat this fancy food and drink this fabulous wine, and maybe the guy gets tortured worse because I tried to help him.”

“That's what happens,” said Lula. “Like I said, human nature.”

Don said, “You've got to stop saying that. I never said shit like that when I was your age. I was Mr. Idealism. I was the guy who was going to save all the little guys from the big bad bullies.”

Lula shrugged, very Balkan. “You should have grown up where I did. We knew the truth from birth.”

“And what truth would that be?”

“Put the little guys in power, and overnight they turn into the big bad bullies.”

Lula stopped. Were they arguing? She didn't want Don to think she was calling him naive. But it never hurt to remind him where she came from and what her country had been through. Don knew she was half Muslim. He'd said, Don't make a point of it. Her visa application said Christian.

Lula said, “So what's the question you wanted to ask me?” If the question was about sex, let Don ask it now. Saying no would be harder after he'd paid for the meal.

Don shook his head like a swimmer with an earful of water. “Oh, right. About that story you gave Stan . . .”

“What about it?” said Lula.

For a moment, she considered telling Don that someone had sneaked into Mister Stanley's house and finished the story on Zeke's computer. She felt like a child with a secret she wanted a grown-up to know. But she wasn't a child, and if her coauthor was Alvo, Don Settebello's knowing would only make everything more complex. She trusted Don, but only so far. She would wait and see what happened between now and dessert.

“I thought your story was fantastic,” Don said.

“Thank you,” said Lula. The waiter appeared with a choice of breads. Don waved the waiter away.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Lula. The waiter returned, and she helped herself to a crusty roll studded with raisins and olives.

“Nicely done,” said Don. “I like appetite in a woman.”

Lula buttered her roll and took a bite, and with her mouth still full in what she hoped was an unsexy way said, “You were talking about my story.”

Don said, “Right. Your story. I took the liberty of showing it to a friend in publishing, and she gave it to an editor friend who, coincidentally, happens to be Bulgarian.”

“Bulgarian?” Lula already had a bad feeling about this Bulgarian person.

“Bulgarian,” said Don. “Anyway, she read your piece. She liked it very much.”

“Thank you,” said Lula uneasily.

“Don't thank me,” said Don. “But she did suggest that . . . well, that story about the Earthly Beauty and the guy who wins her after going through all that abuse and the part about the grapes is a very popular Balkan folktale. So it seemed . . . strange that it happened to your grandfather's half brother.”

Cousin, Lula wanted to say, except that she suddenly couldn't remember what she wrote. Maybe Don was right.

Don said, “She did say that the part about the fifteen kids and the harem was extremely Balkan. And not the traditional ending. I enjoyed that part too.”

Lula said, “It's a short story.”

Don said, “I thought it was true. Something from your journal.”

“I've branched out,” Lula said. “I thought you and Mister Stanley knew that. Anyhow, calling a character my grandfather's half brother doesn't mean he was my grandfather's half brother. I could call a character Don, and he won't be you. Have you read Ismail Kadare? The greatest Albanian novelist? He wrote about Egyptian pharaohs and medieval monks to hide the fact that he was writing about our dictator.”

Lula shouldn't have mentioned Kadare. It was unlikely that Don would remember her passing off a Kadare plot as a story she was writing, but why take chances? She said, “Bulgaria was Disneyland compared to how we lived. How people
still
live in Tirana. Your Bulgarian friend should visit.”

Don turned up his palms, and his fingers curled, groping for . . . what? He didn't care about Bulgaria. He didn't care about Lula's story.

Don said, “Camp Delta was a shock. You think you know, and you think you know . . . but when you see the real thing . . . I'm obsessed. I want to tell anyone who will listen. The loneliness, the pressure . . . Thank God for good friends and good food. I hope my daughter finds that out. Another bottle, please. Pronto!”

“No, thank you,” Lula told the bottle pointed at her glass.

“Yes thank you for me,” said Don.

Neither spoke for a while. Then something fell on Lula's hand so heavily that dishes clattered. At first she thought that a fat warm brick had landed on her fingers, but it turned out to be Don's hand, pinning Lula's to the table. Lula's instinct was to shake it off, but she waited without moving.

Don said, “You're a beautiful woman.” He sounded as if he were shocked to suddenly find that out. He said, “Is it all right if I say that? If I compliment you like that?”

“A compliment is a compliment,” Lula said, gracious but not flirtatious. “Always welcome, believe me.”

Don looked at her over the top of his wine glass, and there was a moment, a split second, really . . .
lawyer client, lawyer client
, Lula chanted inside her head, telegraphing how much Don was risking merely by touching her hand. And for what? Human contact? Romance? Distracting himself from the pain and injustice of the world with a few hours of sordid, unprofessional, maybe actionable sex?

And then, for no discernible reason, or perhaps for a good reason indiscernible to anyone but Don, something broke the mood. Don removed his hand from Lula's and pushed his spectacles back on his nose. Don the lonely guy vanished, and Don the righteous lawyer replaced him.

Don said, “This morning I woke up and looked in the mirror, and my hair was gray.”

Lula tried not to look puzzled. Don's hair, what there was of it, had been gray when she met him.

“I'm quoting Chekhov,” said Don.

“I've read him,” Lula said. “I don't remember about the gray hair.”

“Young people never do,” said Don. “Anyhow, by some divine intercession, or more likely thanks to some bureaucratic fuckup, they let me talk to another detainee. This one's a businessman from Mosul with the bad luck to have the same name as some al-Qaeda motherfucker. Of course they don't let me meet the big guns. The guys who actually did something or plotted something and are still entitled to protections, I don't care how Dick Cheney tries to fuck with the Constitution—”

Lula said, “If Hoxha and Milosevic had a baby, and the baby was a boy, it would look like Dick Cheney.” She'd been waiting months to say this to someone besides Zeke, but she'd chosen the wrong moment. To Don, it was a nonsensical interruption.

“It's fine if I meet with the innocent guys. Nobody gives a rat's ass what they didn't do. This guy's been in solitary for months. The family found out and got in touch. The wife's going crazy. The three kids are crying for their daddy. The guy just came off his hunger strike. He's down to eighty-five pounds.”

Lula said, “What's he accused of?”

Don said, “Nothing yet. The guy ran a charity. Funded religious schools. Helped out widows and orphans.”

Lula said, “The KLA bought its whole arsenal that way, going from house to house in Detroit and the Bronx, collecting for widows and orphans.”

Don said, “That's the kind of cynical shit everybody says.” His scowl made Lula feel terrible for being one of those cynics. She made a mental note to tone down the Eastern Bloc pessimism, or realism, depending.

“I believed this poor bastard. I've been a lawyer for thirty years. I can tell when a client is lying.”

Every lie Lula had ever told passed before her eyes, starting with the one Don knew about, her omitting the half Muslim part on her visa application. No one in her family had been religious for generations. That is, if you didn't count the third cousin who got born again and went to Afghanistan to wage jihad. Everyone had a third cousin like that. What if they traced him to her? If just one nosy agent found out, she could be back in Tirana tomorrow.

The restaurant's creamy light made everyone look healthy, rich, and happy to be having lunch with everyone else. How long could her comfortable life here last? She ordered the haddock with grapes and saffron.

Don said, “Thanks. I'm not eating.” He gulped his wine like water. Lula wondered if she was going to have to help him into a cab. His office number was on her phone. She could call his secretary.

Don said, “A client of mine got deported.”

“The one whose foot got run over?” Lula welcomed the chance to prove she had listened. She hoped it was the same client. The more of Don's clients who got sent home, the less optimistic she felt.

“Good girl,” said Don. “But no, another one. Honestly, I start to wonder, Why am I even trying?”

“Don't blame yourself,” said Lula. “You helped me get my work visa. You fixed things for Estrelia and—”

“This guy
had
a green card,” said Don. “He's a contractor. Bangladeshi. His family's some bizarro evangelical Protestant.”

“What did he do?” asked Lula.

“Illegal weapons possession. Unregistered handgun. To be honest, if I lived where this guy lived, on the far edge of Bushwick with two little kids and a wife, I'd find a way to protect myself, permit or no permit.”

“Okay, sure, wow,” said Lula.

“Is it too warm in here?” asked Don.

How could Don see the droplets beading up on the back of her neck? On TV, the suspects who sweated were either on drugs or guilty or both.

“Allergies,” said Lula. She wondered which was more dangerous, ditching Alvo's gun and pissing off the Albanians, or holding on to it and worrying that someone would report her to the INS. The latter seemed less likely.

“It's not allergy season. You should get your eyes checked,” said Don. “I was around your age when I started wearing glasses.”

What age? she might have asked anyone else. But Don knew her age, to the day. It was on her application. Don already knew so much, she wished she could ask him about the gun. After all, he was her lawyer. But she knew what Don would say: Lose the sketchy Albanian pals, don't answer the door when they knock. She would pretend to take his advice, and she would ignore it.

Lula's haddock arrived. It could almost make you believe in God, or in some higher intelligence that had created this fish that, perfectly poached, flaked apart in buttery layers. She smiled at Don. “Would you like some?” Too much generosity! A remark like that could encourage Don to hold her hand again.

“No thank you,” said Don. “I seem to be on an all-liquid diet. Go ahead, finish your lunch. I won't ruin it for you, I promise.”

Don was as good as his word. He waited till Lula had cleaned her plate, then said, “It's worse than I imagined.”

“Let's have coffee,” said Lula. She and the waiter conspired wordlessly to get enough coffee into Don so he could ask Lula to calculate the tip—twenty percent—before he signed the credit card slip.

“Drink up,” Lula kept saying, while she plied him with small talk about Zeke and Mister Stanley—the upcoming college trip, Zeke's B+ on a math test. Don drank all his coffee. From boredom, probably, but so what? The aim was caffeination.

Walking Don to his office, Lula glared at the few pedestrians rude enough to stare. It was an honor to hold a hero's arm as he lurched down the sidewalk.

Don could manage the elevator. They shook hands, then made an awkward attempt to hug. Lula took the buses back to Jersey.

She decided not to mention the lunch. But that night Mister Stanley asked, first thing, “So how was lunch with Don?”

“He seems a little . . . sad,” Lula said. “He didn't eat much.”

“Was he drinking?” Mister Stanley asked.

“Only wine,” said Lula.

“I thought so too,” said Mister Stanley. “I mean, about him seeming sad. Well, Jesus, Lula, who isn't sad with the state our country is in? This evening, driving home, I heard on NPR that forty thousand people are living in homeless shelters. And that's just in New York City! I worry about Ginger. I don't want her to suffer. Fortunately, she prefers the company of goofballs in Navajo sweat lodges to the company of drunks with the DTs picking bugs from under their skin.”

“I'm sure she does,” Lula said. “I'm sure she's fine.” She went to the sink and devoted herself to washing a fork Zeke had left in the drain.

Mister Stanley said, “What did Don want to talk about?”

Lula said, “My story.”

“He told me he liked it a lot.”

“He did. But next time I think I'll wait before I let anyone read it.”

“We didn't mean to rush you,” Mister Stanley said. “I hope Don didn't upset you . . . He's been under a lot of stress.”