The Brevity of Roses (22 page)

“You can’t prove a thing,” said Sam.

Jalal looked him in the eye and smiled. Victory. He leaned forward, backing Sam against the door, his mouth inches from Sam’s ear. “Do not force me to.” Without another word, Sam shoved him aside and, despite his attempt to portray indignation, made it to the gate in record time. Jalal grinned as he watched the car peel away. For that moment, the world around him felt real again.

Roused from deep in a dream, Jalal answered his phone without checking and was instantly sorry.

“I’m sure I woke you, but I don’t care.”

Damn it.
“Good morning, Karen.”

“Ah ha, so you do remember you have an agent.”

“Funny.”

“I need to meet with you,” she said.

He rubbed his face, hard. “That would not—”

“Jalal, I am not taking no for an answer this time. I’m not even asking to see what you’ve been working on. I just want to talk to you. Okay?”

He blew out a breath. “Of course.”

“Do I need to come down—”

“I will drive up there.”

“Agreed,” she said. “You’ll come to my office tomorrow at one.”

“No.” He had no idea what day tomorrow was.

“Thursday, then. We’ll have lunch.”

He pressed a thumb and forefinger against his closed eyes until he saw stars. “Yes.”

“And, Jalal?”

“What?”

“Do
not
stand me up again.”

Jalal slammed his phone into the chair across the room.
Fuck
Thursday
. What did Karen want from him? He pulled the pillow over his head. Why did she keep forcing him to lie to her? He lifted a corner of the pillow and checked the clock. It was after nine. He sat up. Shock that he had slept through most of the night banished Karen from his mind. His stomach growled in protest.

While he cooked an omelet, the memory of his first breakfast with Meredith floated back unbidden and he pushed it away. With a cup of tea in one hand and a plate in the other, he sat down at the table and glanced at the atomic wall clock. Today was Tuesday. He had forty-eight hours to decide whether he would really drive up to San Francisco this time. Maybe he should give up writing for publication. He had no need of the money. Meredith had seen to that. Her attorney actually had the audacity to tell him he was a lucky man. As though pain had not factored into the equation. As though his life had not already ended before that cold, little man dared deem him fortunate. Jalal pushed away his half-eaten omelet and got up from the table. He refilled his cup and grabbed his journal on the way out to the porch. Wonder of wonders, the sun had already burned off the fog—and Renee was just walking up to his gate.

“Is it too early?” she asked.

Suddenly aware he had gone straight from bed to breakfast and no doubt had a first-class case of bed head, he reached up to smooth what he could.

She waved. “Earth to Jalal.”

“Oh! Yes. Come in.”

“Yes, it’s too early?” she asked, but she was already through the gate.

He laughed. “No. For once, I am on schedule with the rest of the world.” She headed straight to the porch swing, and he followed.

“Do you write mostly at night?”

“I am not very disciplined,” he said. “I write whenever I am inspired. Why do you ask?”

“I see your lights on a lot in the middle of the night.”

His brows arched high. “You drive by my house at night?”

“Not
there
,” she said, pointing to the road in front of them. “You can see your house from the highway above, you know.”

“You often go driving alone at night?”

She nodded. “Even on the nights I don’t work at the bar, I can’t sleep because of the noise. Plus, I guess I’m just not used to living alone yet.”

Though he was curious why she was newly alone, a discussion on relationships was a minefield he dared not enter. “Have you always worked nights?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you’re evading my question.”

He drank from his cup. “I answered your question. I said I write whenever.”

She kicked off her sandals and, pulling her knees up under her chin, turned her body toward his. Her change of position sent a buzz of anxiety through him. Though at least a foot of space separated her toes from his thigh, he fought the urge to move away, to get out of the swing, but no logical reason to do so came to mind.

“Okay,” she said, “respond to the implication then. Do you have trouble sleeping?”

“Sometimes … yes.” He set the swing in motion.

“Have you always?”

“What does that matter?” Before she could answer, he jumped to his feet, the swing nearly buckling his knees as it caught them on the upswing. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

More bewildered by her question than he was disappointed she had nullified his excuse to move, he sat back down. “Why would you think that?”

She shrugged. “The conversation you had with that guy yesterday didn’t look too friendly.”

He looked hard at her for a moment. “I thought I told you to turn around and go home.”

“Free world,” she said. “So what was that about?”

Renee the interrogator. “My sister is divorcing him,” he told her, “and he wanted me to tell him where she is.”

“I’m guessing you told him to get lost.”

Jalal smiled. “Something like that.” No longer pressed by the need to flee, he pushed off with his feet, setting the swing in motion again. He finished his now cold tea. Lulled by the sun and the silence and the rhythm of the swing, for several minutes they said nothing. It felt good, spending the morning that way.

“So. I’ve read your book twice,” she said. “You are one soulful man.”

“Thank you.” Absently, he rubbed a hand over his jaw and winced at the stubble. He must look like hell.

“They’re not as fragile as they look,” she said.

Jalal followed her gaze to a hummingbird at the feeder. “Really?”

“When they're threatened, they fight fiercely.”

He watched the bird for a second longer, then Renee for several more. “I will remember that.”

“It’s so peaceful here,” she said. “No wonder you can write such beautiful poetry. How long have you lived here?”

“Twelve years, off and on.”

“So this is just a getaway home for you?”

“Not anymore.”

“Where did you live before this?”

He breathed in. He breathed out. “In Coelho.”
Stop, please, stop.

“So, when did you move here for good?”

Jalal braked the swing and looked out toward the horizon. The sun seemed far too bright now, and he closed his eyes against it. He had to swallow twice before he could answer. “Two years ago.” A slight jerk of the swing accompanied her soft gasp.

“Oh. After—”

The swing jerked harder, swayed, stopped—he imagined Renee twisting around, slipping her feet into her sandals—and then all the weight shifted back to his end. She had stood up.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

An undulation in the air as she stepped past him carried her scent of sun-warmed oranges, of honey, of life. A moment later, he heard the latch on the gate fall to. He did not move, or call out to her, or even open his eyes. He had no heart for it. Again, he would call Karen, after office hours, and leave a message on her phone:
Thursday is not possible for me
. He was not ready. He was still lost. He retreated into the bliss of a memory.

Meredith sat reading on the floor beside the window, her hair a silver blonde halo against the streaming sunlight. Jalal lay on the sofa with an open book propped on his chest. He only pretended to read. He was studying her. After a few minutes, she looked up.

“Why are you staring at me?” she asked.

“Why do you insist on sitting on the floor when there are two sofas and four chairs in this room?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “This feels more … natural.”

“More spiritual?” he asked. “More connected to the earth’s energies?”

She closed her book with a snap. “Are you mocking me?”

“Not at all,” he said. “I have concluded you are a goddess. Goddess of the roses. Queen of the hummingbirds.”

Meredith rolled her eyes.

“I am serious,” he said. “I believe you are an eternal spirit born into this world from time to time. And I am the fortunate man to have found you in this incarnation.”

“And
I
believe,” she said, rising to her feet, “that you are a silver-tongued devil bucking for a roll in the hay.”

“That too,” he said, laughing. He had just enough time to toss his book to the floor before she pounced on him.

Jalal never stepped outside his house the next day. All his energy had bled out. He stood in the doorway looking at the garden, seeing the result of his neglect with clear eyes. It was dying. He turned away and went in search of his phone. He would call Azadeh. He should have called her yesterday. No. What he should do is drive over to check on her. But he would not. He could not.

Azadeh answered on the fourth ring. “Sorry, Jalal, I was in the garden. It’s been so neglect—” She sucked in a breath.

His inability to cope was a cause of pain in everyone around him. For Azadeh’s sake, he forced himself to ask, “Are the gardeners not doing their job? I will call them; just tell me what you want them to do.”

She hesitated. “Oh, they do the basics, but it’s not the same. You know?”

He knew. They did not love the garden. “Then I am glad you’re there. You belong there.” That was true. “So,” he said, “have you heard from Sam?”

“He called my cell constantly until noon on Sunday, but I didn’t answer and he finally gave up. He’s called a couple times a day since then, but I let it ring and I ignore the voicemails. He’s talked to Ryan and Kristen, but he doesn’t know where they are and they don’t tell him where I am.”

“Talk to him the next time he calls.”

“Jalal, you don’t know how angry—”

“I talked to him, Aza. He will not bother you.”

“He called you?”

“No. You were right; he rushed straight down here Monday morning. I convinced him it was best to let you go.”

“That doesn’t sound like Sam.”

“Just take the call and see,” he said. “Are Goli and Dari bringing the kids down to you this weekend?”

“Yes. Why don’t you come visit with us all?

“No.”

“When will you, Jalal?”

“Soon.”

On Thursday, just about the time he should have been sitting down to lunch with Karen, Jalal sat at his kitchen table, with his earliest journals stacked around him. He was searching for unpublished poems to satisfy his promise to her, but the daily entries from his years in New York distracted him. Reading them disturbed him more than he expected. It seemed he read about some stranger, a man who swung between depression and self-destruction like a pendulum ticking off the seconds of a life. It frightened him to think who he might be now if he had not quelled that motion.

And yet, who was he now? A desperate man, hoping to pass off ten-year-old work as proof he still had talent. Disgusted, he pushed away from the table and walked out onto the porch. Low tide would be at mid-afternoon today, but the heat shimmer on the road foretold packed beaches. A night run, then. He might stop by Jennie’s. Maybe Renee would be there. And, if not? Would he have the nerve to go to her apartment? Or the bar, could he walk in there and have a beer like it was no big deal? The idea of watching her work seemed, in some way, obscene. But then, he was looking for excuses.

He returned to the stack of journals in the kitchen. He would not be cheating. It was his work. What did it matter when he wrote it?

At ten that night, he pulled on his running shoes and left the house. He ran like a ghost under the full moon. True, he was in trouble, just not in the way Renee suspected. He was smart enough to know what he needed to do; he was just too weak to do it. He needed to move forward. Writing should have been his salvation. He wrote every day—and night too when sleep would not come—but his journals were filled only with memories. In his first months alone, he wrote reams of verse. It poured from him, a stream-of-consciousness flowing from his grief, but now he only filled the pages with a meticulous recall of his life with Meredith. Maybe tomorrow a poem would come to him. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. It became his mantra as he ran.

Pausing across the street from Jennie’s long enough to see that Renee was not there, he ran on. He turned back toward home. His enthusiasm diminished with each step. Why did he do this, anyway? He ran far more than he needed to keep in shape. His mother worried about his health. He had a runner’s body now, he told her, but she started most of their conversations by asking whether he was eating enough. Cutting behind the post office and through the VFW parking lot, he crossed the highway to the footbridge and took a shortcut down through the pines to the cliffs road. A four-mile run was enough for one night.

He had slowed to a walk by the time he rounded the last turn and, at the sight of a movement near his gate, he halted. Surely, Sam had not sent some thug after him. Even if he had, would the man be stupid enough to stand out in the open waiting for him? Jalal continued forward, eyes trained on the shadowed figure. He recognized her when he was a dozen yards away. “What are
you
doing here?”