The Executor (32 page)

“I’ll have the original back to you soon as I can,” Zitelli said. “I thought you could use this in the meantime.”

“... thank you.”

“My pleasure. I apologize again for showing up like this. We were in the neighborhood, and I know how it’s going to sound, but I was wondering, if it’s not too great an inconvenience, maybe you could give my friend here a tour of the library. He’s into that kind of thing. Do you mind? Just for a few minutes.”

“Right this way,” I said.

 

 

I HAD GONE OVER every square inch at least a dozen times. I had no real reason to believe that the two men were there for anything other than to gawk. I strove—successfully, I think—to project ownerly insouciance. And yet I have never felt so terrified as I did during those twenty-five minutes. Oddly, what made the situation so nerve-wracking was also what enabled me to maintain a veneer of calm: the incongruity of two homicide detectives prancing around a room that had so recently served as a makeshift morgue was, in its own way, incredibly funny, and I kept having to swallow back the church giggles.

“Jesus,” Connearney said, his big foot on the spot where Daciana’s head had lain.

I stood near the globe, spinning it idly. “It’s a nice thing to have.”

“No shit.”

Zitelli looked at me as if to say
You believe this guy?

I smiled back, waiting for him to comment on the swapped carpet, the missing chairs—

“What happened to your friend?” he said.

The floor dropped out. Game over. Touring the library had been a pretext, after all; here came the axe.
Your friend.
Ha ha ha. Connearney was still pretending to browse, but I knew that he’d tackle me if I tried to bolt. It would happen here and it would happen now and I could do nothing but relent. “Friend,” I said.

“You know.” Zitelli laid his index finger across his upper lip.

Silence.

I said, “My girlfriend asked me to move him. He creeps her out.”

“What are we talking about?” Connearney asked.

“Nietzsche,” I murmured.

“Aha.” He closed his eyes. “‘Pity in a man of knowledge seems almost ludicrous, like sensitive hands on a cyclops.” ’

Zitelli grinned. “You Harvard guys,” he said. “You’re all dickheads.”

As I saw them out, they thanked me profusely, swearing never to bother me again—a chip I doubted I’d be able to cash in.

I fetched half-Nietzsche from behind the file boxes in my office closet, where I’d left him. Upon return I’d been too distraught to deal with cleaning him, and in the intervening days the blood had turned to pinpricks of rust. One large patch cataracted his single eye. I scraped at it and my fingernail came away orange. The green velvet lining the base was dyed black. I tugged it off, crumpled it up, flushed it down the toilet.

Google’s preferred method for removing rust from cast iron involved dish detergent and a potato. These I obtained at the corner market. Sitting at the kitchen table, I cut open one of the potatoes, dripped soap on the exposed face, and used it to rub at the bookend until the flesh turned black, the rust slowly coming away. I sliced off the dirty layer and began anew. The police had come and gone and said nary a word. But I wouldn’t be fooled. Something was up. It had to be. Once you begin to believe that the world could end you, you not only accommodate yourself to that belief but learn to feed off it. You gorge on your own fear. And when it is gone, you churn more, and gorge yourself again. I cut off another blackened slice. My friend, the policeman had called him. My friend was looking good.

B
etween the background noise and Yasmina’s sobbing, I could scarcely make out a word she was saying.

“Where are you calling from?” I asked. “Are you calling from the airport?”

“I’m on the red-eye. I get in at five forty.”

“I thought you weren’t coming back until Wednesday.”

“I changed my flight. It’s over. I told Pedram about us.”

If she was expecting me to let out a victory whoop, she was to be disappointed. All I could get out was, “Really?”

“I had to. I couldn’t stand it anymore.” Still crying, she described the engagement party, guests packed up to the rafters of a Beverly Hills steakhouse; glistening platters of melon, crystal vases brimming with grapes; Pedram digging his fingers into her shoulder, making her feel like a naughty girl being kept close at hand. When it came time for her future husband to speak, she listened as he said nothing of her education, nothing of her as an individual, referring only to her sterling upbringing and her pristine family history and, above all, her beauty.

She blew her nose. “My sister found me freaking out in the bathroom.”

I sat at the kitchen table, fingering my wounded cheek. The area around it was tender, warm to the touch. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t know what to say?”

“Well—”

“Say you’re sorry.”

“I’m s—”

“Say you’re
happy.
”

“I—I am, I’m just, I’m a little surprised.”

“For God’s sake, I didn’t
plan
it this way,” she said, her voice rising above the blare of a boarding announcement.

“I know—”

“It’s not like this has been a whole lot of fun for me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Shit . . .”

“I’m sorry.”

She was crying again.

“Mina—”

“I thought you’d be happy.”

“I am.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“It’s surprise. That’s what you’re hearing. But, but—but a good kind of surprise.” My right temple had begun to hammer, the room to effervesce. I shook my head hard to clear it. “Think of it like this, it’s like someone jumping out of your birthday cake. It’s surprising, but you’re happy to be surprised, once the, the”—pain; spinning; I shook my head again—“the
initial
shock wears off. See? Listen: I’m happy. Don’t I sound happy?”

“No.”

“This is the sound of me happy. Really, really happy.”

Silence.

“Hello?” I said.

“Yeah.” She blew her nose again. “My mother already knew something was up when she saw the necklace.”

I felt equally queasy and pleased. “You wore it.”

“Of course I didn’t wear it. She was going through my drawers.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Yup.”

“You’re a grown woman.”

“That’s never stopped her before. Why are you surprised by this; I’ve told you how it works.”

Woozily snapping my head back and forth. “... I guess.”

“Anyway, she was right, wasn’t she? I had something to hide, and she found it.”

Somewhere in there, I could sense an accusation: I had set her up. And yet here she was, crying on my shoulder. The whole scene was very Yasmina, and far too fraught for me to work through on the spot, what with ninety-eight percent of my brain busy chasing other paranoias. I heard her talking about her parents.

I said, “I’m sure if you explain—”

She made an impatient noise. “Did you hear what I said?”

“. . . uhhy—”

“I’m out of the family. Okay? Do you get it now? Do you see?”

“I, I’m sure that isn’t true.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s true. What matters is that she said it.”

Silence.

A scratchy voice called for group three to Boston.

“That’s me,” she said.

“You’ll feel better when you’ve slept,” I said, as much to myself as to her.

She sniffled. “Whatever.”

Silence.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Get some rest, I’ll see you soon.”

“Wait ... Joseph. ?”

Silence.

She said, “Can I come stay with you?”

Impossible. I couldn’t have her here, not with so much left to clean up. Not when I had policemen dropping round for tea. Not with a bloody carpet rolled up and tucked in the corner of my office. No, it was impossible; the only question was how to tell her that without setting her off.

“Please,” she said. “I can’t be alone.”

“Of course,” I mumbled.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

I offered to meet her at Logan.

“It’s too early. I’ll take a cab.”

“You remember where it is.”

“I think so.”

“Number forty-nine. It’s the last one on the block.”

“I remember.”

“I’ll leave the porch light on.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

I said nothing.

“I’m sorry it’s so early,” she said.

“I’ll be awake,” I said.

 

 

SHE NEVER WAS a light traveler, Yasmina, and I tried not to let on how much my back hurt as I humped up the front porch with her bags. I had reinjured myself the previous evening. Stuck without a car—all the rental agencies in Boston close at nine P.M., along with everything else—I’d gone on foot, a hundred awkward, floppy pounds’ worth of library carpet laid across my neck, staggering along through the twenty-degree weather, losing my footing and falling and righting myself and staggering on. I’d managed to make it about two miles, arriving at a vacant lot near the Museum of Science, where I unburdened myself and limped homeward, soaked and freezing and aching from stem to stern, my sole consolation that the late hour had made for few witnesses.

“I’m sorry,” Yasmina kept saying.

We stood in the entry hall, wiping our feet.

I told her to stop apologizing.

“I am.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m such a mess.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“I am.”

“It’s fine, Yasmina.”

I settled her bags on the landing. When I turned toward her she was coming toward me, one hand out.

“Did you get in a fight?”

“Ha ha,” I said, ducking away. “Please. I tripped.”

“It looks like it hurts.”

“I’m fine. You must be hungry.”

In the kitchen she sat warming her hands over a mug of tea.

“Would you mind closing the window?” she asked.

I complied.

“Thank you.... Aren’t you cold with it open?”

“It tends to get stuffy in here.”

“I can see my breath,” she said.

Actually, I still felt overheated, but I wanted to make her comfortable enough to mask the fact that I was supremely uncomfortable having her there. I offered her toast.

“This is fine, thanks.”

“Say the word.”

“Thank you.”

I started to fix myself breakfast. I wasn’t hungry, but it had to be done.

“My mother left me a voicemail,” she said.

“And?”

“They’re cutting me off.”

Silence.

“That’s abominable,” I said.

“I’m going to have to give up my apartment.”

Silence, pregnant.

I smiled sickly, opened my arms in invitation.

“Are you sure?”

“... of course.”

“Thank you.” Her face greened. “So much.”

I pulled her chair close and held her against me, shushing her. For some reason her crying was making me very agitated.

“I mean it. It’d be so easy for you to laugh at me. You’re such a good person.”

“Shhh.”

“I’ll pay you rent.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I mean it. I’ll do the cooking. I’ll learn to cook.”

“Stop it. Please.”

“I’ll find another place as soon as I can. I’ll start looking next week....”

I stroked her head, trying to soothe her, but she kept on talking nonsense, making promises she could never keep, crying all the while. She recalled the cruel things her aunt had said to her. She talked about Pedram: poor, guileless Pedram, whom she never wanted to hurt but who—her sister told her—hadn’t eaten in days, he was so depressed. She had humiliated herself, disgraced her family name. I didn’t know, couldn’t know, what it was like, the way people talked, the rumors, the importance of reputation. Nobody would ever forget, not after that scene, the threats and imprecations. She would be a laughingstock. She could never go home again. I wanted to be sympathetic, I did. I knew she needed me. But I couldn’t bear the sound of her just then, and I would have given anything for her to be quiet. I told her everything would be fine. Still she wept; still she talked. Hush, I said, hush. But she wouldn’t, no matter what I said or did, and finally I had to kiss her. Truth be told, I wasn’t feeling up to it, but it was the best way—the only way, really—to get her to stop making noise.

THE FREE-WILL PROBLEM is as old as philosophy itself, the debate around it just as fierce as it was two thousand years ago. More so, perhaps, for as our world grows increasingly known, quantified, mechanized, and constrained—technology gripping us tighter every day, science daily smoothing the contours of reality—people seem to feel correspondingly eager to prove that human beings are the exception to the rule, that we are not preprogrammed but free.