“Allison, I’m not sleeping with Jessica.” Sam dared toapproach her, tentatively reached out and took her shoulders. “I’m not sleepingwith your daughter. Not now, not ever.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She was perspiring. She wanted,more than anything in this world, to hear these words, to believe them, but hisreaction-including his guilty expression-told her that she hadn’t been far off.
She had seen that same look of guilt on Mat’s face when shehad paid him that surprise visit years ago at his office and found the youngintern sitting on his desk.
History was repeating itself.
“You tell me everything,” she said calmly, through grittedteeth, removing his hands from her, “and you tell me right now. I saw that lookon your face last night. And now I know why my daughter wouldn’t tell me aboutthe ‘guy’ she was interested in at work.”
“Sit.” Sam gestured to a chair, sat on the edge of his deskfacing her.
“I’m fine standing,” she said.
“That’s all it was,” Sam explained, followed by anexaggerated sigh. “Jessica was interested in me, yes. Yes, she made overtures.Before I met you, Allison. Before that. She’s been working here for a year. Ijust met you a couple months ago.”
Allison found that she was holding her breath.
“Nothing happened, Allison. Nothing. But yes, she-she showedinterest. And I was flattered. Okay? I’m a middle-aged, divorced man and abeautiful twenty-year-old is interested in me. Sure, it boosted my ego. Sure, Iprobably didn’t discourage it. It was the kind of harmless, flirtatious stuffthat happens. But then one night-this is probably, I don’t know, I didn’texactly mark my calendar-maybe November of last year, she said she wanted tosee me outside the office. So I make a joke, right-how about I go into theparking lot? — but she’s serious, she wants to start dating me. I said no, Ally.I said it was inappropriate for more than one reason, and it had nothing to dowith you-I didn’t even know you yet. It was inappropriate because she was Mat’sdaughter, because I’m almost thirty years older than her, and because sheworked for me.”
“And what did she say?” Allison asked, her voice trembling.
“She said-” Sam raised his head, as if to recount theevents. “Oh, she said, she couldn’t control two of those three, but she couldquit her internship.”
Allison raised her eyebrows, to show she was not finishedlistening.
“I said no, Allison. Christ Almighty, I said no.”
Allison sat down in her chair, feeling her physical exhaustionfor the first time.
“And what’s this,” Sam asked, “about the ‘look on my face’last night?”
Allison chewed on her lips, cast her eyes downward. “I sawyou looking at her at the party,” she answered. “I saw that look on your face.”
Allison types on her laptop, a present from Mat, since thecounty prosecutors seized her last computer and seem to be in no hurry toreturn it.
She always loved the theater best. A Doll’s House, Ibsen’splay, was her favorite. She played the lead, Nora Helmer, the underappreciatedmother, the wife to Torvald, in an amateur production one time. She remembersmoving about the house in the final scene, when Nora left Torvald, left himdevastated and confused, Nora finally empowered and taking control.
Plays are so hard, though, because so much of it islanguage. Dialogue can be so trying, so difficult to write exactly how peopletalk. But at least she knows the subjects well.
Allison reads it over and frowns. She hits the backspacebutton on the laptop and watches the cursor gobble up word after word, untilthis passage is wiped out.
“Needs more work, Ally,” she says to herself. She has time.
ONE DAY EARLIER…
Peshawar was like another country. The terrain was notdissimilar but the people were. Other than the Afghan refugees, Ram had metvery few people who were not natives in Baluchistan. Peshawar was different, adusty town on the western border. Dozens of languages spoken on the street,different accents speaking each language. The contrasts were staggering.Exquisite Islamic architecture in one direction, an Afghani refugee campteeming with women and children, sick and deprived, in the other. Men of allages moved through the streets with assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
Father had said that he would sell carpets in Peshawar, thatcommerce was good there, better than in Quetta, and Ram knew that this wasowing to the overflow of refugees and freedom fighters, and Americans andBritish there to help them fight the Soviets. Peshawar, near the Khyber Pass,was the principal gateway for the mujahedin into Afghanistan, and this had madePeshawar an international city in the most notorious sense of that word.
They lived with Father’s cousin in a small house. Ram andhis father shared a bedroom, slept nestled together every night. Father wouldalways wait for Ram to fall asleep, caressing his hair, singing to him. Theyclung to each other, Ram believed, out of utter fear of losing the last remnantof their family.
But sometimes Father would leave the bed after he thoughthis son was asleep. Ram, as he was now called- he would never again be addressedas Zulfikar or Zulfi-would sometimes rise from the bed and listen in onconversations taking place between his father and the men who would come tovisit.
They would talk about weapons. They would talk about jihad.
Ram saw changes. There had been enough upheaval already forhim, the loss of his mother and sister, the move to a new village, but thesingle constant in his life, his father, began to change as well. There wassomething to the look in his eyes, something Ram had never seen previously-asadness, an anger, a sense of purpose. And soon enough, in less than a yearfrom the time they landed in Peshawar, they moved again, to their own home.Father was doing well in the carpet business, he told Ram; things were betterfinancially than they had ever been before, and they would stay that way. Ramwas glad, for his father more than himself. Ram just wanted what he had inQuetta. But there was no turning back, of course. So he did what his fathertold him to do, did not discuss politics and concentrated on schoolwork, whichhis mother would have wanted.
It was not until Ram was thirteen, after the Soviets hadbeen repelled from Afghanistan, after the American CIA largely left Peshawarbehind along with thousands of armed militants, after the United States re- imposedeconomic and military sanctions on Pakistan for its development of nucleartechnology, that Ram’s father finally told him.
Ram Haroon walks into the foyer of the Wickard Building oncampus and removes his gloves and hat. Even the short trip from the dorms tothis building, in this weather, requires full gear. He has spent the betterpart of two years in America’s Midwest, and still he remains shocked by theextremes in the climate.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees his contact, sitting inthe lounge area in the open foyer, wearing headphones, face buried in atextbook. Haroon readjusts his backpack, and his contact, at the opposite endof the foyer, gets up and leaves through the south entrance of the building.Haroon makes his way into the lounge area and
