or about what she did for a living.
Sooner or later, of course, we would have to think about these things, and talk about them, and even deal with them. Meanwhile we took it all one day at a time, which was how I had been taught to take all of life ever since I stopped trying to drink whiskey faster than they could distill it. As someone pointed out, you might as well take the whole business a day at a time. That, after all, is how the world hands it to you.
AT a quarter to four the same Thursday afternoon the telephone rang at the Khoury house on Colonial Road . When Kenan Khoury answered it a male voice said, 'Hey, Khoury. She never came home, did she?'
'Who is this?'
'None of your fuckin' business is who it is. We got your wife, you Arab fuck. You want her back or what?'
'Where is she? Let me talk to her.'
'Hey, fuck you, Khoury,' the man said, and broke the connection.
Khoury stood there for a moment, shouting 'hello' into a dead phone and trying to figure out what to do next. He ran outside, went to the garage, established that his Buick was there and her Camry was not.
He ran the length of the driveway to the street; looked in either direction, returned to the house, and picked up the phone. He listened to the dial tone and tried to think of someone to call.
'Jesus Christ,' he said out loud. He put the phone down and yelled
'Francey!'
He dashed upstairs and burst into their bedroom, calling her name.
Of course she wasn't there, but he couldn't help himself, he had to check every room. It was a big house and he ran in and out of every room in it, shouting her name, at once the spectator and the participant in his own panic. Finally he was back in the living room and he saw that he had left the phone off the hook. That was brilliant. If they were trying to reach him, they couldn't get through. He hung up the phone and willed it to ring, and almost immediately it did.
It was a different male voice this time, calmer, more cultured. He said, 'Mr. Khoury, I've been trying to reach you and getting a busy signal. Who were you talking to?'
'Nobody. I had the phone off the hook.'
'I hope you didn't call the police.'
'I didn't call anybody,' Khoury said. 'I made a mistake, I thought I hung up the phone, but I set it down alongside it. Where's my wife? Let me talk to my wife.'
'You shouldn't leave the phone off the hook. And you shouldn't call anyone.'
'I didn't.'
'And certainly not the police.'
'What do you want?'
'I want to help you get your wife back. If you want her back, that is. Do you want her back?'
'Jesus, what are you—'
'Answer the question, Mr. Khoury.'
'Yes, I want her back. Of course I want her back.'
'And I want to help you. Keep the line open, Mr. Khoury. I'll be in touch.'
'Hello?' he said. 'Hello?'
But the line was dead.
For ten minutes he paced the floor, waiting for the phone to ring.
Then an icy calm settled over him and he relaxed into it. He stopped walking the floor and sat in a chair next to the phone. When it rang he picked it up but said nothing.
'Khoury?' The first man again, the crude one.
'What do you want?'
'What do I want? What the fuck you think I want?'
He didn't respond.
'Money,' the man said after a moment. 'We want money.'
'How much?'
'You fuckin' sand nigger, where do you get off askin' the questions? You want to tell me that?'
He waited.
'A million dollars. How's that strike you, asshole?'
'That's ridiculous,' he said. 'Look, I can't talk with you. Have your friend call me, maybe I can talk with him.'
'Hey, you raghead fuck, what are you tryin' to—'
This time it was Khoury who broke the connection.
IT seemed to him that it was about control.
