“My God you’re pretty,” he said. “You are wasting your time with that jewelry. Because your eyes are like two black diamonds.”
She jumped a little, poked at the phone’s buttons with disbelief, and put it back to her head.
Felix choked back the urge to laugh and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “A string of pearls around your throat would look like peanuts,” he told the phone. “I am totally smitten with you. What are you like under that big baggy coat? Do I dare to wonder? I would give a million dollars just to see your knees!”
“Why are you telling me that?” said the phone.
“Because I’m looking at you right now. And after one look at you, believe me, I was a lost soul.” Felix felt a chill. “Hey, wait a minute-you don’t speak English, do you?”
“No, I don’t speak English-but my telephone does.”
“It does?”
“It’s a very new telephone. It’s from Finland,” the telephone said. “I need it because I’m stuck in a foreign country. Do you really have a million dollars for my knees?”
“That was a figure of speech,” said Felix, though his bank account was, in point of fact, looking considerably healthier since his girlfriend Lola had dumped him. “Never mind the million dollars,” he said. “I’m dying of love out here. I’d sell my blood just to buy you petunias.”
“You must be a famous poet,” the phone said dreamily, “for you speak such wonderful Farsi.”
Felix had no idea what Farsi was-but he was way beyond such fretting now. The rusty gates of his soul were shuddering on their hinges. “I’m drunk,” he realized. “I am drunk on your smile.”
“In my family, the women never smile.”
Felix had no idea what to say to that, so there was a hissing silence.
“Are you a spy? How did you get my phone number?”
“I’m not a spy. I got your phone number from your phone.”
“Then I know you. You must be that tall foreign man who gave me your battery. Where are you?”
“Look outside the store. See me on the bench?” She turned where she stood, and he waved his fingertips. “That’s right, it’s me,” he declared to her. “I can’t believe I’m really going through with this. You just stand there, okay? I’m going to run in there and buy you a wedding ring.”
“Don’t do that.” She glanced cautiously at Dad and Uncle, then stepped closer to the bulletproof glass. “Yes, I do see you. I remember you.”
She was looking straight at him. Their eyes met. They were connecting. A hot torrent ran up his spine. “You are looking straight at me.”
“ You’re very handsome.”
It wasn’t hard to elope. Young women had been eloping since the dawn of time. Elopement with eager phone support was a snap. He followed her to the hotel, a posh place that swarmed with limos and videocams. He brought her a bag with a big hat, sunglasses, and a cheap Mexican wedding dress. He sneaked into the women’s restroom- they never put videocams there, due to the complaints-and he left the bag in a stall. She went in, came out in new clothes with her hair loose, and walked straight out of the hotel and into his car.
They couldn’t speak together without their phones, but that turned out to be surprisingly advantageous, as further discussion was not on their minds. Unlike Lola, who was always complaining that he should open up and relate-“You’re a plumber,” she would tell him, “how deep and mysterious is a plumber supposed to be?”-the new woman in his life had needs that were very straightforward. She liked to walk in parks without a police escort. She liked to thoughtfully peruse the goods in Mideastern ethnic groceries. And she liked to make love to him. She was nineteen years old, and the willing sacrifice of her chastity had really burned the bridges for his little refugee. Once she got fully briefed about what went inside where, she was in the mood to tame the demon. She had big, jagged, sobbing, alarming, romantic, brink-of-the-grave things going on, with long, swoony kisses, and heel-drumming, and clutching-and-clawing.
When they were too weak, and too raw, and too tingling to make love anymore, then she would cook, very badly. She was on her phone constantly, talking to her people. These confidantes of hers were obviously women, because she asked them for Persian cooking tips. She would sink with triumphant delight into cheery chatter as the Basmati rice burned.
He longed to take her out to eat; to show her to everyone, to the whole world; really, besides the sex, no act could have made him happier-but she was undocumented, and sooner or later some security geek was sure to check on that. People did things like that to people nowadays. To contemplate such things threw a thorny darkness over their whole affair, so, mostly, he didn’t think. He took time off work, and he spent every moment that he could in her radiant presence, and she did what a pretty girl could do to lift a man’s darkened spirits, which was plenty. More than he had ever had from anyone.
After ten days of golden, unsullied bliss, ten days of bread and jug wine, ten days when the nightingales sang in chorus and the reddest of roses bloomed outside the boudoir, there came a knock on his door, and it was three cops.
“Hello, Mr. Hernandez,” said the smallest of the trio. “I would be Agent Portillo from Homeland Security, and these would be two of my distinguished associates. Might we come in?”
“Would there be a problem?” said Felix.
“Yes there would!” said Portillo. “There might be rather less of a problem if my associates here could search your apartment.” Portillo offered up a handheld screen. “A young woman named Batool Kadivar? Would we be recognizing Miss Batool Kadivar?”
“I can’t even pronounce that,” Felix said. “But I guess you’d better come in,” for Agent Portillo’s associates were already well on their way. Men of their ilk were not prepared to take no for an answer. They shoved past him and headed at once for the bedroom.
“Who are those guys? They’re not American.”
“They’re Iranian allies. The Iranians were totally nuts for a while, and then they were sort of okay, and then they became our new friends, and then the enemies of our friends became our friends… Do you ever watch TV news, Mr. Hernandez? Secular uprisings, people seizing embassies? Ground war in the holy city of Qom, that kind of thing?”
“It’s hard to miss,” Felix admitted.
“There are a billion Moslems. If they want to turn the whole planet into Israel, we don’t get a choice about that. You know something? I used to be an accountant!” Portillo sighed theatrically. “ ‘Homeland Security.’ Why’d they have to stick me with that chicken outfit? Hombre, we’re twenty years old, and we don’t even have our own budget yet. Did you see those gorillas I’ve got on my hands? You think these guys ever listen to sense? Geneva Convention? U.S. Constitution? Come on.”
“They’re not gonna find any terrorists in here.”
Portillo sighed again. “Look, Mr. Hernandez. You’re a young man with a clean record, so I want to do you a favor.” He adjusted his handheld and it showed a new screen. “These are cell phone records. Thirty, forty calls a day, to and from your number. Then look at this screen, this is the good part. Check out her call records. That would be her aunt in Yerevan, and her little sister in Teheran, and five or six of her teenage girlfriends, still living back in purdah… Who do you think is gonna pay that phone bill? Did that ever cross your mind?”
Felix said nothing.
“I can understand this, Mr. Hernandez. You lucked out. You’re a young, red-blooded guy and that is a very pretty girl. But she’s a minor, and an illegal alien. Her father’s family has got political connections like nobody’s business, and I would mean nobody, and I would also mean business.”
“Not my business,” Felix said.
“You’re being a sap, Mr. Hernandez. You may not be interested in war, but war is plenty interested in you.” There were loud crashing, sacking and looting noises coming from his bedroom.
“You are sunk, hermano. There is video at the Lebanese grocery store. There is video hidden in the traffic lights. You’re a free American citizen, sir. You’re free to go anywhere you want, and we’re free to watch all the backup tapes. That would be the big story I’m relating here. Would we be catching on yet?”
“That’s some kind of story,” Felix said.
