“There could be a logo, don’t you think? If only Lacoste sold chadors … Wouldn’t it be nice, with a crocodile just here? Or maybe ‘Fred Perry’ chadors!”
He went silent for a minute and then continued, “Now I have something important to tell you both. Could you both please look at me?”
They reluctantly raised their heads.
“I’m going to have an operation.”
“Are you sick?” Derdâ asked.
“No!” Steven cried and then chuckled. “Of course not. But in a way, yes, I am. I am sick. I am man. And I want to get rid of this … So I’ve decided to become a woman!”
Stanley interjected, “But you don’t have that kind of money.”
“Of course I do,” Steven said. “Who do you think I am? I’ve worked all my life. I didn’t just loaf around like you, waiting to die! More pasta?”
Their plates were already full of his pasta. But that didn’t matter. The important thing was whether Steven was telling the truth or not. Did he really have money?
Stanley sprang to his feet and waved his fist in the air. “You’re going to give that money to me!” he shouted.
Steven laughed again.
“No, sir, I’m not giving you a penny.”
Stanley put his hands around his father’s neck and then knocked him and his chair to the floor. Steven crashed into the floor and his feet flung out and kicked up the table, sending two plates of pasta flying across the room. Derdâ was shocked by the sudden commotion, and jumped up when the plates crashed to the floor. Steven might have died from a heart attack or cerebral hemorrhaging. His head had taken quite a knock against the floor. But he went on roaring with laughter before he was seized by a terrible coughing fit.
His son knelt down by his father and put his hands around his throat and screamed, “I’ll kill you! You’re going to give me that money. I’ll kill you, I’m telling you … Look Dad, I’m begging you! Please, just give that money!”
As she stood on the other side of the open green wooden door, Derdâ looked at Steven and gave Steven her last order: “Stop crying, Rahime!”
The old man’s eyes were full of tears. His master was leaving him. His threats and entreaties couldn’t convince her to stay. Knocking down Steven in his chair hadn’t changed a thing. His son’s momentary hysterical fit resulted in Steven kicking Stanley out of the house. Steven threatened him in a way that was much more severe than Stanley had expected. “How would you like it if I called the police and had you arrested?” Steven asked him. Stanley couldn’t handle even one night in police custody so he packed up his things and asked Derdâ if she was coming. Derdâ took her prized possession—her dictionary—and followed him out the door.
Steven grabbed Derdâ’s arm the same way he’d done when he first met her on the bench. But she pulled her arm away, quickly turned, and gave him the order not to cry.
When she got to the garden gate, Derdâ turned around one more time and looked at Steven.
“Will you ever come back?” implored the man behind the chador. His words reminded Derdâ of Nazenin. This time she wasn’t afraid to wave good-bye.
They headed for Stick. As they passed the Camdenhead pub, the skinheads hanging out by the door thought Derdâ—with her shaved head and Dr. Martens—was one of them.
They called out to her: “What the hell are you doing with that goth fag? Get over here!”
Derdâ hesitated for a moment, but Stanley took her by the arm and angrily pulled her along. He had no patience for those fascist leftovers from the eighties. He didn’t even lift his head to look at them. Soon enough they arrived at Stick. A giant green-haired Russian stood at the entrance. They went in and went straight to the bathroom to inject the heroin they’d got from Black T. They’d spent a good half of Derdâ’s money. Stanley finished first and when he came out he found Mitch.
“I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do,” Stanley said, after he’d given him a three-sentence rundown of what had happened.
Derdâ joined them. Mitch didn’t recognize her. Stanley introduced them.
“So here’s your film star! Ask her if she likes the current hell we’re living in.”
Mitch bent down and looked at Derdâ’s face under the dim pub lights. He couldn’t believe his eyes.
“No way!” he said. “Impossible!”
He looked at Stanley.
“Oh, yes,” he said, calmly nodding his head.
He pointed at Derdâ. “She still doesn’t understand us, right?”
Derdâ could now speak English pretty well, and with a commercial attaché’s accent.
“I beg your pardon, but I’ve always understood you perfectly!”
Mitch roared with laughter and held out a glass of beer for Derdâ. She pushed the glass away and looked around the pub. That night Stick was a perfect madhouse. Transvestites, goths, punks who didn’t care what year it was, seventy-year-old rockabillies who had draped their jackets over their shoulders in the same way for the last fifty years, the Teddy boys who adjusted their hair every five minutes with not one but two different combs, the mods with their heavy jackets, and a lone drunk Japanese girl dancing on the bar. The DJ was playing “Girl Anachronism” by the Dresden Dolls and as Amanda Palmer’s voice poured into people’s ears, it temporarily blinded them, which was probably why almost everybody was just swaying back and forth in one spot with their eyes closed. Or maybe this was just because Stick was jammed that night and nobody could really move.
It was hard to say what all these people did during the day. But Stick was a place where they could take refuge in one another at night. In the past,
