Instinct. That elusive center an overthinker tends to dart around. Now, recalling their start, she remembers that initial pull to him. Not just attraction, though that was there as well. But a whole-being pull. Cells moving. Mind consumed. “The point is, I came around.”
“Always better late than never.” He gives her hand a squeeze. Up ahead, two boys walk in the street, laughing when they turn to see the car trailing them, then flashing grins and waving with dirty palms.
“Look,” he says. “We’re almost there. See how close the mountains are? Some towns like this, they lose daylight to shadow. We’re lucky we don’t have early dark. Because here, when it’s dark, it’s black. A cloud goes over the moon, it’s darkroom black.”
“No late-night walks, I guess.”
“No walking at night at all. Curfew.”
To this new fact, she says nothing. It’s as if she’s been handed a cryptic map only after having been left in a maze, and no amount of stating the obvious will help. All she can do is stand in the midst and adjust.
“Sunset,” he says. “Six thirty. Somewhere in there. It’s fine.”
“What else, though? What else should I know that you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
Delan, who rewired the bathroom after having only read a book, who thinks nothing of eating expired food or giving Iraqi soldiers a ride home, would of course explain in detail about Neanderthal bones and the varieties of fig trees while neglecting to mention military occupation, curfew, checkpoints, and bribes. But she should’ve expected this. Because this was not a trip to Hawaii. They’re not in Paris or Rome. She should have better understood the landscape, but instead she romanticized it. A mistake that was hers alone, to have considered danger only from the vantage of privilege.
Then she startles, his hands covering her eyes. “Shh,” he whispers, his mouth by her ear. “Don’t be mad. I’m sorry about earlier. But this right here, right now, it’s important.”
She nods, her eyes still covered.
“You remember your first glimpse of what matters most,” he says, “right? The Hollywood sign. The ocean. The first time I saw you. I could tell you about all those times. Even where the sun was.”
“Is this your house?”
“I never thought I’d be with someone who’d see it. My life. I couldn’t admit it was important, but now I know it is. It always has been.” He kisses her cheek. “Try to remember this, okay? One day, I’ll ask you to remind me. I’ll want to see it through your eyes.”
Her lashes brush his fingers. Still, his hands are in place, slivers of light between his flesh, until finally he lets go.
Stone at the base. Beige brick as it rises. Two stories. Window frames and the door painted a bright teal. It’s only feet from the cobbled street, and cinder blocks flank the door, rising into tumbles of red and pink geraniums from round clay pots. Though the house is actually large, she is struck at once by how small it is. Which doesn’t make sense until she realizes that the incongruity is in the impression, not the reality. From the fact that his house means so much and yet takes up so little actual space. Here it is, this speck in the world that is tied to him, that became him.
But the windows are dark. For a moment, she feels an easing of tension, and in this she realizes how worried she’s been about meeting his parents. This would of course only be a postponement, but glimpsing his life without their observation feels like a break, some allowance she’d not known to crave. Delan, however, clearly wants no such postponement and is looking behind him as if perhaps his parents are crossing the street, ready to surprise him. But the street is empty, save a yellow dog that sniffs the corner of a wall, its white-tipped tail straight in the air.
“They must be close,” he says, facing the dark house. “They wouldn’t be out past curfew.”
Then there is a quick conversation with his cousin, who seems appeased by whatever plan Delan has and more than willing to leave, and before the plan is discussed with Olivia, their suitcases are dragged to a small side gate to the right of the house and his cousin is pulling away.
“Kurds say goodbye for too long,” Delan says as she watches the street. “There’s nothing worse. Be thankful. My cousin, I love him, but he’s never been good with people.”
“He’s not driving back to Baghdad, is he?” Because now an idea has kinked itself under her skin. What if his parents are not here? What if they’ve moved and Delan, recklessness previously disguised as impetuousness, simply failed to ask for their new address, much like he might have messed up the codes?
“No, he couldn’t. Curfew,” he adds, this time with emphasis, as if doubting she understands the meaning of the word. “We have another aunt across the river. He’s hungry; he’ll go there.” He sets the pots of geraniums on the ground and grabs two of the cinder blocks, stacking them. “Stay here.”
And just like that, he’s got his leg hooked over the gate and is balancing in a slight wobble, then is gone.
“Grab those,” he says when the gate swings open. He nods to his backpack and her camera bag while he heads for the suitcases, still searching the street.
Clotheslines stretch along the narrow space between the two houses, green with grass and small shrubs. The neighbor’s window is open, the kitchen mere inches away. Something sizzles on the stove—a yellow smell, thick and warm. A woman is there but facing the other direction, a dulled white apron tied loosely behind her back. Olivia pauses just for a moment, hungry—cumin, she thinks, thrilled with the identification—when suddenly a little face catapults up into the kitchen window. Olivia lets out a sound of surprise, and the
