In December I needed a break so I went to my parents’ place in Florida for some weeks. My folks were happy to see me. We hadn’t been together since my wedding in Colombo, and we had a pleasant and uneventful visit. When I got back to Montclair and went next door, she was gone.
“Where’s Galina?” I asked.
“She’s left me. She’s gone back to Romania,” he replied.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“What about the children?” I asked, because that’s what you are supposed to say in these sad circumstances.
“They’re with my mother in Houston. They’ll be okay.”
I looked into his handsome face and said, “I went through a divorce. At first you think it’s the worst thing in the world, but it really isn’t. It might even be the best thing.”
“You know, you might just be right.” He smiled then, and I felt the hairline crack in my heart begin to knit itself together.
There was an investigation, of course. You can’t lose a rich white woman in America and not have an investigation. They suspected Michael. There was a trial, and it took a long time, but he had expensive lawyers and finally they cleared his name. There was no body and you can almost never convict without a body, so I knew it would be okay.
I see Chloe, Shahid, and Dina every now and then, but I don’t really talk to them. My life is different now. We don’t have anything in common anymore, so what would we even speak about? The girls live with their grandmother in Houston. It’s a more stable environment for them. She says they’re putting on weight, the shadows under their eyes have receded. They are normal kids now. I’m so glad. I never had anything against those girls.
It was easier than the first time. My husband’s lover had been young and fierce. She had fought me until I managed to stick the needle into her neck and push the plunger. Did I forget to tell you what my job was? The one I lost in the midst of that terrible year? I was a nurse. At San Francisco General, where the motto was, As Real As It Gets. The things I saw there, they were real. If every now and then I helped a tortured soul to their rest with a certain cocktail, who could blame me? If you were suffering and miserable in your final hours, would you not welcome an angel of mercy?
Anyway, that’s not important. I lied when I said I hadn’t come out to Oakland before I moved here. I used to come and hike the dark trails all the time. I drove my husband’s lover to a cliffside close to here and pushed her into a ravine. It was a spot not far from where we stumbled upon the dead stag. Whatever it was that ripped the deer open must have taken her too, because she was never found.
It was easier with Galina. She wasn’t strong and she wasn’t sober. We went Christmas shopping for the children on a dark December evening. On the way home she sobbed about Michael and drank from her flask of whiskey. I drove up the hill and stopped the car. I jammed the needle into the flesh of her elbow, and then, to be sure, I put a plastic bag over her head and gripped my belt around her neck while it inflated and deflated. There was a struggle and then she was gone. I pushed her out of the car, into the deep growth, and that was that.
When I moved in, the first thing I did was take the shock collar off the dog. At first he cringed away from me. But then, in the way of sweet creatures, he opened his canine heart wide and let me in. He’s fiercely protective of me now — even Michael is a little nervous of his teeth and his size — but I won’t let anyone collar him ever again. He’s sitting by my feet as I write this. The fire is blazing; Michael will be home soon. I have finally found my place, my house, my love. I rest my feet against the dog’s furry side. Both of us, survivors of heartbreak.
Prophets and Spies
by Mahmud Rahman
Mills College
Waiting for Keisha to show up at his door, Gholam regrets he isn’t more into kink. He would have had the proper accessories — handcuffs and a ball gag. It would be easy to truss her up, and it would keep her from screaming. So he’ll just have to be sneaky, act fast before she wakes.
He improvises: Inside his toolbox he finds plastic cable ties of different lengths and selects the longest ones. He worries they will cut into her wrists, he doesn’t want her to feel unnecessary pain. Grabbing an old T-shirt, he cuts the fabric and wraps it around the ties as a cushion. One piece he rolls into a ball to stuff in her mouth. He considers a roll of duct tape, but it would stick too strongly. Masking tape makes better sense. Carefully, he puts everything inside the nightstand drawer, stuffing it behind the condoms, lube, and silk ribbons, and while he waits for Keisha, he cradles a heart about to burst.
On the gated campus, where the hills slide into the flats of East Oakland, the fall semester had begun four months ago amid meadows manicured by a small army of Mexican laborers. New students wore excited faces, returnees were happy to reunite with friends, and faculty geared up to start a new year. Only the staff who worked year-round were ambivalent, some among them blue that the summer of an empty campus had ended too soon.
Not Gholam. Tasked with keeping the computers humming on campus, his job takes him everywhere. He meets interesting people and enrolls in a class now and then. In a literature class last spring he had met Keisha, a resumer student. They had a blast working on a project together, and over the summer they cemented into a couple.
The pair spent their Labor Day weekend together, one day at the beach, another on a Berkeley excursion, the third at home, mostly in bed, their lovemaking mixed with conversations over tea. On weekends Gholam keeps a samovar going, with a ready supply of tea, sugar cubes, and mint. They eventually fell asleep, thoroughly exhausted.
When the phone woke him, Gholam’s eyes barely opened. The clock read 1:13 a.m. Calls this late scared him. Such a call had brought news of his father’s death. And that of the execution of a boyhood friend in Evin Prison. If his placid life here in Oakland was yin, his past in Iran was yang. Always a phone call away.
He picked up the phone and swung his body out of bed. When he needed to jot something down, he reached with his free hand to switch on the nightstand lamp. In the soft light, Keisha’s red-brown face glowed. Though he kept his voice low, she woke up. She didn’t understand Farsi but her eyes reacted to the tone of his voice — first quizzical, then alarmed, eventually patient.
Hanging up, he stroked Keisha’s arms. “I have to go back.”
“For good?”
He shook his head. “For a visit. Mother’s in the hospital. I’ll go during winter break.”
“Shouldn’t you leave sooner?”
“That’ll be soon enough. Let’s go back to sleep.” He put his head down on the pillow.
“Promise me you’ll be safe.”
He turned, pulled her close, and whispered, “One never knows. But more than anything else in the world, I want to come back to you.”
“Inshallah then,” she said, hugging him tight.
He nodded, but as he drifted back to sleep, he thought how people used that phrase to suggest hope, but it meant more like, It might take a miracle.
In the morning, Gholam drove to work in a meditative state. At eighteen, lurching from life as a teenager in Tehran to a foreign student in Detroit, he had wanted nothing more than the fall of the shah. Twenty years after the revolution, its dreams hijacked by the mullahs, his own yearnings for a socialist outcome long buried, Gholam now wanted nothing more than the love of a woman.