Hassan know? Surely he knew something. He wasn’t stupid. He knew he was
visiting the home of two gay men. Did he know his brother had been seeing
one of them?
Hassan studied Elena, as if weighing and judging her threat. He turned to
Daniel. “You are an art professor. What do you think of my brother’s paint-
ings? Are they good?”
The change of subject confused Daniel. “Sometimes. Often. Yes. They can
be quite good. Beautiful, in fact.”
“I like them, too,” said Hassan. “But I am in finance and he is my brother,
so what do I know? I presume I am prejudiced.”
“You know only the old work,” said Abbas, seizing the subject. “The new
work is very different.”
“When can I see the new work?”
“Whenever it is convenient.”
“How about tonight?” Hassan turned to the others. “Let us take a walk. It
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C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
is not too late. Your studio is nearby, yes? It would be fun to look at your work
with people who know art.”
Abbas frowned. “The studio will be freezing. The heat is turned down
during the holiday.”
“Then we won’t stay long. We will have a quick look and go home. Since
your daughter is babysitting your son, we cannot stay out late anyway.”
“I want to see it, too,” said Elena. “It has been months since I’ve been to
the studio. I have not seen the newest things.”
Abbas exchanged a long, uncertain look with his wife. “Fine then. Suit
yourself. It is your funeral,” he told his brother. “You will not like it. You will
find it too strange and modern.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” said Hassan. “I am a man of many worlds. Nothing
my brother does will ever strike me as too strange.”
They quickly put on their coats and hats. Elena knotted a scarf around her
head, but then, as if to prove it was only for warmth, she squeezed a beret on
top. They went out the front door and down the street toward the campus. It
was cold, yet most of the snow was gone. All that remained were a few lacy
patches of ice on the lawns.
Zack walked with Daniel, letting the Rohanis get ahead.
“What does Hassan think he’s going to see?” he whispered.
“Beats me. But he won’t see anything sensuous or pornographic, that’s for
sure.”
“Maybe it’s just his way of changing the subject.” Yet Zack felt there was
an exact purpose to everything this politician said or did.
Abbas had been right about the art building. The heat was turned down,
the interior freezing. Daniel flicked on lights as they went up the stairs. They
came to a door and Abbas unlocked it. The cold darkness gave off a resinous
stink of paint and turpentine. As the fluorescent lights fluttered on, Zack’s
eyes darted around a big room, taking in stretched canvases stacked like stage
flats against a wall, then other canvases lying on the floor. The place was total
chaos, far messier than Daniel’s studio at home. A massacre of squeezed paint
tubes covered a table. Underneath were coffee cans full of dirty brushes, and
a black boom box slapped all over with blue fingerprints.
E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a
2 4 9
Zack saw the sofa in the back, a long green vinyl sofa. Which was where
Daniel and Abbas must have spent every Sunday this past fall. Which didn’t
matter now that it was over, although it must matter or Zack wouldn’t in-
stantly know that they’d fucked here. It looked like such a plain, simple,
harmless sofa.
Zack wondered if Elena noticed it, too, but no, she already stood over one
of the paintings on the floor, frowning at it.
Four stretched paintings lay flat on the floor. They hadn’t fallen there but
were deliberately set out to be worked on. The visitors strolled around the
canvases as if they were Abstract Expressionist flower beds. Everyone re-
mained wrapped in his or her coat, their breaths visible in the cold, their
arms folded disapprovingly. Zack didn’t know if the others disapproved or
not, but he had no love for abstract art. Oh, he could admire colors and tex-
tures and technique, but he wanted people in his pictures, figures, even ab-
stract figures that could be misread as people. He looked and looked, trying
to will some kind of appreciation. Out of the mess of this room and the mess
of his life, Abbas had produced a series of austere, beautiful abstractions,
swirling fields of concentrated color, with large spermy squiggles embedded
inside.
“These are new,” said Daniel, pointing at the floor paintings. “I’ve seen
the others but not these.”
“They are all different from the old work,” said Elena. “Very—” Her hand