Exiles in America(53)

“Yes, I want my life exciting,” said Abbas. “I don’t want it too civilized. I

need excitement or I go dead inside.”

“But you’re a husband and father,” said Zack. “You can’t get too uncivi-

lized. You don’t want to lose your family. You love your kids, I know. A self-

contained excitement isn’t such a bad thing.”

Abbas narrowed his eyes at Zack. “What are you saying? You do not want

me to run off with your boyfriend?”

“It never crossed my mind. I was thinking about your family. You need to

be careful for their sake,” said Zack. “You’re feeling very dissatisfied and rest-

less tonight. You’re trying to fix it with a little drama. You want to get the peo-

ple around you all excited and upset. But dramas have a way of getting out of

control.”

Abbas slowly nodded to himself, taking the words in and weighing them.

“He is very smart,” he told Daniel. “Very smooth. Now I know why you paint

the way you do.”

Daniel stuck his head out at Abbas. “What?”

“You are a passionate, sensual man. Your painting is too tight. It is like

this.” He held up a fist. “It should be like this.” He opened his hand and ca-

ressed the air.

“My life with Zack doesn’t make me paint the way I paint,” Daniel said an-

grily. “I’ve always painted the way I paint.”

“So you prefer mess in your life and order in your art? It should be the

other way around.”

Daniel snorted. “Like you? Your life is so damn orderly?”

E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a

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Abbas smiled and shook his head. “You are such a pair. You play your lit-

tle games and think you are taking great risks. But you are so safe, so Ameri-

can. Even your love is safe.”

“Unlike you and Elena?” said Daniel. “You really love each other and

that’s why you’re always at each other’s throats?”

“Yes. Maybe. Why not?” said Abbas, trying out different replies. “But it is

better than what you have. You are not lovers. You are only friends. Only

chums.”

The accusation hit Daniel like a slap. It left him too angry to speak.

Zack had listened to their exchange with one hand cupping his beard,

pressing the hair around his face like insulation. He lowered his hand.

“Abbas, why are you striking out like this? Are you bored? Or do you feel

threatened?”

“Threatened? What could threaten me?”

“You spend the evening with two people you’re involved with, your wife

and Daniel. And your wife starts flirting with another man. She wants to make

you jealous. She wants to push your buttons.”

Abbas scowled. “My buttons are not pushed.”

Daniel jumped back in. “Ross finds Elena very attractive,” he taunted.

“He could be putting the moves on her right this minute.”

“Daniel, don’t,” said Zack. “We don’t need to get angry with each other.

This doesn’t need anger.”

But Abbas remained cool and controlled. There was a mean look to his

eyes, but that may have been only his rectangular glasses. “Who is angry? I am

not angry. My wife loves only me. Nobody else. She loves me and my children.

That is all. She thinks she can make me jealous, but I know not to believe her.”

“So you can fuck other men but she can’t?” said Daniel.

Abbas gritted his teeth. “She is none of your business.”

“But Zack and I are your business?” Daniel shot back. “You can say we

don’t have a real marriage, but we can’t say anything about your marriage?”

Abbas resumed nodding to himself, more slowly this time. “You are idiots.

Both of you. You do not know how easy your lives are. You do not have chil-

dren to worry about. You do not have a crazy wife. You live in the nation

where you were born, in a big house where you can make roots and keep

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C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m

things, where you don’t have to always throw things away because you are al-

ways moving. And so you can take your time and paint slowly and feel things

slowly. I do not have that luxury. I must feel everything quickly and intensely.

Because I do not have so much time.”

He leaped so rapidly from subject to subject that Daniel couldn’t follow

him.

“Your wife is anything but crazy,” said Zack. “I find her admirably sane.

Especially when one considers her circumstances.”

“Her circumstances?” said Abbas. “You mean me? I am her circumstances?”

“You and a dozen other things. A mother with two children. A woman