Exiles in America(54)

without a country. A poet without a language.”

“A wife without a husband?” Abbas charged.

“I never said that. And neither has she. Is that what you feel?”

“No. Never. We are man and wife. We fight like man and wife. Other cou-

ples fuck. We fight. What do you and Daniel do?”

None of your damn business, Daniel wanted to say.

But Zack said, “We talk. And we fight, although more quietly than you

and Elena. And we love each other—in our fashion. As I’m sure you and

Elena love each other in yours.”

“Pretty words,” said Abbas. “Very pretty words.” He turned to Daniel.

“So will you be coming over Sunday?” he asked again. “Or have I spoiled that

for you?”

Daniel was amazed at the man’s blunt way of cutting to the point, of leav-

ing him with no wiggle room. “Maybe we should forget our Sundays. For a

while.” He wanted to leave a door open. “I think we need a break from each

other.”

“You want a break?” said Abbas, nodding to himself. “Fine. Yes. Good. I

am tired of you. I am bored with your body. I am bored with sucking your

cock and jacking you off. I need a younger, better, braver lover. You have be-

come nothing but a hassle.” He spoke flatly, drily, as if these were facts, noth-

ing more. But he must be infuriated that Daniel could even think of ending

the sex, which was why he ended it for them. He stood up. “Good night.

Goodbye. Good riddance.” He turned and walked away, his steps quickening

as he passed through the café to the front door.

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

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None of the students noticed his exit, but adults are invisible to students.

Realizing how public their argument had been, Daniel nervously looked

around: only townies remained at their end of the café—the faculty were

gone.

Abbas’s cigarette was still burning in the ashtray. Zack reached over and

carefully stubbed it out. “Let’s pay the check and get out of here.” He was tak-

ing deep breaths, as if he’d just climbed a long flight of stairs. He had been so

calm and detached during the scene, yet now he was breathing like a man

who’d been in a ferocious quarrel.

“Zack?” said Daniel. “Honey?”

“I’m fine,” said Zack. “Really.” He produced a thin, embarrassed smile.

“It’s all just catching up with me, that’s all. Let’s go. Okay?”

f 2

“I’m sorry. So damn sorry you were exposed to that,” said Daniel when they

were outside and walking home.

“Not your fault. Or rather, it’s as much my fault as yours. I’m the one who

insisted we get together. Well, I wanted to get to know them better.”

They were cutting across campus toward Jamestown Road, already per-

forming their postmortems on the evening. They had to keep their voices

down. The old mansard-roofed dormitories stood asleep around them like fat

brick prison ships.

“It was your idea,” Daniel conceded. “But I don’t think either of us could

guess how crazy he would get when we were all together.”

“He’s not crazy,” said Zack—it was a word he did not let anyone use

lightly. “He’s just unhappy and uncertain.”

“He sounded drunk at times.”

“He did, only I suspect that’s the language difference. The brakes are off

when you speak a foreign language, so he sounded uninhibited and tipsy. I as-

sume he believes everything he said.”

Daniel wondered if Zack were referring to Abbas being sick of sucking

Daniel’s cock, et cetera. Or was he thinking about the accusation that he and

Zack were only friends, only chums?

“And he was jealous of Ross, right? I didn’t just imagine that?”

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

“Oh yeah, Elena certainly knows how to make her man jealous,” said

Zack. “We should give Ross a call as soon as we get home. To make sure he

didn’t have a run-in with Abbas.”

Daniel felt oddly indignant that Abbas had been jealous, as if he still

owned his wife no matter whom he was fucking himself. It seemed dishonest

and fake. Only why should that matter to Daniel? It didn’t. Not at all.

“You mess around with a guy a couple of times and you think you know

him,” he admitted. “But I feel like I don’t know him. I’d never seen his mean

side before. He’s a little crazy, a little nuts.”

“He’s not crazy,” Zack repeated. “He’s complicated, conflicted. Like he

said himself: he’s had a difficult, scattered life. He has no core identity. He