stuck her head in the door.
“Mr. Wexler? You got a minute?”
Maureen wasn’t scheduled, she wasn’t even taking a class with him, but
Daniel told her to come in. He always enjoyed chatting with Maureen.
“Do you mind if I close the door?” she asked.
That surprised him. “Uh, no. Go ahead.”
She closed the door and sat down. “Mr. Wexler, you’re cool, right? I’m not
making a complaint or anything, right? I just want to talk about this with
someone I can trust. Can you promise this won’t leave the room?”
“So long as it’s a private matter, not a legal matter, sure.”
“I don’t think it’s a legal matter.”
Daniel was very nervous now. He should have known something was up:
Maureen never called him Mr. Wexler.
“All right,” she began. “Friday night. I was babysitting for the Rohanis on
Friday night.”
“Yes?”
“But first let me say how much I like them. Really. The husband and wife
and kids. All of them. But especially Elena. Mrs. Rohani, I mean. She is so
beautiful. And she flirts with me. I never had a grown-up woman flirt with
me. I like it.”
He should tell her that Elena Rohani flirted with everyone.
“All right,” Maureen continued, and she described everything she’d done
with the kids that evening: how they built a fire and roasted marshmallows and
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C h r i s t o p h e r B r a m
played Candy Land. She was one of those Southern storytellers who had to in-
clude every detail. Then she put the kids to bed. She was sitting at the fireplace,
warming her sock feet, reading art history, when Elena came home, alone.
“She was so pleased I had a fire going. She begged me to stay and sit with
her. ‘It is cozy, yes?’ ” Maureen did Elena’s words without imitating her voice
today—this was serious. “And she said we should have some absinthe, only
there was no absinthe, would I like some brandy, and I said sure, I never had
brandy. And when she came back from the kitchen with two big old glasses
like goldfish bowls, she said she was feeling all achy and tense. ‘If I promise to
give you a back rub after, will you give me a back rub?’ And the next thing I
know, we have a quilt and an exercise mat spread in front of the fire and she’s
lying on her stomach and I’m doing her back.”
“Was she dressed?” Daniel hadn’t spoken in five minutes; he was sur-
prised at how angry he sounded.
Maureen made a goony face, as if this were the dumbest question imagi-
nable. “Well, at first! But she took off her blouse and then her bra, and she
said I’d probably be more comfortable if—”
“The kids were in bed?”
“Oh sure. They were upstairs asleep. And her husband wasn’t supposed to
come home until late, she said, so we had the house all to ourselves.”
Daniel wanted to cut to the punch line, the kicker, because he knew where
this was going. Elena was so angry with Abbas that she was determined to
make him jealous, first with Ross Hubbard, then with a woman, a young
woman, a student.
“It was nice,” Maureen insisted. “All warm and friendly and nice. She’s al-
most old enough to be my mother, but she has a beautiful back, you know.
Like a cello. And the smoothest skin. She just lay in front of the fire, telling me
where to rub. Promising she would do the same for me. But you’ll never guess
what happened!”
“No, what?” Daniel muttered.
“I heard footsteps outside, and suddenly the door opened and there was
Mr. Rohani! Her husband! And he just stood there, looking at us, staring. I
was so scared. I didn’t know what he’d do.” She drew a deep, frightened
breath, remembering the experience.
E x i l e s i n A m e r i c a
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“Did he hurt you? He didn’t hit you, did he?”
“Oh no. He was sweet. Really.” She bobbed her head around, looking
goony again. She was unsure what the appropriate response might be. “No,
he just closed the door and came in and said, ‘Pretty. Very pretty. The children
are sleeping?’ And his wife looked over her shoulder, and they spoke in
French. Which made me kind of nervous. But then he said to me, ‘Here, I will
show you how to do it.’ And he began to undress.”
Daniel said in a stunned whisper, “The three of you had sex?”
“No way!” Maureen grimaced. “Just them. I only watched.”
Which was even stranger, maybe worse. Daniel could feel his stomach
knot up, as if he were in the room with Maureen, watching Abbas and Elena
put on a show for her or each other or whomever they wanted to prove them-