Exiles in America(68)

She looked at him as if he’d insulted her intelligence. “Our husbands.

What is happening between our husbands.”

Here they were. They could postpone it no longer.

“I pushed my luck,” she admitted. “Such a curious phrase. Pushing my

luck. I should not have forced things by bringing everyone together. I thought

I could break them apart by making Abbas jealous. I was in a devilish mood

that night. I rubbed it in my husband’s face. I did not care who got hurt. Not

your friend Ross. Not even that sweet-faced college girl. And I succeeded—

for a bit. I won—for a bit. But in the end I made things worse. I threw them

into each other’s arms.”

Her words were strong and melodramatic, yet she delivered them with dry

amusement, as if she didn’t fully believe them.

Zack said, “So it’s no longer just sex? They really are in love?”

Elena shrugged. “I suppose. But what do you mean by love? There is love

and there is falling in love.” She shook her head. “A man falls in love because

there is something wrong with him.”

Zack laughed and nodded, and she smiled. She was pleased he under-

stood.

“Abbas has his work and his family,” she explained. “And he has sex.

Daniel and I are both giving him sex. Why does he need more? What lack

must he fill? I do not know. I cannot guess. What is wrong with Daniel? Are

things missing in his life?”

“Little things. Human things. Nothing major.” Zack was reluctant to get

into Daniel’s dissatisfactions for fear of betraying him.

“How does he behave at home? Does he act like a man in love?”

A good question. But Daniel was not a kid anymore. He did not moon

around the house humming love songs. “To tell the truth, he’s the same as al-

ways. A little gentler, maybe. More considerate. Distracted but not irritable.

What about Abbas?”

“Abbas is gentler, too. So long as I and the children do not get in the way.

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

He is like he is when a painting is going well. Not until love falls apart does he

become difficult.”

Oh yes, they had that to look forward to. Whether it ended in a bang or a

whimper, the participants would be miserable.

“What do the children know?”

“Nothing. Only that their father and his friend have gone to New York on

business.”

“Have they seen their father go off with other friends?”

“Oh yes.”

“Osh seems fine about it. Mina doesn’t look happy.”

“Mina is being Mina. She likes to play everybody’s mother, everybody’s

conscience.”

There was a soft crunch from the fire as a log broke in two. A new flame

rose up; the gold light illuminated their knees and faces.

“How long do you think it’ll last?” asked Zack.

“I was going to ask you.”

“In the past,” he began, “the bad flings lasted a couple of months. The good

ones lasted years. But the good ones were chiefly sex and friendship. The bad

ones were unrequited love. Although Daniel didn’t call any of them love.”

“What does he call this one?”

“He calls it love. He says it’s a love affair and asks me to bear with him be-

cause, like all love affairs, it will have a beginning, middle, and end.”

“Of course it will end. Everything ends. Most things end badly.”

She was only being rhetorical, but Zack could not leave the statement

unanswered. “Not in my experience. In my experience most things go on and

on. But when they end, they usually end for the better.”

“That’s a very American perspective.”

“Maybe,” said Zack. “Or a psychiatric one. But it’s not as sunny as it

sounds. We want things to end, we want to start over. But what looks like a

bad ending is often just a bad middle.”

“Except for death.”

“Except for that,” Zack agreed. “But even there, our end is always some-

body else’s middle.”

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

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There’s something about English as a second language that fills an ex-

change with first principles, turning any conversation philosophical.

Elena lit up a new cigarette. She noticed Zack watching her. “Does my

smoking bother you?”

“Not at all. I used to be a smoker myself. I still enjoy the smell.”

“Ah, so you are a vicarious smoker and a vicarious adulterer.”

Zack frowned. “I’m not getting any pleasure from this affair.”

“None?”

“No.”

“Not even in talking about it with me?”

She was very acute, very keen. He trusted her, but he might trust her more