“It’s a beautiful picture,” I said.

“I knew it’s the kind of thing you’d like.” He put down the cloth, which was covered with shoe wax, picked up another cloth, and began to shine the shoes.

Ziba came to the kitchen doorway, unwrapped her chador which she had tied to her waist and put it back on her head. She smoothed it down carefully on the sides and then entered the courtyard. Her lips looked a little pinched at seeing me. Then she forced a smile.

“You look very tired,” she said to me.

“I haven’t been getting much sleep,” I said.

“Where are you going?” Darius asked her.

“Where else? Shopping for food while my big son polishes and repolishes his shoes. You should be ashamed.” Her voice was light.

Darius chuckled as she passed him. He put his shoes neatly together like the ones in the picture.

“Your husband doesn’t like me, does he?” he said.

“Why do you always act so belligerent? You almost crashed into that car.”

“It was him—your husband—the way he seemed to be judging me that got me worked up.” He sat on crossed legs and looked at his hands.

I could see he had bitten his nails.

There was a loud knock at the door. Darius listened carefully.

“Who could that be—the door is open,” he said.

There was another loud knock. Darius went to the door. I heard a conversation going on between him and someone else. Silence followed, and then the sound of footsteps going away.

I waited in the courtyard, thinking of Darius. The anger he dispersed randomly, I kept inside, under tight control.

A long time had passed since Darius left. I went outside and looked up and down the street for him. The sun reflected off the street in waves. Somewhere a man was singing. Darius’s disappearance worried me. I recalled how his life used to be full of intrigue with the neighborhood boys. The same ones he would be friends with and lavish high praise on would disappoint him by not including him in a game or by slighting him while he tried to fix a tire. Then he called them nasty names (son of a dog, or whoremonger) with the same intensity. Sometimes he got into ferocious fights with them. At thirty-one he had retained that adolescent quality, and would have it still at forty or fifty.

From the adjacent street a figure staggered into the light. I blinked, staring. It was Darius. He stumbled, blood trickling down his face, his hands pressed to his scalp.

I ran to him.

“What happened?”

He doubled over and then straightened up again. His face was dead white under the trickles of blood and his lower lip drooped and quivered.

I led him inside.

“Sons of bitches,” he whispered, staring downward as we walked. “They’ve asked for it now.”

“Who were they?”

“The two sons of bitches. I should have run them over last night.”

“It was them? Oh, no!”