They walked out to the parking lot, which was filled up with cars and buses and trucks, and looked at the long lines on either side of the border. It was snowing. She took out a broom and swept off the windshield and side windows of her truck, an old red pickup. He stood there, his back against a wall, watching her. She was conscious of this and at one point he almost looked away; his focus was too strong. But then she opened the passenger door and said, “Guess you don’t know what to do with snow, do you?”

He looked at her and said, “I don’t want to offend you, but I feel it’s wrong for me to take this ride from you.”

She said, “Hey, it’s okay. Honest.” So he got in the seat, a little ocean-sick at how she affected him.

When they were past the parking lot and out on the road, he said, without thinking, “I see your heart, and it is beautiful, and I want it.” He stopped and looked out the window. “I want you in my hand.” He had planned to say more, but she pulled to the side of the road, and when she turned the engine off, she turned to look at him, and she was, he thought, a kind woman who also happened to be unerringly beautiful, and he wanted to get his fill of her.

So he spent a week with her, nights and nights in which she could not stop and he could not stop. When she took him to the train station, he imagined he would come back for her and marry her. That was what he said to himself. “You will never be free” was what he told her. “Come with me.” She stayed behind.

Chapter 19

19

It was a walk-up above the Fair City Supermarket on Coney Island Avenue. Roaches strong from grocery leavings lined the underside of the stove, the sinks, the baseboards. His roommates Waheb and Rachid looked to be improvements over the Chinese and the sick Nigerian. Unfortunately, Waheb was stupid. So dumb, that while it was true Aziz could tell him the most intricate of his thoughts with all the words needed, Waheb was mostly incapable of understanding what it was, even halfway, that Aziz meant. As for Rachid, he was constantly on the phone to someone in Germany, and this someone spoke German, and Aziz had no German.

Then there were the shoes. Waheb and Rachid kept them in boxes stacked in a closet. They filled it top to bottom. He never saw them wear them. He did not ask about them. He had learned. If they had packed the closets with grenades, he would have been silent. After the first few weeks, he avoided them.