by Laila Lalami
“This one here is Loyal,” she said, almost reluctantly. Her tremors seemed worse than the other time I had seen her, when I’d come to interview her husband about the hit-and-run. “And that one is Royal.”
“My son’s been asking me for a dog, but I wasn’t sure what breed would be best.”
“Well, you can’t go wrong with collies.”
“So you recommend them?” I rubbed Royal’s chin—or was it Loyal?—and it stretched its neck with obvious pleasure. The other dog let out a plaintive yelp. “Trouble is, my son is really set on having a chocolate lab. You know how boys are. They get an idea in their heads, and it’s impossible to get it out.”
“What’s this about?” she asked.
I looked beyond her at the house, baking in the afternoon heat. The garage door was open, and the spaces inside were empty. “Does your son have a car, Mrs. Baker?”
“Not right now,” she said after a moment of hesitation. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering, you know. I didn’t see any bus stops on the way over here. If A.J. doesn’t have a car, how does he get around? Does he borrow yours?”
She put her hand on the mailbox, as if to steady herself. One of her dogs nuzzled up to her, asking to be petted, but she ignored it. She was watching me, trying to decide what she should say next.
“Maybe he borrowed your husband’s car, too. Back in April.”
“It was just an accident,” she pleaded. “That’s all it was.”
We were both mothers, she seemed to be saying, didn’t I understand how natural it was to want to protect a son? I scratched the scar on my eyebrow with a thumbnail, an old habit I fell back into from time to time. In my head, I’d arranged the pieces of this case one way, but I saw clearly now that they fit together in a different way. Of course, it was natural for Mrs. Baker to want to protect her son. But who would protect others from him?
Anderson
I became a father late in life. I’d always wanted to have a son, and when it finally happened, after fifteen years, I was surprised by how different it was from what I expected. It was even better than in my wildest dreams. I remember the summer A.J. was born, how I would sit on the couch with him curled up on my chest, sleeping, drooling all over my shirt. He was a happy baby, an easy baby. Slept through the night by the time he was three months old, got through his teething without too much fuss or trouble. Every time I try to unspool the past and pick out the specific moment when things went wrong for him, I fail. I can never find it. Maybe it was when Helen started coddling him, and I didn’t put my foot down. Maybe it was when he was on the playground, and stuck to himself instead of playing with the other kids. Or maybe it was years later, in high school, when he turned into a bully. It’s hard to love a bully, but Lord knows I did, with all my heart.
I tried to help him. He didn’t listen to me, though, at least not when it mattered. Like when he wanted to start his doggie-daycare business, I told him straightaway that the timing wasn’t right, what with the recession and all, but he thought I was just stingy, that I didn’t want to lend him the $50,000 he was asking for, and he got his mom to pressure me into giving it to him. He lost it all, of course. I think that caused him a lot of embarrassment. And some anger, too, because of the way he lost it. He would get into nasty fights with his wife, and go out drinking, which is how he ended up with a DUI. We never talked back then; I found out about all this later, from his mother. So when he called me late one night, I was shocked. I’d just come home from work, and I was cracking open a beer when my phone rang. “What’s wrong?” I asked. I thought it was an emergency—that’s how unusual it was for me to hear from him directly.
“Nothing’s wrong, Dad.”
He didn’t say anything else, didn’t ask how I was doing, or why he was calling. Maybe he had tried to reach Helen, but she was in Kansas City that weekend for her niece’s funeral. Whenever she was away from home, she would leave me instructions on the fridge about what I should eat and how to heat it up. She wrote in beautiful cursive, and I remember staring at the plans she had for me that night. Tuesday: baked ziti. Set oven to 350 and heat for 15 minutes. I walked out of the kitchen and crossed the living room, where the collies were sleeping, and stepped out into the backyard with my beer. It was a clear night. “The stars are out tonight,” I said, just to fill the silence.
“I was thinking…” he said, and got quiet again.
I sat on a lawn chair, not caring that it was covered with dust and sand, and took a sip from my Budweiser. “How’s Annette?” I asked. “Everything okay between you two?”
“We’re okay. It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“I sold my store sign today.”
I should describe this sign, because A.J. built it himself. He’s always had an artistic streak—he can draw almost anything—so when he opened his doggie-daycare business, he put a lot of heart into the signage. He built a five-foot collie out of painted steel, with a bone in its mouth that glowed at night, and mounted it on the roof of the building. It caught the eye, and his customers always talked about it when they came in, it made for a conversation starter. I knew what that sign meant to him, and I was surprised that he’d parted with it. “Who’d you sell it to?” I asked.
“Some guy who wants to melt it. Got forty bucks for it.”
“Well, that’s good.” I was trying to sound encouraging, though of course forty bucks was a drop in the bucket of money he owed to the bank.
“Dad,” he said, “what do I do now?”
He sounded so scared, it reminded me of the time he was four years old and the doors to the elevator in our hotel in Las Vegas closed behind him and we got separated. It took us twenty minutes of riding up and down that damn elevator before we found him. He was crying, and holding on to his crotch to keep from wetting himself. Afterward, he held Helen’s hand all day, he wouldn’t let go.
I took a sip from my beer and wondered if he really cared what I had to say. He’d never before asked my opinion about anything, but as the silence stretched I realized he was serious. “Why don’t you come back home?” I said. “You could work for me, save on your bills, get back on your feet.”
“And you would be okay with that?”
“Of course, I’m okay with that. You’re my son.”
He moved back in with us later that spring, along with his wife, his daughter, her hamster, and his collies. Overnight the house got smaller and busier and louder. Much louder. It took a little getting used to. Annette managed to find a job at a title company in Palm Springs, and A.J. came to work for me, but they were still behind on their credit cards and some of their bills. It wasn’t easy, is what I’m trying to say. We were all under a lot of pressure, both at home and at work. Still, for the first time in our lives, A.J. and I spent entire days together. We talked a lot, he would ask me all sorts of questions about the business. It made me feel like we finally had a connection.
Of course, he shouldn’t’ve been driving that night. But Helen couldn’t drive much, on account of her tremors, and our daughter-in-law wanted nothing to do with the bowling alley. That didn’t leave us with much choice, if we wanted to run our business. And I can tell you, he only took the car a few times, when there was no one who could drive him. What happened with the guy next door was just an accident. It wasn’t A.J.’s fault, but I knew with his record they’d make it seem like it was. All I know is that my son isn’t a bad guy. At heart, he’s a good kid. I wish I could close the gap between the way things used to be and the way they are now. Maybe that’s why I’m trying to tell this story.
A.J.
A couple of days after my arrest, someone tipped off a reporter and she went through my social media accounts, clipped a couple of comments and quotes out of context, and turned me into a brute. The readers of the Desert Sun ate it up, of course. It’s funny, everyone goes on and on about
celebrating diverse cultures, but the minute you bring up white culture, the oh-so-enlightened liberals turn on you and call you names. Someone sent a letter to the editor calling me a racist, which is what they call anyone who’s a straight white man these days. Everyone else can be proud of their heritage, but not me?
What was infuriating to me was that after I posted bail and came out, some people started acting like I was a monster, a creature with horns and fangs. But I wasn’t. I was just like them: I loved my family, played with my dogs, bought lottery tickets whenever I filled up at the gas station, then spent days fantasizing about what I’d do if I won millions of dollars. If anything set me apart from everyone else, it was only that I took charge of myself. When I graduated from college, for example, the country was in the middle of the worst recession it had seen in a century, but I didn’t sit back and play the victim, the way so many others do all day long. No, I borrowed some money from my folks and started my own business in Irvine, a doggie daycare.
Of course, my dad wasn’t thrilled about lending me money. He was tightfisted and didn’t think dogs made for a good investment, but my mom talked him into it. And he turned out to be wrong, because my business did very well. Paws & Claws, it was called. Aside from daycare, I offered all kinds of other services, like grooming and kenneling. By the end of my first year, I’d already built a solid client base from the tech start-ups in the area, programmers who worked long hours and didn’t have time to walk their dogs or play with them every day. I married my college girlfriend, Annette, and we had a baby girl. Everything was going well. We were happy. I didn’t realize this until almost three years later, when it was all taken away from me.
That day, I was bringing two golden retrievers and a husky back from their afternoon walk when one of my newer clients jumped out of her car and came running toward me. Her name was Grace Chin. The husky started barking at her—that’s how aggressive this woman came across—and I had to restrain him just so I could hear her. Not that it mattered, because I could hardly make out what she was saying, her English was so bad. But I figured she wanted to pick up Peanut, her Jack Russell terrier, which she’d boarded with me over the weekend. “Just give me a minute,” I told her. I had to get the big dogs inside safely. Her Lexus had been left idling on the pavement, with the emergency lights on, and I remember having a bad feeling about it; it was almost as if I could tell that something was about to go down. I took the two golden retrievers and the husky inside, got them off their leashes in their pen, and went back to get the Jack Russell. Behind me, the gate bell jingled, and I knew that Grace Chin had come inside.
I want to stress that I followed all the laws and regulations when I set up my business. I’m certain that Peanut must have had some prior condition, because there was nothing in what I’d done that could have caused him to die. I gave him the same food and the same water I gave him every day, so it wasn’t anything I did that could’ve made him sick. But he wasn’t moving, not even after I called his name, and just as I realized something wasn’t right, that Chin-Chong lady started pestering me. “What you did to my dog?” she asked. “What you did?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. I petted Peanut, and I swear he moved. “See?” I said.
She walked around the counter, completely disregarding the sign that said MANAGEMENT ONLY, and came to stand next to me. When she cooed to him, he didn’t move. Then she tried to pick him up, and he was limp. The scream she let out would’ve made you think someone was flaying her alive. Even before the vet could figure out what exactly had caused the death, she’d told everyone at her work that I’d killed Peanut. She was a database engineer, she knew most of my other clients, so of course I lost a lot of business. And then, with the lawsuit, I couldn’t keep up, financially. I’ve spent many sleepless nights going over the events of that day, and I still can’t figure out how the Jack Russell terrier died. It wasn’t the food or water, I was sure of it. Maybe he ate something when I took him for a walk. Whatever it was, it wasn’t my fault. But it didn’t matter, I started bleeding clients left and right. I couldn’t believe it—this woman came into my country, could barely speak my language, and then sued me for negligence.
It didn’t make sense to keep my business, at least not in the Irvine area, but I didn’t have the money to start it up somewhere else. And my mom’s symptoms were getting worse, so I ended up moving back home. I figured I might as well get used to running the bowling alley, since it would come to me someday. My dad was seventy-eight at the time, well past retirement age, but he didn’t want to retire, so it was one of those situations where I just had to wait, even though I had so many ideas about the business. We needed to turn the concession stand into a full snack bar, buy new game consoles, get better music for our theme nights, put up better signage, things like that. Whenever I brought up these ideas with him, he’d say it would cost money, and he’d already given me all his savings to start my business. My failed business.
What happened to the guy next door was an accident. I didn’t mean for him to die. It was really dark out and I didn’t see him until it was too late. I mean, why would I want to kill him?
Driss
I think I mentioned before that business had slowed down that winter. Two new restaurants had opened a couple of miles west on the highway, and although one was a sandwich shop and the other a café that served only pastries and cookies, I was worried about the competition. Forty percent of my revenue comes from tourists, people who only stop here on their way to the national park or a concert in the desert, so I was considering a few changes. I wanted to drop the corn hash and fried cheese sticks from the menu, add new salads and fruit smoothies, replace the vinyl flooring in the entrance, maybe look into that alcohol license. And, more urgently, because the highway runs fast and I only have one chance to grab the attention of tourists, install a new sign.
The old sign, which I inherited from the previous owner, was made of planked wood, with the words THE PANTRY painted in white over a green background. It was a handsome marquee, but its colors had long ago faded and its right side was occasionally obstructed from view by a palo verde tree on the sidewalk. In the spring, when the palo verde bloomed with yellow flowers that overhung the sign, it seemed as if I were advertising that my business was THE PAN or sometimes THE PA. Even without this springtime interference, it was easy to miss at night, because there are so few lights on the highway. The owner of the hardware store two blocks from my restaurant had understood this years ago, and put up a neon sign.
One night in February, working at the counter while Rafi mopped the floors, I sketched out a new design on a piece of paper. I kept the planked wood, because I wanted the sign to remain familiar to my customers, but I made it bigger—eight feet by seven, much larger than the old one—and I changed the colors to red and white for higher contrast. I decided to hang it higher, so it wouldn’t be obscured by the blooming palo verde, and for good measure I added a curved arrow over it, made of metal and dotted with lightbulbs. It was Beatrice who gave me the idea of the lighted arrow; she said it would give the marquee a classic look that would be perfect for a diner like mine.
I took my design to a local sign shop early the next morning. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on the brink of change, that I had finally taken the first step in an adventure I had dreamed about for years without ever daring it. Aside from the plans I had for the restaurant, I had plans with Beatrice, which meant that I had to have an excruciatingly difficult conversation with Maryam. Every morning I woke up telling myself this was the day I would tell her, and every evening I came home and pushed it back another day. So that entire winter felt at once rife with danger and ripe with possibility, contradictory feelings that I hadn’t experienced with such intensity since I was a young man.
It took only four days for the sign to be made but another six weeks to get the permits approved. The installation was scheduled for April 28, and when the shop tol
d me it would send a truck for the job, I said to come early in the morning, before the bowling arcade opened. But they didn’t listen, or maybe they were too busy that day. The truck didn’t make it to the restaurant until nearly eleven in the morning, and the crane blocked part of the parking lot. I had to move my car to the south side of Chemehuevi to make room for customers. It took an hour to remove the old sign and hoist the new one up, and while my energies were consumed with making sure that people could safely come in and out of the lot, and that the contractor followed my instructions, Baker’s son stood outside the bowling arcade, watching us.
After the truck left, I stepped back to admire my new sign. It had come out even better than I expected and, pleased with my work, I felt energized to take on another little project. The pendant lamps that hung over the leather booths dated back to 1959, when the diner had first opened, and although they were made of beautiful cream glass, they were so dim that they made the place look ghostly at night. I decided to upgrade the lightbulbs to 75 watts—bright enough to see the menu, but still intimate enough for a cozy meal. So that night, I told Marty to go home and that I would close up.
I locked the front doors and brought out the bulbs from the storage room. With only the pale light of the counter to see by, I went from table to table, changing the old lights with the new. Then I flipped the switch on, and the row of booths came into view. I stepped out into the parking lot, to see how the diner looked from outside. The whole place was so bright and inviting that I was half-tempted to leave the lights on all night. From the corner of my eye, I saw Baker’s son stepping out of the arcade. He paused next to his father’s Crown Vic and observed my restaurant for a minute, as if he had a stake in it, too. He used to be a lanky, shifty-eyed boy, but now that he was a man, his frame had filled out and he had a direct gaze. Almost too direct. Again, that feeling of being watched came over me.