by Deno Trakas
“So, you’re not dating anyone now?” I asked. “Who are the ‘girls’ you talk about?”
“They’re two Mexican sisters that take turns helping me. They clean a little, cook a little, sew, run errands. They’re only sixteen and seventeen, and no, I don’t sleep with them. But, to answer your other question, I started dating a woman who’s the daughter of a guy who owns several car dealerships in Monterrey. She’s cute but spoiled. She wants me to marry her and take her to New York. I’m trying to break up with her gently, but I’m not very good at it.”
We stopped at Yesterdays, drank and talked and drank and talked. Oman had an appealing openness and curiosity that made me confide in him. By the end of the day, we were good old friends again, and he knew almost as much about my recent rocky trails of the heart as Richard. I told him about comps too, but not in detail—I just said that I’d had a couple of rough days, an understatement he seemed to understand, and that I was waiting to hear the verdict.
After Yesterdays, we picked up two more six-packs and other supplies, which he paid for, and dropped them off, along with his gear, at my place. We went to Jesudi’s for pizza, which, we agreed, was okay but not good enough for him to want to open a franchise in Monterrey. From there we went to Group Therapy, a.k.a. Grope Therapy, a drink and dance hole in the wall at Five Points that must’ve gotten its name from the fact that if you went inside, you were so tightly packed that you couldn’t avoid a group grope. It wasn’t the kind of place you went for a quiet drink and conversation. You squeezed in, bought a beer at the bar, circulated, danced, and squeezed out some time later with, if you were lucky, a compatible partner. It sold foreplay. I hadn’t been in years, but when I described it to Oman, especially when I mentioned it catered to USC students and played classic rock, he said it was just what he needed to get psyched for his literary performance the next day.
“Lead us into temptation, Kid,” he said as we stepped over the sculpted brass hands that formed the threshold of the front door—I imagined some desperate nerd trying to claw his way out and being trampled into the floor. The narrow passage leading past the bar was crowded, mostly people in their early twenties, from preppies to punks, all there to look and be looked at, to get and be got. Oman and I flowed in the slow current, picking up beers as we passed the bar. As soon as we made it to the back where the channel opened onto a not-wide-enough dance floor, we found a vacant spot on the rail where we could perch and watch. The music was too loud and the lights were irritating, but it was group therapy all right.
I was watching a rock-and-rolling redneck who was standing on a table, playing air guitar like Joe Cocker, obviously stoned, when Oman tugged my sleeve and said, “It’s dancing fool time.” He had spotted three women headed our way, and we were waiting for them as they spilled onto the narrow shore of the dance floor. I didn’t feel like dancing, and I definitely didn’t need another woman in my life, but I didn’t want to spoil Oman’s fun, so I went along. He invited all three to dance, but one insisted on sitting out and guarding our beers, so we introduced ourselves to Janice and Charly-with-a-Y and began to dance to Crosby, Stills and Nash.
Janice had practical-short blonde hair and a plain, broad Midwestern face without much make-up, but she wore a short black skirt and a silky cream-colored blouse that showed her figure to good effect. Despite her sexy clothes, I thought she might be a schoolteacher because she had a no-nonsense, don’t-push-me look in her green eyes. But she danced as if she weren’t in a hurry at all, as if she were perfectly in synch with the passage of time.
After about four songs, my nervous energy was ebbing. Janice said she was ready for a break too, so we sidled to the spectator rail beside her non-dancing friend. As we watched Oman and Charly gyrate under the blinking colored lights, we spoke into each other’s ears in order to be heard. Janice was a dental hygienist, divorced, and her friends had brought her here to celebrate her thirtieth birthday.
This situation was unfamiliar to me—if we continued to put our lips to each other’s ears, would it be a date? And what was I doing on a date? I didn’t know, but I liked Janice, I liked watching her dance, and touching her when we danced, so I thought I’d let the beer blunt my guilt and go with Oman’s flow. When the others got tired of dancing, Oman suggested we go back to my place. Their other friend had attracted a guy I recognized as a librarian and said she wanted to stay and check him out.
Oman and Charly sat together on one side of the couch, leaving room for me, and Janice took the recliner. After I brought out a round of beer and wine, I turned on my new radio and found an FM station playing Joni Mitchell. I was about to sit on the floor beside the recliner when the phone rang. Michaels.
“Sorry to call so late, Jay, I tried to reach you earlier and you weren’t home, but I figured I’d try one more time before I left the office.”
“Sure, no problem. Is there news?”
“Azi’s sick.”
“What do you mean, sick?”
“Our man there says he finally got to see her and she has a fever, she’s weak—that’s about all I know. He met her mother too—he told her he was a friend, had met her at the bank—and they’re going to try to get the guards to bring in a doctor. That’s all we can do, so don’t start in on that covert operation shit. I just thought I’d let you know.”
“Isn’t there a doctor at the jail?”
“Evidently not. Who knows what goes on over there?”
I pictured her lying on a cot, her pale face like a partial moon in her black chador. “Do you have any ideas?”
“No, but if I hear anything else, I’ll let you know.”
“Y’all are responsible for this, Michaels. You don’t get absolution just because you do me the favor of a phone call.”
“Yeah, whatever.” He hung up on me.
When I rejoined the others, they stared at me, waiting for an explanation. I looked at Oman and said, “It’s Azi. Did you say anything?”
“Nope, it’s your story, Kid.”
I sat on the couch, glanced around as if I expected Saad to jump out from behind us, and then told them that a good friend, an Iranian woman, was in Tehran and was sick, and her mother and friends were worried about her. Janice asked what the jail reference was about, and I said that was unrelated, that was something else. I hardly knew what I was saying, and it must’ve been clear that I was lying, so they changed the subject.
We drank a toast to Janice’s birthday and talked for a while about Mexico and why Oman lived there, but soon the conversation lulled and it became clear that if more was going to happen, now was the time. Oman whispered to Charly, she nodded, and they went into the bedroom, closing the door behind them.
Janice met my gaze as she sat calmly in the recliner with her feet tucked under her, much as Nadia used to do. With a lot more beer than I was used to blurring my thoughts, thoughts that were especially confused by the phone call, I couldn’t figure out what to do—I half wished Janice would leave and half didn’t.
She seemed embarrassed too for a moment, but then she slowly eased off the recliner and sat beside me on the couch. She leaned against me and nestled her head on my shoulder. I liked the herbal scent of her hair even though we both smelled of smoke from the bar. Janice seemed to be waiting for a move or an explanation, and I had neither, so we sat as we were, listening to the radio, until I realized she’d fallen asleep.
A half hour later, maybe more—I’d dozed off myself—Oman and Charly were standing over us, looking down like amused parents. Charly gently shook Janice’s shoulder, and in a minute we were all standing, stretching, and starting to say goodbye. When the other two went out the door, Janice turned to me, close, and said, “I’m sorry I fell asleep, Jay. I guess I had a long day.”
“That’s okay. I did too.”
“Maybe another time?”
I looked into her frank green eyes, said, “I don’t think I can. It’s because of . . . complications.” That was the best word I could think of. “It
’s not because I don’t like you. I think you’re terrific.”
She waved her hand and stifled a yawn. “Terrific, huh? I guess that doesn’t hurt my feelings. I hope your complications clear up.”
“Thanks. I hope you had a happy birthday.”
“I did.” She kissed me lightly on the lips and I walked her down to her car, where Oman was giving Charly a final squeeze.
As they drove away, Oman watched and said, “It’s good to be back in sexy South Carolina. I love this fall air.” He took a deep breath, put his arm around my shoulders, and as we climbed the stairs, he asked if I’d had a good time.
“We fell asleep. How about you?”
“We didn’t fall asleep. Was it the phone call?”
“Among other things.” He went to the refrigerator and came over with two beers. We sat down, popped them. I took a sip, which had no taste, but I drank some anyway.
“So what’s the deal? What’s the jail thing about?”
Maybe because I was still half drunk, or because I felt close to Oman after our long day, or because my frustration and desperation were enflamed, but probably because Azi’s situation was critical . . . I told Oman about Athens.
“Wow, that’s a hell of a story,” he said.
“Yeah, and now that she’s sick, and they’re not treating her, I feel like I’ve got to do something.” I shook my head. “I keep saying that but I never do anything.”
“Yeah, there’s not much you can do with a woman who’s in jail half way around the world.”
I stood up and took my beer to the kitchen, poured it into the sink. Started to wash glasses. Oman didn’t say anything else and neither did I, but in a couple of minutes he brought over two more glasses and several empty beer cans. Then these words came out of my mouth: “I’m going to Tehran.”
“How the hell would you do that?”
On the spot I tried to make a coherent plan of the random possibilities that had occurred to me in the last two months. “First I’ll call Ham Jordan, that’s Carter’s Chief of Staff, an old friend of mine. He’s the one who instigated my trip to Athens, the fiasco. He owes me, and Azi.” I looked down into the sink and washed the same glass two or three times. “There’s a ban on travel to Iran for Americans, so he’d have to get me fake papers and sneak me in. I’m sure the Iranians are suspicious of anyone who looks American, so maybe he’d make me Greek. That’s what they did for the Athens trip.”
“Makes sense—I’m with you so far.”
“But as for finding Azi, breaking her out of jail, and smuggling her out of the country, I don’t know shit—I’d have to have help from their guy in Tehran.” Oman nodded his head and raised his eyebrows, as if the possibilities were remote. I looked him in the eye and said, “I’m going anyway.”
“What about work and school and all that?”
“I’ll make up something—that’s the least of my problems.” I turned off the water and went to the bedroom to find my atlas, which I’d gotten free from a guy who was trying to sell me life insurance. Maybe I should have bought some. I returned and sat on the couch beside Oman, opened the book on my lap. “Here it is. There’s Iraq to the west, desert to the east, Turkey to the north, the Gulf to the south. It’d probably be best to leave by boat—look, if this map is any good, it’s only like forty miles from Iran to Kuwait—that’s where Nadia lives. Hell, we could make it in a row boat.”
Oman leaned forward, interested, and looked where I pointed. “Forty miles in a row boat, I don’t think so, but in a motorboat, maybe. If the weather’s good, and if the currents aren’t dangerous, and if the Iranian navy isn’t on patrol. Is there such a thing—the Iranian navy?”
“Hell if I know.”
“How would you get her from Tehran to the coast?”
“I’d have to have help.”
Oman slowly shook his head, leaned back, and spoke with the voice of reason. “Look, I’ve read about this kind of thing. Ross Perot, you know who he is?”
“No.”
“Texas billionaire. He was running a computer business in Iran last year and the Iranians arrested two of his executives without charging them and, essentially, held them hostage. Anyway, Perot tried all the legal means to free them but nada, zilch, so he put together a special forces team to get them out. Seven or eight men, most with military training, and millions of dollars at his disposal. He succeeded, but it wasn’t easy. Then there’s the U.S. rescue mission, operated with all the expertise and money available to the U.S. of A., and it ended with eight men dead in the desert and a heap of burned helicopters. What I’m saying is, there’ll be huge problems.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Surely you’ve never done anything like this before?”
“Not even close, but I can’t do nothing any more. I can’t.”
“Listen, Jay, there’s no moral imperative here. I know you feel guilty and all, and you should definitely keep kicking the asses of your buddies in Washington, but you’re not obligated to risk your life for Azi—and that’s what this is, risking your life.”
“I understand that.”
He scratched his beard on one side, then the other. “You serious about this?”
“Damn right.”
“You’re drunk.”
“A little.”
“A lot. And this scheme ain’t gonna sound so hot in the morning.”
“I’m sure you’re right, but I don’t care.”
“Okay then, how about this—if we can get the CIA to help, you and I and the other girl fly to Kuwait”—
I interrupted. “No way. This isn’t your problem.”
“I know, but I kind of like the idea. Hell, a writer doesn’t get a chance like this very often. The book would write itself.”
“No way. I’m responsible for Azi being there. The whole thing is my fault. But you don’t even know her.”
“I’d be doing it for the adventure—it’d make me feel like I was back in Nam, except for a good cause.”
“You fought in Vietnam? I didn’t know that.”
“I wasn’t there long. I got shot in the knee, just like Hemingway, but I didn’t get to recuperate in an Italian hospital with a pretty nurse. Instead, they sent me home to my mother. I’ve always said that was the difference—that’s the only reason I haven’t written A Farewell to Arms.”
“Look, I shouldn’t have even brought this up. You’re here as my guest, you have to visit classes and give a reading tomorrow; you should be in bed, not talking to me about a crazy-ass scheme to go to Tehran.”
“I can put on my costume and do the writer show on auto-pilot, and I’ve done it before without any sleep at all, so don’t worry about that. And I’m a big boy. I’m unattached. I’ve got no wife or kids. Sounds like you have good contacts in DC, and if you can get the CIA to help, and we have a plausible operation with some chance of success, I want to go, and I think I’d be useful.”
“Yeah, I have good contacts, but I’m not at all sure they’re going to help with this.”
“You can ask anyway. Stress that it’s the only way to save Azi’s life. Stress that we’re the ones who’ll assume the risk. Stress that we have a plan to escape to Kuwait and a prominent Kuwaiti who’s willing to help.”
“Yeah, that just might do the trick.”
“We could go as Mexican oilmen or something—I’m sure that as long as oil is flowing, other countries are still doing business with Iran, and I already have a Mexican passport. Maybe you could get one too—I think you could pass for Mexican. Do you speak any Spanish?”
“Sí, un poco.”
“Perfecto,” he said with a good Spanish accent. If the CIA can put us in contact with their man in Tehran, who must speak Iranian, and if he can arrange to transport us to the coast, and get us detailed information about the jail, weapons, shit like that . . . we’re in business. It’s a lot of ifs, but it’s possible.”
Somehow our roles had reversed and I was the one casting doubts. “What about
the jail? How would we get her out?”
“That’ll be tricky, I’m sure, depending on the level of security and stuff. But in the end, if it’s not real tight, you bribe a guard, or overpower a guard, or smuggle in a weapon or a key or something. Usually women’s prisons are pretty lax, so it might not be that hard.”
“How do you know?”
He grinned. “An old girlfriend of mine was in one for writing bad checks.”
“Did you break her out?”
“Naw, I wasn’t imaginative enough back then, back in Spartanburg.”
“But we’re not talking about Spartanburg. Tehran is a city full of armed militants chanting ‘Death to America.’ If we made the smallest mistake, we’d be killed.”
He scratched the goat on the back of his hand as if it had fleas. Then he put his hands behind his head. “No doubt about it, it’s dangerous, but I figure the confusion over there, the war and all, might work in our favor. And if we pull it off, you’ll be like Perseus rescuing Andromeda—they’ll name a constellation after you, man.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t about me being a hero. It’s about trying to save a life I put in jeopardy.”
He nodded and said, “Okay, whatever, but I’m ready to go. Are you?”
Was I, really, when it came down to it? I’d never done anything bold and courageous, much less put my life at stake, not even in Athens because I thought I was perfectly safe. This would be a real mission, a dangerous one. And I wouldn’t be an asset—I’d be an agent, a somebody right in the middle of it. Azi needed me to be that somebody, that man with god-blood running through his veins. I said, “It scares the shit out of me, but I’m going. But I still don’t see why you would.”
“As I said, I’d do just about anything if I knew I’d get a good book out of it. I’m a big talker, as you know, but in fact I feel like I’m getting stale—my books are starting to seem the same to me. Besides,” he added with a grin, “if you get Azi back, next time I come to Columbia I can have Charly and Janice.”
With my mind on Azi and our mission impossible, I wasn’t in the mood for jokes, so I answered seriously, “Okay then, I’ll make some calls tomorrow before we go to school, and we’ll talk to Nadia after your reading.”