Watched

by Marina Budhos

  As we step into the mall, I crane my neck sideways to acknowledge the guard. It’s always like this. In the dollar store I feel the manager at my back, like the smoky tail of an airplane exhaust. Can I help you? Always everyone is so helpful.

  “Don’t you have anything else to wear?” Ibrahim asks. “Do you always have to look like such a homeboy?”

  “If I’d known this was a big deal—”

  “Forget it.” He waves a hand, showing the slender gold chain around his wrist. “We’ll find a way to explain.”

  I’ve always known Ibrahim is a liar. He told me about his uncles—filthy rich, their gated compounds back in Lahore. Or his second cousin in Dubai, who he’s engaged to. Or the job interviews he’s got lined up through a friend of a friend. Serious business consulting, man. I knew none of it was true. Or was it? I liked that he played his roles so well he believed them. I can’t do that.

  When I challenged him, I’d see his lashes sweep down. He’s so pale. He doesn’t eat well or much. My stepmother saw him once and cried out, “Beta, come here right now and we put some decent food in you!” She didn’t care that he was a Paki, like those dirty soldiers that did dirty things to her aunt. All that was behind us. We live in the free world now. The free world of New York City.

  Why do I hang with someone who so baldly, so badly lies? Because I know that what falls from his mouth isn’t true, but it sounds so good, so possible, which makes it almost true? Because he makes me, the son who breaks his parents’ hearts daily, feel like gold? I think: I can’t be that bad. There’s still hope. Finish the quarter and I can pull through on the grades. Do a year of community college. Then get into Queens College.

  Sometimes, stacked in the backseat of the car, I see his chemistry and marketing textbooks, still sealed into their plastic wrappers.

  “I’m selling them back,” he explains. “I didn’t like the classes. Boring profs.”

  “What does your father say?” I ask.

  He goes silent, steers us onto the wide swath of Queens Boulevard. We’re the same that way. We like to move. We don’t stay still long enough to say what hurts.

  —

  Ibrahim is four steps ahead of me, plunging past the makeup counters with those scary mask women, then down another escalator, to the men’s department. He goes right to the area where they’ve got suits locked with a thick cable through the sleeve, and a guy has to shake them loose with a key.

  “Would you like me to start a dressing room?” he asks. He’s an old dude, heavy, stomach flopping over his belt, tired eyes, but I like him right away. I don’t know why.

  “Why not?”

  “Important occasion?” he asks Ibrahim when he emerges from the dressing room with the suit on. The salesman settles the jacket on his shoulders, tugs down on the back flaps.

  “Graduation. My father’s coming in from Lahore.” He checks his watch. “He told me to take care of it because he had to stop in Paris on business.” He smiles. “His alma mater too. Columbia. His professors still remember him.”

  I shake my head. Ibrahim can’t even keep his lies straight.

  But the man is impressed. I’ve seen this before. With his ambiguous looks, Ibrahim can pretend he’s many things, testing people. Sometimes he acts like he’s the son of a rich Saudi—though he has to be careful these days, with all the nutty fears, and Fox TV. He did that once in a restaurant and the waitress got nervous, convinced he was on his cell for all the wrong reasons. She sent over the manager, who asked us to please pay the check and leave. We did.

  As we walk to the mirror area, the lies keep unspooling. “I didn’t even know about this mall,” he continues. “What is it called, sir?”

  “Queens Center.”

  “I’m in Manhattan. East Side. But since we were on our way to the airport, I told the driver to stop. To save time.” His accent has gotten super posh. Ibrahim knows how to do that too.

  He wags his head. “Forgive my friend here. I tell him to stop dressing as if he’s a hoodlum. My family does have a reputation, after all. But it’s a way of slumming, I suppose. They’re all so affected by MTV. You should see my cousins, when we get together at the compound. The way they prance around. They think they’re the next Beyoncé and Jay Z or Zayn Malik. Drives the elders mad.”

  The man smiles.

  Now Ibrahim’s standing on a low wood platform where there’s a three-way mirror, and the man is brushing his shoulders. “Just remember,” he says. “A suit like this, it can be used forever. A suit is an investment. Graduation. Interviews.” He smiles. “Wedding, even.”

  I like this man even more now. He gets why we’re here. It’s not just a suit. It’s Ibrahim, flashing back to him in a tunnel of possibilities. I think of his jeans crumpled on the floor in the stall, left behind.

  “What do you think?” the man asks.

  Ibrahim’s grin is a mile wide. “I like it.”

  “Just remember we can tailor too.” He pinches the back of the jacket. “I’d take this in, just a little.”

  “I agree,” Ibrahim says.

  I’m amazed. My friend, with the pimple-rash at his jaw, with the scooped-out chest, looks fine, spiffy as a rich man. No different from the ones he conjures up all the time. Maybe he could be one of those guys he says he could be—McKinsey consultant. Investment banker, MBA, toeing his shiny Prada shoes onto the subway platform every morning. I see them sometimes when we head into Manhattan: desi guys just like us, bent over the Wall Street Journal, leather briefcase wedged like a blade between their ankles. Or that guy who comes into my parents’ store all the time but never finds what he wants. Once I saw him on the subway platform, a cloth WNYC bag hanging from his shoulder. An ache swelled in my throat. I wanted to tap him on the elbow, ask him how to get there. To be him.

  “The thing is—”

  “Yes?”

  Ibrahim pivots. “I can’t really tell without a shirt. A real dress shirt, you know?”

  The man nods vigorously, as if embarrassed that he didn’t think of it himself. “I’ll be right back, sir,” he says.

  I keep thinking Ibrahim is going to rip the suit off his body and we’ll tear out of there, laughing. I keep waiting for him to give up the game. We’ve never kept it up this long. But instead he glances at the label on the cuff. “It’s silk and wool,” he says. “Joseph Abboud.”

  “Ibrahim,” I hiss. “You can’t buy that. For real, man.”

  He glares at me, because the man is back, sliding the cardboard from a folded-up shirt, shaking out creases. He’s got a stack of others tucked under his elbow. “I brought a few so you can see the options. That suit’s a great color. Charcoal. Goes with a lot.” He suddenly slaps his hand against his head. “I forgot the ties! We’ve got some really interesting ones.” He tosses the rest of the shirts onto an armchair. “I’ll go get some.”

  Suddenly I feel sorry for the man. This area of the men’s department is completely empty. Five o’clock in the middle of the week must not be prime time for suits. The only other customer is picking out socks. How often do you have someone at Queens Center checking out a seven-hundred-dollar suit?

  “Hey,” Ibrahim calls, “let my friend go with you. He’s got a great eye.”

  The man smiles. “Sure.”

  As we’re leaving, Ibrahim calls out, “Get a lot, Naeem. My dad really likes ties. I want to get one for him too.”

  —

  My head is a sparkler, fizzing out with the absurdity of this scene. Here I am picking out ties for a job, a graduation, that doesn’t even exist and for a father who, last I heard, owns a fleet of taxis and hates Ibrahim’s guts. Or so I think. I can’t keep any of this straight.

  But me and the salesman, we’re picking out ties as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, as if he’s some nice uncle helping me out. Our arms bump. We survey the ties, lined up in tucked rows.

  What about this? He drapes the ties on his arm, expertly. I touch the slanted edges, admiring.

&nb
sp; I could do this, I think. I hear they take applications. Maybe apply tomorrow.

  By the time we’re back in the dressing room, Ibrahim has put on the whole ensemble—pale blue shirt, suit—and we hand him my favorite tie, the one with maroon diagonal stripes. He looks elegant. I almost believe he’s headed for a graduation.

  “Listen,” Ibrahim says, checking his watch again. It’s a fake Rolex—he bought it off a Chinese guy jiggling them on a pole on the subway one night. “My dad gets into JFK just about now. How late are you open?”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “Perfect. Can you hold this under my name? We’ll come right here, so he can see all this.” He smiles sheepishly. “I can’t really go ahead without his approval.”

  I can see the man is disappointed, but he quickly covers it up. “Of course.”

  The dressing room has shirts, ties tossed everywhere. The man is desperate to make a sale. So the trousers are shaken out just so, clamped into the bottom rod of a thick wooden hanger, the jacket over that, a little cardboard tag tied around the wire hook with a fake name and number. Three shirts and three ties too.

  —

  As Ibrahim and I leave the men’s department, there’s a strange pressure in my ears, like when I was on the airplane, a giddy whoosh in my stomach. We glide up the escalator, weirdly happy. I’ve never felt so light. Back on the ground floor, among the stands draped in bead necklaces, Ibrahim twists away from me. “Hey, listen, can you meet me in the front? I promised Ma I’d get her this perfume she likes. It’s her birthday soon.”

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  I watch him weave toward the counters, melting into the other shoppers. My backpack hangs heavy on my shoulder, making my socket ache. I’d forgotten how full it was, having set it down on the dressing room floor. My math and physics textbooks are stowed in there—if I cram, I can clear the Fs. Get off academic probation. So I turn toward the mall entrance to wait for Ibrahim. Maybe after I can find a quiet spot at one of the food joints, put in a few hours.

  It takes a few seconds for me to realize that the crazy bleating noise was triggered by me. The metal rods stationed at the entrance are flashing wild, for me. And the security guard and some woman in a cardigan are bearing down—on me. Then my arm is seized, the backpack yanked off my shoulder. I see the suit guy bringing up the rear, looking not uncle-like at all, but tense.

  Shaking my head, I squint over the glass display cases, the other shoppers frozen, grim. I realize what was eerie-wrong before. I’d forgotten. The watching. The cameras, the clicks, the parked cars, the guards tracking my knees, my stupid-looking ears, my thoughts. I’d pretended me and Ibrahim, we were shaken loose, unseen.

  Right there the woman zips open my backpack and the shirts spring out in a gorgeous fan—pink, blue, cream. “Where’s your friend, your friend?” the salesman keeps asking. But I know. Ibrahim’s in the air, free. He’s gone. And me? I’m here.

  All alone.

  “You want some water?”

  The man shifts his legs, leans forward, pushes a Poland Spring bottle across the table. For a cop, this guy has treated me pretty well. Like a visitor, almost.

  It’s weird: when we arrived at the police station, I wasn’t booked. Instead one of the cops leaned across the desk and talked softly to a woman. Someone else led me by the elbow, down a hall. They took my backpack, my phone, but that was it.

  Now I’m in this room with no windows, rubbing the raw creases on my wrist, sitting across from a tall, lanky guy—Taylor, he says his name is—and he doesn’t even have a uniform. A detective, I figure. What’s to investigate? Pretty straightforward. Dumb high school senior stuffed three Ralph Lauren shirts into his backpack.

  “My partner will be here soon,” Taylor explains. “Won’t be a minute. Go ahead, drink up.”

  I unscrew the bottle cap and suck down water. My throat burns, peppery-mad. It wasn’t me, I want to say. My friend! He’s a pathological liar, a freak, and he does stuff like that. They don’t give me a chance. They just make me wait. Which is worse, in a way.

  I still can’t figure out what happened. The scene keeps looping in my mind: Ibrahim turning in front of the three-way mirror. Sending us for the ties. Did he know there wasn’t a camera in the dressing room? That we’d meet back in the front mall, Woodhaven Boulevard’s traffic teeming around us, and I’d hand him the shirts? Or did he want me caught?

  Taylor looks at a folder, taps his knuckle against the tabletop, using a chunky school ring. He even smiles at me. “You’re at Newtown High, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I went to Van Buren. Played basketball for them. You play?”

  “I shoot hoops. Play a little soccer. But nothing regular.”

  He shrugs, looks away. I feel as if I’ve disappointed him somehow. He goes back to tapping his ring, rhythmic. One, two. My own heart’s jumping a scared beat.

  No one has called my parents, which has me relieved and scared. Give it a few more hours, though, and my cell phone—wherever it is—will vibrate. My stepmother never texts. Says it mixes her up, that tiny screen. She will speak very softly, bewildered, so I can barely hear her. Naeem, didn’t you say you would come home by eight? She never knows, exactly, how to be a mother to me. She speaks to me sometimes like a son, scolding, and sometimes as a brother.

  The door swings open. Another guy strides in. Blue hoodie, Timberland boots. He’s glaring. I can see ragged sweat stains beneath his armpits. Never mess with a man who’s sweating a lot. He’s already in a bad mood.

  “So.” He sits, flicks his eyes at me, as if already I’ve taken up too much of his time. “The store is ready to press charges. And the Staples incident will be used on setting bail. We’re not talking juvenile court, of course. You’re already eighteen.”

  “You know about that?” My throat is super parched, even though I’ve drained half the water in my bottle.

  He tilts his forehead down, as if to say Are you kidding? He’s heavyset, with a thick, scrunched brow, a coppery sheen to his skin. He reminds me of my gym teacher when I come up with some lame excuse as to why I didn’t bring my shorts.

  Flapping open the folder, he reads, rubbing his thumb on his lower lip. Then he squints at me. “Not doing well in school?”

  There’s a prickly sensation at the back of my neck. Just like that weird, pixelated feeling when I know I’m being tracked, in stores, on the streets. How could he know that? “What do you mean? I’m going to Queens College!” I blurt, jutting out my chin.

  He smiles.

  “I am!”

  Taylor leans forward, sets his hand on my wrist. Mine looks so skinny under his broad palm. “Hey, hey. Calm down. I had a lousy GPA too. It’s not the end of the world.”

  He gives me a reassuring smile, which washes me in confusion, then anger. I’m supposed to hate these guys. They’re the ones Amma tells me to stay away from. Now here he’s talking about high school basketball and GPAs! He’s trying to fritz my circuits. I remember my cousin Taslima warning me about the cops: how they pick you up, spook you, take you to the station. A kid I know was two hours short on his community service and they pulled this bull. Stay cool.

  But it’s hard. Taylor is watching me with a careful gaze; the other guy—who hasn’t even told me his name—has retreated into sullen silence. This is worse than if they had asked me questions, yelled, did all those mean and swaggering gestures they do on police shows. I sense him watching. Gauging. Every bit of my body, every hair, feels lit up, seen, bathed in an ultraviolet light. I’m a specimen of cold fear, twisting in their lab dish. I just want to scuttle away. Hide out, like my little brother under his mound of stuffed animals. The thought of Zahir gives me a stab of pain. What’s he doing now? Sitting cross-legged in front of the TV. Wondering where I am.

  “Okay, let’s look at your options,” the second one finally says. “We can take you down the hall and book you. I’d put my money on a conviction. They’re really cracking down these days. Even on sma
ll infractions.”

  “But it was my friend who did it!”

  “Yeah, right. That’s original.”

  The men smile at each other. Burning, I stare down at my knuckles. He’s just trying to scare me.

  “And your parents, they can put up the bail?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I thought so.” He winds his fingers together. They’re stubby, tough-looking. “Every time you fill out a job application, you’ll have to say, I was arrested for a misdemeanor. I’ll put my money on a conviction. That’s even worse. Imagine explaining that for the rest of your life.”

  I don’t say anything.

  Taylor looks idly at the folder again. “Your parents. They came over here when?”

  “My…father eleven years ago. My stepmother a long time ago.” I add hopefully, “She went to school here.”

  “Their papers in order?”

  A knot tightens in my stomach. “She’s a citizen. My dad has a green card. We’re okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know any trouble on a green card it can be revoked, right?”

  There’s a thumping, deep as a bass, in my chest. “No. I didn’t know.” My voice is a lot smaller now.

  “Here’s the thing, Naeem.” That’s the other guy—Taylor. He seems concerned, his voice soothing. “There’s another option.”

  I don’t budge.

  “Naeem, look at me.”

  I lift my head. I can see that Taylor is all neutral, pewter eyes and gray hair trimmed tight around his ears. Unlike the other guy, he wears a crisp white shirt, the sleeves neatly folded up above his elbow. I remember those shirts in Macy’s. Three lousy shirts.

  “We can have the charges dropped. Easy.”

  I feel a quiver of relief. “That would be great! I promise, I won’t do it again. It was my friend—”

  He puts a palm up. “We have a need.”

  “A need?” I swallow.

  “For guys like you.” He adds, “You can keep an eye on things in the neighborhood.”

  “Where?”

  “The mosque.”