Watched

by Marina Budhos

  —

  Taylor’s sitting at a table, already drinking a café con leche. I slide in opposite him. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sanchez, perched on a stool, head tilted, ready to dive into a quivering slab of flan. This is getting to be our little dance. Taylor on me. Sanchez like a spurned girl, always within earshot. I get it. Teams. Cops. How they do business. Keeps me on edge.

  “Hey,” I say, trying out a smile.

  “Hey.”

  I feel suddenly shy. It’s as if it’s my first day of school and I’m not sure what to do. His gray eyes flicker, once, toward me, then at the Spanish telenovela on TV. “You want some coffee?”

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  Taylor is different today. The guy who smiled when I swished into the hoop in the playground, who coaxed me into the car a few weeks ago, has vanished. Now he’s a by-the-book detective, all business, cool, shut. I’ve noticed this before: the part of him that can withdraw to a compartment and then watch. I never know which one I’m getting. But maybe this is part of the training. I sit up a little straighter, wait for my cue.

  Finally he talks. “Look. A job like this, you have to show initiative. We’re depending on you. You’re our eyes and ears. You understand?”

  “I guess.”

  “Just guess?”

  I wince. “No. I mean, yeah, I can do that.”

  He doesn’t look convinced. A small panic pulses in me. I thought this was all decided. I had the job, easy. But now it’s as if this is still a job interview. I’ve got to crisp myself up. “I know a lot of people,” I offer. “I get around. Really.”

  He calls the girl behind the counter over. She smiles warmly, as if she knows him, and I notice he gives his order in Spanish. Damn, this guy is smooth.

  I’ve barely finished my coffee when he stands. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  An impatient look crosses his face. “Some sites.”

  “But—”

  “Come on.”

  Why is he so tense? My stomach hurts. I didn’t realize until now how much I want to please Taylor, show him I can be counted on, that I’m good at this. I can be like him. Detached, observant. Cool and chill. In the car I squeeze my fists on the seat belt. Don’t screw up.

  —

  We pull up beside a low-slung building. Nothing special: Laundromat, discount store, brooms bristling out of rubber garbage containers. A Chinese shop where they sell funky-smelling herbs and concoctions in brown jars. But it’s the Internet café on the second floor he’s pointing to. Every step is seamed with scuffed metal, painted a different color, the centers worn.

  “You know how much money laundering went on there?”

  “What do you know,” I breathe.

  The window, which is crowded with signs for phone cards, MoneyGrams, transferring funds, is like dozens I’ve seen before. When our computer broke and we couldn’t afford another, Abba used a place on Seventy-Third Street to Skype every week with my uncle. But through Taylor’s eyes, it’s as if everything is turning paper thin, decals blowing off to reveal something murky, not right, on the inside.

  He reaches into his wallet and pulls out ten dollars. “Go in there, sign up for an hour. Take a look around, see who’s there. Spend no more than thirty minutes. Note everything—who’s sitting at what station. What website they’re on. If they leave, switch computers and see if you can get in there and see their search history.”

  I swallow. “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  Behind the counter a man is thumbing through a newspaper. Urdu, I think, so he must be Pakistani. There are only two guys sitting at the stations—one an older man in a long white kurta and a sweater vest, even though it’s warm out. He’s smiling, chuckling to himself as he coasts the mouse to scan through family pictures—mostly kids. A wedding somewhere. Then there’s a young guy in a blue hoodie and basketball sneakers. He’s hunched in a way that I can’t see his screen.

  I slide into the next cubicle and log on, spend some time making new email accounts. CaptnA, I call one. Ahmed718 another. But I don’t feel slick or fish-fly or magnetic. My fingers bang clumsily on the keyboard. I edge my chair back, catch a glimpse of the screen over the young guy’s screen. Facebook. He’s messaging with someone, tapping furiously.

  There’s a twitching motion and the other guy looks up. “Wanna give me some room?”

  I scrape my chair back. “Yeah, sure. Sorry.”

  The rest of my session doesn’t go much better. The next thing I know the man from the counter is looking belligerently at my screen. “Done with session?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That didn’t go so well,” I tell Taylor as I slide into the front seat. There’s an anxious gnawing in my stomach. I’m sure he’s going to fire me on the spot. I’m not a watcher. I’m a failure again. A punk kid who needs four hundred dollars for summer school.

  To my surprise, Sanchez, sitting in the back, laughs. “Weird, huh?”

  I swivel toward him. His voice is friendly, open. “Yeah.”

  “That’s okay. It’s always like that in the beginning.”

  Taylor puts a bill in my palm, folded. It’s a fifty, and a piece of paper with all the sites he wants me to track.

  —

  Later that afternoon I pick up Zahir from school, take him to his karate lessons and then back to the store, where I help my parents do some stocking. We work side by side, silent, pushing the new bottles to the back of the fridge. The fifty-dollar bill is burning in my pocket. Not much. And if I can’t step it up, my grand plan will collapse.

  When I finally head back to the apartment and snap on the computer, I’m surprised at how easy it is. It’s like dipping a toe, then a leg, then all of me, into a mercury lake. The air closes shut around me. Soon I’m in deep. The keyboard clacks. The lies shimmer.

  Soaked in the blue light-waves of the computer, I test out my first screen name in an Islam support group. I’m Ahmed, a business student at Baruch.

  Hi, the moderator says. Exams tough?

  Yes, I reply. Sometimes I think if I could figure out my praying and my studying, I could do better.

  That’s why we’re here.

  I talk about classes. Statistics nearly killed me! About video games. About the Quran, how I was always lousy at memorizing. I know if you jump right into the far-out talk, everyone will freak and figure out you’re a plant.

  After a while, I’m feeling so smooth I venture to my other account, CaptnA. One click. Another, the soft leap into a new Yahoo group, this one about politics in the Middle East. I hang on the edges, take notes on who’s saying what. It’s nothing new. The usual mouthing off about crappy dictators and crappier regimes.

  At some point, Zahir pads into the room, smiling sheepishly, his pajamas drooping on his bare feet. I notice the colorful pages of a comic tucked into his vocabulary workbook. He has his sly secrets too, reading under the covers, the flashlight turning his face pink.

  “Naeem?” he says hopefully.

  After Ma and Abba have gone to bed, Zahir and I like to stay up, talking comic books. The Marvel universe. The new series. Who’s turning vigilante, who’s working on the government side.

  “Not tonight, Zahir,” I say, smiling. “Tomorrow, for sure.”

  He climbs into bed, shuts out his Mets lamp. The apartment settles. Abba in the bathroom, then Amma. Pipes groan. I don’t move. I’m lost in a new dimension, and by the end of the night, dry-eyed, exhausted, I’ve got five names to keep an eye on.

  —

  Today in my parents’ store, the Starbucks guy’s got on a wrinkled linen jacket with a black T-shirt underneath. I want to ask him what he does for a living, dressed like that, but he’s browsing the shelves, impatient. “Pens?” he asks. We’ve got a few old ones in a box, next to the Tylenol packets that are probably expired, so I thrust out a Bic. He shakes his head, pulls out his own: slender and silver, the click kind. “You don’t have any of these?”

  I shake my he
ad.

  “Too bad.”

  Then he strides outside. Not even Tic Tacs this time. I almost want to run after him. Instead, I check my phone. I’m supposed to meet Taylor, give him an update. And hopefully get paid. It’s been a few weeks on this Internet work.

  “Not bad,” Taylor says when I fill him in. We’re meeting at a different bakery. Sanchez is in the booth too, dressed in one of those cotton shirts with an embroidered pocket and panel scrolled with pale blue threads. Dude looks like he’s ready for Sunday fishing.

  I can’t complain. This time they let me drink my café con leche halfway before they set down what’s next. “I was talking to my colleagues. Even this guy.” He elbows Sanchez. “We have a good feeling about you. We want to give you more responsibility. More on-the-ground stuff.”

  “Why me?” I shake my head.

  “We can use kids like you. You blend more. You speak Bangla, right?”

  “Yeah. Though I forget a lot.” A part of me is flattered. Isn’t this what I wanted? But this sudden shift makes me nervous. I knew I would have to do more. I just didn’t think it would happen so fast. Besides, I like the Internet work. These past few weeks, especially with everyone heading toward new stuff, it’s my secret place. Now I can be someone else and no one knows.

  “We need you to focus on some campus groups. Pay attention to political arguments. What speakers are invited. We’re looking for names. Especially those who seem to be outliers. Expressing stronger views. Radical ideas.”

  “Where?”

  “We want you to start with Queens College,” he says.

  “Queens College,” I repeat, the word tinny in my mouth.

  “There’s a human rights group. It’s run by someone who’s not even a student. Graduated a while ago, but she convinced the administration to give her space. Her name is Taslima. You know her?”

  A prickling sensation breaks out on the back of my neck. His eyes are on me, plain and serious. Was this a setup? I wonder. Did he know she’s my cousin?

  Taslima. Rebel girl. I used to love to hear all the stories about Taslima: how, when she was in college, she sneaked out on the fire escape at night, stuffing her clothes into her backpack and putting on a tank and cutoffs to meet her boyfriend. Last time I saw her was when she came by about her workshop.

  “You have a problem with that?” Sanchez asks.

  “No. It’s just…” I have to hold down the trembling in my voice. My fingers grasp the sides of my coffee cup, as if to steady me. “We’re related.”

  His gaze slides sideways. “If you’re not ready, we can drop it.”

  That closed-in Taylor, the one who is just a handler and I’m a small-bit prospect, has returned. He’s fingering his cell phone. I can sense his interest shifting elsewhere.

  “No, no!”

  “Seriously. We can keep you on smaller stuff. Some Internet places.” He adds, with a small, tilted smile, “Not as much money in that. Won’t get you noticed.”

  Noticed. That’s another one of those words, bait, wriggly-smooth, tempting. “I can do it.”

  “You sure?”

  I swallow, set the cup down. My hand shakes so hard coffee sloshes into the saucer. “Yes,” I breathe.

  We don’t say anything for a while. My fingers slowly come ungripped from my cup. Taylor orders us three sweet buns, which we wolf down. Then he explains why they’re targeting Taslima: how she’s been holding a lot of events, outreach to mosques. I keep folding the idea over and over in my mind, like a piece of paper, until it’s creased and familiar. “What do I do exactly?”

  He nods, almost cracks a smile. “This is what we call ‘cultivation.’ ”

  Cultivation. He lets the word hang there. A door glides open. His eyes have a bright, metallic sheen. I get the feeling this is what he likes most about this work.

  “So how does it work?” I try the word out. “Cultivation?”

  “It takes skill. You strike up a conversation. Show interest in their ideas.” He laughs. “People love to talk. Especially about themselves.”

  I get the feeling that Taylor finds this a kind of weakness in others. He’s hammered shut, and this is strength, to let others do all the talking. I make note of the way he holds his head set back on his shoulders so he can scan the room, me, the steaming coffee. I try the same, thrusting myself backward in my chair. A puff of air widens between us. That’s what it takes. Don’t engage too much, get riled up. Just observe.

  “Get names. Pictures, if you can.” He taps my iPhone, which sits diagonally between us. “Especially if they belong to the Muslim Student Association.”

  I almost want to laugh. My cousin isn’t going to be any help on the MSA. Taslima hates those guys. She told me long ago. Says it’s run by a bunch of old-school sexist know-it-alls who don’t let the girls talk. “Want us all like their mothers,” she scoffed. “We’re supposed to bring the samosas and stay quiet.”

  “But what good is she?” I ask. “She’s not even in an Islamic group.”

  “It’s about connections, Naeem.” Sanchez is talking now. “That’s how information works. One group, one name, leads you to another. Look for buzzwords. Jihad. Revolution. This is a human rights group, and sometimes”—he laughs—“they get carried away with themselves.”

  “And the pay? For doing this?” I’ve surprised myself that I asked so bluntly. But I’m calculating: if I go to Queens College tomorrow and they pay me by the end of the week, then at least I’ll have enough to register for my classes. I’ll do English over the summer. Then make-up math, for the next session, in the fall. That still leaves some for my parents. Start community college in January.

  “Get me some real leads.” He tosses a crumpled ten-dollar bill onto the Formica table.

  My mood drops. I thought I was on the in. In training. In the know. In with him. My jaw hurts, hard.

  “And then?”

  He sets his hand on my shoulder. To my surprise, it’s warm, firm. I see a crease of concern. I feel stupid and ashamed at once.

  “You show us you’re making inroads and we’ll talk about your compensation, okay?”

  I nod, swallowing.

  “You’ll do good, Naeem. I know it,” he says softly.

  Then, with Sanchez offering a few silky Spanish words to the girl behind the counter, they’re gone, the glass door flashing behind them.

  The next day is hot, hotter than I’d like. By the time I make my way off the bus and up the campus and find the student union, my T-shirt is soaked through, pasted to my skin. I’m excited, seeing some of the pretty sand-colored buildings with their terra-cotta roofs, a green lawn, and sloping paths. This is where I hoped to go someday. Then I remember why I’m here. My iPhone is nestled in my pocket. I still don’t know how I’m going to do this. Taslima is whip-smart, with a fast mouth. She’s the one with the real X-ray vision—how am I going to escape her detection? My whole plan seems a joke—like some little kid’s crayoned drawing, announcing: Look at me! Mr. Super Agent!

  I find her group downstairs, all the way down a narrow passage at the very back of the building, next to a bulletin board littered with flyers. Cheap Buses to Boston! beside Know Your Rights! Silence = Death. Inside, the air-conditioning is turned off, leaving the room stuffy. Folding chairs are stacked on both sides of the wall, and on the floor are piles of paper and folders, clearly waiting to be stapled and put together. Taslima sits behind a desk, tapping urgently on her laptop.

  “Hey!” she calls out, jumping up from the desk. Her eyes have that slightly cross-eyed look from too much screen time. “Look who’s here! What’s up?”

  I shrug. “Staying out of trouble.”

  “Really. You, Naeem?”

  I keep staring at Taslima. She’s skinny and flat-chested as a boy, wears jeans that are probably two sizes smaller than mine, and ratty canvas slippers that the old Chinese ladies wear.

  “So can I help?”

  She squints. “You sure you want to?”

  “Y
eah.” I shrug. “Thought I’d come by, see what I could do.”

  “Really?” She puts a fist on her hip, skeptical.

  Does she know already? Then I remember: It’s a job. A role. Don’t act too eager—that will draw out her suspicions. Play it goofy and aloof. Taslima’s no dummy.

  “If you really want to know,” I say, leaning close, “Abba just wants me to stay busy. He’s not too happy with me these days.”

  “I heard. You flunked out?”

  I puff my chest out a little. “I’m going to summer school.”

  She steps back in irritation. “I thought so. You didn’t come here blazing with ideals. We’re supposed to keep you out of trouble? Report back to Uncle at the end of the summer?”

  I give her a sheepish smile. This is easier than I thought.

  “Okay, so no babysitting here. Got it? We’ve got a huge number of programs lined up. I don’t have time to train you.” She waves a hand over at the floor. “Put those packets together. It’s pretty obvious how to do it.”

  “Thanks, Taslima.”

  She’s already behind her desk. “It’s nothing.” Her voice is gruff.

  Before I squat on the floor and start assembling her packets, I snatch a glance at Taslima. There’s a haggard, sad look drawing down in her eyes. She’s blinking away tears. Her jaw is rigid. I’ve seen her look this way before. A lot of family and friends don’t accept her. She’s the shaming fire on everyone’s tongues. Not just because she lied to her parents or did things on the side, like going to parties or having boyfriends. Because she flaunted herself. No one forgave her for that. Especially when she split with her parents, broke their hearts. They went back to Bangladesh, what with all the trouble after 9/11.

  Taslima’s so loyal to everyone, but her life is also somewhere else, off a foreign edge. Divorced, living on her own in some small apartment on Kissena Boulevard. No family, no husband. This group is her family. She rarely shows up at weddings or for holidays. But that doesn’t stop people from calling her for a favor—an immigration problem, a contact for their kid. It’s like they don’t see Taslima—they see what they need, not what she’s become.