Checker and the Derailleurs

by Lionel Shriver

  “Syria!” Rahim reprimanded her. He turned to Reese and declared, “You insult her, I mess your face.”

  “You guys are going to make me nail you, aren’t you? Okay, Mr. Immigré, out in the waiting room. I’m going to ask the little woman a few questions.”

  “Syria? I stay if—”

  “Go on, Chick-pea,” she said, with that rare softness of hers. “I’ll be okay. It’s part of the deal.”

  Rahim looked uncertainly from Reese to Syria, then bent down and carefully kissed his wife on the mouth. She smiled.

  Reese saw Rahim to the front desk, and returned to the cubicle with a gesture that would have been closing the door collusively behind him, but of course there was no door. “So let’s talk about your marriage, Mrs. Pyramus. How much money was involved?”

  “Twelve dollars and twenty-eight cents.” She paused. “And this, the application fee. I wouldn’t pay it.”

  “Twelve dollars. Pretty cheap for a whole country.”

  “No, marrying me has cost him enormously.”

  Reese licked his lips. “Tell me about it.”

  “Not in detail.” She uncrossed her legs, left off right, and crossed them back, right on left. “A little Middle Eastern therapy. I should run workshops.”

  “Can I come?”

  “As long as you can scrub linoleum.”

  Reese was beginning to feel a little over his head. He brought the interview back in line. “He’s nineteen? You’re”—he checked—“twenty-nine.”

  “I like young boys,” said Syria readily.

  “Mmm. Why is that?”

  “They’re still alive. You don’t find many of those anymore.”

  “Live people?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I suppose boys do have a reputation for stamina.”

  “Yes.”

  Reese couldn’t understand why this seedy line of questioning was proceeding with so much dignity.

  “Though no control,” she went on. “They don’t know what they have. They don’t know how important it is, how rare. They take it for granted, and left to their own devices, they’ll burn it up, or even throw it away.”

  “But you’re going to make sure this little Arab doesn’t waste his talents.” He smirked.

  “I’m a teacher and a protector. That’s one of the responsibilities of getting older.”

  “You married the kid to protect him? Say, from the INS?”

  She shrugged. “Among others. There was a time not long ago when I was quite difficult. I caused people a lot of trouble—”

  “If you want an amateur opinion—”

  “Which I don’t.”

  “You’re still difficult.”

  “I cause different people trouble now.” She smiled. “I was a drain, and now I’m a resource. I’ll be around when the time comes. I have things that boys need.”

  “I bet.” But he could say anything! It didn’t matter. Syria sat sweetly on his couch, her neck arched back with her Adam’s apple out, unusually distinct for a woman’s. She kept her arms spread expansively on the back of the couch, claiming a good proportion of his office’s territory. Her fingers rippled, her top boot nodded up and down, as if keeping time to music only she could hear.

  “You get tired of looking at that thing?” she asked conversationally.

  “The American flag?”

  “I’ve always thought the design was a little busy.—You’re supposed to ask me if I’m a Communist now, aren’t you? Or is it a Nazi?”

  David Reese had been studying the woman in front of him. “You’re planning to play this straight,” he determined incredulously. “You’re going to tell me you’re in love.”

  “I am in love.” The expression on her face was of gliding through water. Breaststroke.

  “All right.” Reese came around to sit on the front of his desk, with one thigh raised so the crotch of his pants pulled taut. He spoke more quietly. “I don’t know what’s in this for you, but you obviously want to keep it. So maybe you and I can work out a deal to make us both happy.”

  “I’m already happy. What’s your problem?”

  “I get a little tense.”

  “Is that so.”

  “It’s a hard job.”

  “Which seems to have its compensations.”

  “I do like to relieve that tension.”

  “Oh, spell it out,” said Syria, rubbing her hands down her thighs and raising the nap of her jeans. “I’m enjoying this.”

  “I know I’m a little old for you. But I thought we could investigate what kind of a wife you really are.”

  “You do want to scrub linoleum.”

  “This investigation would be in depth.”

  “Mr. Reese,” she said with mock surprise, “you want to fuck me.”

  Reese shrugged with gentlemanly embarrassment.

  Syria leaned forward. “And we could stay up all night? And we could get all slick and sweaty with your saliva all over me until it was light out, then you’d let Rahim have his green card?”

  Reese’s breathing had increased.

  “Getting tense, Mr. Reese?” Syria stood up and towered over him. “Getting jammed up under the band of your underwear?”

  He nodded. “You’re good at this.”

  “Isn’t it too bad you don’t have a door, Mr. Reese, or you could take me down on your big, messy, disorganized desktop—”

  Reese had risen toward her, and rocked slightly. “Keep going. Keep talking.” He reached for her hand.

  She slipped away. “No, I’m finished, honey. Because I’d rather sleep with nineteen-year-old wetbacks than with your pudgy American ass. Dark, foreign, funny-smelling Muslim boys.” Syria sat back down and crossed her legs again and looked him straight in the eye.

  Reese snapped into a somewhat different person. “You’re not just a bitch, lady, you’re a stupid bitch. That’s the worst kind.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to ask me the color of our shower curtain, Mr. Reese? It’s blue, and Chick-pea finally got all the mildew off the bottom. Go ahead. Ask me the kind of toothbrush I use. It’s a big black-and-white check. Rahim’s is a tiny Oral B. Ask me what’s on the walls of our living room.”

  “All right,” said Reese through his teeth, “what’s on the halls?”

  “Walls. Volcanoes. Next?”

  “You want to be grilled? Fine, I’ll hang you both. I can have that wet on a plane before this office closes.”

  “Not without reasonable suspicion, Mr. Reese. Please proceed.”

  He pitched questions one after the other like fastballs; she hit them back, easy. What was in the refrigerator? Spoiled things. Another disagreeable Netional Deesh. Cold pizza. Half a surprisingly decent pan of moussaka. Rahim took out the garbage. She went to bed at four in the morning. They met through a mutual friend.

  “Who?”

  “A boy. A disaster.”

  “How often do you sleep with your husband?”

  “Often as I like.”

  “And what positions do you use?”

  “Don’t you think we’ve had enough dirty talk for one afternoon?”

  “I’m only doing my job, Mrs. Pyramus.”

  “We’ve already explored the extent of your professionalism.”

  “Go get your ‘husband,’ Mrs. Pyramus. Let’s get this fiasco over with.”

  Syria rose smoothly and retrieved Rahim, who had now lost all his Middle Eastern pigmentation and could readily pass for an albino who took a lot of baths. His tie straggled from his neck, and his shoes were untied. It had recently occurred to him, the way it does when we say something to other people over and over again until finally we hear it ourselves, that Iraqis really do execute draft evaders. He clutched Syria’s hand down the hall.

  “He do anything, Syria?” Rahim rasped. “He touch you?”

  “He can’t touch either of us, Chick-pea.”

  “He touch you, I kill him.” Syria smiled. Rahim could barely talk.

  S
yria waited out in the hall. She could see part of Rahim’s face on the couch, staring down into the floor, curling gradually over as the questions beat down on him from the desk: Who markets? Who does the laundry? Who mends? Who does the dishes? What kind of Arab are you?

  “And what’s one of your best dinners?” asked Reese sardonically.

  “Spaghetti.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I make with sweet sausage,” said Rahim, bravely raising his chin up. “Last time, add green pepper. Sheckair, he don have to tell me. Syria, she say vedy good.”

  “And do you shop for curtains for your love nest?”

  “Have trouble,” said Rahim, his chin still up, getting the feel: play it straight, that was the deal. “Kitchen strange yellow. Hard to match. I keep looking.”

  “And do you clip coupons, too?”

  Rahim looked confused.

  “So how much are you getting off her? She strikes me as a little stingy.”

  Rahim didn’t move.

  “Come on, how much does she come across? The lady claims to be a regular pedophile. She all talk, or what?”

  Rahim’s face clouded, and he sat up straighter. “You say anything about her—”

  “Buddy, you’re supposed to be banging her, or you can’t stay in the States, understand?”

  Rahim looked from pile to pile of paper in a panic. (Don’t get angry, Hijack. Swallow it, Hijack. Just get through, Hijack. You keep cool, that’s what will make me proud of you.) “In my country we don talk such things.”

  Once more Reese walked around to the front of his desk, looking down on Rahim’s head. “I bet she’s a tease, isn’t she? I bet she makes your life hell. I bet she waltzes past you in those tight Levi’s of hers and closes the door in your face.”

  Two tears splashed on the linoleum. “Syria my wife,” said Rahim quietly. “We live together. I work hard for her, take care of her. For this, I need green card.”

  Syria had seen enough, and walked back into the cubicle; Rahim rose and buried his face in the folds of her shirt. She put her arm around him and arranged a stray wet curl. “He’s only nineteen.”

  “I have reason to press, Mrs. Pyramus. He was reported as an illegal. We send an agent after him, he disappears. Two weeks later he shows up, married. Everyone in the INS isn’t an idiot.”

  “Just some of you. Reese, you have ample evidence we live together, no evidence the marriage isn’t consummated. Why I’m doing this isn’t your problem. Even if I married for money, this is America. There’s no law against being a sleazebag.”

  “You’re such a canny girl,” observed Reese. “What on earth makes you think this department has anything to do with justice or due process or even the law? You had your chance at the game the way it’s really played. You lost.”

  “No, I’m still in the game. You know the name Secretti, Mr. Reese? D.C.”

  Reese paused. “It’s vaguely familiar.”

  “Well, Secretti is a good friend of mine. I could tell him about that deal you proposed, and he might not find it so reasonable. So, if you turn down this petition, you may find yourself having to explain why in an office that actually has a door.”

  She started to leave, and Reese called after her, “All right, Pyramus. But I’m keeping your file open, understand? This smells, and you know it. Okay, you married Baba Ganoosh here; well, you’re gonna stay married for a while, hon. Because we’re going to investigate up your ass.”

  “Investigate anywhere else you like, buttercup, but not up there. That’s the point.” She swept Rahim off down the hall, and when they met Check in the waiting room, Rahim stared at his friend Secretti with new awe.

  Walking down the corridor of the Investigation Branch, Rahim holds Syria’s hand

  12 / Don’t Be Cruel

  Rahim was proud of her, but being proud of anyone else is a sensation quite distinct from being proud of yourself. Leaving Federal Plaza, he was quiet.

  “I’m telling you, we went about it all wrong,” Checker explained exuberantly down Broadway. “While you were in there I talked to this Indian who’d overstayed his student visa. He wanted to go home but didn’t have the money; he’d come to turn himself in. He went up to the desk, they didn’t want to hear about it. He started screaming, ‘I’m illegal, I want to be deported!’ and they called some guards and hauled him away. He shouted to me as they dragged him out the door, ‘No matter what you want, they’ll do the opposite!’ Hijack, we missed a trick. You could have come in there and begged to be deported and they’d have folded their arms and said, ‘Not on your life, wetback. Stay and suffer.’”

  Syria laughed. “Just don’t throw me into the briar patch.”

  But Rahim barely smiled, missing her allusion with uncharacteristic apathy. A glutton for small cultural reference points, the Iraqi loyally watched Star Trek reruns at midnight, just so he’d understand when Caldwell exclaimed, “Beam me up, Scotty!” yet Brer Rabbit he passed by. Too bad. It was a gambit Captain Kirk used all the time.

  At Plato’s The Derailleurs had prepared for either a celebration or a wake. Still, after Checker delivered what seemed to be good news—though the file was still open, Rahim was not on an airplane—the Iraqi’s demeanor made it difficult to be festive. When Check read the song he’d scribbled in the waiting room, “I Bared My Breast to the INS,” Rahim chewed a seed between his teeth and kicked at Caldwell’s effect box. When the rest of the band chowed down pizza, Rahim wasn’t hungry.

  Eaton injected with a jaundiced sigh, “Well, Kaypro says immigration control in this country is a farce. I figure any day now airlines are going to come out with a new gimmick, free U.S. citizenship with all one-way tickets from squalid countries.”

  “Fix the balance of payments by selling off passports,” Caldwell suggested. “Better bet than tractors, that’s for sure.”

  “Syria says we do that already,” said Check. “Not just black market, but INS people.”

  “Why does that bother you, and your own scam doesn’t?” asked Eaton.

  “My marriage is no scam,” Rahim intruded.

  “Yeah, Hijack’s pretty legit now, Eat. They’ve got a regular home sweet home over there,” said Caldwell.

  “From the look of those Levi’s, real sweet,” said J.K.

  “You hear how these poor foreign sons of bitches crawl over here and sweat in lettuce fields? Man, I’m not impressed, Hijack. That’s not suffering, not with that woman, no way.”

  “Come on, Sweets, our boy sweat plenty. You seen that tall order he live with. How many buckets every night it take to put out that fire?”

  “He is looking a little peaked,” Caldwell observed.

  “This wet on overtime!”

  Rahim smiled shyly. “Can complain.”

  “Can’t complain!” J.K. exclaimed. “That girl scare me brain dead!”

  “Is this at all serious to you?” Eaton asked Checker.

  “Yes,” said Check pensively, who hadn’t been joining in the fun.

  “Because, nothing personal, Rahim—”

  The Iraqi blew Eaton a kiss.

  “—but aliens bring down wages and take American jobs.”

  “You want Hijack’s job making pyramids of peaches, Eat?” asked Caldwell. “And some little old lady takes one from the bottom and the whole thing falls on the floor? Bet you ask him on the right day, he’d give it to you, apron and all.”

  “I know the job our man give Striker easy: scrubbing Pyro’s bathtub. Just stop by some Saturday and say, Hijack, you taking that work away from a American. You gimme that sponge.”

  “Bet there’s one job Hijack’s not giving up,” Caldwell leered. It was nice to have a theme so early in the evening.

  “Well, Strike,” said Checker thoughtfully, “if you knew there was somewhere you could make in a day what you made in a week where you were, you’d try to get to that place, don’t you think?”

  “All right,” Eaton conceded. “But why only identify with hard-up peop
le? Why not identify with yourself? As someone with a bicycle, an apartment, and a job, don’t you want to keep them?”

  “Sure, but I don’t blame other people for trying to get them, either. Okay, there’s only so much room in this country, but it’s like musical chairs—when the music stops everyone scrambles and somebody’s left out of the game. But like musical chairs, it doesn’t have much to do with morality. Everyone wants a place to sit down and everyone probably deserves a place and everyone isn’t going to get one. It’s just kind of a drag.”

  “‘It’s just kind of a drag’ doesn’t strike me as a statement of terrific political acuity.”

  Checker shrugged. “I just don’t see getting all huffy about aliens. We’ve got a popular club, it’s called the United States. We were born members; we didn’t do anything special.”

  “But you don’t fault Americans who want to keep their country from being overrun.”

  “No, but I wouldn’t mail them merit badges, either. You need to know the difference between when you’re fighting for something because it’s so great and when you’re fighting for your own self-interest. People have to fight for their own interests, and I’m not saying that’s wrong. But I’m also saying it’s not right. When Americans defend their borders, they’re being selfish. It’s important to know the difference between selfishness and heroism, that’s all.”

  “And defending Rahim is heroic.”

  “No, selfish,” Checker corrected.

  “But he’s an alien. Not in the club.”

  “Plato’s is a club. My club.”

  “Somehow by your definition I don’t see how anyone does anything heroic, ever. If defending the people on your side is selfish, then the only thing that’s heroic is betrayal.”

  Checker laughed. “I like that!” Checker’s laughter could glitter with something nearly evil, like Carl Perkins on “Tug of War” or that immortalized studio janitor on “Dark Side of the Moon.” Sometimes it made his friends nervous, like now. He never cared about losing arguments so long as he enjoyed them.

  “I don like,” said Rahim. “All twisted up.”

  Checker stopped and took a long, hard look at Rahim. “I need to run a broom around the studio. Syr’s still in SoHo, you come with me?”