The Brevity of Roses (27 page)

When he looked up, Renee stood across the table from him. Nothing on her face or in her stance encouraged him, but he said, “I would like to start over. Please, give me one more chance.” A debate raged in her head; he read it in her eyes.

Finally, she nodded.

The breath he held rushed out and he dared a weak smile. “Will you let me cook dinner for you tonight?”

She shook her head, but a smile touched her lips. “What am I going to do with you, Jalal?”

“Eat?”

“Yes,” she said, “I will.”

Jalal feared, if he stayed any longer, he would blunder and say something to change her mind so he stood. “Be there at seven.” As he reached the door, he turned and added, “Please.”

By the time he reached his car, he had planned the menu. He headed back to the market. Piemonte’s was next on his list. He wished understanding Renee was as easy as cooking for her. His powers of perception did not work. Meredith had been so much easier to read, but then, she had shown him her poetry, the window into her mind and heart. Renee gave him so little, with evasions and, he suspected, lies. She accused him of not seeing her, but how could he when she kept herself hidden from him?

Renee arrived precisely on time, and entered the house without knocking. Jalal noted she wore one of those soft summer dresses instead of her usual tee and shorts. And her hair—set free again—cascaded to her waist. “I didn’t know what we were having for dinner,” she said, setting two bottles on the counter, “so I brought a red and a white.”

Jalal glanced at the labels. “You have excellent taste in wine.”

“No,” she said. “I just used to work in an excellent upscale restaurant.”

“I am preparing fish, so the Sauv Blanc will be perfect.”

“You really cook?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “it keeps me from starving.”

“
Funny
. So, you’re a gourmet cook, a renowned poet, a financial genius. What other talents do you have?” She pinched a bite of salad. “Mmmm, that’s good.”

“Thank you. The dressing is my own recipe.”

“And …?”

Jalal glanced up, eyebrows raised.

“I asked what other talents you have.”

He shook his head. “I do not even claim the three you think I have.”

“Well, I’ll judge the first one for myself tonight, but the other two are common knowledge.”

“Oh, yes … what would we do without Wikipedia?”

“Smart ass,” she said.

“Now, that one, I will claim.” It made him nervous, how easy it seemed between them again, as if they were only killing time until his next screw up. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.” He dished up salad. “The corkscrew is in that drawer.” He motioned with the tongs. “Will you pour the wine?”

He carried the salad plates to the table and sat down across from her. “Where did you live before moving here?” he asked after a few bites.

She glanced up at him and then focused again on her plate. “I can’t quite picture you as a suit on Wall Street.”

“Neither could I,” he said then laid his fork down and sat back in his chair, “but that is beside the point. I asked where you lived.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I could not find your bio on the internet.” When she begrudged him a smile, he returned to his salad.

“Sacramento,” she said after a moment.

“Is that where—”

The oven timer buzzed and she said, “The fish is calling.”

“Saved by the bell,” he muttered.

He served the snapper
en papillote
with saffron rice. Renee seemed impressed when he snipped open the parchment, and that pleased him. They ate without speaking, until Jalal felt her watching him. He looked up.

“It should be illegal for any man to have eyelashes as long and thick as yours,” she said.

“They
are
my best feature.” He fluttered them to make her laugh. “Your hair is one of your best features. You should wear it down more often.”

“I lived most of my life in Indiana,” she said. “I moved out here when I was nineteen.”

Though surprised at the non-sequitur, this was only the second bit of personal information she had ever spontaneously offered, so he went with it. “How did you choose Sacramento?”

She shrugged. “I’d visited there once.”

He took a drink of his wine before he repeated the question, he had asked her once before. “Why did you leave there?”

“I just wanted a …” She looked down and traced a pattern through her rice with her fork before meeting his eyes again. “I left because of a bad relationship.”

Jalal nodded and took another drink, silently watching as Renee resumed eating.

“About Sacramento,” she said, not looking up from her plate, “I lied. I didn’t just visit once. I lived there … for a few months when I was fifteen … with my father.”

Renee offered no more and he decided not to press his luck by questioning her. She would tell him in her own time. But as he ate, he pondered the implications of what she had told him. He had suspected she was on the run from a relationship. Now it occurred to him the man she ran from might not have been the kind he assumed. That man might have been her father. Maybe he and Renee had that in common.

Dinner with Renee had gone perfectly. For once, they spent hours together and neither of them said anything to make the other run away, physically or emotionally. Pleased she had revealed that bit about her father, he had answered her usual barrage of questions without trying to force her to reveal anything more. She wanted to know more about his poetry, and when he asked her why, her answer surprised him. He expected she might flatter him again, praise his talent, instead, in a tone that made it clear she thought her reason should have been obvious, she said,
Your poems are you
. As simple as that. He fell asleep treasuring those words and woke still in their afterglow.

His morning had been a lazy one, mostly spent drinking tea while stretched out on the sofa reading. He had finally roused himself and carried his cup to the kitchen when his phone rang.

“Good morning,
azizam.
”

“Hello, Maman,” he dumped out the last inch of cold tea in the sink. “I was getting ready to call you. I swear.”

“Oh, you always say that. I am happy to hear you sound well again.”

“Uh … yes, I guess that was just a twenty-four hour thing. I am fine, now.” He crossed the kitchen and stepped out onto the side porch.

“You always say that too.”

He smiled. When would he accept that he only fooled himself when he thought he fooled her? “Yes, but today it is true, Maman.”

“Good,” she said. “Everything is fine here too, except for the trouble with Jason.”

“Jason! What happened to him?”

“Oh, nothing happened to him. Farhad is raging because Jason changed his mind about going to college in the fall … well, I guess he never intended to go. He just forgot to tell anyone.”

It was useless for his mother to tell him this. He would not get involved. “They will work it out,” he told her.

His mother sighed. “I guess so.”

“Maman, listen, I was just going out for a run. Let me call you later.” He ended the call. They both knew, sooner or later, he would be dragged into this family drama, but not today. Today the fog had lifted early, the sun would warm his face, and he had another chance with Renee.

In the bedroom, while hunting down his running shoes, he caught sight of himself in the mirror and stopped dead.
Damn, I
am
skinny.
He pulled off his shirt and examined his body closer. He ran his fingers over his rib cage. He could feel them nearly as well as when he was a gawky pre-teen, and finally understood why his mother and Goli—and Jennie too—were always shoving food at him. When had he transformed into this ramshackle man? How could he remember everything else, but forget the one thing Meredith had warned him against? The one thing that had chilled him every time she brought it up, the last time only days before the crash. He remembered now.

Lying in bed beside her, Jalal could tell by her breathing Meredith was far from sleep. He rolled to his side, facing her, and reached over to comb his fingers slowly through her hair. Usually, this caused her to relax and grow sleepy, but tonight she pulled his hand away and held it in hers.

“The hardest part of Stephen’s death to endure was the swiftness of it,” she said. “I wasn’t prepared. There was no time to say anything important, anything profound … not even time to say goodbye.”

“Meredith, why—”

“I need you to promise me something,” she said.

“Anything, my beloved.” He raised their clenched hands to his lips and kissed her fingers.

“Jalal!” She pulled her hand away. “I’m serious.”

“Sorry. I am listening.”

“You’re going to outlive me—”

“Stop! We are not having this conversation again.”

“I want you to promise—”

He rolled onto his back. “This is pointless, Meredith. You are not dying. I am not dying.” He sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “I am going downstairs to read for a while.” He stood and pulled on his jeans.

“When I die, please don’t die with me,” she said quickly into the darkness. “Promise me you won’t become some shell of a man sitting in the rose garden.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Why must you persist in thinking—”

“Because I love you, and I don’t want you to shut down like I did. I’m afraid for you.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her, a ghostly figure in the light of the full moon. Baba’s words had come from her mouth. Meredith feared he would not fight. She knew he was weak. After a moment, he slipped off his jeans and lay down beside her again. He held her close. He promised.

Now, as Jalal scrutinized his image in the mirror, he saw himself as Meredith might. Before him stood a carcass, a shell, an animated corpse. In the end, his promise to her had been as hollow as he was now. He had not sat in the garden in Coelho since a few days after her death. He sat here instead. In every way that mattered, he had buried himself along with her.
Let go of the rope.
He could do that now—had to—but he did not believe he could do it alone. He checked the time, then stripped off his running shorts and reached for his jeans. Renee would be working at Jennie’s right now.

Jalal had never been in the restaurant when it was as full and noisy as it was now, and he felt like an intruder until he saw Don and Eduardo at their usual table. On his way to join them, he waved at Renee serving a customer across the room. Jennie appeared at his elbow seconds after he took a seat.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” she said. “What are you doing here at lunchtime?”

“I am hungry.” His table companions looked at him wide-eyed, their forks paused. “Bring me whatever is good today, Jennie.”

“Well, it’s
all
good, hon, I just don’t do it up fancy in parchment.”

He winced, but when he looked up at her, she grinned and gave him a wink.

“It’s about time you put some meat back on those bones,” she said, “stop all that crazy running you do.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “My shoes are retired.” She gave him a pat on the shoulder and headed toward the kitchen. Don and Eduardo still stared at him. Jalal laughed. “Do you two ever go home?” Like synchronized eaters, they both blinked and forked a mouthful.

While he chewed, Eduardo gestured with his fork toward Renee. “That little one the reason you’re here?” he asked.

Jalal smiled. “Could be.”

“Good,” said Don. “You’re too young to give up on life like us.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Eduardo, “I’m still working on getting Jennie to marry me.”

“You’re an old fool,” muttered Don.

“And what would a senile old jackass like you know about it?”

Their banter continued and kept Jalal laughing until Renee brought his lunch. “Jennie said if you don’t clean your plate, she’s going to slap you six ways to Sunday,” she told him.

“Good lord,” he said, gaping at the plate she set before him. Jennie had mounded the plate with meatloaf and mashed potatoes, drowned in gravy, with a side of corn swimming in butter—a meal apparently intended to put ten pounds on him in one sitting.

For the next three hours, Jalal only half-listened to the conversation of his tablemates, preferring to watch Renee work. Her movements were efficiency in action, obviously honed by years of practice. On good days, the time he spent with her was so companionable it was easy to fool himself that he knew her. Maybe because Jennie had been the one who really introduced him to Renee, like some sleight of mind, he had linked his knowledge of Jennie’s past to Renee, and supposed he knew Renee’s too. Her accusation that he had seen only Meredith never her, echoed in his mind. Despite what he had told Renee, in some ways, he had substituted her for Meredith. It seemed he never really fooled any of the women in his life.

As Jalal walked Renee to her car after her shift, they discussed how and where to spend the rest of the afternoon. “How about a late picnic at the beach?” he said. She opened her mouth, and he held a hand up to silence her. “Not the beach in front of my house. I know a place.”

“Sounds good.” She opened her car door. “What are we going—”

“I will stop at the deli and then pick you up.”

Thirty minutes later, they headed south along the Cabrillo Highway. He knew a cove, favored by surfers, but not this late in the day. It was a perfect spot to eat and talk and, if all went well, if he managed not to screw up, if he stayed focused in the present, focused on Renee, they might still be there to see the sunset. He pulled off the road above the cove. She carried the blanket and sweatshirts; he carried the food and wine. As they started down the steps, she teased him, pointing out the sign forbidding alcohol on the beach.

He sneered. “Laws written by barbarians should be challenged. Besides, wine is not alcohol, it is simply well-aged fruit.”

She followed him to their picnic spot and kicked off her flip-flops. “Could we just walk on the beach for a while?”

“Indeed.” He motioned for her to spread the blanket on the sand, and he piled on the rest of their things.