Free The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen Page B

here. You can’t be surprised that women are trying to jump on the gravy train.”
    “I’m a married man.”
    “I can’t believe you sometimes.”
    “What?” Abdullah said.
    Dan rolled his eyes in the dark. They drove back through the VIP lane in silence. To the left, there were lines of cars waiting at customs to be inspected. Living in post- 9 / 11 Saudi Arabia was like permanently residing in an airport, the authorities constantly scanning, examining, X-raying, and patting you down. The scrutiny sometimes made Dan panic, thinking for a split second that perhaps he did have a bomb in his trunk or a bottle of scotch under the seat. Did they itch and twitch beforehand, the young suicide bombers? Spell their mothers’ names backward and forward before an intestinal amen punctuated their fragment of a life? Were they thinking about paradise and the houri, the dark-eyed virgins, like the American anchormen postulated in stern voices that betrayed a hint of titillation? Or were they just thinking, khara. Shit.
    “Let’s get home,” Abdullah said.
    “Which house?”
    “The big one. It’s the weekend. Rosalie gets the weekends.”
    On Thursdays, Abdullah usually hosted a luncheon for the extended family, though Dan imagined that family obligations were probably on hold for the time being. He thought of Rosalie straining to play hostess in the formal women’s sitting room, where there was so much crystal on display that it resembled an ice palace.
    The streets outside were empty, the only movement from the glowing hands of a huge Timex clock on the side of an office building. They drove a few more miles down King Khaled Street before pulling into Abdullah’s driveway. If only Dan could see past the high walls, perhaps he might glimpse Rosalie pulling the curtains aside, dropping them back into place—the closed lids of the palace’s dull eyes. Her presence oddly comforted him, made him feel less alone.
    “Think she’s up?” Dan asked.
    “Yeah,” Abdullah said. “She worries. She thinks I should have a bodyguard.”
    “Don’t forget the king of soul’s advice: Try a little tenderness.” He paused, looked over at his friend. “It’s good advice.”
    “Remind me, was that Ibn Saud or Fahd who said that?”
    “Fuck you.”
    Abdullah got out of the car and walked to the front door, his gait still a little shaky from whiskey and fatigue. The house rose into the night like a mausoleum. It all made Dan feel inordinately far away from Austin and the University of Texas and Threadgill’s, where he and Abdullah had first gotten drunk together.
    Since he learned about Isra, Dan had felt a gap yawning between him and Abdullah. Perhaps it had always been there, filled with funhouse mirrors that were mostly invisible, but sometimes, like now, opaque with the smoke of their difference. Still, Abdullah was all Dan had in the Gulf, so he clutched at the threads of their former life together and barreled through, dreaming of oaks along the Pedernales, the boughs hung with ball moss, the roots mazing deep in the banks.
    Dan rolled up his window, blocking out the heavy night. He hoped the sound of the engine wouldn’t wake the kids—quiet Faisal, keen-eyed Mariam. He wondered about his own children, Eleanor and Joe, just starting their nights in Boston, San Diego. What were they doing? They sent e-mails, called every few months. When he’d left to go back to Saudi, he hadn’t considered the children. With a true expat’s disregard for distance, he had ventured forward. But as it turned out, proximity did have a thing or two to do with love, and he could feel a coldness settling between him and the kids. Not hostility, exactly, but a brittleness of manner that marked the interactions of strangers.
    The walls of Prairie Vista reflected white as his headlights scanned over them, and a plain wooden sign with a palm tree painted on it welcomed him home. Between the compound’s razor-wire fence and the oasis downshore,