Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

The next morning, after a deep but troubled sleep, Rahad spent an hour disinfecting every surface, rechecking the pillows for bedbugs, and spraying every corner with insect repellant. When he was finished, he lit a sandalwood candle and put the Abyssinians on his portable CD player. The sound barely reached the four corners of his room, but it took all of a minute for someone to knock.

“What you are hearing there, neighbor?” a cheerful voice with a mixed-up Indian accent traveled through the flimsy wooden door. Rahad clicked his travel broom back into its plastic casing. He opened the door and said a muted greeting, trying hard not to react to the overpowering scent of patchouli and citrus that assaulted his nose. A dark man around his own age but more weathered, with thick gray stubble and a T-shirt that seemed to be made from an American flag, was smiling widely, displaying three yellow teeth that alternated with his white ones, like piano keys. He stepped inside, slapped Rahad on the back, and said, “Bro, do one thing. Please be putting on ‘Forward Jah.’ That is my favorite of this album by ten thousand percent.” His mouth made wide, deliberate motions.

He introduced himself as Wyatt, wandered to Rahad’s bed, and sat without invitation. He asked about Rahad’s origins in a way that suggested he saw himself as the more American of the two.

“Tehran,” said Rahad as he flipped to the song Wyatt had requested. “And you?”

“I am coming from DC,” said Wyatt, rubbing his knees with his palm. “An agreeable city. A first-class city. But bitch work to be surviving there, you know?”

Rahad tried not to chuckle. He had known many Indians. Most had accents with a hint of British, dulled after decades abroad. This man sounded American, but forcibly so, as if he had left Calcutta last week and, afraid of sounding “fresh off the boat,” as they say, was trying to compel his accent to fit the patterns and rhythms of natives through a heavy regimen of mangled Americanisms and mouth exercises. “And the name Wyatt? How did you get it, sahib?”

“What you are meaning?” he said, eyes wide.

“I mean, tell me your good name,” Rahad said. He wanted this Wyatt to know that he had traveled to India, that he knew the world this man had left behind, and that the only way to be Rahad’s friend was to own up to the real story.

“My good name?” said Wyatt, making a twisting gesture with his hand—as if plucking a ripe fruit from the tree—that absolutely gave away his origins. He grinned toothily. “I have not the least good idea what you are meaning. What finds you in this establishment, brother? Here is only down in the lucks, immigrants, some pot smokers, and that sort. You seem like nice old Irani gentleman, no disrespect.”

Rahad coughed into his fist. “We are same age, I think. Fifty-four, fifty-five?”

“Oh no, no, sir,” Wyatt laughed, flashing his yellow teeth again. “I am just turning forty only. I am here temporarily. Who knows what is coming next for anyone.”

Having decided that the man suffered from some kind of mental illness, Rahad grew eager to expel him from his room. He wanted to gather his things and find an Internet café or library, but couldn’t overcome his Iranian manners—he would not kick out a fellow traveler. He nodded a few times and waited. But Wyatt only smiled and shook his head to the music. “Forward Jah!” he sang, not making the slightest motion to leave.

The next day Wyatt arrived at his door before breakfast. Apparently he had found naan, the soft, stretchy bread that Iranians and Indians share. “Do one thing. Eat this naan, Mr. Rahad, because you are surely missing your home.”

He hadn’t been home for two decades, but he didn’t mention this to Wyatt. Instead he focused on whether he should eat food offered by a crazy man. Would it be tainted? But what can you put in a chunk of plain naan? He ate some and agreed that it was good, freshly made like home. “You find tanoor around here? Where you buy this?”

Through a mouthful of bread Wyatt said, “No, no, is brick ovens here only. No tanoor. I am making dough in bathroom sink here, extra one I can be using all night for rising dough, then onward to my colleague at pizza joint for baking. Nice and fresher, cheaper breakfast than bagel or doughnut.”

“Clever,” Rahad muttered, giving the wet lump in his mouth a hard swallow.

Then Wyatt’s gaze fell on Rahad’s sitar in the corner of the room and his mouth hung open as if he had just seen a minor deity. “You have sitar? Holy shits!”

Rahad smiled. “And what does born-in-seventies DC native know about sitar?”

“I know every music, my friend,” said Wyatt, now bent at the waist, nose-to-nose with the instrument, struggling not to pluck a string. “Shall we be having jam sesh today later perhaps? I have familiarity on tambour, which is make-doable using large bucket. You play from Viguen. I order for brick oven. It will be first class.”

Rahad knew how to play Viguen. His father never played those songs, of course, since the legendary singer was his rival, and the old man felt obliged to dislike Viguen’s Westernized music and pop-star image. The elder ustad Sokouti was a classical sitarist of the most traditional school. He excelled on every ancient string instrument, but would never touch a modern guitar. “Yes, a nice idea,” he said.

He wasted the rest of the morning staring at parked cars, remembering those difficult months after Yas found out he had given up his house and become a drifter, an avareh, and he found out that she had put down her colored pencils (her last creative thread) and taken a tougher job at Google. One day he visited, and they paced her tiny apartment and shouted at each other.

“Did you want to stay the night?” She glanced over her blow-dryer. She was getting ready for a date. What did she hope for, he wondered, as she scrutinized these men over plates of oysters and fish tacos and bone marrow? The truth was almost certainly something he had failed to give her: a family, perhaps, or a home.

“I want to spend some time with you, yes,” he said. Such skill she had at shaming.

“Where did you park?” she asked, eyes fixed on the mirror. He patted some baking soda from his pant leg, hoping she didn’t see—every time he began a stint as a nomad, he found it clinging to him wherever he went, dustings of it on his shirt, in his jacket lining, in his sheets. The white powder was familiar and it amused him, but Yasmine would judge… if she could look away from her own reflection. Where did his daughter get this marble-hard vanity? Her mother had been a distracted scientist who memorized songs and didn’t bother with appearances—sometimes she left the house with crumbs in her hair. Once, she went out with only one eye made up, and that night Rahad loved her more than all the days before. Now here was her American daughter, free to imagine and create and trust the universe, but instead she slathered on a second layer like a veil. In that, she was no different than those caged-in Tehrani girls he saw during his long sessions on the Internet, the ones with high hair under a scarf, big sunglasses and nose-job plasters, desperate to show their creative spirit in whatever way possible, but, in the end, masking themselves in another way.

Oh, the Internet, that mystical hand, that unseen eye, a marvel! It was a captivation he tried to hide from Yas. She would only say, You don’t understand it, and conjure past arguments about art, vocation, legacy, and technological skill. Besides, who wants to admit to wasting their hours that way? He reached into his shoulder bag for the pistachios he had brought for her; the blushing, leathery bulbs, still in their outer skin, were every bit old Iran.