Рон Рэш - The Best American Short Stories 2018

What harm could come of it? Rahad thought. He situated himself on a YMCA blanket his friend had brought, took out his sitar, and though the sounds of taxis, tourists, vendors, and fellow architects of harebrained stunts drowned him out, he began to enjoy the adventure. He could now say that he had played in Times Square. What Tehrani musician could say that? Maybe the Internet would catch wind of it and post a photo. Briefly the world felt as it had in his younger days, when he strummed and others snapped photos of him that would appear in unknown parts of the city.

Rahad and Wyatt played for an hour to small crowds overflowing from the popular Chinese restaurant next door and a few stragglers who drifted over from a nearby hot dog cart. Eastern men, like themselves, on breaks from their restaurant jobs. Most wandered away after a few seconds, realizing that they couldn’t enjoy the music for the commotion of the street. Others recognized a melody and nudged each other. Do you remember this? they murmured in languages he didn’t understand. But Rahad understood that you always know—if yours are the fingers that strum the strings—when someone recognizes your sound. And isn’t that all there is to want?

Some gave money, and at first Rahad stopped to explain that this wasn’t their purpose. Finally he gave up, but made sure that his sitar case was closed and stowed behind him and that his jacket was nowhere in sight. If he offered no place to drop money, the people would understand his intentions. Most didn’t, throwing coins onto the blanket instead.

“Where are your music big shots then, agha?” said Rahad, grinning at his friend. He didn’t mind if none of the promised record executives appeared. He enjoyed playing in this great cavity of noise, alone in a human swarm. He was doing something worth remembering, even if it was foolish and self-indulgent. And he was in New York.

“We must be patient,” said Wyatt.

“Come, I buy you Starbuck,” said Rahad, packing up his instrument. He was desperate for a coffee, a feeling that always reminded him to text Yasmine.

In the café, Wyatt ordered a foamy latte. When the barista muttered, “So you want a cappuccino, then,” he shook his head sadly at Rahad. “These young generations think we are all terribly stupid, always in risk of poking out an eye if not for their instruction.”

They sat down at a table near the window, watching their corner in case their record producer exited the subway at just that moment.

“I hoped to have coffee with Yasmine,” said Rahad, checking his phone. “Especially this time that we come by bus. Twice before I came by car and she chose café with no parking spot and I got ticket. Then drove back in dark because I’m not welcome even on her couch. This treatment is normal for American parents, I think. After that, I sell the car. I only kept it for visiting often. But who wants to be burden?”

“My son is same. I am borrowing car, driving hours, and last minute, poof, canceled.” Wyatt shook his head and stared into his latte, the foaminess of which obviously irritated him. “My son, he is thinking I am stupid. Where he gets this?”

“Is problem of generation,” said Rahad. “We come to West, suffer in learning language in adulthood, which we can never lose accent or get joke and so on. But kids go to school and learn in a normal route with other first citizens, and later they think we are dumb or at least considering us lower than themselves. My daughter asks always, ‘Did you google this or that like I tell you?’ She thinks she is my teacher.”

Wyatt’s hands flew up in agreement, so that his spoon splattered foam on the table. “My son wants me to do video online instead of telephone,” he said. “I tell my son, ‘Oh, good try, good try. Next time, can you tell me something? Do you speak Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi? Can you write in these language? Can you change yourself every hour according to situation? Can you keep your American pride in foreign city? You can upload videos on social sites, nothing else. But Indian people can speak in minimum four languages. And we know when to put away all four and listen sometimes, too.’” Wyatt chuckled a little maniacally, scooped some foam out of his coffee, and stared at Rahad. “Did you ever read Pnin ?” he said. Rahad shook his head. “Is about bumbling immigrant, but lovable because he is arriving new, learning, missing home. My son brings this book one day from school,” he paused, as if wondering why he had mentioned it. “New arrivals, they have reason to be confuse, they must be missing home. But I say, fuck old country—I don’t miss it. Is whole world that changed too quick! I am exile from my own child. It’s like I try to jump gorge and got foot permanently stuck.”

“Yes,” Rahad laughed. “Is like pushing against an unbrokable wall.”

“But we have music, right?” said Wyatt, tapping his paper cup against Rahad’s as if to toast. “Music from the world.”

Rahad watched his friend as he lifted his cup to his lips. Again, something was wrong with the way Wyatt spoke. “Your English is improving, my friend,” he said. “ Gorge is not word I know.”

Wyatt wiped his mouth and let out a breathy, tittering sigh. “Nothing is improving, sahib,” Wyatt said, his tone changing, his eyes emptying of the eager joy he seemed to carry in abundance. “Life is easier if people think you just arrived, you know? They expect, twenty years here and you should have made it.” It took a moment for Rahad to realize, given his own troubles with English, that his friend was speaking without his unmistakable lilt. Now Wyatt sounded like the Indians Rahad had known in Baltimore and Tehran. “There are things you need,” Wyatt continued, “things to survive, and you don’t have it yet. Why not? You must be stupid. You must not have studied the culture hard enough. You must be hostile to it. Who needs that, brother? I’d rather be a lovable FOB than a failure whose story has grown stale.”

What careful thought his friend must have put into every sentence he uttered. This new voice struck Rahad hard and he was quiet for some time. A proud look passed over Wyatt’s face, like a person who had written a moving melody. He raised both eyebrows, sucked something out of his teeth. “See, twenty years ago when we were new, the new ones were invisible, too. Now everyone’s read Pnin and those FOB-y bastards are loved, and us who lived here for twenty years, we’re fucked again. Who has a kind word for someone who can’t find their foot after that long? See? Fucked from both directions.”

“So not born in DC then?” Rahad asked, feeling duped and a little angry. How had he grown so close to this man?

“All FOBs say they’re born in DC,” said Wyatt, then added, stroking his salt-and-pepper chin and reprising his phony accent, “That is a big, big true.”

“You give me headache,” said Rahad, touching his temple. He remembered the day they had met, thinking Wyatt was a crazy man. Now Rahad thought he might be a disturbed scholar, or a mystic, or a traumatized poet. How did he talk to his son? Rahad wondered. Did he put on the same new-immigrant act, hoping for a glimmer of sympathy? It would be misguided, Rahad knew; displays of foreignness were the children’s greatest irritation. “I need another coffee. Too much Wyatt thinking for today.”

“Vadhi,” mumbled his friend as he emptied his cup. He rose and gestured toward the counter. “Vadhi is my good name. I’ll buy as a sorry for lying. You buy next one.”

Rahad spent the rest of the night playing melancholy songs in the corner by the subway entrance. During prime theater hours, Times Square was slightly less manic, and he enjoyed hearing his own songs under the feverish lights of a New York evening. They ate at the last open hot dog stand before the owner packed up and left. Late that evening, as they rode the last bus back to Wilmington, he phoned Yasmine again. He started to tell her about Wyatt and the Vietnamese woman, about the spicy soup and the naan from the brick oven, wanting her to share in his astonishment at the gifts of the universe—these scattered foreigners sharing from their food stamps and loose change, finding joy in music. He wanted to say, Azizam, trust the universe. Life can be easy if you let it be. But Yasmine’s breath grew quicker. “Baba joon, are you in trouble?” she said. “Why are people giving you food? If you’re in trouble—”