Six days after the encounter with Epps, I was eating breakfast alone at the
Apthorp when the doorbell rang.
Nussie ran for cover — as he always did — and hid under the couch. Miss
Ritu opened the door and let in four men in blue boiler suits, white cotton
gloves, and thick - soled sneakers. They walked wordlessly past the dining
room in single file, and I jumped up and ran into the kitchen.
“What? Those ... what?” That was all I could get out.
Miss Ritu looked up from the stove, red - faced from frying eggs. “Those
men are for the paintings, sir. Sent by Mr. Abbas? I told you yesterday?”
Paintings? Miss Ritu had babbled something at dinner, but I wasn’t
really listening; I had learned nothing more since my run - in with Epps —
and it was driving me crazy.
The men in the boiler suits carried in big wooden crates on hand trucks.
The backs of their overalls bore stenciled letters — ZENITH ART SERVICES —
and they moved with the precise solemnity of undertakers. They took the
Matisse and Picasso prints off the walls and crated them up, then rehung the
corridor with a series of handsome, oversized color photographs in severe
black gallery frames. From the dining room, these images looked abstract:
enticing slabs of shell - pink, rose, and coral contrasted with areas of mauve,
lavender, and moss green. The photographer who made these images had an
exquisite color sense.
The men soon left, packing up their power tools. After I finished my
fried eggs I wandered into the corridor for a closer view, and the actual
subject matter of the photographs was revealed: close - ups of slabs of meat
— flayed animal carcasses hanging on hooks — left to rot, taking on de eper,
bruised hues. The glints and gleams were maggots and horseflies.
Bile rose in my throat, and I almost vomited. Were these photographs a
coded warning from Abbas?
Not even coded — they were a direct threat: If you ke ep poking around in
my business, you’ll end up as a rotting slab of meat.
If Maryam had just explained to me what was going on, I would never have
started investigating Abbas’s past. But Maryam hadn’t told me a damn
thing.
That first evening after my run - in with Epps, I waited anxiously in the
apartment for Maryam to return from the hospital. I needed her to deny
everything I had heard: No, of course my father is not a serial killer.
That evening, Nussie grew bored of getting his tummy rubbed, jumped
off my lap, and ran out into the corridor. The apartment was so huge that
some days I’d hardly see the cat. He would nap in some distant closet,
dreaming his feline dreams, and only emerge to greet Maryam, who seemed
to exert a strange power over him.
It grew dark early. I paced the living room and paused to look across the
courtyard. During the day, the windows were opaque, but at night, they
grew transparent and revealed the inhabitants moving around inside.
Sometimes I’d turn off all the lights and stand there with my camera,
snapping images of the people who appeared in the lit windows. I expected
to see extraordinary things — nudity, marital discord, women dancing alone
to sad music — but instead my photographs captured only tired, lonely
individuals, sprawled out in the blue light of their televisions, eating
directly out of take - out containers.
That evening fooling around with my camera was not going to help. I
tried to watch a hospital show on television, but without Maryam beside
me, it wasn’t any fun. Around eight p. m., there was a text from her, dinging
loudly in the silence: ‘Ran into some friends. Out for drinks. Don’t wait up.’
Friends? Drinks? Maryam didn’t drink — not a drop — and she had only
distant acquaintances. This was all very odd.
After a dinner of bland grilled fish, I waited up in the silent apartment,
and Maryam arrived home at midnight. She dropped her keys outside the
apartment door, and I heard the jingle of metal and rushed to let her in. She
was still in her work clothes, a black pantsuit, though she’d unclipped her
hospital badge. She was very drunk. Pulling off her flats, she held one shoe
in each hand, waving them around as she talked.
It had been a reunion of sorts, she said, slurring badly. Six girls from
Brearley. Two ran art galleries. Three others had kids and were on the
boards of philanthropic foundations. “Dull, dull, dull,” Maryam k ept
saying. “They were shocked that I had an actual job. K ept asking if it
interfered with my home life.” She giggled uncontrollably.
I saw my opening. “Hey, what is going on? Has Farhan been calling
you?”
Maryam grew somber and pressed a finger to her lips. “Shhh. Can’t say
a word.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but Maryam was traipsing down the
corridor. She threw her heels into a corner, flung herself across our bed, and
started snoring. She was out cold, and there was no chance of a
conversation. I pulled some blankets over her and went to sle ep in a guest
room.
Fine, I would talk to her in the morning, when she was sober — but the
next day, Maryam was already gone by the time I woke. I called her and left
a message: “We really need to talk.”
It was noon, and I was at work at Tiger Corp when she finally returned
my call. She apologized for her drunken behavior the night before and said
she was at the apartment, packing a suitcase. She had to go to Florida.
Another medical resident was supposed to give a presentation at a
conference in Miami — but he had fallen sick, and Maryam was, at the last
minute, filling in: “Sorry. I’ll be gone for a week.” Maryam said she had to
rush to the airport to make a flight — and hung up.
A conference? What bullshit. But when I looked it up, the annual
meeting of the American Psychiatric Association was indeed being held in
Miami — and there was a listing for Dr. Maryam Khan of NYU on a panel
about “The Social Determinants of Mental Health.”
Enough was enough. I called for my car and reached the courtyard of the
Apthorp in ten minutes. I found Maryam downstairs, just getting into a
black Lincoln Town Car. She saw me and paused; her face was pale, her
eyes shadowed with exhaustion.
“You’re avoiding me. For God’s sake, talk to me. Please.”
Maryam opened her mouth, but nothing came out. I became conscious
that our body language — me, advancing; she, with one foot in her car —
gave it all away: A marital falling out was happening in plain sight, right in
the middle of the Apthorp courtyard. George the doorman was standing
close by, his eyes carefully averted.
“You were stinking drunk last night. And now you’re suddenly taking
off? What the hell is going on?” Despite myself, my voice grew louder. “I
can’t take this anymore. For the first few months of our marriage, you’re
distant, and then, just when we’re getting close, you stop talking to me —
and you won’t tell me why. You’re in touch with Farhan, aren’t you? Are all
those calls from her?”
Maryam sneaked a look at her watch, and that furtive gesture infuriated
me. “I’m serious. If you leave, I’m not sure that we can survive this.”
She reached up and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “I wish I could tell
you, Ali, but I can’t. This is not about you — trust me. I’ll be back in a week,
and maybe we can talk then.” And then her voice dropped. “I do love you,
Ali.”
She had never said those words out loud to me before — and later, I
wished that I had returned them, but right then, I was too angry. I stood
aside as she slipped into her car and closed the door. There was nothing else
I could do; there were too many windows in the courtyard, too many hidden
eyes staring at me.
Maryam’s car pulled away and George, the doorman, came up to me.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Fine, fine. Perfect.” I gave him a glassy smile. “You know how it is.”
“Indeed, sir. It is not about winning the battle — it is about winning the
entire war.”
I smiled at George, but I was stewing inside. I was sick of Maryam’s
fluctuations of mood, sick of her silence. Sick of the Khans and their secrets.
I felt completely alone, and there was no one to talk to.
That day I returned to work at Tiger Corp and stared blankly at spreadsheets
that Kyle had pr epared, analyzing the windfalls of the EB - 5 project. I sat in
on endless meetings with immigration lawyers. And all the while, I was
turning over the entire situation in my mind: Maryam’s sudden coldness
toward me. The fact that she was inexplicably helping Farhan to investigate
their own father. Epps’s insane accusations that Abbas was a serial killer.
The more I thought about it, the more muddled I became.
Long ago, back when I was in art school, I had learned the term
“negative capability,” coined by the poet John Keats. According to him,
negative capability was achieved when “a man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and
reason.” I had always prided myself that I could roll with uncertainty,
embrace ambiguity — but now my belief was put to the test. As I waited for
Maryam to return from Florida, I barely ate and sl ept only a few hours a
night. In this destabilized state, I began to reconsider certain pieces of
information that I had suppressed about my father - in - law:
Abbas’s vicious flare - up with the attractive waitress in Mumbai.
His continuing financial support for the families of JHK’s victims.
His purported attraction to young girls, plus the rumors that he
maintained a love nest in Queens.
And most damming:
The jagged, raised scar over Farhan’s heart — and the fact that the
Jackson Heights Killer had cut out the hearts of his victims.
These pieces refused to cohere into a clear picture, but together they
built a dense, allusive web and held together the way that a poem holds
together, through metaphor and imagery. In my strange, altered state, I
began to wonder, was there any way that Epps could possibly be right?
The next day, I started to schedule lunches with several young cousins —
who, in public, were blatantly sycophantic — and it was shocking how, after
a martini or two, they were willing to hold forth on Abbas’s peculiarities:
His absences from the office. His eye for young Indian women, whom he
hired enthusiastically and who always left within a year. His ability to go
from calmness to absolute rage, to engage in tantrums and throw things.
The cousins loved to speculate about Abbas and his twisted secrets, but,
paradoxically, the more I heard, the more relieved I felt. There were no
rumors about Abbas abusing Farhan — if anything, he had tolerated her
erratic lifestyle for years. Sure, Abbas could be a real asshole at work, but
his behavior echoed that of many business tycoons who misbehaved
strategically to motivate their employees. As for Abbas’s extramarital
activities, well, Farhan had long ago told me that extreme wealth relieved
the Khans of conforming to societal norms. If anything, Abbas was a cliché:
an older man trying to re capture his youth through a string of younger
mistresses.
Yes, my father - in - law’s behavior was de eply inappropriate, even
manipulative, but it did not add up to him being a serial killer — and for a
few days, my “irritable reaching after fact and reason” did calm me a little.
I became convinced that Farhan had hired Epps to work on some sort of
absurd conspiracy theory — and somehow she had in volved Maryam, too.
None of it made sense, but it didn’t have to — because Farhan was nuts,
wasn’t she?
Then, on that sixth morning, the men from Zenith Art Services entered our
apartment and hung up those gruesome photographs of rotting meat — and I
began to feel very, very afraid.
Had Abbas gotten wind of me poking around? Were these images a
warning?
I called Abbas’s personal assistant and instantly got her upbeat voice.
“Oh,” she said, “great timing, Mr. Azeem. I was just about to call you. Do
you like the new Lapcharoensaps?”
“The ... what?” I said.
“Dao Lapcharoensap,” she answered cheerfully. “The Thai photographer
— her images are a bit edgy. If you don’t like them, I can always have them
r eplaced.”
“So, Abbas hasn’t seen these?”
Abbas’s assistant r eplied that no, Mr. Khan hadn’t seen the photographs
yet; they had been chosen by an Australian art adviser who scoured the
galleries for hot young Asian artists. “Sometimes,” the assistant said, “the
adviser gets carried away. Are you unhappy with the Lapcharoensaps?”
“No, fine, fine.” I hung up and stared at the vibrant images of rotting
meat. Was the assistant lying? Had Abbas knowingly sent me these?
Across the way, I glimpsed my reflection in a large gilt mirror: a drawn,
haunted face; bloodshot eyes; a bad cut under the chin from shaving. I was
a mess — and it was all Maryam’s fault.
She had texted me earlier that day, saying that after the conference was
over, she was staying on for a few extra days to “decompress,” whatever
that meant. Enough was enough. I got out my phone and booked the next
flight to Miami. I could be at the conference hotel early that evening. We’d
have a face - to - face, Maryam and I, and talk about what the hell was really
going on.
I was in the midst of booking my flight when the doorbell rang again.
The Zenith Art Services guys had, no doubt, left one of their tools behind. I
got up in a petulant rush and walked to the door, already thinking ahead — to
the flight, the blessed heat of Florida, to what I would say when I saw
Maryam: No matter how bad it is, tell me the truth. No more evasions.
I yanked open the door, and Barey Mian st epped into the apartment.
Despite the cold, he wore his usual white pants and long - sleeved white
cricket sweater. He must have just shaved because his upper lip was
smooth, his Lincolnesque beard freshly trimmed, and he smelled strongly of
sandalwood soap.
“Ali Sahib,” he said courteously in Hindi, “I hope I am not disturbing
you.”
“Well, actually, not the best timing. I was on my way out, I’m sorry, and
— ”
Mian ignored me and strolled down the corridor, not even glancing at
the gruesome photographs. He walked into the living room as if he owned
the place, and there was no trace of subservience in his bearing.
I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach; I had completely misread the
man. He was no servant at all.
Mian stood with his back to me and spoke in a calm, reasonable voice.
“I don’t understand you, Ali. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you —
and your actions — are a complete mystery to me.
“Abbas Sahib plucked you from Mumbai and gave you a future here.
Everyone knows that Azeem and Sons is bankrupt, and your brother will
inherit what is left. And what exactly were you doing with your life back
home? Pretending to run a photography business but mostly sle eping with
women you picked up on your gigs — secretaries, old maids, frustrated
society ladies — ”
I tried to interject, but Mian’s voice lost its reasonable tone, became
strident. “You think we are fools? Hanh? Our investigation was discreet,
but the word came back: ‘Ali Azeem is a loser, drifting, going nowhere.’
Still, for some perverse reason, Abbas Sahib liked you. Perhaps he saw
himself in you: the younger son of an illustrious family in decline, lost,
frittering away his life.
“I will be honest. I did not share Abbas Sahib’s feelings. Why were we
even considering an uncredentialled, unaccomplished boy for our Maryam?
There were other candidates, Ivy League graduates, men with professional
careers. The entire family agreed with me — but no, Abbas Sahib liked you,
and so I went along with it. I thought, ‘At least this boy is harmless.’ So it
was a shock to find out that you were screwing Farhan. Forgive my
language, but it was pure fornication, was it not?
“Still, I did not judge you. I know Farhan well. She hasn’t really grown
up, she still behaves childishly, she wants everything Maryam has — that’s
why she went out of her way to seduce you. Knowing all this, I let you off
with a warning. For a while, you seemed to straighten out, but for the past
week you have been talking to all the cousins, ferreting out every piece of
malicious gossip about Abbas Sahib. Why are you biting the hand that feeds
you?”
Finally, I understood why Mian was so incensed. Hamza had ratted me
out.
One of the cousins I’d lunched with was young Hamza. After his failure
with the Tower Seven marketing campaign, I’d assumed he would be fired,
but Abbas had kicked him up the corporate ladder: Empty - headed Hamza,
with his dimples, charm, and Princeton connections, was now head of
Client Services, and spent his days wining and dining Indonesian
industrialists, Emirati sheikhs, Russian oil magnates.
I’d stopped by Hamza’s office and asked casually if there was any basis
to the rumors swirling around the old man. Hamza’s face had flushed red
with pleasure, and he’d whispered to me, “Have you noticed that Coco is
always up at that Zen monastery? I heard she’s got the hots for the abbot or
whatever, you know, some white guy who’s taken on a Japanese name. With
Coco gone, Abbas must be getting his rocks off somehow. Where there is
smoke there’s always fire, right?”
I said that I’d appreciate any information about Abbas’s sexual
proclivities. Hamza had nodded agreeably and said he’d ask around for me
— and then he’d picked up the phone and r eported me to Barey Mian.
It was all too much: The rude way that Mian had spoken to me. The idea
that the Khan clan was against me marrying Maryam. My body flushed
with sudden, liberating anger, and I advanced on him.
“You will not use that tone with me. And maybe I too should have done
my own investigation before getting married — because there are some
pretty awful rumors about Abbas. So bad that Farhan has hired a private
investigator to look into her own father. And this man, Epps, is no joke.
He’s a retired police detective — and he told me a lot of interesting stuff.”
I was a head taller than Mian and maybe forty pounds heavier, but I saw
his face turn crimson, his fists clench, and I thought he was about to strike
me — but then he turned away and spoke in a tight, controlled voice.
“Look, I know Epps. He cannot be trusted. He has an axe to grind ...
You must understand: A man like Abbas Sahib, a man with brown skin, he
becomes successful, and what do his competitors say? That he is corrupt.
That his money comes from the mob. That he is a sexual predator.” Mian
st epped back and took a de ep breath. “Look. There is no point in squabbling
among us. I am an open book. Ask me whatever you want, and I will
answer honestly. Anything. Go ahead.”
We stood face - to - face, Mian and I, in the living room. He was on the
defensive, and that emboldened me.
“Fine. Explain something to me. Farhan has a jagged scar on her
chest” — I gestured to my own — “right here, over her heart. She told me that
she had an accident, but Abbas said that she tried to kill herself. I don’t
believe him. A girl would take pills, slice her wrists in the bath — but she
wouldn’t try to cut open her own chest.”
Mian took a half st ep back. He lost all steam and sank down onto a
couch. “My God. That ... Terrible. If I could go back in time ... That poor,
poor girl. I told Abbas Sahib not to do it, but he...”
I stared at Mian in horrible fascination. I had expected him to deny
everything, and here he was, looking guilty as hell: He dropped his head
into his hands and hid his face, but I was too far gone — and wanted it all
spelled out in gruesome detail.
“So Farhan didn’t try to kill herself? Abbas did that to her — for what,
practice? And then he went on to kill all those girls in Jackson Heights?
You’ve known all along — but you protected him?”
“What nonsense are you speaking?” Mian’s face changed: The door that
had been opened, showing his tangled emotions, was slammed shut. “No,
no, no. You are completely wrong. Completely.” He laughed, an abrupt,
relieved bark. “Epps — as I said — is a crazy, obsessed man, and Farhan, she
just wants attention. She will do anything to be noticed by Abbas Sahib, to
engage him in any perverse way.”
Mian walked over to the marble - topped bar in the corner of the living
room and, without asking my permission, poured himself a big slug of a
rare single malt Scotch.
“Aah,” he said, taking a gulp. “That’s better. No, listen — what actually
happened was...”
I listened reluctantly as Mian began to speak.
When Mian left, an hour later, it was just past eleven in the morning.
Outside, traffic surged on Broadway; the day was in full spate — but for
me, it was over.
Mian had ended up reassuring me that I was not the son - in - law of a
serial killer. Instead, I was the son - in - law of a vicious, ruthless man who
treated his daughters like property. Abbas’s suits, his aftershave, his clipped
British accent were all part of a carefully constructed facade — and
underneath it was a brutal Old Testament patriarch. Poor Farhan, what she
had endured. And Maryam, too, must have been indelibly scarred by her
childhood experience.
It should have been enough for me that Abbas was not a serial killer —
but ego is a funny thing, and my ego was de eply bruised. Mian had been
brutally honest about my true position in the Khan family: They thought of
me as weak, unqualified, a loser.
I badly needed a drink. There was always the bar in the living room —
but I did not want to drink alone. And I had to get away from the enormous,
bruised slabs of rotting meat hanging on my walls.
I grabbed my Italian overcoat and headed out the door. Just as I was
walking through the arched gateway of the Apthorp, I ran into George, who
was getting off the night shift. Something about his neat, humorous persona
was incredibly attractive, and on an impulse, I asked him if he wanted to
join me for a drink. “Hmm,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Maybe a little
early?” He must have sensed my desperation, because he then said, “What
the hell, one quick one.” I considered going to the St. Regis, with its
Maxfield Parrish murals and thirty - dollar Aperol spritzes, but I didn’t want
to run into anyone from the Khan orbit. I asked George if he could
recommend a spot, a quiet, discreet spot, and he nodded and said, “I know
just the place,” and I was so grateful I could barely speak.
We took a cab down to 44 th Street, just outside Times Square.
It was an archetypal dive bar, a dingy, narrow slot of a place: long
scarred wooden bar along one side, a working jukebox, air thick with a mix
of spilled beer, disinfectant, the fug of endless human habitation. What
made it different was the wall covered with boxing photographs, all highcontrast black -
and - white, the boxing ring stripped of color and subtlety,
turned into a dramatic arena of combat. Right in the center was a portrait of
the African American owner of the bar, Billy, posing with a slim young
version of Muhammad Ali, the “Louisville Lip” himself.
“Is this place to your liking?” George turned to me from his stool. “The
drinks are fine, but I cannot recommend the food. Pretzels, maybe.”
“Great photos,” I said, gesturing to the walls. “You know I used to be a
wedding photographer? Sometimes I regret having given up that career. It
was tough, but I was my own man. You know?”
“You are a fount of surprises, Mr. Azeem,” said George primly.
“Ali. Call me Ali, please. And drinks are on me.”
George ordered us each a Coors and a shot of Jack. I remembered
Mian’s words and felt anger course through me; I downed my drink and
called for another, but George sipped daintily at his first whiskey. Even
outside of work he wore a uniform of sorts: dark trousers, a collared white
shirt, an expensive black cashmere overcoat, and dandyish pointed shoes.
With his shaved head and punctilious speech, I’d guessed he was in his
early sixties, but up close, his face was unlined, and I realized that he was
much younger.
“Nice decor,” I said, looking around. “Really authentic.”
George shrugged. “It does the job. I had a top - notch spot out in Queens.
Clientele was mostly Indian, so they had Kingfisher beer. Papadums and
chili peanuts for snacks. But it’s gone now — like everything that was
reasonable and appealing about this city.”
We made small talk about how expensive New York had become.
George had recently returned to the city after being away in Guyana for
years, and he found it to be “completely in the thrall of filthy lucre.” He
said that the Apthorp was “a fine establishment,” and his “renumerations
were more than adequate.” Where had he learned to talk in this formal,
ornate style?
The booze began to work on George, because after our third round his
prissy diction loosened up, and a wicked, barbed sense of humor emerged.
He told me stories about his awful, Dickensian upbringing in Guyana, as
the child of a schizophrenic mother and a brutal, heavy - handed father who
would beat him at the slightest provocation.
Tears filled George’s eyes, and our conversation seemed about to take a
maudlin turn, so I quickly asked about the other residents of the Apthorp.
George brightened then and launched into a series of hilarious anecdotes:
The aging pop singer from the seventies who had a botched eye lift and
emerged only at night to walk her poodle. The macho banker with a thing
for young Chinese waiters. The tech company founder who had
bioengineered smoothies delivered every day.
“So, what do you think,” I finally asked, “about that Hemingway quote?
That the rich are just like us, exc ept that they have more money? Agree?
Disagree?”
“I am not familiar with that author.” George put down his drink and
wiped his lips. “But from what I have observed, the rich are different — but
not in the ways one expects: arrogance, snobbishness, vanity. No. The
magnitude of their money warps their reality. For example, weather, yes?
For me, weather is a given. If it is a cloudy, cold day, that’s what it is. A
very rich person, one who has six or eight residences around the world, can
fly to Baja, or to Bali, and get exactly the kind of weather they want. Once
you can do that, you become impatient with reality ... Forgive me, I have
talked too much.”
“Not at all. This is very interesting.”
I thought of the Khan cousins and their obsession with corporate jets, the
exorbitant sums of money they spent on second, third, fourth residences.
Hamza, I knew, had an apartment on the Upper East Side, a town house in
San Francisco, and what he called a “small studio” in the heart of London.
He flitted between all these places, sometimes not even adjusting to local
time.
A group of tourists entered the bar and loudly demanded drink menus;
they were red - faced and very drunk. The elderly owner, the old boxer,
refused to serve them, and the tourists left, threatening to write him terrible
reviews online. The old man winked at us and turned back to his newspaper.
The tourists were from the new world — they believed in internet reviews
and Instagram - worthy drinks — while the old man owned his bar, populated
by regulars, and didn’t give a damn about strangers. He was a holdout, a
dinosaur, and when he died, they’d demolish his bar, build a steel - and - glass
condo in its place, and rent out the bottom to a cashless Starbucks. Money
was continuously flowing into New York from all over the world and
reshaping it — and men like Abbas directed those flows of money, became
co - creators of the new city. How arrogant had that power made him?
“So.” I turned to George. “You have your ear to the ground, right?
What’s the gossip about my in - laws? The Khans?”
“I don’t like to say,” George said primly, but after I promised not to
r epeat anything, he continued. “Well, Coco is lovely. An eccentric, of
course, all that Zen meditation. People say she’s pushing her husband to
donate a few million dollars to some monastery in the Hudson Valley, and
this is an area of friction. Now, Mr. Khan, he’s a piece of work. Has a
mistress out in Queens, they say, for years. Worships her. She advises him
on all his investments. And the daughter, Farhan, is a drug addict. On and
off. All that money, she can afford to be an addict and get away with it...”
He halted and his eyes gleamed with panic. “You won’t r epeat this, right?
Mr. Khan, he is very vengeful when crossed.”
Interesting. This was different from the rumors about the young girls.
But there it was again — a hidden apartment, a love nest. I could see that
George was, despite the alcohol, feeling anxious. He was a timid soul,
really. I assured him that I would be very discreet — and ordered us another
round of drinks.
As we consumed more alcohol, George’s accent slipped, and he sounded
more Caribbean; he said he had to make a quick trip to the “bar - chroom”
and when I asked him about his next shift, he said he was off until
“Chooseday,” and I realized with some difficulty — the alcohol was hitting
me, too — what he meant.
We had a lot of drinks. Cheap drinks, because when I settled up, it was,
to my shock, less than a hundred dollars. It was disorienting to walk out of
the nighttime gloom of the bar into bright afternoon sunlight. George
insisted on taking the train home to his place in Queens, and I reluctantly
got a car back up to the Apthorp.
Before we parted, I told George I’d had a nice time, and I was being
honest — it was a relief to spend time with someone who was unimpressed
by wealth and status. I said that we should hang out again, and George said,
“I’d like that,” and he seemed to mean it.
When I returned to the apartment, I felt a little better. The Khans might
think I was trash — but look what everyone else was saying about them. It
was just four in the afternoon, early enough for a nap. I set the alarm for an
hour and climbed into bed. Knowing that I’d feel hungover later, I
swallowed a handful of ibuprofen.
I woke briefly to the dinging of my alarm, switched it off, and went back to
sle ep.
The day ended, evening faded into night, but still I sl ept on.
At nine at night my phone rang, finally waking me. Even in this
confused state, I rushed to answer, hoping that it was Maryam, but by the
time I located my cell — inside my overcoat pocket, which I’d flung onto the
floor — it had gone to voicemail, and I waited impatiently for the message to
load. The number was unknown, but the voice was female and strangely
familiar.
“Hello? Are you there? I’ll be up in a few minutes.”
I was still processing this message, trying to recognize the voice, when
the doorbell rang. Odd. At this late hour, Miss Ritu was long gone. Had
Mian returned? Normally, the doormen wouldn’t let anyone in without
calling up first.
For the second time that day, I opened the door. Farhan stood in the
lobby, looking uncertain, one hand on an expensive, shiny aluminum rolling
suitcase. Bright red lipstick, asymmetrical short haircut. Thinner than
before, but with those unmistakable plump, rounded shoulders. An air of
tiredness about her, but she didn’t seem crazy at all.
“Ali. It’s good to see you.”
It was dreamlike: The dim lobby. The glittering metal suitcase. The
alcohol was still pulsing faintly through my veins.
“Maryam’s not here,” I finally managed to get out. “She’s in Florida.”
“Yes, I know. I sent her there.” She kissed me lightly on the mouth and
st epped inside, a warm hand on my cheek. “Been drinking? You look like
crap. Let’s get some coffee into you. I could use some, too. Long flight
from Tokyo. My body doesn’t know what time it is.”
Farhan brushed past me, walked down the corridor, and I heard her
exclaim, “Yuck. What awful photographs. Who the hell chose these?”
Fifteen minutes later, Farhan and I stood silently in the kitchen, sipping
from tiny cups of rich espresso. She’d briskly ground coffee beans and fed
them into the gleaming fire - engine - red espresso machine, and we hadn’t
said a thing as the coffee hissed and sputtered to a conclusion.
It was hard to believe that Farhan was standing a few feet away, blowing
on her espresso to cool it. As usual, her crimson lipstick was smudged, and
she exuded her familiar salty smell. I had a million questions for her, but
now I felt shy because I was confronted with two Farhans: the one standing
here in my kitchen and the Farhan of memory, and I could not help
r eplaying our muggy afternoons of passionate sex and, afterward, the way
we’d ravenously consumed spicy Korean chicken wings.
Finally, I had to speak, break the silence. “I saw you on the cover of
some Japanese magazine. Congratulations on your success.”
“Why, thank you.” Her voice was cool. “So at least someone here
noticed. I never heard a word from Maryam or my parents.”
“Those people...” I thought of what Barey Mian had said about me.
“They’re impossible snobs. Their idea of success is unrealistic.”
“Oh. Wow.” Farhan clinked her espresso cup down on the counter.
“You’ve changed your tune. The last time we met, you were all gung ho
about Tiger Corp.”
It had been a very long day. All that alcohol, and then the ibuprofen —
and now the espresso jacked up my nervous system and made me jittery.
Farhan and I could stand around for hours, saying sharp, cutting things, but
I’d had enough.
I just wanted to know the truth.
“What the hell are you doing back here?” The question just burst out of
my mouth. “Maryam won’t say a word to me, but I know she met with that
former NYPD detective, the one you hired. And I ended up talking to Epps.
He told me that Abbas has blood on his hands: Five girls dead, but that can’t
be true. Your dad is an asshole, but he’s not a killer. Sure, after what he did
to you, I know you must be very angry. It was brutal, unforgivable.”
Farhan busied herself with the hissing espresso machine. She handed me
another tiny cup of espresso, and her hands were shaking. “I’m not sure
what you’re talking about.”
“Barey Mian was here earlier today — and he told me everything: You
got pregnant when you were sixteen. You wanted to ke ep the baby, but
Abbas sent you to Switzerland and forced you to have an abortion. You fell
into a de
Ep d epression afterward and stabbed yourself in the chest — with a
switchblade that you found in Mian’s room. Maryam discovered you
bleeding out and saved your life ... It’s all true, right?”
Farhan lowered her face and sipped from her espresso. “Mmmm,
broadly, yes.”
“Broadly? What else is there? You hate your father because of this. You
want to destroy him — but why now? Why have you hired Epps after all
these years?”
Farhan drained her espresso and licked the foam from her lips. “Did
Mian tell you the rest of it? What Papa did to Hutch? No?”
I looked blank, and she continued in a brisk tone.
“Hutch. Ivor Hutchinson. The boy I fooled around with. Bookish,
shambling boy, a Latin nerd. He’d translate erotic passages from Catullus
and give them to me — Hutch was crazy about me. He never wanted to get
me pregnant; he was as surprised as I was. When Papa found out, he went
on the warpath and wanted to hurt someone — but I refused to tell him
Hutch was the father. I thought Papa had let it go, but when I got back from
Switzerland, I heard that Hutch had been found up in the Bronx. Beaten
badly, both his cheekbones shattered — he had to have his face rebuilt. The
cops said it was a drug deal gone wrong — but, please, Hutch didn’t even
drink coffee. Papa didn’t bother to deny he was behind it — he just shrugged
and said, ‘Those who play with fire get burned.’ Whatever Mian has told
you just isn’t true. Papa is capable of tremendous violence. I felt responsible
for what happened to Hutch — that’s why I tried to kill myself.”
The silence grew between us. I tried — and failed — to absorb the
enormity of what Abbas had done.
“That’s awful, Farhan,” I finally stammered. “The old man is a monster.
But did he kill those girls? Is that why you hired Epps?”
“I’ll tell you everything, I promise.” She moved closer. “But before we
get into all that stuff, I need to apologize. I never intended to disappear.
Mian told Papa about our affair, and the old man made me promise that I
wouldn’t stay in touch with you — that was his condition for giving me the
store in Tokyo.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. So Mian had ratted me out to
Abbas after all. All this time that the old man had been confiding in me,
making me feel special — and he’d been manipulating me like a puppet.
Farhan moved closer and, with her fingertips, wiped a fleck of espresso
foam from the corner of my mouth. “I’ve missed you, Ali. I really have.
Have you missed me?”
It was still hard to believe this was Farhan, in my kitchen. She was so
close I could feel the heat of her body.
“I ... I saw you on the cover of that Japanese magazine. You looked very
stylish.”
Farhan smiled happily. “So you have missed me.”
She reached out for me, and I did not stop her. She kissed me, long and
slow, and I tasted the bitter coffee in her mouth.
The espresso maker hissed and sputtered behind us, but I soon stopped
noticing it.