Evel Knievel Days by Pauls Toutonghi Page B

arranged, orchestrated—for the lunch to begin in earnest. Because how—how—could you eat if the tip of your fork and your napkin were out of alignment? It was an impossibility. It would be a travesty.
    Somebody once told me: Reasons are the stories that you make up after you act. I understand this, I really do. I wish, I yearn, for the ability to give you my feelings, to simply transfer them to you at this moment, to cut a window into myself and display the substance, the grain and the character, of the images I saw. Because this cut wouldrelieve a pressure. In telling the story, the story would become easier to bear, to hold inside of me, where it is now, private and hidden and completely concealed. What I wanted to do was something spectacular. I wanted to call Natasha, to ask her to join me here, so I could reach over the table and kiss her, so I could press my lips against hers and run my fingers through her hair. She of course was not there. Any version of her would be a hallucination.
    When the food came, it was delicious. Rafiq brought it to the table himself, repeating stock phrases about how I was his honored guest and always welcome,
inshallah
(God willing), at his restaurant. I idly wondered if he’d poisoned my meal. But the plates steamed and gave off the thick scent of chickpeas and coriander and saffron rice. He’d just baked the pita on the bread stone in his blazing wood-fired oven. He’d used a massive black-charred paddle. I do agree with M.F.K. Fisher, who said that
the smell of good bread baking is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight
.
    I took my phone out of my pocket and turned it on again. Off/on, off/on. This time there was one message. I stopped chewing. I punched in my security code. Natasha’s voice expanded into the room—hesitant, tired-sounding, tentative. She needed time, she said, to think about everything. She was confused. It was a short, dispiriting message. Of course she was confused. I was confused, too, and hurt as well. But what did I expect? Let’s run away together and move to Tahiti? Let’s run away and join the circus or start a jug band or drive south to Mexico City? Let’s just—perhaps the most thrilling and terrifying of all possible ideas to me—let’s run away.
    Rafiq lingered too close to the table while I was eating. He madea great show of dusting and straightening and collecting menus. “You like it?” he finally said.
    “It’s average,” I said.
    Rafiq smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “How
is
your mother, anyway?”
    I told him. His casual question turned into a ten-minute narrative of my problems.
    “Oh dear,” Rafiq said when I’d finished. “You know, I never met your father. But he’s a legend in the community.”
    “Exactly,” I said. “Legendary for lying. That’s what Mom says now. She says he’s not sick. She says there’s no way it’s true. She says he’s healthy as a horse.”
    Rafiq glanced around the restaurant, perhaps to judge if the few other patrons were listening to us talk. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Why would he show up, then?” he said.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s strange. Maybe I’ll go to Egypt and track him down to ask him.”
    At that, quite unexpectedly, Rafiq laughed. He laughed and laughed, laughed until tears came to his eyes.
    “I could do it,” I said.
    That only made him laugh more. He snorted. “Khosi Saqr, Butte’s best-known hermit.”
    “I’m really quite social,” I said.
    “Oh,” he said. “I am indeed sorry. It’s just so amusing. The thought of you dropping everything and flying around the world to look for your father.”
    “A number of commercial airlines fly to Cairo,” I said.
    Rafiq kept laughing. “It’s just so impossible,” he said. “It wouldnever happen. You, of all people. Your mother, she once told me that as a boy, you sorted your crayons according to their length.”
    I blushed. “So that I’d know which colors I