Читать книгу Bibi's Rainbow: Hilarious Ordeals of Assimilation - Majid Amini - Страница 6

Mike gets up again, goes downstairs, brews fresh tea, pours a cup from the steamy samovar, butters two slices of whole-wheat toast, takes a jar of strawberry jam, two two-minute boiled eggs, puts them on a tray and goes upstairs. After putting the tray down on his side of the bed, he gently shakes his wife to wake her up. She is so lethargic that she can hardly open her eyes. Partially covering her squinted eyes with one hand and signaling at the window with the other, she commands Mike to pull the certain closed. He carries out the order with a small amount of irritation reflected on his face. After placing the breakfast tray on her lap, he has to force her to sit up straight in the bed.

As usual, Noshin refuses to eat, but after his insistence that borders on anger, she uninterestedly forces down several morsels of eggs and bread sweetened with jam that Mike patiently prepares for her. He then anxiously watches her drink a cup of tea like an adult watches an ill child taking his medicine before he takes away the tray.

After her breakfast, she lies down on her side and closes her eyes. He gently massages her back, performing the ritualistic act every morning that has become a reminder of the good old days for him. He knows that what always motivated him to rub her back was to arouse her sexual desire, but now he does it because he feels sorry for her. He keeps touching her even though he knows well that he won’t hear any of those seductive purring sounds from her that she used to murmur whenever he touched her. He struggles with no success to remember exactly when his love for her was replaced by pettiness.

In her murky mind Noshin can hardly wait for Mike to leave the house so she can get on with her daily routine, even though what she does afterward is no longer a secret to anyone. Whether it is a matter of courtesy, respect, embarrassment, guilt, or a combination of all of these that compels her to perform her routine out of everybody’s sight, she is not certain. As soon as Mike leaves the house, she will quietly go downstairs to have her daily cocktail of antidepressant and tranquilizer pills, which she will down with a tall glass of mostly hundred-proof vodka and orange juice. It is only the combination of these substances, she believes, that endow her with enough nerve, strength and energy to make peace with her ghosts and face her world half sanely.

After Mike carries the tray with the remains of Noshin’s mostly uneaten breakfast down to the kitchen, he takes a quick shower, dries himself, wraps a long bright yellow towel around his waist, and stands in front of the wide mirror lathering up his face with shaving cream, preparing to shave. Just before putting the razor blade to his skin, he pauses and stares strangely at his own face in the mirror as if he has suddenly discovered a flaw, or is looking at an unfamiliar person. It is obviously a flash of thought that makes him pause. For some mysterious reason, he remembers one of his university classmates, Parviz, another self-exile, an old friend who, unlike himself, never sold his soul to the previous regime to attain fame and fortune. The incident Mike remembers took place on a freezing snowy day in December on a street in Paris, a year prior to migrating to America. He had commented to Parviz, “I still don’t know what caused the Iranians to go so fanatically crazy that they revolted and destroyed everything that was stable and good?” Parviz had shifted his weight on his legs and responded, “If you’re really curious to know at least one of the causes of the revolution, just look into a mirror for a second.” Those were his friend’s last words before he disappeared forever into the overcrowded stairs leading to an underground metro.

Looking into the mirror, Mike considers how the upheaval of the revolution broke the cord that once firmly linked him to his homeland, and how he hasn’t been able to anchor himself in his adopted country. He feels adrift, and wonders how he can connect his wonderful past to his present and feel safe and secure again.

As he shaves he can’t help but dislike seeing his own face, as he unwillingly entertains an unpleasant thought: a collection of many faces like his brought about the disastrous revolution. But soon thoughts of what is ahead for him the rest of that day become an excuse he aloofly uses to shrug off the unpleasant images in his mind, releasing him from any further thoughts about revolution or personal responsibilities.

He puts on a white shirt, a bright red silk tie and his dark blue Italian-made suit. Dressing up meticulously and ostentatiously, he consciously pretends he is going to report to his office perhaps as an indispensable deputy secretary of industry in Iran, even though he well knows he is only a simple and easily replaceable clerk at The Home Depot. It caused some moments of embarrassment when he first started this routine of dressing up, but gradually the process became like an addiction. It momentarily makes him feel important, sort of an attempt to preserve his âberoo, if not to others, at least to himself.

Before going downstairs, he wakes up Shirin, Che, Ester, Nadia and Rushan, but allows little Bijan sleep, to be fed breakfast later by Ferdous or Naghmeh. He knows that Harriet and Shayan are already out looking for jobs. Mike doesn’t have the heart to wake up Farhad. After much nagging on his part and groaning from the children, they finally join him in the kitchen, where breakfast is ready. Sipping a cup of tea, Mike listens to Shirin explaining to Nadia and Rushan how Che lost one of his testicles in the middle of the night, and how Grandpa Mike ingeniously found it for him. Watching his kids laughing gives him the shot of adrenaline he desperately needs to face his unpleasant day.

After causing a lot of grief for the family, Nadia had finally passed her driver’s license test. Being a strong-minded teenager, she had immediately demanded her own car. Knowing that she would raise holy hell if she didn’t get her way, Mike reluctantly relented and bought her an old jalopy, a two-door Toyota Corolla, on the condition that she would be responsible for giving rides to the younger kids. On school days, she drives Che and Ester to the nearby daycare center, Rushan to the corner of Santa Monica and 20^th Street to catch her school bus, and Shirin to her elementary school five blocks away. She then goes to her high school. This morning, Nadia begins to herd the kids out to the car.

Mike parks his car at the far end of the parking lot of The Home Depot off Sherman Way in the San Fernando Valley. He takes his bag, in which he carries his work clothes, and deliberately enters the building through the front entrance door. Thinking he looks like a high-ranking administrator, Mike makes sure everybody notices him in his tailored Italian suit. Even though he has several times been the target of disdainful remarks and laughter by other employees, he craves respect in any way or form that he can get it. His last high position in the Iranian government, where everybody bowed to him whenever he walked down the halls, had irreversibly spoiled him rotten. Like an addict, respect has become an essential part of his existence; the lack of it causes severe withdrawal symptoms, with which he is unable to cope. There are, of course, times that he loathes himself for cunningly impersonating a man with character, when, in reality, he can hardly stand to look at himself in the mirror.

After over nine years working at The Home Depot, with all his education and managerial experience, Mike still hasn’t been promoted to upper management at the chain store, which he thinks he deserves. He is still a simple floor foreman, responsible for an awful lot of work, and with only five subordinates, who never fear or respect him like his subordinates did in Iran. It makes him feel reasonably better when he thinks the reason for not being promoted is because he is a foreigner, and worse, a Persian. And there are times that the lack of promotion troubles him so much that he feels like screaming, bloody discrimination.

The five people who have been working for him are: Leon, an old ex-Vietnamese army officer, whose ultimate wish is to return home, even though nearly all of his memories about Vietnam before his departure are not pleasant to be remembered.

At twenty-six, Little Joe, standing at just over five feet (on a good day) is a second generation Italian-American. A hardworking man, a loving and devoted father of two gorgeous kids and the kind husband of even an attractive wife, that many years of marriage have converted them to a brother and sister.

Big Jerome, a six-foot-five-inch African-American in his early fifties, with his transmittable smile, he is liked by everybody.

Mary is a forty-three-year-old, snack-loving woman who, after losing her second husband to cancer, crossed the line from being voluptuous to being classified as obese. If her enormous body is not a pleasant sight to gaze at for some people, her unique warm smile, her beautiful blue eyes and her amiable personality definitely compensate for it. As a single mother, she works hard to raise her three kids.

Victoria Aguilar is a beautiful twenty-three-year-old proud Mexican-American, who is determined to become a medical doctor. Polite, warm and caring, she is an ideal young lady that every father wishes to have as a daughter, and perhaps many men as their wife.

As Mike arrives at work, like every morning, he ignores the look on Mathew’s face―the cashier, who has never missed any opportunity to show his disapproval of him. He ignores the arched eyebrows of young Steve, the front desk clerk, and the mocking smile of Rob, working at the return merchandise desk, whose nose looks like a large bruised banana hanging from between his two brush-sized black eyebrows.

In some dark burrows of his mind Mike images that he is heading toward his immaculately decorated office in Iran, as he physically heads straight for the locker room at the rear of the building. Going through his daily metamorphosis, he changes his clothes to his working-stiff outfit―blue jeans, a long sleeved work shirt, and a pair of comfortable shoes. When he ties the khaki apron behind his back and walks out on the floor, Mike appears, at least physically, as assimilated into American working class society as one who has been here for many generations. He is ready to start his degrading day at a job he dislikes intensely, a job he feels is way beneath him, and a job that he has come to believe is depriving him from shaping and sustaining a promising and meaningful life, a job a thousand notches below his previous one in Iran.

Today’s insignificant tasks begin with a man desperate to find the right metric nuts for the sample screws he holds in his hand as if they were prized possessions. Mike directs him to the correct aisle and the man flashes an insincere smile as he scurries off.

He has to find crazy glue for an old fat Russian woman with an obnoxious attitude, who acts as if she is direct descendant of the last czar. She wants to glue pieces of her broken Russian antique porcelain pot back together. The woman is so nervous that Mike has to refrain from telling her that she should go to a pharmacy and ask for the most potent tranquilizer to glue herself together.

He sits down with an impatient, niggling emigrant couple to help them select the right mosaic tiles for the kitchen and bathroom floors of their new dream house―most probably, Mike thinks, a tastelessly built pile of lumber, but undoubtedly their Taj Mahal. He can’t guess where they come from. He doesn’t have the nerve to ask them, but with their noticeable accents, dark complexions, and straight raven-black hair, he is convinced they are either from India or Pakistan. The images of destitute people in the slums of Calcutta, India, and the city of Karachi in Pakistan, where he has visited in the past come to focus in his mind.

He shakes his head when the couple finally selects some dark mosaic tiles that Mike thinks are tastelessly ugly as volcanic rocks. In his entire life, Mike has never entertained the notion that as people come in different shades of colors, their tastes might wary the same. He stares at the couple contemptuously as he continues thinking while the customers go on arguing between themselves in their native language.

Next, Mike settles a dispute between the store and a couple who are returning two trays of withered begonias that are suffering from a severe case of dehydration, claiming they have changed their minds. He is about to lose his temper when the couple refuses to accept credit and keeps insisting on receiving nothing but cash for their purchase. Aggravated, he obliges.

In the afternoon, he takes his time to assist several more customers in finding what they are looking for: electric outlets, fuses, sprinklers, nails, garden hoses, four-ply plywood, two-by-fours, and a lost cute boy that reminds him his grandson Che. He then delegates several tasks to those who work for him and tries to catch up with his paperwork. About an hour before the end of his eight hours shift, Mike walks around between the isles to check on the arrangements of various merchandises on the shelves, and on his subordinates. Checking on the people who work under him periodically is a way to indulge himself with a small sense of superiority, even though, in the back of him mind, he knows, he is only deceiving himself.

Everybody is accounted for, except he can’t locate Mary and Little Joe anywhere on the floor. He naively likes to think they are so dedicated to their work that they might be in the stockroom, busy packing up products to stock the shelves. However, a hunch nags at him and his curiosity is ratcheted up a few notches. He sneaks into the stockroom, and is disappointed at not finding them there either. As he is about to leave and look for them elsewhere, he hears a moaning sound that seems to be coming from the rear of the room. He follows the sound, and is startled to find Little Joe and big Mary in a very compromising position in a secluded section of the stockroom behind a pile of lumber. With both their pants down on the floor, Mary is bent over a pile of cement bags, her large white rear end sticking up in the air. To compensate for his short height so he can reach Mary, Joe is standing on a box. Moaning and groaning, he is frantically struggling to mount Mary from behind. Considering the size of Joe’s tool for planting and spreading his seeds on earth, which is appropriately proportionate to his height, it is obvious that it is not physically made to match Mary’s behind. Meanwhile, Mary is impatiently waiting to be mounted and to get on with whatever she was seduced into doing. It is apparent that Joe is very displeased with the measurement of his manly tool. Attentively watching the unexpected scene, it at first appears very vulgar and repulsive to Mike. Then in an effort to rationalize the entire affair, he begins to believe that Joe’s glut of hormones have overwhelmed his sense of appreciation for beauty. It has impaired his vision so severely that he sees only sex appeal in all that excessive fat that Mary hauls around. But again, he wonders whether maybe Mary’s sexy smile and/or her agreeable personality have done the trick, blinding Joe, attracting him enough to go for it wholeheartedly.

In assessing the situation further, it dawns on Mike that everybody somehow manages to find a place to do their most-needed-thing-to-be-done in life when their testosterones start to overflow their eyeballs. He knows that for centuries, priests have been known to do it behind altars in churches and doctors have performed it on examination tables. Some male and recently female teachers have indulged their natural inclinations in the classroom with girls and boys half their ages. So, if these two horny creatures have decided to do it in the most unthinkable place they could find to perform to divine act of lovemaking, he realizes that he doesn’t have the heart to announce his presence and spoil their little pleasure. He feels that to interrupt poor Little Joe who is entering his paradise at that very moment, having finally managed to find its gate would be a sin that God Almighty might not forgive. He makes a very critical managerial decision on the spot that he was never fortunate to make at his previous highly respected job. He conceals himself behind a row of stoves and becomes witness to the most out of the ordinary and perhaps longest lovemaking between the two most physically incompatible people he has ever witnessed doing it. Joe is elated that he has found it between the layers of all that fat, makes a howling sound and guides his little thing in, and with it, he half disappears within the mountain of Mary’s beauty. Mary is exhilarated perhaps because of what she thought she had put away and forgotten, now realizes she has found someone who appreciates it (and her) wholeheartedly. Shortly, he and Mary find their natural rhythm; there are those highly respected philosophers, intellectuals, and critical thinkers in this world, who seriously believe this rhythm is the foundation of all mankind’s music.

Not considering himself highly moral at all, nor expecting to receive from anybody a confirmation of piety, the oddness, the vulgarity of Joe and Mary’s act slowly evaporates from Mike’s mind. He feels surprised and embarrassed at the same time about an eerie pleasure, an almost divinely enigmatic sensation that comes over him that gradually gives him an unprecedented erection in recent years. The nearly uncontrollable thought of going for Mary if the opportunity ever presents itself fills him with both a shameful uneasiness and exhilaration.

Their moaning and groaning gradually give way to long ahhhs and ohhhs, and Joe clasps onto Mary’s massive back, giving the distinct impression that he has passed out or passed away. Before they notice him, Mike manages his erection by thinking about some tragic events in his life, like the images of live executions on TV after the revolution. He leaves the stockroom semi-entertained, and out of the goodness of his heart, he decides not to reprimand Joe and Mary for their conventional method of expressing their desire for each other in the most unconventional place.

Fifteen minutes later, he is stunned to find them both in separate aisles, squatting, working their tails off, with ear-to-ear grins, apparently happy as anyone can be considering the prevailing high rate of inflation and unemployment. Joe is whistling the music of Elvis Presley’s old song, “Hound Dog,” and Mary is singing, “Come on Baby, Light My Fire.”

No matter how hard he tries to escape the replay in his mind of the scene in the stockroom by replacing it with more somber and even sad images, he is unable to do so. He cannot quite comprehend the strange sense of enchantment, the sort of perverse sensation imbued in him by the lovemaking images of those two mismatched creatures. He shakes his head and wonders.

Mike looks at his watch and notices it is ten minutes past five. He is elated that his monotonous shift has finally ended, and with it, the agony of being cooped up in this large prison. He has to stop himself from running to the locker room. There, he sheds his working clothes and replaces them with his neat suit and white shirt and tie. Looking into the cracked mirror while putting the final touches on his tie, what he sees, even though he surely knows it is fictitious, still makes him feel a bit better, as if he is once again someone very important and respected, who is definitely going somewhere in life.

He feels tired, and somewhat unsure, as if he is running on empty, once he is on the street. Going home does not feel like an option; he knows for certain his disabled wife is not in a position to give him the feeling that she has been anxiously awaiting his arrival. To escape the San Fernando Valley’s polluted air, he enters the Sherman Way off-ramp onto the 405 freeway south, over the Sepulveda Pass, which takes him to Santa Monica where he feels more at home than in the Valley. He then takes the Wilshire Boulevard West exit and drives toward the ocean, hoping he can hit the synchronized traffic lights green all the way to where he will be able to see the blue waves of the Pacific and can inhale its air saturated with the smells of salt and kelp. Except for a few lights, he coasts fairly traffic-free all the way to the beach. He parks his car next to a late model silver Cadillac in the parking lot of the Sea Lion Bar on Second Street near the beach. Once he is out of his car, he lets the cool moist air from the Pacific caress his warm face. He fills his lungs with ocean air and holds it in for a while before exhaling. Before reaching the bar, unintentionally he makes eye contact with a man in the driver’s seat of a late model silver Cadillac.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he greets the man cordially.

“I wish it could be a good afternoon,” the man replies soberly.

Late afternoon sun shining through the windshield of the stranger’s car is providing adequate illumination for Mike to size him up. The first thing he notices about the man is how neatly he is dressed; the black jacket with gold buttons, light gold dress shirt and a richly colored tie. Long curly blond hair combed straight back, and face resembling Gary Cooper’s.

“I assume you had a bad day,” Mike says sympathetically.

“The worst day in my life,” the stranger replies with a sigh.

With Mike’s sense of sympathy fully stimulated now, he is curiously eager to hear this man’s gloomy saga. Or perhaps he is just interested in meeting someone who not only shares his own great fashion sense, but who might possibly be even more miserable than him.

He goes a little closer, and in a hesitant soft voice, he asks, “What’s wrong?

“I don’t have anybody to blame it on except myself. See, I went to Las Vegas to negotiate a very promising business deal. My negotiation failed sadly. I was so depressed that I foolishly gambled away most of my money. Bizarre as it may sound, I was so upset and mentally disoriented that I lost my wallet somewhere with the little money I had to get home, my credit cards―the whole thing. I had enough gas in the car to drive to LA, hoping I could borrow some money from my brother. Guess what? He is out of town, too. I haven’t had a bite to eat the whole day.”

“Where do you live?” Mike asks in a sympathetic tone.

“Santa Barbara,” the man responds nervously.

Mike is touched. “That’s tough. I can understand how you feel. I can lend you enough money to get some food and enough gas to get you home.”

“It is extremely kind of you, but I can’t accept,” the man replies in a gentlemanly manner.

“I insist.”

“I tell you what. How much money you got on you?” the stranger asks as he takes a gold ring with a large diamond setting off his finger.

“Oh, I have about hundred or so with me,” Mike answers innocently, as he takes a bundle of cash out of his wallet and counts it. “I got one hundred thirteen dollars on me,” Mike announces.

“Here, I paid over two thousand five hundred dollars for this diamond ring a few months ago. Why don’t you take it as collateral, and when I mail you the money, you can send me the ring back,” the man offers the deal with a convincing voice.

Before Mike has time to think, the stranger gives him the ring and a business card, grabs the money, and starts writing Mike’s address on a piece of paper. He starts his car, and before he drives away, Mike hears the man’s last words, “You’re a very kind man.”

Happy that he has done a good deed, or perhaps brokered a good deal, wallowing in his accomplishment, he goes into the bar, finds his usual small table in the corner. He looks at the ring that shines under the dim light with a great sense of appreciation. The ring’s large diamond and its quality impress him a great deal. He has no doubt that this is the easiest two thousand five hundred dollars he has ever made. No. You got to be ashamed of yourself. He rebukes himself. You promised the man to return it when he sends you the money. He scolds himself and is very proud of his honesty.

Julie, the slender middle-aged, extremely attractive barmaid whom Mike wouldn’t mind to give his right arm to find himself between her thighs, whom he has tried many times to take to Las Vegas for an extended weekend, but who has turned him down each time, approaches him.

“What would it be, good-looking?” she asks coquettishly.

“The usual, but please make it a double,” Mike orders his drink cheerfully.

Julie smiles wide and walks away, wiggling her round butt; Mike’s eyes almost come out of their sockets. Naively not realizing her move is nothing except a tease, Mike wrongly takes it as an invitation, and that gives him hope that she might be receptive to his offer this time. But as soon as Mike sees Julie’s boyfriend, Tom, a rugged-looking man in a red-and-white checked shirt with cut-off sleeves, sitting at the bar, watching every move she makes, he decides not to hit on her again, at least not today. If Tom’s overall huge size doesn’t convince Mike to leave Julie alone, perhaps his exposed muscular arms tattooed from shoulders to fingers does the trick.

Old heavy-set bearded Richard, the bar owner, says hello to him as he passes by.

“Hey, Richard. You look like a man who knows a lot about jewelry. Take a look at this ring and tell me how much it is worth,” Mike says and hands Richard the ring.

Richard looks at the ring carefully from different angles, and gives it back to him.

“Ten bucks at most,” Richard announces.

“What?” Mike sounds shocked.

“You can buy this shit wholesale across the border for five bucks a shot. Like all the other shit, this crap is made in China. How much did you pay for it?”

“Hundred thirteen dollars,” Mike replies unhappily.

“Man-o-man, somebody conned you.”

Mike looks at the ring carefully this time. He can’t find any inscription inside the ring that normally indicates the number of karats. Warily holding it closer to the light, he doesn’t see any glare reflecting from the light, which would normally be expected from a diamond. The expression of hope on his face quickly changes to hopelessness and anger, as he grits his teeth.

“Holy shit! Welcome to America, Mike, to this big pile of steaming stinking shit. You’ve been fucked royally, man,” Richard says, laughing as he walks away. Every note of Richard’s laughter feels like sprinkles of salt on Mike’s wound.

As if Mike weren’t already depressed enough, the news of the ring being literally worthless instantly pushes him even deeper into the pit of depression.

Julie brings him his drink, and before she leaves, she says sarcastically, “What a smart man you are!”

The expression on Mike’s face shows that Julie’s cutting remark seems to have disturbed him rather more than the awful feeling of having been conned.

With a beer mug in his hand, Richard returns, pulls up a chair and sits across from him.

“Forgive me if I’m laughing, Mike,” Richard says with a sympathetic smile. “I really shouldn’t be laughing, because I’m a big sucker myself. I’ve been conned big time.”

“That’s all right. I deserve it.”

“You know, by giving the bastard all that money for this worthless piece of shit says a lot about you, man. You’ve got a kind heart. Of course that son-of-a-bitch took advantage of you,” Richard says, showing genuine understanding.

“Thanks, Richard.”

“I tell you what,” Richard says.

Mike laughs—a sardonic laugh. It surprises Richard.

“What’s funny?”

“That’s exactly what the man who conned me said before he took my money and duped me. He said, ‘I tell you what.’ ”

“I was going to buy this fake ring, this piece of crap from you for twenty bucks, you asshole,” Richard snaps.

“Didn’t you say it’s counterfeit?”

“I got this night cleaning man, a nice Mexican guy. He’s a very good worker. He likes this kind of shit. I’d give it to him as a gift.”

Mike hands Richard the ring. Richard slaps a twenty-dollar bill on the table hard and walks away grinning. A few minutes later, Mike notices Richard is talking to two men sitting on stools at the bar’s counter. His suspicion that Richard might be talking about him is confirmed when the men, both in their mid-fifties, turn and look at him sympathetically, smiling and waving their hands. With a stiffened body, Mike reluctantly returns their unsolicited smiles with an artificial one, bordering on a grimace

“Come over here, man. Let me buy you a drink,” one of the men invites Mike.

“No, thanks. I should be going soon,” Mike refuses.

Both men pause, look at each other, pick up their drinks and walk to Mike’s table. They ignore the uninviting look on Mike’s face, sit down, and one of them places a new drink in front of Mike. They introduce themselves as Kevin Sullivan and Joel Jansen. With the help of a few drinks, they both seem to be in a very friendly frame of mind.

“Richard told us how you were conned. Don’t feel bad, I’ve been conned many times for much more than you were,” Kevin says. “You think I’ve learned my lesson? No sir. If the same son-of-a-bitch who conned you would’ve approached me, you can bet your last dollar that he could’ve conned me, too.”

“See, it’s impossible to enjoy so much personal freedom in a society such as ours and expect everyone to remain good, moral, ethical, and kind,” Joel asserts to ease Mike’s pain.

Mike nods in affirmation.

“Bullshit!” It doesn’t have anything to do with personal freedom,” Kevin disputes Joel. “Look at those fucking Nigerians. They’re the best con artists the world has ever known, and they don’t give shit about personal freedom in their society. It’s just human nature, to find another man and sock it to him if you can.”

Mike doesn’t know whether to agree with Kevin or Joel.

Both are Vietnam vets. Joel has been recently laid off from a middle-management position in a toy manufacturing company, and Kevin is a financial manager, managing retirement funds for large corporations.

They talk about many subjects, with some that can only be discussed in a bar with total strangers after the loosening effect of alcohol. They talk about their families, failed dreams; they tell funny stories, and to balance those off, they discuss some of their depressing ones. As Mike talks about his current job in comparison to his previous position as the deputy secretary of minister of industries in Iran, it makes Kevin and Joel even more sympathetic towards him.

Joel has been looking for a job, and hasn’t been successful, and is about to run out of his unemployment benefits. Mike informs him about an opening at The Home Depot. Joel is appreciative and promises to drop by to pick up an application the next day. But Kevin has some entrepreneurial venture in mind for him.

“You know,” Kevin, a little tipsy now begins. “I’ve been thinking lately. There are three things in this world that people can’t live without them: food, sex, and religion. Going into the restaurant business requires large sums of hard-to-raise capital and you must deal with perishable products, which it very risky. Religion doesn’t need capital, but you got to be a fast-talking shyster, a typical used-car salesman, which you are not, Joel.”

“Yes, I don’t have that fine qualification that many of these son-of-bitches evangelists and our fucking politicians have who are making fortunes, Kevin. What do have in mind now?”

“Well, it remains sex.”

Richard joins their friendly gathering. If someone could look at them from the other side of the room, he would have sworn that these four guys had been inseparable bosom buddies since they have been toddlers.

“You mean become a pimp or open a whorehouse?” Joel asks.

“No! The law in this country is adamantly against selling or purchasing sex openly, although it is done in different forms. Sooner or later they will get you. Why? Because we still attach a lot of taboos to sex in this country, like Europe did five hundred years ago. However, genius that I am, I’ve a suggestion. Rent a bus, or better yet, buy a used one. You’re a good carpenter. Aren’t you? Make four or five small separate plush rooms inside the bus. Each tastefully decorated room has its own couch that can be converted to a comfortable bed, a small bar and a closed-circuit TV showing high-class porn. Then you hire five top-notch sexy young women, who are a dime a dozen these days. You dress them like high-class models, sophisticated and sexy, but not cheap looking. Then you drive your bus into parking lots of famous discos in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, where rich people go to escape their loneliness by meeting and picking up women who might fuck them and listen to their fucking sad stories afterward without telling them, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ You dispatch your small army of beautiful hardworking girls into the disco. They approach singles, men who look rich; they offer and negotiate a one-on-one or two-on-one party in the privacy of a room in your bus for three hundred up to a thousand bucks per shot.”

“That’s a goddamn pimp job,” Joel objects, and Richard and Mike agree.

“Bullshit! We all pimp ourselves a hundred times a day no matter what we do for a living. You just provide fun, while you’ve nothing to do with what happens between two consenting adults. You receive your seventy-five percent of the proceeds, tax free, and before you know it, you’ll be filthy rich.”

“Well, what do you say, Joel?” Richard asks anxiously.

“It sounds so simple, yet so ingenious,” Joel approves.

In an effort to better sell his idea to his buddy, Kevin goes on, “Look at its enormous benefits, man. You don’t have to deal with state workmen’s compensation insurance, state and federal taxes, Social Security, or any other government scheme to siphon all your profits from you. And, of course, most importantly, you’re not being dealing with perishable products. When there are no customers, you can use the “product” (he makes quote marks in the air with his fingers) until your heart desires, or you get so sore that you will walk like you’re disabled.”

“What name do you suggest for this business?” Mike asks. He is so wrapped up with Kevin’s suggestion that he has forgotten his embarrassment of having been conned less than an hour ago.

“Man, you got lots of choices: pussies on wheels, whores on wheels, pleasure on wheels, or just fun on wheels. Take your pick,” Richard gets involved.

“One more thing, you have to consider a good percentage of commission for me, because the great idea is mine,” Kevin states his condition and bursts out laughing.

The total strangers of less than an hour ago, with the help of a few drinks, forget their problems temporarily and they all laugh. Kevin, Joel, and Richard leave, and Mike remains to kill more time before going home where a mixture of a little pleasure and a lot of grief is waiting for him.

When nothing except a few chunks of ice is left in his glass, he asks for another. By the time he has two sips of his third drink, he is under the influence of alcohol enough to cause him to leave the harsh realities of his present life and take a quick tour of his past―a past that when he visits it selectively, he has noticed, momentarily brings him more pleasure than he has been having lately. One foot in history, one foot in the present, his soul is tired of the harsh realities of his current life and his heart’s constant desire is to visit the past. He is concerned that the details of his bygone days are getting hazier with the passing of every year. He is becoming addicted to looking backward, leafing through the glittering pages of his past again and again, and even more so when he is depressed. What is eating him the most is the awareness that even the worst day of his bygone days was filled with more quality of life than all his days combined together have been here in America. Often, even thinking about those days brings him more joy than the days that pass in front of his eyes like the freight cars of a speeding train hauling wagons loads of despair. He now understands his father’s mindset―his loneliness, his loveless and unadventurous boring life in America―when he said, “I’d rather be an undernourished dog, muzzled and leached by my government, living in Iran, than live in America like a fat bored pig, wallowing in a pool of shit people in this country call it individual freedom.” He continues on thinking and wondering.

Quite loaded, while driving home later in the evening, he half seriously toys with the idea of going into the business of providing fun and game for men and becoming as rich and famous like Hugh Hefner of Playboy Enterprises. Wouldn’t that be considered an American success? He asks and wonders more.

He misses his last position in Iran, where all he had to do was be subservient to one man above him, the minister, and have the fear-based respect of all the people under him. And he wonders how unpredictably the 1979 revolution in Iran irreversibly changed all that.