The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen Read Free Book Online

him in the vulnerable moments of sleep so that he awoke already ranting with all the artfulness of the groggily embittered. He would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to the movement of the world outside the condo. In those moments, he felt alone and very far from his children, Eleanor and Joe, so lacking in energy or direction that he even contemplated a passive form of suicide—starvation, sun exposure. He could drive out to Jebel Al Dawoun, lie down at the lip of a cave, and just wait until his heart stopped beating.
    As he neared the Baylanis’ front door, Dan could hear the growl of their voices, punctuated by Abdullah’s shushings. The two of them looked small standing in the lee of the enormous arch, where the evening shadows played against their faces and made their teeth glow white. Abdullah was glancing around as if he thought the neighbors might be peering at them over the fifteen-foot walls. If paranoia was the Saudi pastime, then Abdullah was their Roger Maris. But Dan didn’t give him grief for it, because he knew that Abdullah had perfected the game out of necessity. In the Kingdom, reputation was everything, and the country’s rich built empires on it.
    Rosalie jabbed her finger repeatedly in the direction of Abdullah’s chest. They were both talking at the same time. Seeing Dan, Abdullah threw up his arms.
    “Alhamdulillah. You’re here. Let’s go.”
    “Dan Coleman, you go home right now. Don’t take another step this way. Things are fixing to get rough here in a minute.”
    Rosalie had slipped into her Texas drawl, an accent that she used like a shield when dealing with bad situations. Tough girl, Panhandle mama, rodeo queen. How could Abdullah have done this to her? This woman who had given up everything—family, religion, homeland—to marry him. Even now, standing on her front step in the unflattering light of the desert sun without a spot of makeup on her forty-seven-year-old face, she was striking. Her strong jaw gave way to a soft mouth whose upper lip peaked in a perfect cupid’s bow. When they’d all hung out in college, he’d often found himself staring at that mouth. It was something a man couldn’t help, noticing the features that made a woman beautiful. Now Rosalie smiled a tight, mocking half-smile. Her hair, dyed red to hide the gray but once naturally the color of molten lava, fell over her shoulders in a tangle. She had on a blue cotton robe cinched tightly at the waist. Dan could tell that she wasn’t wearing a bra by the way her breasts gently sloped downwards, and it brought forth a wanting in him, more for the familiarity of a robed female body than for the breasts themselves. Sometimes the longing was too much. He closed his eyes for a moment and let the feeling pass.
    “Dan, stay. We’re going to leave in just a minute. As soon as I can get my wife to calm down.”
    “Yes, like you; you’re always so calm, aren’t you?” she said. “So cool and collected, surveying the messes you make. Dan, can you believe it? He doesn’t blink, though he can see what this is doing to me. I had to learn about this mess from a jeweler at the souq. A jeweler. All because my husband didn’t have the guts to tell me himself.” She paused, put a hand on her hip. “And what about you, Coleman? How long have you known about this? How long have you been chuckling about what a fool I am?” Anger bloomed a blotched red on her cheeks.
    Dan shifted uncomfortably. He felt implicated through his friendship with Abdullah, even though he’d only learned about Isra a few weeks before. Abdullah had kept her in a seaside condominium in Doha for the last couple of years, making monthly trips under the guise of business. He’d been busy all right. It must have been exhausting, maintaining the lie for so long. Last month, around the time he finally told Dan about his double life, he’d moved Isra into a house a block away from this villa because he was tired of traveling back