Zeitoun by Dave Eggers Read Free Book Online

orange room—it really was difficult to look at—he noted the clients’ new tub, a huge claw-footed antique.
    “It’s big, but isn’t it beautiful?” Kathy asked.
    “Yes, like you!” he joked.
    “Watch it,” she said. “I can lose this weight, but you’re never growing that hair back.”
    When they’d met, Kathy had been weight-obsessed, and was far too thin. She had been chubby as a child, at least to some eyes, and in her teens her weight fluctuated wildly. She binged and dieted and then cycled through it all again. When she and Zeitoun were married, he insisted that she get beyond the weight issues and eat like a normal person. She did, and now joked that she’d gone too far. “Thank God for the abaya,” she told friends. When she didn’t want to bother worrying about clothes or how they looked on her, the shoulder-to-floor Islamic dress solved the problem, and tidily.
    There was a knock on the door. Kathy went to answer it and found Melvin, a Guatemalan painter. He was looking to get paid before the weekend.
    Zeitoun was relentless in his efforts to pay the workers well and promptly. He always quoted the Prophet Muhammad: “Pay the laborer his wages before his sweat dries.” Zeitoun used that as a bedrock and constant guide in the way he and Kathy did business, and the workers took note.
    Still, Zeitoun preferred to pay on Sundays or Mondays—because when he paid on Fridays, too many of the workers would disappear all weekend. But Kathy’s heart was soft, her resolve to withhold payment even an hour weakened in the presence of these workers soaked with sweat, knuckles bleeding, forearms yellow with sawdust.
    “Don’t tell Zeitoun,” she said, and wrote him a check.
    Kathy turned on the TV and flipped through the channels. Every station was covering the storm.
    Nothing had changed: Katrina was still headed their way, and it was losing no power. And because the hurricane as a whole was traveling so slowly, about eight miles per hour, the sustained winds were causing, and would continue to cause, catastrophic damage.
    The coverage was just background noise, though, until Kathy caught the words “family of five.” They were talking about the family lost at sea.
Oh no
, she thought.
Please
. She turned up the sound. They were still missing. The father’s name was Ed Larsen. He was a construction supervisor.
You’re kidding me
, she thought. He had taken the week off to take his family sailing on his yacht, the
Sea Note
. They had been at Marathon and were sailing back to Cape Coral when they’d lost radio contact. His wife and three kids were with him. They were on their way back to shore for a family reunion. The extended family had gathered only to realize that the Larsens were missing; the celebration turned into a vigil of worry and prayer.
    Kathy couldn’t stand it.
    She called her husband. “We have to go.”
    “Wait, wait,” he said. “Let’s wait and see.”
    “Please,” she said.
    “Really?” he said. “You can go.”
    *    *    *
    Kathy had taken the kids north a handful of times when storms had gotten close. But she was hoping she wouldn’t have to make the trip this time. She had work to do over the weekend, and the kids had plans, and she always came back from those trips more exhausted than when she’d left.
    Almost without exception, whether it was fleeing a storm or for a weekend vacation, Kathy and the kids had to go without Zeitoun. Her husband had trouble leaving the business, had trouble relaxing for days on end, and after years of this vacationless life Kathy had threatened to pack the kids and just leave for Florida some Friday after school. At first Zeitoun hadn’t believed her. Would she really pack up and leave with or without him?
    She would, and she did. One Friday afternoon, Zeitoun was checking on a nearby job and decided to stop at home. He wanted to see the kids, change his shirt, pick up some paperwork. But when he pulled into the driveway,