Of course, my dad wasn’t thrilled about lending me money. He was tightfisted and didn’t think dogs made for a good investment, but my mom talked him into it. And he turned out to be wrong, because my business did very well. Paws & Claws, it was called. Aside from daycare, I offered all kinds of other services, like grooming and kenneling. By the end of my first year, I’d already built a solid client base from the tech start-ups in the area, programmers who worked long hours and didn’t have time to walk their dogs or play with them every day. I married my college girlfriend, Annette, and we had a baby girl. Everything was going well. We were happy. I didn’t realize this until almost three years later, when it was all taken away from me.
That day, I was bringing two golden retrievers and a husky back from their afternoon walk when one of my newer clients jumped out of her car and came running toward me. Her name was Grace Chin. The husky started barking at her—that’s how aggressive this woman came across—and I had to restrain him just so I could hear her. Not that it mattered, because I could hardly make out what she was saying, her English was so bad. But I figured she wanted to pick up Peanut, her Jack Russell terrier, which she’d boarded with me over the weekend. “Just give me a minute,” I told her. I had to get the big dogs inside safely. Her Lexus had been left idling on the pavement, with the emergency lights on, and I remember having a bad feeling about it; it was almost as if I could tell that something was about to go down. I took the two golden retrievers and the husky inside, got them off their leashes in their pen, and went back to get the Jack Russell. Behind me, the gate bell jingled, and I knew that Grace Chin had come inside.
I want to stress that I followed all the laws and regulations when I set up my business. I’m certain that Peanut must have had some prior condition, because there was nothing in what I’d done that could have caused him to die. I gave him the same food and the same water I gave him every day, so it wasn’t anything I did that could’ve made him sick. But he wasn’t moving, not even after I called his name, and just as I realized something wasn’t right, that Chin-Chong lady started pestering me. “What you did to my dog?” she asked. “What you did?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. I petted Peanut, and I swear he moved. “See?” I said.
She walked around the counter, completely disregarding the sign that said MANAGEMENT ONLY, and came to stand next to me. When she cooed to him, he didn’t move. Then she tried to pick him up, and he was limp. The scream she let out would’ve made you think someone was flaying her alive. Even before the vet could figure out what exactly had caused the death, she’d told everyone at her work that I’d killed Peanut. She was a database engineer, she knew most of my other clients, so of course I lost a lot of business. And then, with the lawsuit, I couldn’t keep up, financially. I’ve spent many sleepless nights going over the events of that day, and I still can’t figure out how the Jack Russell terrier died. It wasn’t the food or water, I was sure of it. Maybe he ate something when I took him for a walk. Whatever it was, it wasn’t my fault. But it didn’t matter, I started bleeding clients left and right. I couldn’t believe it—this woman came into my country, could barely speak my language, and then sued me for negligence.
It didn’t make sense to keep my business, at least not in the Irvine area, but I didn’t have the money to start it up somewhere else. And my mom’s symptoms were getting worse, so I ended up moving back home. I figured I might as well get used to running the bowling alley, since it would come to me someday. My dad was seventy-eight at the time, well past retirement age, but he didn’t want to retire, so it was one of those situations where I just had to wait, even though I had so many ideas about the business. We needed to turn the concession stand into a full snack bar, buy new game consoles, get better music for our theme nights, put up better signage, things like that. Whenever I brought up these ideas with him, he’d say it would cost money, and he’d already given me all his savings to start my business. My failed business.
What happened to the guy next door was an accident. I didn’t mean for him to die. It was really dark out and I didn’t see him until it was too late. I mean, why would I want to kill him?
Driss
I think I mentioned before that business had slowed down that winter. Two new restaurants had opened a couple of miles west on the highway, and although one was a sandwich shop and the other a café that served only pastries and cookies, I was worried about the competition. Forty percent of my revenue comes from tourists, people who only stop here on their way to the national park or a concert in the desert, so I was considering a few changes. I wanted to drop the corn hash and fried cheese sticks from the menu, add new salads and fruit smoothies, replace the vinyl flooring in the entrance, maybe look into that alcohol license. And, more urgently, because the highway runs fast and I only have one chance to grab the attention of tourists, install a new sign.
The old sign, which I inherited from the previous owner, was made of planked wood, with the words THE PANTRY painted in white over a green background. It was a handsome marquee, but its colors had long ago faded and its right side was occasionally obstructed from view by a palo verde tree on the sidewalk. In the spring, when the palo verde bloomed with yellow flowers that overhung the sign, it seemed as if I were advertising that my business was THE PAN or sometimes THE PA. Even without this springtime interference, it was easy to miss at night, because there are so few lights on the highway. The owner of the hardware store two blocks from my restaurant had understood this years ago, and put up a neon sign.
One night in February, working at the counter while Rafi mopped the floors, I sketched out a new design on a piece of paper. I kept the planked wood, because I wanted the sign to remain familiar to my customers, but I made it bigger—eight feet by seven, much larger than the old one—and I changed the colors to red and white for higher contrast. I decided to hang it higher, so it wouldn’t be obscured by the blooming palo verde, and for good measure I added a curved arrow over it, made of metal and dotted with lightbulbs. It was Beatrice who gave me the idea of the lighted arrow; she said it would give the marquee a classic look that would be perfect for a diner like mine.
I took my design to a local sign shop early the next morning. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on the brink of change, that I had finally taken the first step in an adventure I had dreamed about for years without ever daring it. Aside from the plans I had for the restaurant, I had plans with Beatrice, which meant that I had to have an excruciatingly difficult conversation with Maryam. Every morning I woke up telling myself this was the day I would tell her, and every evening I came home and pushed it back another day. So that entire winter felt at once rife with danger and ripe with possibility, contradictory feelings that I hadn’t experienced with such intensity since I was a young man.
It took only four days for the sign to be made but another six weeks to get the permits approved. The installation was scheduled for April 28, and when the shop told me it would send a truck for the job, I said to come early in the morning, before the bowling arcade opened. But they didn’t listen, or maybe they were too busy that day. The truck didn’t make it to the restaurant until nearly eleven in the morning, and the crane blocked part of the parking lot. I had to move my car to the south side of Chemehuevi to make room for customers. It took an hour to remove the old sign and hoist the new one up, and while my energies were consumed with making sure that people could safely come in and out of the lot, and that the contractor followed my instructions, Baker’s son stood outside the bowling arcade, watching us.