But that was unkind, and Jack was never unkind. She had never told him about her father’s kiss. And, like most other elements of her past, it wasn’t a memory that lingered. Neither she nor her father had mentioned it again, except for one phone call, in that dark time. She had never probed the meaning, but the kiss had marked the end of her perception of him as her father first, and a man second. At the time, he had said something about her beauty, that that was somehow a reason, and even though she hadn’t felt at all beautiful, she knew that her father, who was almost forty, was looking at her as a woman rather than his daughter, that a forty-year-old man kissing a sleeping fourteen-year-old was an amplification of the scope and depth of men in the world that she did not want to meet. And yet, after that was precisely when she had begun to meet them.
Now she was heading east, back home, and it was as if the horizon itself were narrowing its length, the opposite sensation of heading west, and all the promise and possibility that she still felt during their once-a-year trips to the Pacific were being funneled away toward a father who might very well be dying and a mother who had told her when she called that she had never stopped marking the passing of the seasons with Claire’s unnatural silence.
Ahead now, out of the shimmer of the highway and against a backdrop of gray mountains, she saw a figure rise out of the shoulder of the road, and turn toward her and extend an arm. She rarely picked up hitchhikers, and never had while driving alone, but she was surprised to see this was a woman, in shorts and a shirt tied in back, carrying a small backpack, and with a scarf pulled over her head to protect it from the sun. She was hitchhiking alone. Claire steered the car over to the shoulder, and in the rearview mirror watched the woman turn and jog up to the passenger door. When she pulled it open, Claire had a moment when she thought the woman was a man, but the woman undid the scarf and revealed a head of black hair that hung to her shoulders, and said in a light voice, “Thanks so much for stopping. It’s unbearable out there.”
“No problem at all,” she said. “How long were you waiting?”
“God, I don’t know. Fifty cars must have passed before you stopped.”
“Jesus. Everyone’s so cautious nowadays. Where you heading?”
“If I can get there, Chicago.”
“No kidding?” Claire asked. “I’m heading to Michigan.”
“Really? Can you stand the company for a couple of nights? I’ll pay for gas.”
The woman’s cheeks were tanned from the sun, and her eyes were dark gray, almost depthless. She was smiling hopefully.
Claire extended her hand and said, “My name’s Claire.”
“Genevieve,” she said. “I’m so grateful to you. I’ll be happy to drive some if you want.”
The woman’s hand was warm and damp with sweat, and she held her fingers for a moment before letting them go.
6
When Saabir came in after the woman left, and untied Marc’s blindfold and undid the ropes around his wrists—with a one-word curse at the looseness of the knots—Marc hardly stood up before going to his knees and rolling out his mat and falling deeply asleep. In the middle of the night, he woke once, and in the dim light that came in through the window, he saw Saabir sleeping across the threshold of the door with his gun strapped over his shoulder. When Marc raised his head, Saabir opened his eyes, but they seemed black with unconsciousness. Toward morning, he dreamed he was driving in Nevada, into Reno, the only Nevada city he’d ever visited, and along the road was a man who was hitchhiking while wearing one shoe; the other he carried in his free hand. When he pulled over, the man became a woman, and the shoe a high heel, and she said, “I wonder if you could drive me into Reno and see what I can get for this at the pawnshop.” “For a single shoe?” he asked the woman, and she said, “No, for a single girl,” and then the woman became Claire and the shoe a blindfold, and she was tying it around his head, and she said, “How far do you think you can drive without seeing?” and he woke up.
Saabir was sitting in a chair, looking at him with his head cocked sideways, and then he gestured with his fingers along the side of his face, and as Marc sat up, he realized his face was wet. Saabir reached into his pocket and pulled out a small square of cloth and handed it to Marc. “Thank you,” he said, and wiped his face dry.
“No cry,” Saabir said, and put a finger to one eye and shook his head.
“I wasn’t crying,” he said. “I was—was I crying out in my sleep?”
Saabir nodded. Marc was remembering the dream, and the story the woman had told the night before, Claire on the highway after marrying a man named Jack. She’d described how Claire remembered the time he’d kissed her, and how she was traveling east because Marc was in the hospital probably dying. While she spoke, Marc had gone completely still. He couldn’t recall a single footstep, a single voice outside the room, and the blindfold had become like a drive-in movie screen. He knew even then, though, that in this storytelling the woman would never let her arrive, and the woman who Claire had picked up along the highway—Genevieve—likely had no better intentions than Josephine herself. Inexplicably, he found himself worrying over Claire.
He handed the piece of cloth back to Saabir, who folded it neatly and slipped it back into his pocket. This kindness led him to take a risk.
“Josephine,” he said.
Saabir laughed once, and shook his head.
“Well, then, whatever her name is. What does she look like?” He passed his hand over his face, and through his hair matted with sweat.
Saabir shook his head again, this time with a slight smile, and said, “No.” Then he hoisted his gun higher on his shoulder, and said, “She is man. Man.”