Saabir pulled the chairs so they were facing one another in the now familiar ritual, and Marc rose to his feet without being prompted and sat in one of them, and then Saabir bound his wrists and wrapped the blindfold around his eyes.
When she came through the door, the sounds outside were briefly amplified: someone’s footsteps on the street, and what sounded like a cart with a broken wheel being dragged through a distant alley. He realized part of him had been waiting for the call of the muezzin and the sunset prayer, but it had yet to come. She said a few words to Saabir, and closed the door. He wasn’t certain, but he thought Saabir was still in the room, and Marc listened to her settle her garments as she sat down in the chair.
“How are you tonight, Marc?” she said. He again felt her voice as soothing, and he knew that he would have trouble resisting it.
“Not much different from how I was last night,” he said.
“Really? After everything we told each other?”
“I’m not always sure of the purpose of what you’re telling me.”
“I’m not, either, if you can believe that.”
“Well, you rarely hesitate. You rarely stumble on a word.”
He heard her shift on her chair, uncross and recross her legs.
“Has Azhar been killed?” he asked, and was struck by his tone of resignation.
She didn’t respond immediately, and then said a few words in Urdu. Saabir was still in the room, after all.
“If I told you no, would you believe me?”
“To take away a father from his children, I don’t care the cause—”
“Don’t. Listen to me. I’m telling you no.”
“What did you say to Saabir?”
“I told him that soon I would be asking him to leave.”
“Can I see Azhar?”
“No. You won’t see him again.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but remained silent. She said a single word to Saabir, who responded with a word of his own that sounded half-spit, but he opened the door to walk into the evening. When he closed it, the call went out for the sunset prayer.
Marc asked, “When he leaves like that, and he hears the muezzin, where does he go to pray?”
“You’re assuming Saabir is necessarily devout,” she said.
“I asked him about his wife and child.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then said, “The time is coming where we may have to move you. It may be far away, and I may not be the one speaking to you anymore.”
“Why?” He heard the note of desperation in his voice.
“Because, as I’ve told you, I don’t coordinate things here.”
He felt hollow inside.
“Have you remembered another story you can tell me about Claire?”
Before an image could invade his mind, he said, “Josephine. Joline’s story is your story, isn’t it?”
“Shhhhh,” she said. “Tell me a story you remember about Claire.”
Something rose in him without the effort of recollection.
“The last—” He had to clear his throat against a tide. “It’s strange, you know.” Because he had to think past the story of the time of Claire’s healing, and her leaving the note, and her running away, but this he didn’t say. “The last time I saw her. It was like something out of a movie, if you can believe that. It was maybe a month before the phone call I told you about.”
“When she said, ‘You shouldn’t have kissed me’?”
“Yes.” He was quiet for a moment, thinking about that.