“I want to see your face,” he interrupted.
“I’m going to tell you about Claire and Genevieve now.”
“No,” he heard himself say. “I want to see your face.”
“Marc—”
But he was standing up. “I want to see your face,” he said more loudly.
“You have to stop this.”
He took a step toward her voice, and almost stumbled, and when he found his balance, she brushed against him but stepped away.
“I want to see your face!” He was shouting now.
“Marc—”
“I want to see your face!”
Then Saabir came through the door and put two hands hard to his chest and pushed him, and he sprawled across the floor, and he knew she had gone, but he was shouting, “I want to see her face!”
“No face,” Saabir said. Marc rose to his feet and charged at the voice, but Saabir had moved, and he slammed into the wall.
“I want to see her face!”
“Who face?” Saabir said, mocking him. “No face.”
He again ran at the sound of it, and Saabir caught him, wrapped him in his arms, and pushed him to the floor with his mouth to his ear.
“You die? You die now? Who face?”
But now he was shaking, shaking, and the sobs were working their way up through his throat, and he thought he would vomit. “Her face,” he said. “I have to see it. Please, please let me see—” And he could not stop it then, saying over and over, “Her face, her face,” and everything he’d ever known about her, about anything, was coming up: “Dad, I don’t want your help.” “But if you just shift the paper this way—I don’t want your help!” On Lake Michigan, she was lifted by a heavy wave and went under. “She’s drowning!” Lynne shouted. “No, she’s not; she’s learning how to swim.” He was a boy, and his mother was an hour late from the store, and he was alone in the house, and a panic rose in him. Later, she ran her hand through his damp hair. “What were you afraid of?” “That something happened.” “That what happened?” But he could not tell. Claire was sprinkling brown sugar over the entire surface of her bowl of oatmeal. “You trying to make candy out of that, kid?” “Yep. I like candy.” Lynne, so small when he first knew her, lay with her head on his bare chest and her nude body stretched out the entire length of him. “Do you think this will last?” “What will last?” “This. This. The incredible comfort of this. Me lying on top of you like this.” At seventeen, Claire took a black-and-white photo of herself, and her expression, under black freckles that seemed overexposed, was a kind of amused confusion, as if she weren’t certain the camera would work properly, and when she hung the photo on the wall, she said, “That’s my all-time favorite picture of me.” Just before she asked him to leave, Lynne had said something uncharacteristic, and she was holding a glass of orange juice when she said it, the sun pouring through the kitchen window. “Mornings shouldn’t feel like this. Not morning after morning.” “Like what?” “Like a shroud. This November sunshine feels like a shroud.” Claire wanted to play the whisper game. “The whisper game? We haven’t played that in like two years. Since you were maybe nine.” “I know, Dad.” It was a game where you spoke in the other’s ear in the faintest voice possible to see if the other could still discern the words. The angles of her face were becoming more like a woman’s. She put her mouth to his ear. “I like boys.” He had heard her, but he told her he hadn’t, so she repeated it again, with a half-suppressed delighted laugh at the end. “I like boys.”
And then he felt Saabir whispering in his ear, still lying on top of him, pressing him to the floor. But he had not used his gun. “Stop now, Marc? Stop now?” He felt himself trembling under him, and was cold, though he knew the room was still certainly too warm. “I get up,” Saabir said, then something in Urdu. He used Marc’s shoulder for ballast and pushed himself to his feet. Perhaps Saabir had dropped the gun, because Marc heard him checking it, releasing the safety, and then reengaging it. He heard him kneel down again. Saabir said, quietly, “Last time, Marc. Yes?” Then he untied Marc’s hands and removed the blindfold.
Because Marc had been sweating so profusely, and had been pushed down onto the half floor with the hard-packed dirt, his arms were streaked with it, and he imagined his face was the same. Saabir was looking down on him, but must have felt no threat, because the gun was on his back. When Marc sat up, Saabir walked over and took Marc’s bedroll from the corner, and laid it out along the wall where he usually slept.
Marc did not bother getting to his feet. His shoulder ached from the hard fall, and he crawled over to the mat and lay flat on his back. Saabir stood over and looked down on him. His expression was almost sad.