"We don't," Charlie tells him, his face creasing sourly, but his voice neutral enough. "It's automatic. Just like in your friendly family car."

His mother's embarra.s.sing Subaru. His new friend senses an embarra.s.sment, and says rea.s.suringly, "Gears give you one more thing to worry about. One kid we took on, a couple of drivers ago, stripped the gears shifting into reverse going downhill."

"But on steep hills, shouldn't you shift down? Instead of riding the brake and wearing out the pads."

"Go ahead; you can shift down on the steering stalk. But this part of Jersey isn't that big into hills. It's not like we're West Virginia."

Charlie knows the states; he is a man of the world. He walks around the cab and in one easy swoop, his arms stretching like a monkey's, ascends into the pa.s.senger's seat. To Ahmad it feels that someone has jumped into bed with him. Charlie pulls a half-red pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his shirt-a coa.r.s.e tough cloth like denim, but a military green instead of blue-and adroitly snaps it so that several tan-tipped cigarettes pop out an inch. He asks Ahmad, "A smoke steady your nerves?"

"Thanks, sir, no. I don't smoke."

"Really? That's smart. You'll live forever, Madman. You can cut the 'sir.' 'Charlie' will do. O.K.: let's see you drive this heap."

"Right now?"

Charlie snorts, making an explosion of smoke in the corner of Ahmad's vision. "You'd rather next week? What'd you come here for? Don't look so anxious. It's a piece of cake. Morons do it, all the time; believe me. This isn't rocket science."

It is eight-thirty in the morning-too early, Ahmad feels, for an initiation. But if the Prophet entrusted his body to the fearsome horse Buraq, Ahmad can ascend to the high black seat, cracked and stained and split by previous occupants, and steer this towering orange box on wheels. The engine, when the key turns it over into combustion, has a deep pitch, as if the fuel is a thicker, lumpier substance than gasoline. "It takes diesel?" Ahmad asks.

Charlie exhales more sputtery smoke: it keeps coming from deep in his lungs. "You kidding, kid? You ever driven diesel? Stinks up the place, and takes forever for the engine to warm up. You can't just get in and put the pedal to the metal. One thing to keep in mind, though: there's no rear-view mirror over the dash. Don't panic when out of habit you look and there's nothing there. Use your side mirrors. Another thing, remember everything takes longer-takes longer to stop, and longer to get going. At stoplights, you're not winning any dig-out races; don't try. She's like an old lady: don't push her, but don't underestimate her either. Take your eye off the road for a second, and she can kill. But don't let me scare you. O.K., let's give it a try. Let's go. Wait: make sure you put it in reverse. We've had more than one collision with the platform. That same driver I mentioned before. You know what I've learned over the years? There's nothing so stupid people won't go ahead and do it. Back up, do a three-point, head straight out of the lot, that's Thir- teenth Street, and go right on Reagan. You can't go left; there's a cement divider, but, like I say, there's nothing so stupid people won't do it, so I mention it."

Charlie is still talking as Ahmad eases the truck back, backs it a tidy half-circle, and in forward gear heads out of the lot. He discovers that, this high off the ground, he floats, looking down upon the tops of cars. As he heads out onto the boulevard, he takes the corner too short and drags the back tires up over the curb, but hardly feels it. He has been transposed to another scale, to another plane. Charlie is busy stubbing out his cigarette in the dashboard ashtray and doesn't mention the b.u.mp.

After a few blocks, Ahmad's eyes acquire the habit of darting left to the long-side mirror, and then through the pa.s.senger window to the right-hand mirror. The orange, chrome-edged reflections of Excellency's own sides tJiat he glimpses no longer alarm him but become parts of him, like the shoulders and arms that figure in his peripheral awareness as he walks down the street. In his dreams since childhood he would sometimes be flying down hallways or skimming sidewalks a few feet off the ground, and sometimes would awake with an erection or, more shamefully still, a large wet spot on the inside of his pajama fly. He had consulted the Qur'an for s.e.xual advice in vain. It talked of uncleanness but only in regard to women, their menstruation, their suckling of infants. In the second sura, he found the mysterious words, Your wives are your field: go in, therefore, to your field as ye will; but do first some act for your souls' good: and fear ye G.o.d, and know that ye must meet Him. Your wives are your field: go in, therefore, to your field as ye will; but do first some act for your souls' good: and fear ye G.o.d, and know that ye must meet Him. In the verse before that, he read that women are a pollution. In the verse before that, he read that women are a pollution. Separate yourselves therefore from women and approach them not, until they be cleansed. But when they are cleansed, go in Separate yourselves therefore from women and approach them not, until they be cleansed. But when they are cleansed, go in unto them as G.o.d hath ordained for you. Verily G.o.d loveth those who turn to Him, and loveth those who seek to be clean. Ahmad feels clean in the truck, cut off from the base world, its streets full of dog filth and blowing shreds of plastic and paper; he feels clean and free, flying his orange box kite behind him in the side mirrors. Ahmad feels clean in the truck, cut off from the base world, its streets full of dog filth and blowing shreds of plastic and paper; he feels clean and free, flying his orange box kite behind him in the side mirrors.

"Don't pa.s.s on the right," Charlie suddenly admonishes him, in a voice sharp with alarm. Ahmad slows, not having realized he was overtaking cars to his left, in the lane next to the traffic divider, a solid, sullied string of Jersey barriers.

"Why are they called Jersey barriers?" he asks. "In Maryland, what are they called?"

"Don't change the subject, Madman. Driving a truck, you can't sit there and daydream. You got life and death in your hands, not to mention repairs that'll jack up the insurance premiums if you goof. No hot-d.o.g.g.i.ng and farting around with cell phones like people do in cars. You're bigger; you got to be better."

"Really?" Ahmad makes an attempt to tease the older man, his Lebanese-American brother, out of his grimly serious mood. "Shouldn't cars get out of my way?"

Charlie doesn't see that Ahmad is teasing. He keeps his eyes on the road, through the windshield, and says, "Don't be stupid, kid: they can't. It's like animals. You don't hold rats and rabbits to the same standard as lions and elephants. You don't hold Iraq to the same standard as the U.S. Bigger, you better be better."

This political note strikes Ahmad as strange, slighdy out of tune. But he is in bed with Charlie, and submissively settles himself for the ride.

"Jesus," says Jack Levy. "This is what life is all about. I'd forgotten, and never expected anybody to remind me." Thus guardedly, in tbese circ.u.mstances, without naming her, he pays tribute of a sort to his wife, who long ago had had her turn at showing him what life was all about.

Teresa Mulloy, naked beside him, agrees, "It is," but then adds, in self-protection, "but it doesn't last." Her face, with its round shape and slightly protuberant eyes, is flushed so that her freckles blend in, pale brown on pink.

"What does?" Jack asks. She doesn't really want him to agree with such a careless shrug. Her rosy flush becomes the high color that follows the sting of a rebuke, a facing of her defenselessness in this dead-end adventure, another married boyfriend. He will never leave his fat Beth, and would she want him to in any case? He is twenty-three years older than she, and she needs a man to last her the rest of her life.

Summer in New Jersey has attained July's steady swelter, but even so, feeling the air as cool on their love-flushed skins, the lovers have drawn up the top sheet, rumpled and damp from having been beneath their bodies. Jack sits up against the pillow, exposing the slack muscles and gray froth of his chest, and Terry, with lovable bohemian immodesty, has pulled her side of the sheet no higher, so her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, white as soap where the sun never touches them, jut free for him to admire and to feel the heft of again if he desires. He loves plump, tbough it can get to be too much. The fragrances of paint thinner and linseed oil lull Jack here in his mistress's bed. As Terry said, she is working bigger and brighter. When in f.u.c.king she sits on his lap, impaling herself on his erection, he feels the colors reflected from her walls flow down her sides along with his hands, her elongating, rib-filled, preening, Irish-white sides. With Beth, he can't imagine her weight on his pelvis, or her legs spread far enough apart; tbey have run out of positions, except for the spoon, and even there her huge a.s.s pushes him away like a jealous child in their bed.

"The thing is," Jack goes on, hearing in Terry's silence a withdrawal from some tacdessness on his part, "while it's going on it doesn't matter that it doesn't last-Motber Nature says, 'Who cares?' It feels like it's forever. I adore your t.i.ts, have I said tbat lately?"

"They're starting to droop. You should have seen tbem when I was eighteen. Bigger, even, and stuck straight out."

"Terry, please. Don't get me excited again. I got to go." Beth's, too, he could remember, had been like inverted bowls, tbe size for breakfast cereal, witb nipples hard as a single blueberry in his mouth.

"Where to now, Jack?" Terry's voice is weary. A mistress knows the man to be a liar, where the wife only guesses.

"A tutorial. A real one, across town. I have the car; she needs it in an hour and a half to get to the library." He is uncertain, in the gap his post-o.r.g.a.s.mic daze leaves in his head, of how much of what he says is true. Beth needs tlie car eventually, he knows.

Terry, hearing his uncertainty, complains, "Jack, you're always rushing off. Do I have body odor or something?"

This is cruel, because Beth indeed does; it fills up the bed at night, a caustic exhalation from her deep creases, and adds to his nocturnal unease and dread.

"No way," he says, having picked up this much slang from his students. "Not even-" He halts, on the edge of overstepping.

"My c.u.n.t. Say it."

"Not even tbere," he concedes. "Especially there. You're sweet. You're my sugar plum." But if truth be known he is wary of having his face too long between her legs, for fear of Beth's smelling the other woman through their good-night kiss-a mere peck, but their enduring custom for thirty-six years of marriage.

"Tell me about my c.u.n.t, Jack. I want to hear it. Loosen up."

"Please, Terry. This is grotesque."

"Why, you prim p.r.i.c.k? You Jewish priss. What's grotesque about my c.u.n.t?"

"Nothing, nothing," he concedes, beaten down. "It's perfect, it's gorgeous, it-"

"It? What? What is all these nice things? Perfect and gorgeous."

"Your c.u.n.t."

"Good. Go on." Perhaps her point is that he uses it, as he uses her, without paying enough attention, without taking in the whole picture-the aroma, the incidentals, her ache of loneliness when he pulls out, her awareness of being used, and used squeamishly at that.

"-is wet," he goes on, "and fuzzy, and soft as a flower inside, and stretchy-"

"Oh," she says, "stretchy. This is interesting. And it likes-tell me what it likes."

"It likes being kissed, and licked, and played with, and entered-don't make me go on any more, Terry. It kills it for me. I'm crazy about you, you know that. You're the nicest-"

"Don't tell me," she says angrily, and throws back the sheet and jackknifes out of bed, her b.u.t.tocks jiggling and beginning, as she said of elsewhere, to droop. Her b.u.t.tocks are developing puckers. As if sensing his eyes on her backside, she turns in the bathroom doorway, flashing her little patch of cedar color; the whole doughy softness of her- white bread without the crust-is exposed, he feels, defiantly, an invitation to kindness that he has failed to accept heartily enough. The sight of her, so naked and female, so sensitive and lumpy, dries his mouth, sucking the air of his usual clothed, conscientious life quite out of him. She completes his sentence for him: "-the nicest thing since Beth before she got pig-fat. You're happy enough to f.u.c.k me, but you don't want to say 'f.u.c.k' for fear she'll somehow hear it. It used to be you'd f.u.c.k and run because you were afraid Ahmad might come back any minute, but now he's gone at his job all day you always have some other excuse not to hang around even a minute. Just enjoy me, that's all I ever asked, but, no, Jews have to have guilt, it's their way of showing how special they are, how superior to everybody else, G.o.d gets sore at just them, them, with their putrid precious covenant. You make me sick, Jack Levy!" She slams the bathroom door, but it catches on a woolly bathroom rug and shuts reluctantly, not before in the slice of the light being angrily flicked on he sees her Irish a.s.s, never kissed by the desert sun, jiggle. with their putrid precious covenant. You make me sick, Jack Levy!" She slams the bathroom door, but it catches on a woolly bathroom rug and shuts reluctantly, not before in the slice of the light being angrily flicked on he sees her Irish a.s.s, never kissed by the desert sun, jiggle.

Jack lies there feeling mournful, wanting to get his clothes back on but knowing this would prove her point. When she finally comes out of the bathroom, having washed him away with a shower, she picks up her underwear from the floor and in measured fashion puts it on. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swing as she bends down, and these are the first pieces of her she covers, catching them up in the gossamer cups of her bra and reaching with a grimace behind to do the fasteners. Then she steps into her underpants, steadying herself with an extended arm and a shapely firm hand on the bureau top that is covered with lined-up tubes of painter's oils. She tugs with one hand and then with both the bit of nylon smartly up; the cedar-colored patch of frizzy hair puffs out, in its moment of capture, above the elastic waistband like the head on an impatiently poured beer. Her bra is black but her thong panties are lilac. Their elastic waist is low, exposing the pearly swell of her belly to the depth of the most daring hip-huggers, though what she next puts on are a pair of ordinary old high-waisted jeans, with a dab or two of paint on the front. A ribbed jersey and a pair of canvas sandals, and she will be completely armored, ready to face the street and its opportunities. Another man might steal her. Jack fears that each time he sees her naked might be the last. A desolation sweeps through him sharp enough to make him cry out, "Don't put all that c.r.a.p back on! Come back to bed, Terry. Please."

"You don't have time."

"I have time. I just remembered, the tutorial isn't until three. The kid's a loser anyway, from over in Fair Lawn, his parents think I can tutor him into Princeton. I can't. Pretty please?"

"Well . . . maybe a second. For just a snuggle. I hate it when we quarrel. We shouldn't have anything to quarrel about."

"We quarrel," he explains to her, "because we care about each other. If we didn't care we wouldn't quarrel."

She undoes the snap on her jeans, sucking in her gut and looking comically pop-eyed for a second, and quickly slithers back beneath the wrinkled sheet in her black and lilac underthings. There is a light-hearted whorishness in the outfit, like the teeny-s.l.u.t look affected by some of the bolder girls at Central High, which startles a furtive throb from his p.e.n.i.s. He tries to ignore it, putting his arm around her shoulders-the downy hairs at the nape of her neck are still damp from her shower-and pulling her closer to him in chaste companionship. "How is Ahmad doing?" he asks.

Terry answers warily, feeling the transition abrupt from wh.o.r.e to mother. "He seems to be doing fine. He likes the people he works for-a Lebanese father and son, who do a kind of good-cop / bad-cop routine on him. The son is apparently something of a character. Ahmad loves the truck."

"The truck?"

"It could be any truck, but this one is his his truck. You know how love is. Every morning he checks the tire pressure, the brakes, all these fluids. He tells me about them-engine oil, radiator coolant, windshield-washer fluid, battery, power steering, automatic transmission ... I think that's all. He checks the fan belts for tightness and I don't know what all else. He says the mechanics at the service stations, for the scheduled check-ups, are too rushed and hungover to do it right. The truck even has a name-Excellency. Excellency Home Furnishings. They thought it meant something excellent." truck. You know how love is. Every morning he checks the tire pressure, the brakes, all these fluids. He tells me about them-engine oil, radiator coolant, windshield-washer fluid, battery, power steering, automatic transmission ... I think that's all. He checks the fan belts for tightness and I don't know what all else. He says the mechanics at the service stations, for the scheduled check-ups, are too rushed and hungover to do it right. The truck even has a name-Excellency. Excellency Home Furnishings. They thought it meant something excellent."

"Well," Jack admits, "it almost does. It's witty." His hard-on is growing back as he lies there trying to think of Terry as a mother and a professional person, a nurse's aide and an abstract painter, an intelligent many-sided individual he would be glad to know even if she weren't of the opposite gender. But his thoughts have taken off from her silken underclothes, lilac and black, and the easy, even careless way she deals with him s.e.xually-all that experience, all those boyfriends acc.u.mulated in the fifteen years since Ahmad's father failed to crack America's riddle and fled. Even back then she was a Catholic-raised girl who didn't mind shacking up with a raghead, a Mussulman. She was a wild one, a rule-breaker. Terri-ble. A holy Terr-or. He asks her, "Who told you about Jews and the covenant?"

"I don't know. Some guy I knew once."

"You knew him in what sense?"

"I knew him. Jack, look, don't we have a deal? You don't ask, and I don't tell. I've been abandoned and single in the best years a woman is supposed to have. Now I'm forty. Don't begrudge me a little past."

"In my head I don't, of course. But, like we were saying, when you care, you get possessive."

"Is that what we were saying? I didn't hear that. All I heard was you thinking about Beth. Pathetic Beth."

"She's not so pathetic at the library. She sits behind the reference desk and moves around on the Internet much better than I can do."

"She sounds wonderful."

"No, but she's a person."

"Great. Who isn't? You're saying I'm not?"

An Irish temper makes you appreciate Lutherans. His p.r.i.c.k feels the change in Teresa's climate, and is beginning to wilt again. "We all are," he soothes her. "You especially. But as to the covenant, here's one Jew who never felt it. My father hated religion, and the only covenants I heard about were in neighborhoods that wouldn't let Jews in. How religious is Ahmad these days?"

She relaxes a little, slumping down into her pillow. His gaze travels an inch farther down into the black bra. The freckled skin of her upper chest looks a bit crepey, exposed to sun damage year after year, in contrast to the soap-white strip this side of the bra's edge. Jack thinks, So another Jew has been here before me. So another Jew has been here before me. Who all else? Egyptians, Chinamen, G.o.d knows. A lot of these painters she knows are kids half Who all else? Egyptians, Chinamen, G.o.d knows. A lot of these painters she knows are kids half her age. To them she'd be a mother who f.u.c.ks. Maybe that's why her own kid is queer, if he is.

She is saying, "It's hard to say. He never talked much about it. Poor little guy, he used to look so frail and scared when I'd drop him off at the mosque, going up those stairs all by himself. When I'd ask him afterwards how it had gone, he'd say 'Great' and clam up. He'd even blush. It was something he couldn't share. With the job, he told me, it's hard for him to always get to the mosque on Fridays, and this Charlie who's always with him doesn't seem to be all that observant. But, you know, really, all in all Ahmad seems more relaxed- just the way he talks to me, more of a man's manner, looking me level in the eye. He's pleased with himself, earning money, and, I don't know, maybe I'm imagining this, more open to new ideas, not closed into this very, in my opinion, limited and intolerant belief system. He's getting fresh input."

"Does he have a girlfriend?" Jack Levy asks, grateful to Terry for warming to a subject other than his own failings.

"Not as far as I know," she says. He loves that Irish mouth of hers when she gets pensive, forgetting to close her lifted upper lip, with its little blister of flesh in the middle. "I think I would know. He comes home tired, lets me feed him, reads the Koran or lately the newspaper-this stupid war on terror-so he can talk with this Charlie about it, and goes to bed in his room. His sheets"-she regrets bringing up the subject, but goes ahead with it-"are unspotted." She adds, "They weren't always."

"How would you know if he has a girl?" Jack presses.

"Oh, he'd talk about it, if only to get my goat. He's always hated my having male friends. He'd want to go out nights, and he doesn't."

"It doesn't seem quite right. He's a good-looking kid. Could he be gay?"

The question doesn't faze her; she has thought about it. "I could be wrong, but I think I'd know that, too. His teacher at the mosque, this Shaikh Rashid, is kind of creepy; but Ahmad's aware. He reveres him but distrusts him."

"You say you've met the man?"

"Just once or twice, picking up Ahmad or dropping him off. He was very smooth and proper with me. But I could feel hatred. To him I was a piece of meat-unclean meat." meat."

Unclean meat. Jack's hard-on has revived. He makes himself focus, a minute or so longer, before sharing this possibly inconvenient development. There is a pleasure, which he had forgotten, in just Jack's hard-on has revived. He makes himself focus, a minute or so longer, before sharing this possibly inconvenient development. There is a pleasure, which he had forgotten, in just having having the thing-the firm, stout, importunate stalk, the pompous little freshly appointed center of your being, bringing with it die sensation of there being the thing-the firm, stout, importunate stalk, the pompous little freshly appointed center of your being, bringing with it die sensation of there being more more of you. "The job," he resumes. "Does he put in long hours?" of you. "The job," he resumes. "Does he put in long hours?"

"It varies," Terry says. Her body gives off, perhaps in response to an emanation from his, a mix of tingling scents, soap at the nape of her neck foremost. The subject of her son is losing her interest. "He gets off when he's delivered the furniture. Some days it's early, most days it's late. Sometimes they drive as far as Camden, or Atlantic City."

"That's a long way to go, to deliver a piece of furniture."

"There aren't just deliveries; there are pickups, too. A lot of their furniture is secondhand. They make bids on people's estates and truck the stuff off. They have a kind of network; I don't know how much the Islamic thing matters. Most of their customers around New Prospect are black families. Some of their homes, Ahmad says, are surprisingly nice. He loves seeing the different areas, the different lifestyles."

"See the world," Jack sighs. "See New Jersey first. That's what I did, only I left out the world part. Now, missy"-he clears his throat-"you and I have a problem."

Teresa Mulloy's protuberant, beryl-pale eyes widen in mild alarm. "Problem?"

Jack lifts the sheet and shows her what has happened below his waist. He hopes he has shared enough life in general with her for her to share this with him.

She stares, and lets the tip of her tongue curl up to touch the plump center of her upper lip. "That's not a problem," she decides. "No problema, senor. "No problema, senor."

Charlie Chehab often rides with Ahmad, even when Ahmad could handle by himself the furniture to be loaded or unloaded. The boy is growing stronger with the lifting and hauling. He has asked that his paychecks-nearly five hundred a week, at twice what Shop-a-Sec paid per hour-be made out to Ahmad Ashmawy, though he still lives with his mother. Because his Social Security and driver's license both list his last name as Mulloy, she has gone with him downtown to the bank, in one of the new gla.s.s buildings, to explain, and to make out new forms for a separate account. That is how she is these days: she makes no resistance to him, though she never made much. His mother is, he sees now, looking back, a typical American, lacking strong convictions and the courage and comfort they bring. She is a victim of the American religion of freedom, freedom above all, though freedom to do what and to what purpose is left up in the air. Bombs bursting in air Bombs bursting in air- empty air is the perfect symbol of American freedom. There is no ummah ummah here, both Charlie and Shaikh Rashid point here, both Charlie and Shaikh Rashid point out-no encompa.s.sing structure of divine law that brings men rich and poor to bow down shoulder to shoulder, no code of self-sacrifice, no exalted submission such as lies at the heart of Islam, its very name. Instead tiiere is a clashing diversity of private self-seeking, whose catchwords are Seize the day Seize the day and and Devil take the hindmost Devil take the hindmost and and G.o.d helps those who help themselves, G.o.d helps those who help themselves, which translate to which translate to There is no G.o.d, no Day of Judgment; help yourself. There is no G.o.d, no Day of Judgment; help yourself. The double sense of "help yourself"-self-reliance and "grab what you can"-amuses the shaikh, who, after twenty years among these infidels, takes pride in his fluency in their language. Ahmad sometimes has to suppress a suspicion tJiat his teacher inhabits a semi-real world of pure words and most loves the Holy Qur'an for its language, a sh.e.l.l of violent shorthand whose content is its syllables, the ecstatic flow of "l"s and "a"s and guttural catches in the throat, savoring of the cries and the gallantry of mounted robed warriors under the cloudless sky of Arabia Deserta. The double sense of "help yourself"-self-reliance and "grab what you can"-amuses the shaikh, who, after twenty years among these infidels, takes pride in his fluency in their language. Ahmad sometimes has to suppress a suspicion tJiat his teacher inhabits a semi-real world of pure words and most loves the Holy Qur'an for its language, a sh.e.l.l of violent shorthand whose content is its syllables, the ecstatic flow of "l"s and "a"s and guttural catches in the throat, savoring of the cries and the gallantry of mounted robed warriors under the cloudless sky of Arabia Deserta.

Ahmad sees his mother as an aging woman still in her heart a girl, playing at art and love-for she is alive lately with a preoccupation in which her son detects a new lover, though this one, unlike the run of them, does not come around to the apartment and vie witJi Ahmad for dominance of the premises. She may be your mother but I f.u.c.k her, She may be your mother but I f.u.c.k her, their manner said, and this too was American, this valuing of s.e.xual performance over all family ties. The American way is to hate one's family and flee from it. Even the parents conspire in this, welcoming signs of independence from the child and laughing at disobedience. There is not that bonding love which the Prophet expressed for his daughter Fatimah: their manner said, and this too was American, this valuing of s.e.xual performance over all family ties. The American way is to hate one's family and flee from it. Even the parents conspire in this, welcoming signs of independence from the child and laughing at disobedience. There is not that bonding love which the Prophet expressed for his daughter Fatimah: Fatimah is a part of my body; whoever hurts her, has hurt me, and whoever hurts me has hurt G.o.d. Fatimah is a part of my body; whoever hurts her, has hurt me, and whoever hurts me has hurt G.o.d. Ahmad does not hate his mother; she is too scattered to hate, too distracted by her Ahmad does not hate his mother; she is too scattered to hate, too distracted by her pursuit of happiness. Though they still live together in that apartment perfumed with the sweet and acrid odors of oil paints, she has as little to do with the self he presents to the daytime world as do the pajamas, greasy widi sweat, that he sleeps in at night and sheds before the shower through which he hurries into the morning purity of the working day, and his mile walk to work. For some years it has been awkward, their bodies sharing the limited s.p.a.ce of the apartment. Her ideas of healthy behavior include appearing before her son in her underwear or a summer nightie that allows the shadows of her private parts to show through. On the summer street she wears halters and miniskirts, blouses unb.u.t.toned at the top and low-slung jeans tightest where she is fullest. When he rebukes her attire as improper and provocative, she mocks and teases him as if he is flirting with her. Only at the hospital, with pale-green scrubs, decently baggy, worn over her indiscreet street clothes, does she meet the Prophet's injunction to women, in the twenty-fourth sura, to throw veils over their bosoms and to display their ornaments only to dieir husbands and fathers and sons and brothers and slaves and eunuchs and, the Book emphasizes, children who note not women's nakedness. children who note not women's nakedness. As a child often or less, he more than once, to patch over the lack of a babysitter, waited for her at Saint Francis's and would rejoice to see her flushed with the hurry of her job, m.u.f.fled below the waist in scrub pants and tliick-soled running shoes, with no bangles to break die silence. A tense moment was reached when, at fifteen, he became taller dian she, and sprouted a dark down on his upper lip: still under forty, she still foolishly hoped to catch a man, to pluck a rich doctor from the midst of his harem of comely young attendants, and her teen-age son was betraying her as middle-aged. As a child often or less, he more than once, to patch over the lack of a babysitter, waited for her at Saint Francis's and would rejoice to see her flushed with the hurry of her job, m.u.f.fled below the waist in scrub pants and tliick-soled running shoes, with no bangles to break die silence. A tense moment was reached when, at fifteen, he became taller dian she, and sprouted a dark down on his upper lip: still under forty, she still foolishly hoped to catch a man, to pluck a rich doctor from the midst of his harem of comely young attendants, and her teen-age son was betraying her as middle-aged.

From Ahmad's standpoint she looked and acted younger than a mother should. In the countries of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, women withdrew into wrinkles and a proud shapelessness; an indecent confusion between a mother and a mate was not possible. Praise Allah, Ahmad never dreamed of sleeping with his mother, never undressed her in those s.p.a.ces of his brain where Satan thrusts vileness upon the dreaming and the daydreaming. In truth, insofar as the boy allows himself to link such thoughts with the image of his mother, she is not his type. Her flesh, mottled with pink and dotted with freckles, seems unnaturally white, like a leper's; his taste, developed in his years at Central High, is for darker skins, cocoa and caramel and chocolate, and for the alluring mystery of eyes whose blackness, opaque at first glance, deepens to the purple of plums or the glinting brown of syrup-what in the Qur'an figure as large dark eyeb.a.l.l.s, kept close in their pavilions. large dark eyeb.a.l.l.s, kept close in their pavilions. The Book promises: The Book promises: And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds. And theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds. Ahmad regards his mother as a mistake that his father made but that he never would. Ahmad regards his mother as a mistake that his father made but that he never would.

Charlie is married, to a Lebanese woman Ahmad sees rarely, coming into the store toward closing hour, at the end of her own day's work, which was performed in a legal office where tax forms are filled out for those who cannot do it for themselves, and where paper intercessions are made with the governments of the city, the state, and the nation as each exacts its tribute from all citizens. There is a mannish air to her Western dress and pants suits, and only her olive complexion and tfiick, untrimmed eyebrows distinguish her from a kafir. Her hair bushes out to several inches all around her head, but in the photograph Charlie keeps on his desk she is wearing an extensive head scarf that conceals every hair, and smiles above the faces of two small children. He never speaks of her, yet speaks of women often, especially the women who appear on television commercials.

"Did you see the one on the Levitra ad for guys who can't get it up?"

"I rarely watch television," Ahmad tells him. "Now tliat I am no longer a child, it does not interest me."

"Well, it should-how can you know what the corporations that run this country are doing to us if you don't? The one in the Levitra ad is my idea of absolute p.u.s.s.y, purring away about her 'guy' and how he likes 'quality' in his erections-she doesn't say 'erections' but that's what the whole ad is about, p.r.i.c.ks getting hard enough, erectile dysfunction is the biggest thing the drug-makers have hit upon since Valium-and the way she gazes off into the middle distance and gets misty-eyed, you can just see, see through a woman's eyes, this big stiff p.r.i.c.k of his, hard as a rock, and her mouth does this funny little thing-she has a great great mouth-it kind of ripples, tiie tiny little muscles in the lips, so you know she's picturing it, thinking of blowing it-the mouth-it kind of ripples, tiie tiny little muscles in the lips, so you know she's picturing it, thinking of blowing it-the perfect perfect mouth for c.o.c.ksucking-and then, looking, you know, all kind of misty and smug and s.e.xually satisfied, she turns to the guy- some male model, probably gay in his real life-and, quick as a wink, says, mouth for c.o.c.ksucking-and then, looking, you know, all kind of misty and smug and s.e.xually satisfied, she turns to the guy- some male model, probably gay in his real life-and, quick as a wink, says, 'Look 'Look at that!' and touches his cheek where he was making a dimple, listening sheepishly to her talking about how great he is. You wonder how the h.e.l.l diey did it- how many takes on videotape before she thought of it, or if the scriptwriter for at that!' and touches his cheek where he was making a dimple, listening sheepishly to her talking about how great he is. You wonder how the h.e.l.l diey did it- how many takes on videotape before she thought of it, or if the scriptwriter for the the commercial thought of it and wrote it out ahead of time-but it seems so spontaneous, you wonder how they got her to look so s.e.xed-up. She really has that happily f.u.c.ked look women get, you know? And it's not just the soft focus." commercial thought of it and wrote it out ahead of time-but it seems so spontaneous, you wonder how they got her to look so s.e.xed-up. She really has that happily f.u.c.ked look women get, you know? And it's not just the soft focus."

This, Ahmad thinks to himself a little mournfully, is male talk, which he, in his severe white shirt and black jeans, skirted the edges of in high school, and which his father might have provided in measured and less obscene fashion, had Omar Ashmawy waited to play a father's role. Ahmad is grateful to Charlie for including him in the club of male friendship. Fifteen or more years older than he, and married though he doesn't sound it, Charlie seems to a.s.sume that Ahmad knows everything he knows, or that if not he wants to know it. The boy finds it easier to talk to Charlie sideways, staring ahead through the truck windshield and with his hands on the wheel, than he does face to face. He tells him, blushing in exposing his piety, "I do not find that television encourages clean thoughts."

"h.e.l.l, no. Wake up: it's not meant to. Most of it is just c.r.a.p they put out to fill in between the commercials. That's what I'd love to be doing, if I didn't have Dad's business to keep from going under. His brother got it going with him and now sits down there in Florida bleeding us dry with his cut. I'd love to make commercials. Planning it out, putting together the elements-the director, the cast, the sets, the script; those things have to have a script-and then socking John Q. Public with it, right in the kisser, so he can't ever think straight again. Your gut to his gut, telling him what he can't live without. What else do they give us, these media moguls? The news is sob-sister stuff-Diane Sawyer, the poor Afghani babies, boo-hoo-hoo-or else straight propaganda; Bush complains about Putin turning into Stalin, but we're worse than the poor old clunky Kremlin ever was. The Commies just wanted to brainwash you. The new powers that be, the international corporations, want to wash your brains away, period. They want to turn you into machines for consuming-the chicken-coop society. All this entertainment-Madman, it's c.r.a.p, the same c.r.a.p that kept the ma.s.ses zombified in the Depression, only then you stood in line and paid a quarter for the movie, where today they hand it to you free, with the advertisers paying a million a minute for the chance to mess with your heads."

Ahmad, steering, tries to agree: "It is not on the Straight Path."

"You kidding? It's the Yellow Brick Road, paved with insidious intentions." In-sid-i-ous, In-sid-i-ous, Ahmad thinks, recalling the last time he was preached at. In the side of his field of vision he sees sparks of saliva spray from Charlie's mouth in his hurry to speak. "Sports," the man spits out. "They pay zillions for the rights to televise sports. It's reality without being real. The money has ruined the professional leagues; n.o.body sticks with their team any more, they jump ship for another fifteen mill when already they can't count the money they have. There used to be team loyalty and some regional identification, but the morons in the stands don't know what they're missing. They think this has always been it, greedy players and records broken every year. Barry Bonds-he's better than Ruth, better than DiMaggio, but who can love that juiced-up surly b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Fans now don't know about love. They don't care about it. Sports are like video games; the players are holograms. You listen to these radio talk shows and want to say to these Cheeseheads or Jetheads or whatever who spout off endlessly, 'Oh, please, get a f.u.c.king life.' My G.o.d, the poor saps have all these statistics memorized, as if Ahmad thinks, recalling the last time he was preached at. In the side of his field of vision he sees sparks of saliva spray from Charlie's mouth in his hurry to speak. "Sports," the man spits out. "They pay zillions for the rights to televise sports. It's reality without being real. The money has ruined the professional leagues; n.o.body sticks with their team any more, they jump ship for another fifteen mill when already they can't count the money they have. There used to be team loyalty and some regional identification, but the morons in the stands don't know what they're missing. They think this has always been it, greedy players and records broken every year. Barry Bonds-he's better than Ruth, better than DiMaggio, but who can love that juiced-up surly b.a.s.t.a.r.d? Fans now don't know about love. They don't care about it. Sports are like video games; the players are holograms. You listen to these radio talk shows and want to say to these Cheeseheads or Jetheads or whatever who spout off endlessly, 'Oh, please, get a f.u.c.king life.' My G.o.d, the poor saps have all these statistics memorized, as if they^re they^re getting paid A-Rod's salary. And the so-called comedies the networks dish up-Jesus- who's laughing? It's slop. And Leno and Letterman, more slop. But the commercials, they are fantastic. They're like Faberge eggs. When somebody in this country wants to sell getting paid A-Rod's salary. And the so-called comedies the networks dish up-Jesus- who's laughing? It's slop. And Leno and Letterman, more slop. But the commercials, they are fantastic. They're like Faberge eggs. When somebody in this country wants to sell you something, they really buckle down. They get intense. You watch the same commercial twenty times, you see how every second has been weighed out in gold. They're full of what physicists call information. information. Would you know, for example, that Americans were as sick as they are, full of indigestion and impotence and baldness, always wetting their pants and having sore a.s.sholes, if you didn't watch commercials? I know you say you never watch it, but you really shouldn't miss this Ex-Lax commercial with this cute dish with long straight hair and Waspy long teeth who looks out through the camera and tells you, just Would you know, for example, that Americans were as sick as they are, full of indigestion and impotence and baldness, always wetting their pants and having sore a.s.sholes, if you didn't watch commercials? I know you say you never watch it, but you really shouldn't miss this Ex-Lax commercial with this cute dish with long straight hair and Waspy long teeth who looks out through the camera and tells you, just you, you, sitting there with your bag of Fritos, that she has a weakness for junk food-skinny as a rail, with a weakness for junk food supposedly-and has to battle constipation sometimes? How old is she? Twenty-five if that, and as buff as Lance Armstrong, and you can bet she hasn't missed taking a dump for a day in her life, but the Ex-Lax CEO wants the old ladies out there not to be ashamed of their plugged-up colons. 'Look,' he's saying to them, the Ex-Lax CEO is saying, 'even a snappy Waspy chick like this can't always take a s.h.i.t, or keep her underpants dry on the golf course, or her hemorrhoids from ruining her day in the bleachers; so, Grandma, you're not some old piece of crud on the trash heap, you're in the same boat with these young glamour p.u.s.s.es!' " sitting there with your bag of Fritos, that she has a weakness for junk food-skinny as a rail, with a weakness for junk food supposedly-and has to battle constipation sometimes? How old is she? Twenty-five if that, and as buff as Lance Armstrong, and you can bet she hasn't missed taking a dump for a day in her life, but the Ex-Lax CEO wants the old ladies out there not to be ashamed of their plugged-up colons. 'Look,' he's saying to them, the Ex-Lax CEO is saying, 'even a snappy Waspy chick like this can't always take a s.h.i.t, or keep her underpants dry on the golf course, or her hemorrhoids from ruining her day in the bleachers; so, Grandma, you're not some old piece of crud on the trash heap, you're in the same boat with these young glamour p.u.s.s.es!' "

"It is a society that fears getting old," Ahmad agrees, gently braking in antic.i.p.ation of a far-off green light's turning red before the truck gets there. "Infidels do not know how to die."

"No," Charlie says, his unstoppable voice halting, and sounding cautious. "Who does?" he asks.

"True believers," Ahmad tells him, since he has asked. "They know that Paradise awaits the righteous." Gazing through Excellency's tall and dirty windshield at the oil-stained macadam and red taillights and blaring blobs of reflected sun that compose a summer day along a truck route in New Jersey, he quotes the Qur'an: "G.o.d giveth you life, then causeth you to die: then will He a.s.semble you on the day of resurrection: there is no doubt of it." "G.o.d giveth you life, then causeth you to die: then will He a.s.semble you on the day of resurrection: there is no doubt of it."

"Absolutely," Charlie says. "Good stuff. 'No doubt of it.' Me, if a good reason came up, I'd be happy to cash it in. You, you're too young. You got all your life ahead of you."

"Not so," Ahmad says. He did not hear in Charlie's gruff response the quaver of doubt, the silken shimmer of irony, which he detects in the voice of Shaikh Rashid. Charlie is a man of the world, but Islam is solidly part of that world. Lebanese are not fine-honed and two-edged like Yemenis or handsome and vanishing like Egyptians. He shyly points out, "Already I have lived longer than many martyrs in Iran and Iraq."

But Charlie is not done with the women he sees on television commercials. "And now," he says, "the drug cartels have made such a killing with v.i.a.g.r.a and so on they're selling s.e.x enhancement, as they call it, to women. There's one commercial-you may not have seen it, it doesn't come on too often-showing a woman, kind of sensible and plain, a schoolteacher, you figure, or an office manager for some middle-grade tech company, not the upper end, with this little frown on her face so you know something's missing in her life, and the music adds an undercurrent, kind of a minor-key nagging, and the next thing you know you see her floating along swathed in this filmy stuff, barefoot; she better be barefoot, because when you look she's walking on water, trailing ripples, there off the beach where it's just a couple of inches deep, but even so she's not sinking in, and has a new hairdo, and better makeup, so she's gone all misty in the face, like that terrific c.o.c.ksucker I was describing-I think they have some dilator they put in the eyes of these women to make them look that way-and then you get the reason, the logo of this new 'hormone enhancer,' they call it. The message is, she's been laid. She's been knocking herself silly with multiple o.r.g.a.s.ms. They would never have admitted that in commercials ten, fifteen years ago-that women want it, they want it a lot; being nicked is a relaxant and a beauty aid. How about you, Madman? You getting a lot lately?"