Kapitoil

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 4

When I woke up after Halloween, I was still ill. I hydrated on my couch and watched American football on television, which was less stimulating than baseball even though there was more continuous action, and I also failed to cover the point spread in one of the three games I bet on and lost my $5.

I considered calling Rebecca, but I was uncertain what to express.

After two hours of not moving from the couch, I forced myself to take the subway to the mosque on the Upper East Side.

There were again many people inside. I performed wudu, and felt especially refreshed after rinsing my mouth and inhaling and ejecting the water into and out of my nose. Wudu is like defragmenting a bottlenecked hard drive: You do not realize how enhanced you will feel until you do it.

I found an area in which to pray. When I stood to leave, an older man with dark skin and long eyelashes wearing a white robe walked over. “As-Salāmu ‘Alaykum,” he said.

“Wa ‘Alaykum As-Salam,” I said. It felt strange to speak Arabic to someone in New York.

“This is your first time here?” he asked.

I didn’t want to admit that I had been there before but had never talked to anyone in nearly a month in New York. “I recently transferred here for work at Schrub Equities,” I said.

“Ah, you are a banker.” He rubbed his fingers together and smiled. “You are making money, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “I donate Zakat to schools in Qatar.”

“Are you from Doha?” he asked. I told him I was. “Then you should meet Fawaz.” He waved his hand at another man his age also in a white robe. Fawaz had one golden tooth, and told me that he was an Egyptian who previously lived in Doha but hadn’t been back in over a decade. He had lived near my family’s neighborhood, and we discussed the infrastructure changes there in the past ten years, e.g., construction for what will be the largest shopping mall in the Middle East.

Fawaz wrote his address and telephone number on a piece of paper. “My family is having a dinner with others from the mosque on Friday,” he said. “Your presence would honor us.”

“It would honor me as well,” I said.

After I left I felt enhanced in all ways, so I decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and walked south on 5th Ave. past the wealthy apartments bordering Central Park. Mr. Schrub probably knows many of their residents. One goal I had hoped to achieve here which I haven’t yet is meeting more business people and networking partners to build social capital. But whenever I meet someone, I have difficulty thinking primarily of that person as part of a future network.

The museum entrance was similar to a palace and made the Qatar National Museum seem like a small store. I was seven when I first went. I do not remember the actual visit, but only what happened before it. There was an exhibition on Qatari traditional clothing and how it is produced. Even though clothing is not my preferred subject now and it was not then either, my mother talked about it for several days in a way that stimulated my interest.

The day arrived, and we were about to leave when my father, who was reading a newspaper at the kitchen table as he often does, asked where we were going.

“I told you before,” she said. “I am taking Karim to the museum.”

“You are pregnant. You should be resting at home.”

“I can manage a museum,” she said. “And Karim is very interested in seeing the exhibition.”

He put down his newspaper. “What is the exhibition?”

“Traditional Qatari clothing.”

My father turned to me. I was even worse then about reciprocating visual contact, and I looked at my shoes. “Clothing.” He laughed. “My son is interested in clothing.”

I wished she had at least said it was about how the clothing was produced. But my mother just shook her head and took me to the door. “Do not forget to show him the jewelry and perfumes as well,” my father said as we left.

When we got outside she said, “Do not ever let anyone make you feel inferior for what interests you.” I tried to remember this advice whenever my classmates made fun of me for being interested in computers before technology became popular.

In the Metropolitan Museum I decided to observe exclusively the European paintings, as the museum was so vast that I had to specialize, and that area is also a major knowledge gap to address if I am to become as well-rounded as Mr. Schrub.

I spent a long time studying the paintings of Paul Cezanne, who focused on objects and sometimes nature. But he also painted men and females bathing. At first I stood far away from the painting so no one would witness me looking closely at it, but then I listened to a museum leader lecturing to a cluster of tourists.

“Cezanne was noted for his discomfort with female models,” she said. “He compensated by concocting imaginary tableaus in sylvan environments, and that visionary quality is what lends the bathing paintings a sense of the mythic. Note the characteristic diagonal, parallel brushstrokes that weld the bathers to the landscape while simultaneously asserting their division…”

I stopped listening, because although I appreciate receiving some data to help decipher a problem, it’s always more enjoyable for me to utilize my own intellect. After the tourists left, I moved closer to inspect the brushstrokes. The leader was correct, and I examined them for several minutes and was careless when other visitors came nearby. It’s beneficial for my programming to remind myself that major projects ultimately derive from discrete miniature components.

For the rest of the paintings I selected just a few that intrigued me, and similarly magnified them, even when they were of bathing females. After two hours I was taxed and walked home for exercise.

I rerouted through Times Square, as I had not been there in several weeks. While I waited at a corner, a man nearby with an advertisement on a board surrounding his body said, “Naked girls! No cover! $10 lap dance specials all night!” A mother was adjacent to me with her young daughter, and she covered her daughters’ ears by pretending to hug her.

I wanted to call Zahira when I came home, but it was too late in Doha. On Monday morning I called as I ate my labneh and pita, but my father answered. “Is Zahira at university now?” I asked him.

“It’s pleasant to hear from you as well,” he said.

I asked him how his business was progressing.

“Not well,” he said. “That’s why I’m home early. No one entered the shop today. I told Qasim I will have to let him go.”

“But he has worked for you for four years,” I said. “And without him, you will have to spend extra hours stocking and cleaning the store.”

“I cannot afford his salary. If I must work harder, then that is what I will do.”

“You should update your computer inventory system,” I said. His computer is obsolete and not connected to the Internet. “For instance, you do not currently use it to search for different suppliers, which could help you find lower prices and—”

“I am satisfied with my current arrangement,” he said.

It was frustrating, because I had several ideas for how a new computer could benefit his business, but I knew he wouldn’t listen. So I discarded the idea and told him he should advertise his shop in the newspapers, as I’ve advised him to do for years, because his shop does provide a valuable and unique service of searching for items that are difficult to locate. “You must spend money to make money,” I said.

“Advertising inflates prices without enhancing the product,” he said.

“Yes, but with greater profits from advertising, the manufacturer or supplier can then work on enhancing the product.” It’s an argument we’ve had frequently and we always state the same ideas, and I was able to discuss it while I tied up my full kitchen trash bag to deposit in the hallway incinerator.

“A new department store recently opened nearby,” he said. “Nearly everything I have they also have, plus additional products. And now there is an advertisement on our street for it that depicts a white female coloring her lips.”

Outside my window were many advertisements depicting females doing much more than that. “That is the means by which consumers respond,” I said. “It’s normal.”

“It’s immoral. And if we permit foreign companies to advertise like that here, soon Qatari companies will advertise similarly.”

“Showing females’ bodies is not necessarily immoral,” I said. I was about to tell him about the Cezanne paintings, but he interrupted.

“Is that what you think after one month as an American banker?” His voice was sharp like a right angle on the words “American banker.” “Have you completely adopted American values?”

I didn’t know why he had to note that I was an American banker, as I was a banker before, and he never previously criticized me for my profession. “I have not completely adopted American values. But after spending time here and seeing more of the world than merely Doha, I see that not all of them are harmful.”

“If you think that, then you are already brainwashed,” he said.

If there is one thing I dislike, it’s someone telling me that I am not in control of my own thoughts. “I would rather be brainwashed than not have a brain at all,” I said. “You are jealous because you don’t have the skills to succeed in a field like mine.”

After a period of muteness, he said, “I will tell Zahira to call you,” and disconnected.

The piece of paper on which Fawaz had written his address and telephone number was on my kitchen table. His address in Queens was in Arabic letters. I found an opening in the kitchen trash bag and put the paper inside, and in the hallway I threw it down the incinerator and shut the small door with force and went to work.

While I was in a restroom partition in the afternoon, I heard Jefferson and Dan use the urinals. Under the door I saw their feet at opposite ends of the row. Dan said, “My friend Tim’s coming in this weekend. Want to go to Gentlemen Only with us?”

“Yeah,” Jefferson said. “This time I’m getting the champagne room.”

“Didn’t you hear? There’s no sex in the champagne room,” Dan said.

They sang those words multiple times, and then Jefferson said, “Fuck that, if I’m shelling out 200 bucks, I’m getting a hand job,” and Dan said, “I hear that,” and they both left without depressing the flush handles or washing their hands.

I didn’t see Rebecca the next two days, which relieved me, as I still didn’t know what to say. Then I finally innovated something. The brain frequently works in the background on another problem when it is solving something else.

Sender: Karim Issar

Recipient: Rebecca A. Goldman

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 21:14:38

Subject: I am a…

…tool.

I waited for her to reply, and when she didn’t I grew panicked that she no longer wanted to be my friend at all. But on Wednesday morning she wrote:

You don’t owe me any apology/explanation. If you want to, though, you can come to a party my roommate and I are throwing on Friday. Details below.

I told her I would attend, but she didn’t write back then or the remainder of the week, and I didn’t see her in the coffee room.

Zahira emailed that she didn’t have time to call me but that she had received a 97 on another biology exam. She didn’t mention anything about our father.

sylvan = related to forests

tableau = picture

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 6

Rebecca’s building didn’t have an elevator. A female with short very blonde hair like a boy’s with plastic clips in it answered the door. She held a drink and wore a black dress that was the class of dress on old movie stars.

“Hellooo,” she said as if she were singing a note. I didn’t hear anyone else inside.

I tried to look into the room, but I didn’t see anyone. “Is this the apartment of Rebecca Goldman?”

“It is. You’re Karim, I take it?”

The solitary way she could know my name was if Rebecca had talked to her about me, which would be positive, but only if she gave me kudos. “Is this the night of the party?” I asked.

“It is indeed the night of the party. You’re a little early, hot stuff.”

In fact I wasn’t early, because the invitation stated the party started at 10:00 p.m. and it was 10:04 p.m., but I didn’t correct her. She told me her name was Jessica, and waved for me to follow her inside and danced as she walked to the sounds of a fast song that I didn’t recognize, then yelled for Rebecca.

Rebecca entered in jeans and an informal shirt, which I had never seen her wear before.

“This is for your guests,” I said, and offered her a container of ma’amoul I had baked and juice I had poured into a two-liter bottle of Coke. “And for you, of course.”

“Thank you.” She put the container on the table with the other food and held the juice. “I hope Jessica didn’t scare you off.”

“No, she is not scary,” I said.

“Can I fix you a drink?” Jessica asked. “I make a mean mojito.”

Before I could respond, Rebecca said, “Hey, don’t start stealing away my guests.” She directed me to give my coat to Jessica and to come into the kitchen, where there were several bottles of liquor and also nonalcoholic beverages. She handed me a red plastic cup. “Have whatever you like. Or your juice.” I had told her about the juice previously at work and urged her to have it because it is high in antioxidants. She tried it once and said she disliked the flavor. I told her most things people dislike are in fact healthy for them.

I didn’t want to repeat what happened the previous weekend. But I also didn’t want Rebecca to think I was someone who never experienced fun. So I said, “I would like one beer, if you have any.”

She took a bottle out of the refrigerator and opened it rapidly with a bottle opener. When she transferred it to me, our fingers briefly contacted.

“I haven’t seen you around the office much lately,” she said.

“I have been working overtime.”

“Right, on your little Manhattan project.”

Then neither of us said anything, and I was nervous because we were alone in the kitchen and the only sounds derived from the stereo. I was glad when the doorbell rang.

The guests were a man with a black beard he continuously petted and a female who wore glasses with thick frames shaped like the eyes of a cat. Rebecca hugged them and offered them some food on the table, and the female said, “Is that ma’amoul?” Rebecca asked me to confirm it, and I said yes.

“Where’d you buy it?” the female asked. “I can’t find it anywhere.” She picked one up and put it in her mouth.

“I—” I said, then I stopped myself and waited for her to eat it, as I didn’t want her to convert her judgment because she knew its origin.

“This is so good,” she said. “John, try one. It’s a cookie stuffed with dates.”

“I baked them myself,” I said. “But I wanted to wait for you to eat it before I confessed.”

Everyone laughed, although I didn’t intend for it to be a joke. The female wiped off her hand and held it out. “I’m Eleanor, and this is my partner, John.”

“You have a business together?” I asked.

“A business?” Then she laughed again. “Oh, no, I meant we’re domestic partners.”

“I understand,” I said. “My name is Karim. Rebecca and I are international work partners.”

I waited for the others to laugh at my joke, but no one did, and in fact no one said anything and it was tense until Eleanor asked where I came from. I told her, and she said she was an artist and had studied Middle Eastern art and she wanted to go there someday. John asked me questions about Qatar because he was a journalist and knew that we just had our first elections since our independence in 1971. I was happy to discuss politics, as I hadn’t truly done that yet in New York. Rebecca is interested in the topic but she is always nervous when discussing it with me, so our conversations don’t have much breadth.

After an hour of conversing with them the room had become full, but I wasn’t anxious. A few more people joined our conversation and at one point I saw that Rebecca was watching us from across the room, but she turned her eyes away when I detected her.

Then Jessica requested that we all dance, and although I’m not a sexy dancer despite my athletic skills, it was enjoyable and we continued for a long time to songs I hadn’t heard of because they weren’t of the class that reaches Qatar. Rebecca joined us halfway through and we danced near each other several times, but every time she came close it was like we were magnets with similar poles, and she moved away. She left after a period of time and talked with a few men who had thin beards and glasses like hers and wore unconventional materials that blended in with everyone else’s, unlike my suit, and I kept watching her even though I attempted not to. I didn’t want to join her cluster because I was the only one who didn’t wear glasses, and I would stand out like a syntax error in a program, even though my eyes were not defective and theirs were.

I also didn’t understand what they were discussing, e.g., one of the men, who was not shaved and had long black hair tied with a green rubber band in the rear, said in a very deep voice, “I didn’t say I disliked the Archdukes of Hazzard; I said they were derivative of so many late-’70s New York punk bands that I’d rather just listen to the original singers. Which, incidentally, would be a good punk band name — the Original Singers.” And Rebecca said, “James, you’re such an elitist, and an obscurantist,” and he said, “Using the words ‘elitist’ and ‘obscurantist’ is a performative sentence which renders the speaker an elitist and obscurantist, as well. Read your Austin,” and she said, “You suck — perform that sentence,” but she smiled and lightly struck him on the shoulder.

Jessica left to talk with Rebecca and her friends, and she returned to our circle and asked, “Anyone for weed?”

Everyone else said yes. “You want to have some fun, Karim?” Jessica said.

I said loudly, “Yes, I would like to have some fun.”

She said “All right,” and we all followed her to Rebecca in the corner. Rebecca watched me closely. She whispered, “You know what this is, right?”

“I am not a child,” I said. “I know about marijuana.”

“Okay, sorry,” she said.

Jessica retrieved from a closet a tall red plastic cylinder that had a metal smoking pipe attached to it. She took it to the kitchen, and when she returned the cylinder was partially filled with water. One of the men removed a clear bag with marijuana in it. He inserted his fingers into the bag to pinch a small quantity, as if his hand were a machine that picked up dirt, and carefully deposited it in the pipe.

I observed him closely so that when it was my turn I would not humiliate myself. He covered a small hole in the cylinder with his index finger while he moved an activated lighter over the marijuana, then he inhaled from the cylinder and simultaneously removed his index finger. The smoke passed through the water, and I hypothesized that it made it less carcinogenic and softer for the lungs, which made me less nervous about inhaling it, as I have never even used a hookah.

Then he contained his breath for over ten seconds before he exhaled the smoke like a factory chimney. After he finished he said, “That’s a totally groovy bong, dude,” in an intentionally false and high voice, and everyone else laughed with him although I didn’t know why, and I decided I should not make any more jokes in the U.S. because I still didn’t understand the logic of humor here.

He shifted the bong clockwise to the next person. I was next, and while the female next to me inhaled, Rebecca looked at me again as if she were afraid for me.

When I received the bong, I inflamed the marijuana for a long time and inhaled strongly. The water inside made a quiet bubbling sound that was pleasing and then the marijuana smoke reached my lungs, and it burned and produced tears in my eyes, but I closed them and continued inhaling at the same pace as if I were a machine that could proceed infinitely. When I was finally done, Jessica said, “Damn, Karim knows how to par-tay!” and I still contained my breath for even longer than the previous two people. By the time I exhaled there were just a few clouds of smoke, so I had absorbed the lion’s share of it and was using the product efficiently.

I felt slightly imbalanced, but I was not truly inebriated yet. They passed the bong around the circle, and the originator asked if we were up for another round. A few people, including Rebecca, said they had inhaled a sufficient amount, but Jessica said she wanted more and asked if I did, and I said, “If you have enough remaining I would like more,” not only because I wanted to see what the true sensation was like but also to show Rebecca that I knew how to party.

I watched the first man produce another cloud of smoke. I thought about how it was previously the marijuana plant, which came in a larger shipment that was probably sold by a drug dealer with a small income who bought it in a much larger shipment from a drug dealer with a larger income and so on, and was transported into this country by a drug dealer with an even larger income, and originally derived from marijuana plants in the ground, but that it was picked by someone with a very small income. It is always a valuable exercise to evaluate how a product arrives at its consumer, because it shows how many middlemen there are and whose labor helps determine the market price.

When the smoke contacted my lungs on the next round, it didn’t burn at all, and my body instantly felt lighter, as if someone had rotated a dial and reduced the gravity in the room.

After I handed the bong to Jessica I thought about how:

1. The party was not stimulating the economy, because most of what the guests consumed for entertainment at the party minus the alcohol was either essentially “free” (all the food was homemade, although the raw materials were purchased elsewhere) or not purchased from a store (the marijuana) or was previously purchased and reused (e.g., the music);

A. but then it also meant the guests were not paying for middlemen or advertising;

B. and ultimately they were creating a “product” (a social event providing entertainment) from almost nothing via creativity and cooperation;

i. which is impossible in the physical world in which matter cannot be created or destroyed;

1. but this is how human emotions and intangible products differ from objects;

a. and the most powerful material/emotion that you truly derive from nothing is love, which does not require a source and has no limit;

i. e.g., I have infinitely loved Zahira since the first time I saw her and will always feel that way.

As I concluded this thought, I observed Rebecca more closely than I would normally, especially the small area between her lips and her nose and the soft angles of the two vertical lines there, and I almost became imbalanced, but I put my hand on the wall and remained vertical. I could hear the blood zooming in my ears like water boiling in a teapot, and I licked my dry lips.

I craved water but I couldn’t go to the kitchen because I didn’t want anyone to see me in that condition. I went down a hallway to the restroom on the other side of the apartment.

The restroom was locked, so I leaned against the wall. It hurt my back and I plummeted slowly until I was sitting. That was uncomfortable also, and then I noticed an open door to another room. Multiple coats covered the bed in a pile like a bowl of colorful herbs, and I considered that if coats were allowed to be on the bed then I could be as well.

The room had only a small lamp on for minimal light. A picture of Rebecca’s brother was on the table by the bed and next to a black-and-white picture of a young female with long straight hair who looked like Rebecca. Three framed paintings hung on her walls of men’s faces in colors such as orange and blue and green that looked like the inverted true colors.

A bottle of prescription pills was next to her pictures. I rotated it to read the label:

Rebecca Goldman

Zoloft

Take daily with food (150mg)

I rotated it back and reviewed the paintings. The men looked like aliens, and their faces were very angry and sad simultaneously, and my heart accelerated and my skin perspired at what felt like an infinite number of points. I sat on the bed where there weren’t any coats and reclined and closed my eyes because the ceiling looked like it was spinning. Then I grew very panicked, because I knew I did not have complete control over my thoughts anymore, and I didn’t want to be at the party anymore and I regretted inhaling marijuana smoke only to impress Rebecca.

I tried to regulate my breathing but I was inhaling shallowly, and then a voice said “Here,” and a cold wet cloth was on my forehead and absorbing the perspiration, and when I opened my eyes Rebecca was leaning over me. She said, “You’ve been gone almost half an hour,” even though it seemed like only a few minutes.

“I am not feeling well,” I said.

She continued petting my forehead. “Just stay still.”

We stayed like that for a few minutes and my breathing deepened. “Do you think some slow music will help?” she asked, and I nodded.

I closed my eyes and focused on the words of the singer on the stereo she said was named Leonard Cohen, and it helped reroute my brain from panicking. The line “Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm” especially helped because I had to mentally link the two images, and it was a logical connection I had never previously considered, and after he sang that I opened my eyes and Rebecca’s hair was now hanging down on the pillow like falling black water and covering everything else around my face like a cylinder and all I could see was her face looking down at me, and my body felt more stabilized.

“Who produced these paintings?” I asked.

“My brother,” she said. “He’s studied art since he was little.”

“Zahira is artistic as well.” I didn’t know what else to say in that position. “But my father discouraged her from taking classes like that when she was young.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “Girls can do whatever they want here.” She removed the cloth from my forehead. Then she lowered her head and her hair touched my face like feathers. Her eyes fluctuated quickly from my eyes to my chest, and her warm breath moved over me, and my heart accelerated again.

I said, “Rebecca,” because the silence felt like shallow breaths again, and she didn’t answer, so I said her name again and she said, “God, it’s been a while,” and I wasn’t certain what she was referring to but I had an idea, so I said, “Then possibly—”

Before I could finish my sentence, which was going to be “Then possibly we should first discuss this situation from other angles,” she sat up and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is a mistake.” She kept saying the word “mistake” to herself as she stood up and moved away from the bed.

I said I was feeling enhanced and should go home, even though I was perspiring again, and tried to find my coat. The pile was large, and Rebecca stood there while I searched. She said, “You must think I’m a real shithead,” which almost made me laugh after I had analyzed the word, but because I didn’t know how to respond I looked around while I continued feeling through the pile and saw her blue wool hat on her desk.

I said, “That is a nice hat,” and she said, “My mother knitted it for me,” and suddenly I became very sad thinking about her mother producing a hat for her, even though there is of course nothing truly sad about it for her, but I could feel pressure behind my eyes, so I refocused on the pile and finally found my coat at the bottom and said I would see her on Monday and walked out while holding it, and I exited the party without saying good-bye to anyone and took a taxi home.

bong = device for inhaling marijuana

Manhattan project = term for atomic bomb project (not necessarily a project in Manhattan)

obscurantist = a person who withholds data from others

par-tay = different pronunciation for “party”

performative = a statement that also produces an action

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 9

On Tuesday I was making some trades in my office when someone knocked on the door. The person knocked very softly as if waking a child, and I didn’t hear it the first time, because it was raining loudly outside.

“What’s up?” Rebecca asked when she entered, which I didn’t know how to answer, because (1) she was the one to search for me, and (2) I never know how to respond to that question, since (a) people don’t truly want to know exactly what you are doing at the moment and (b) I couldn’t tell Rebecca even if she did want to know.

So I said “Nothing,” which makes people think you are boring, but I had no other ideas and I was slightly nervous.

“You’re allowed to decorate here,” she said.

“I do not own many objects.”

“Still, a picture or something. Some personality.” She was now standing across from me at the desk even though there were two empty chairs there. The sky outside was the color of smoke, which made the interior seem even less decorated. “It’s pretty dead.”

“Maybe you can lend me one of your brother’s paintings,” I said, and immediately I regretted it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Not about the paintings.” She picked up a pen on my desk and moved it in her fingers like a conductor of a symphony holds a baton. “So, the other night, I was pretty drunk and all, and I think I may have done or nearly done certain things that could be considered somewhat inappropriate by some given the context of our professional relationship.”

It was difficult for me to follow the meaning of her sentence but I could understand it from her expression and how she focused on the pen.

“So, basically I’m saying that I wanted to make sure you didn’t get the wrong impression or anything.” She looked at me for the first time since she had entered the room. “Still friends?”

The rain had stopped, and in fact the sun was now out, but I wished it was still raining. It felt as if someone had turned up the gravity inside my chest, the opposite of feeling high, and without looking at her I slowly said, “Still friends.” I understand on a logical level how all real-world systems have finite resources and can partially satisfy only some consumers, and therefore the desires of two parties are sometimes incompatible. But it is still difficult to understand on a nonlogical level.

I heard her put the pen on my desk. “Great. Well, that’s all I wanted to say.” Then, to be polite, she asked me how work was proceeding, and I again responded like a robot, and she left, and I looked at the sunlight pouring into my dead office until I decided to concentrate on my work.

dead = lacking decoration or personality

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 14

The next two days I worked very late and was home only to sleep. My apartment had many luxuries but I was the solitary person using them, and that can grow boring, e.g., many times I was listening to the radio on the stereo and wished I could play the song for Zahira, but when I remembered she wasn’t there, I didn’t want to listen anymore.

Kapitoil was humming at near-optimal efficiency. We were restricting our daily investment so we would not cause market turmoil, and Mr. Ray didn’t state any specific projections, but I calculated that if we continued at this rate for the next year, Schrub’s quants revenues would increase approximately 30 % over the previous year.

Then on Thursday morning I received an email from Mr. Schrub’s secretary. I was so stimulated when I saw her name in my inbox that I spilled my cranberry-blueberry juice on my desk and it left a small red puddle. She wrote:

Mr. Issar,

Mr. Schrub would like to invite you to his estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, this coming weekend. Car service will pick you up at the office at 5 p.m. on Friday and deliver you to Downtown Manhattan Heliport, where you will meet Mr. Schrub and proceed by helicopter to Greenwich. A car will return you to your residence on Sunday afternoon. Please let me know at your earliest convenience if these terms are acceptable.

I almost called Zahira to tell her the news, but it was too expensive to connect to Qatar during the workday. And I couldn’t tell anyone in the office because it would produce envy and they would question why Mr. Schrub was requesting my company, so I told my mother in Arabic so no one would understand me if they heard. I don’t truly believe she is observing me, but it’s nice sometimes to pretend she is.

I replied that the terms were acceptable, and she responded with further data about the car service. I asked:

Is it possible for me to arrange my own car service?

She wrote that it was. I removed Barron’s business card from my wallet. It was easy to find because it was the only one I had received in New York so far.

When I made my reservation with Barron he didn’t mention if he remembered me, but maybe that was because he was very busy and couldn’t talk for long.

At noon on Friday I saw Rebecca in the kitchen. She was emptying packets of false sugar into her coffee. “Hey,” she said.

“Hello,” I said.

“Any weekend plans?” she asked.

“I have a busy weekend planned with friends,” I said, which was at least partially true. “What about you?”

She stirred the coffee with a plastic straw without looking at me. “Nothing special,” she said. “Have a good one.” She walked past me and out the door. I should have said that I was instead going to try to compensate this weekend for work I had neglected. But maybe it’s better I didn’t. When people lie they often have to lie again to cover the first lie, and they continue for many iterations in a chain.

Barron was on time, and as I got into the car I said, “It is my pleasure to meet you again, Mr. Wright.”

“You, too,” he said, and although I know that people reciprocate that to be polite, it sounded more authentic with his voice. “Heliport, right?”

“Yes. It will be my first time on a helicopter.” I added ASAP, “When you took me to the Yankees game, I forgot to call you after the game. My employer drove me home.”

“That’s cool. People forget all the time. I still get paid.”

“No, it is not cool,” I said. “It was my bad.”

He turned his head and looked at me even though he was still driving. “Okay,” he finally said. “Nice suit, by the way. Fits you right.”

Barron turned down the sun-protector, and again I saw the picture of his daughter taped to it. I asked how she was progressing. He said she was excelling in school and he thought she would soon be smarter than he was. I told him I thought the same thing about my sister. “Although for now I want her to think I am more intelligent, so that she continues to try to impress me in school.”

He laughed and said, “You’re all right. You’ve got a unique sense of humor. It’s subtle, but you’ve got one.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I will work to make my sense of humor less subtle.” This was possibly the reason no one else found me humorous. Then I said, “It must be enjoyable to spend time with your family after a week of work.”

Barron scratched the back of his head. His haircut was close to his skull, but many white hairs blended with the black ones. “It is. Sometimes it’s not. But mostly it is.” His eyes angled at me in the mirror. “You have any family here?”

I looked out the window, because suddenly it felt like tears were under the surface of my eyes and waiting to appear like perspiration on a Coke can. “No,” I said. I remained in that position to avoid Barron and because we were now near the East River and I always enjoy observing the water. My father used to teach me swimming at Al Wakrah beach on Saturdays. He was a powerful swimmer, and I learned quickly, although I was never as strong in the water as he was. He didn’t take Zahira, and of course my mother never went although I derived my broad shoulders from her and I believe she would have been efficient in the water as well. We stopped going when she became ill.

We arrived in a few minutes at the heliport, which had a landing pad in the shape of an L on top of the river, a large building behind the small parking lot for cars, and spaces for 12 helicopters, although just five were currently there. I thanked Barron. “Call me when you need a ride to the White House,” he said, and I laughed and complimented him by saying he had a non-subtle sense of humor.

In a few minutes Mr. Schrub’s limo entered the parking lot. The driver, Patrick, exited and opened the rear door for Mr. Schrub. He nodded at Patrick while he held a briefcase in one hand and talked on a cellular, and Patrick returned to the car and waited.

When Mr. Schrub was next to me, he said on the cellular, “John, I’m going to have to go — I’m with an employee,” which was both stimulating, because I always enjoy when anyone mentions that I’m a Schrub employee, especially Mr. Schrub himself, but also disappointing, because he didn’t refer to me by name. He closed the cellular and put down his briefcase and shook my hand. “Glad you could make it, Karim. I hope the late invite wasn’t a problem?”

I told him it wasn’t and that I was grateful for the opportunity to see more of the U.S. “Greenwich isn’t exactly how the other half lives. But it’s a good place for getting to know someone — it’s not always so easy in the city,” he said. I was glad he stated his reason for inviting me, because I didn’t know if we were going to discuss business over the weekend, but then I got nervous because it meant I would have to discuss myself, and my background and opinions are not nearly as original as Mr. Schrub’s.

Then he met with the pilot, who wore a blue uniform with gold buttons and a cap and had a thick black mustache, and they discussed some issues about the flight that I couldn’t hear, and Mr. Schrub informed me we were ready.

The helicopter was much larger than I anticipated. It looked like a minivan with a skinny nose, an elongated tail, and blades on top. The rear had six leather seats opposite each other the color of yogurt, and in the front were two seats for the pilot and a copilot, although when I saw there wasn’t one, Mr. Schrub said, “Don’t worry — if Mike passes out, I know how to land.”

Mr. Schrub and I faced each other, next to the windows, and linked our seat belts. After Mike toggled many switches and talked on the radio system, there was a sound like a powerful windstorm and the helicopter vibrated and it was like we were a vegetable pulled out of the dirt and finally we smoothly partnered with the air.

The sun was down now and the water below us was black, and I visualized that we were like the Schrub hawk, only the helicopter was not carrying the S and E, but Mr. Schrub himself and me, and for a second I also visualized a potential day Schrub Equities would have the name Schrub Issar.

I became very fearful as we flew higher and I didn’t look out the window anymore, because a helicopter doesn’t feel as stable as an airplane. Mr. Schrub could detect I was nervous and said, “I’ve flown this route hundreds of times, Karim. It’s perfectly safe.” When we were high enough, the helicopter moved north and I let myself look out the window. The overview was more beautiful than it was on the airplane, because we were at sufficient altitude to get the big picture of the city but also close enough to see details like cars and people moving through streets like liquid through channels, and it’s always preferable to have a macro and micro perspective simultaneously. E.g., when I’m on the street, New York seems so large, but now in the air I was reminded of how minimal Manhattan truly is, unless you consider the third dimension of height.

“Take a look, Karim,” he said. We were traveling over downtown now. “That city is ripe with possibility. It’s made for young men like you.”

Below us the cars advanced in traffic like lines of ants. “I have never had problems with working hard,” I said.

“It’s not always just about working hard,” he said. He looked like he was about to say something else, but stopped and removed his laptop from his briefcase and said he had to do some work, and told me I could use the portable DVD player and whatever movie was inside that his sons had been watching. He also mentioned that his sons might be joining us this weekend, and I said I was looking forward to meeting them. “I’m more looking forward to having them meet you,” he said.

We bypassed the ultraviolet lights of Times Square and the Schrub logo and my building and the angular skyscrapers in midtown and then the quiet trees of Central Park and the shorter buildings uptown like young children at the knees of their midtown parents, then Harlem and its blocks of iterating apartments and the George Washington Bridge’s white lights like points on a parabola, and then we flew east along the coast and the ground below wasn’t as bright anymore, and the last unique object I could make out was a large ship exhaling black smoke into the air that Mr. Schrub said was littered with garbage and was probably heading to a landfill in Connecticut, and when I couldn’t see anything anymore I powered on the DVD player and the movie Armageddon, which I had heard of in Doha.

Soon we were above large houses with long slanted driveways like snakes and empty swimming pools and fields. We zoomed toward a concrete square with lights around its perimeter far behind one of the houses that was shaped like a large U, but then approximately 200 feet above the ground we decelerated and landed very gently, as if we were tucking a child into bed.

The helicopter powered off and the blades stopped, and Mike helped Mr. Schrub exit. I jumped down without aid, which was foolish because I slightly hurt my ankle. Mr. Schrub asked Mike to take my luggage inside after he checked over the helicopter and to leave it with someone named Irma. Then we walked off the concrete and onto a path of small stones on a grass field and toward the house.

His house was not as big as some of the other houses I saw from the air. Its walls were white stone and it had a white roof which in a few areas was conical. In the rear, white columns extended from a wooden floor and formed a shelter, and we bypassed an empty swimming pool and a tennis court. It was like a larger version of Mr. Schrub’s apartment building: very luxurious but not boastful.

Mr. Schrub promised that I would get a full tour later but that for now he was hungry. When we approached the rear of his house, a black man in a blue uniform was sitting on a chair. “Hello, Thomas. This is Karim Issar,” said Mr. Schrub, and I shook hands with him. “He has full clearance this weekend.”

Thomas opened a heavy black door for us and we entered the house. The room had as much space as a hall for concerts, with a crystal-and-gold object with false candles attached to the high ceiling, a staircase with a gold railing, dark wood furniture I could see my face in, and a large carpet with a pattern like an expensive tie.

Mr. Schrub led me into the kitchen, which was the size of my living room, and a man who looked Eastern European was sitting at the marble counter in the middle and reading a magazine. His name was Andre, and Mr. Schrub told me I could ask him to fix me anything I wanted. While he waited for me to decide, Mr. Schrub said he was in the mood for a steak and potatoes and salad. I was craving lamb kofta, but if I ordered it I would have to ask if the lamb was halal, which it probably wasn’t, and it would take a long time to prepare and possibly Andre didn’t have all the ingredients, so I ordered a salad.

“That’s all you want?” Mr. Schrub asked. I said I had eaten a filling lunch and was not very hungry.

Andre told Mr. Schrub that Mrs. Schrub was dressing for dinner and would be down soon. “I’m afraid it’ll be a casual affair tonight — just the three of us,” Mr. Schrub said. “The boys will be joining us tomorrow.” Then he told me I could wash myself in the restroom in my bedroom, and the maid Irma showed me where it was upstairs. My luggage was already present and the bedroom was larger than the bedroom in my apartment even though it was for guests. When I was finishing, someone knocked on my door. It was Mrs. Schrub, and I recognized her from pictures on the Internet of the Schrubs at social events. They looked as if they could be siblings, because they were both very tall (although she is approximately ten years younger), except that she had short blonde hair. She wore a pearl necklace and a long gray dress and high heels. I was glad I was in one of my nice suits.

She shook my hand. “You must be Karim,” she said.

“You are definitely Mrs. Schrub,” I said.

She smiled and looked as if she didn’t know what to say for a moment, then told me to call her Helena and offered to tour the house with me before dinner. She displayed many rooms to me, and after seeing all the expensive furniture in them, they looked similar to me, but possibly that’s because I don’t have mastery in interior decoration, e.g., in the same way that Mrs. Schrub couldn’t observe differences between C++ and JavaScript. But Mrs. Schrub informed me she had decorated the house herself and described the objects in detail, e.g., a “Louis the 13th armoire” in the master bedroom she had acquired from an antique dealer in Vermont, so I said each room was beautiful, which was true, except I was also afraid to touch anything in the rooms, and if you’re afraid or unable to touch or utilize something it makes it less beautiful to me, and although the rooms were littered with decorations, in some ways they still seemed dead.

Then it was time for dinner, and we moved to the dining room, where we sat at one end of a rectangular wooden table that had 16 seats. Mr. Schrub said he hoped I wasn’t too bored during the tour, and I quickly said that Mrs. Schrub was an informative guide and I especially liked the armoire. Mr. Schrub laughed and said, “Helena, do you think Karim really cares about the armoire?”

“Not everyone is allergic to interior decoration. And Karim has a good eye for design,” she said, which was friendly but false, unless you consider theoretical design.

Andre served our dinners, and Mrs. Schrub had exclusively the salad. She apologized that we couldn’t use vegetables from their garden because of the weather. Mr. Schrub said, “Andre, would you bring up the ’93 Burgundy?”

After he left through a door in the dining room, Mrs. Schrub said, “Derek.”

His eyes linked with hers, and I looked at my plate to let them communicate in privacy, and then Mr. Schrub said, “Karim, do you like wine? Or would you prefer something else?”

I said, “I do not normally drink wine, but I would enjoy some tonight.”

Mrs. Schrub quickly asked me where I grew up, and I told her about Doha. She also asked about my family, which I valued, as the only other people who have truly inquired about them here were Rebecca and slightly Barron. Then she asked if I was “experiencing any difficulty acclimating” to life in the U.S. as “a citizen from an Arab country.”

I took a few moments to strategize an answer, as I didn’t want them to think I was ungrateful for being here or make them uncomfortable around me. So I said, “Americans are hospitable, although sometimes they do not know as much as they should know about the rest of the world considering how powerful they are.”

“I agree.” Mrs. Schrub put her fork down. “I very much support the Palestinians.”

Mr. Schrub smiled to himself as he cut his steak. “The lion’s share of people from my country agree with you,” I said.

Mr. Schrub laughed loudly and turned to his wife. “You support the Palestinians? That would be like someone from Qatar saying to you, ‘Just so you’re aware, I deeply support the IRA.’”

“I simply wanted Karim to know that not all Americans are willfully ignorant about foreign affairs,” she said, and I wished I hadn’t responded to her statement.

“You hear that, Karim?” Mr. Schrub said. “Not all of us regurgitate our opinions from TV news. Some of us do it from NPR.”

Mrs. Schrub looked down at her salad and Mr. Schrub leaned over to her. “Honey, I’m just joking.” He kissed her cheek. “Still love me?”

“If I have to,” she said. For a few seconds I had a mental image of Rebecca’s hair creating a tunnel over my head, but then I forced myself to focus on the Schrubs.

Andre returned with a bottle of wine. He showed it to Mr. Schrub, who nodded, and then utilized a corkscrew made of black rubber that depressed itself into the cork and removed it with ease. Its efficiency and reduction of human error and labor was impressive.

Andre poured a small amount of wine into Mr. Schrub’s glass. Mr. Schrub made a circular motion with the glass on his personal white tablecloth and the wine centripetally orbited around the interior. He inhaled the scent of the wine, then tasted it and gargled as if it were mouthwash. He said “Very good,” and Andre poured him a full glass and the same amount for Mrs. Schrub and me. He also poured water for us, which made me feel like when the doormen at my building perform a service (opening a door) that I prefer to do independently.

Mrs. Schrub didn’t drink her portion yet, so I wasn’t sure if it was rude merely to drink the wine without copying Mr. Schrub’s routine. I made the circular motion with my wineglass, but some of the wine spilled over the edge and stained my white tablecloth.

“I am very sorry,” I said, because it’s good to acknowledge your error in front of your employer before he does.

“That’s all right — it’s just cotton, we can throw it out,” said Mrs. Schrub. “Andre, would you fetch Karim a new mat?”

Mr. Schrub later said the wine had “too many apple notes for a red,” although I enjoyed it much more than beer and especially liquor, but I was careful not to have more than one glass. Mrs. Schrub had just one glass as well, but Mr. Schrub consumed the rest of the bottle. When we finished eating, Andre said the dessert would be ready soon, and Mr. Schrub asked him to bring up a dessert wine, then said he would retrieve it himself and invited me to see his wine cellar.

He led me through the door Andre went through and downstairs to a steel door. Mr. Schrub checked an instrument panel outside the door and said, “You want it at 55 degrees and 65 % relative humidity.”

He opened the steel door and we entered a room whose light powered on automatically to a low level so it looked like the production of many candles. Horizontal bottles of red wine occupied hundreds of slots on each wall. The different colors of their upper covers made a beautiful random pattern like a Jackson Pollock painting. Mr. Schrub went to a corner and selected a bottle immediately. He quickly told me about the different brands of wine and which ones he preferred (red wine more than white wine because it is more complex, and I predict I would agree with him for that reason).

Before we left he said, “Here, I’ll show you my baby.” He walked to a vault in a corner of the room I had not observed before. I looked away as he deciphered the combination and retrieved the bottle protected inside.

“1945 Bordeaux.” He turned the bottle in his hands as if he enjoyed the feel of it as much as the potential taste. “Arguably the vintage of the century for Bordeaux.” He held it out to me with both hands. “Want to see it?”

He handed it to me, but I was very nervous, like I was when my parents took Zahira home from the hospital for the first time and they let me hold her and I was afraid I would drop her because she was so small. I kept thinking that if I ever dropped her she would be ruined forever, like it would be if I dropped the wine, which is foolish because humans are mostly strong and repairable, but in some ways they aren’t.

“When are you going to drink it?” I asked.

He shook his head and took the bottle back. “I’ll never drink this.” He observed it again for several seconds with a smile on his face as he held it near his chest, then replaced it in the vault.

I had baked baklava as a gift and brought it down for dessert, and we also had delicious sorbet and raspberries and wine, and Mr. Schrub consumed two glasses of dessert wine even though his wife and I only drank one glass each. Mr. Schrub yawned and said he was exhausted and he had planned a big day for us tomorrow, and asked if I minded if we all retired early for the night.

Mrs. Schrub said that she was very glad to have met me after she had heard so much about me, and I tried not to smile but I couldn’t restrict myself, and I said I had heard a great amount about her as well, although of course Mr. Schrub hadn’t told me anything, but I had read about her and the multiple charitable organizations she is on the board of.

My bedroom had a wooden bookshelf of a blond color with dozens of books. Many were about finance, and I initially selected one titled Emerging Asian Markets, as that is an area I have interest in. I was prepared to start, but then I saw that the bookshelf contained a few nonfinancial books.

This was an opportunity to broaden my worldview, as I don’t typically read literature. Although it was very long, I picked the one that had the most intriguing title because its arrangement of words was illogical: The Grapes of Wrath.

I read the first few pages, and the language was simple for me to access, and the story incorporated me, and then I noticed I had been reading for three hours without stopping, which is rare for me to do with anything nonfinancial.

It was slightly after midnight. I wondered what Rebecca was doing. She had said she was doing nothing special, but maybe she was lying as well. I hoped she was home alone and not with any of the men from her party. I continued thinking about this scenario, and I couldn’t fall asleep, and I told myself to reroute my thoughts but that made me think about it more, and finally I called Rebecca’s home telephone number that she had listed in the email for her party. It rang several times, and each time it rang I was more certain that she was out with someone else, but on the fifth ring Rebecca picked up.

“Hello?” she said, and her voice sounded scratched.

I didn’t say anything. “Hello?” she said again. “David, is that you?” My chest shifted until I remembered that David was her brother.

When I still didn’t respond, she said, “Whoever the fuck wakes me up in the middle of the night should at least have the courtesy to identify yourself,” and disconnected.

I closed my cellular and exhaled.

I woke in the morning feeling fatigued, because although the bed was very soft, in fact the softest bed I had ever slept on, it was almost too soft and I never felt comfortable, in the same way that some foods are too sweet to enjoy.

When I went downstairs, Mr. and Mrs. Schrub were already eating breakfast. “We didn’t want to wake you,” Mrs. Schrub said. “Derek is up at 5:30 every morning to go for his walk, but the rest of us mortals need a little more sleep.”

They were reading their own copies of The New York Times and eating bacon and eggs, but Andre made me a flavorful vegetarian version of it with tofu and false eggs. Even though it was a substitute I believe it probably tasted superior to the authentic version. When we finished, we heard the front door open. Mrs. Schrub said it was the boys and that I should come and meet them. Mr. Schrub stayed to read an article.

I knew their names were Wilson and Jeromy, and they were putting down their luggage by the front door. A black sport utility vehicle was parked outside on the semicircular driveway.

Mr. Schrub’s sons were both tall, even taller than he is, although they were also slightly overweight, especially in their faces, as if someone had inflated them, Wilson’s more than Jeromy’s, and Jeromy’s neck had red bumps all over from shaving. Mrs. Schrub introduced me to them, and they both shook my hand and said they were glad to meet me. Then Wilson said he was starving and Mrs. Schrub told him Andre would fix them something, and we all returned to the kitchen.

Mr. Schrub and his sons said hello to each other. Jeromy ordered French toast from Andre and Wilson ordered steak with eggs. “Bloody and runny, please,” he said.

“I was thinking of taking a hike around the Audubon Center today. Who’s up for it?” Mr. Schrub asked. I waited for his sons to answer, but when they didn’t, I said I was.

“Good,” he said. “Guys? It’s a beautiful day.”

His sons were reading the newspaper now. Wilson had the National section and Jeromy had the Sports section. “I’d love to, Dad, if I could find the time,” Wilson said, and he smiled very slightly to himself while he continued reading.

“Me, too,” said Jeromy. “I’ve been getting literally raped at school.”

“Jeromy,” Mrs. Schrub said. “First of all, getting ‘literally raped’ would mean you’re actually getting raped. Second, it’s not the most polite language.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Figuratively speaking, I’ve been getting sexually harassed.”

“Then it’ll literally just be me and Karim,” Mr. Schrub said. “Or is it ‘Karim and I’?” he asked his wife, and pinched her waist. The proper grammar was in fact “Karim and I,” and in addition to “me and Karim” being incorrect, it is considered impolite to state “me and [other person]” instead of “[other person] and me,” but I remained quiet.

Irma provided me with hiking clothing and sneakers, and after I changed Mr. Schrub and I went outside to the driveway, where a dark green sport utility vehicle was already parked. Mr. Schrub drove and I sat next to him, and because we were so high off the ground in the car, it felt as if he were the pilot of a plane and I were his copilot.

The Audubon Center had multiple walking trails, and we took one that Mr. Schrub said was his preferred route. Of course I had been in Central Park many times, but there you are always seeing people and it doesn’t feel like you are truly solitary in nature. We saw very few others, and the only sounds I heard were birds and the wind on the leaves colored like fire and the branches breaking under our feet. Mr. Schrub didn’t talk frequently except to identify the names of the trees I didn’t know, such as American sycamore, and plants with original names, such as honey-bells and eastern skunk cabbage.

We arrived at an open field, and Mr. Schrub handed me a pair of binoculars he had brought. “This is one of the best sites in the country to spot hawks,” he said as he looked through his own pair. He pointed to a tree a few hundred meters away. “Look! That’s a red-shouldered. They’re rare, now.” He exhaled loudly and said, “Moronic hunters.”

It took me longer to find it, because I wasn’t acclimated to searching for birds in trees. The hawk had red and brown horizontal stripes over its chest and shoulder and black and white on its wings and tail. Mr. Schrub told me facts about the bird, e.g., it locates prey from a tree branch, then dives quickly and retrieves its target and eats it on the branch again, and facts about hawks in general, e.g., their eyes are eight times more powerful than a human’s. “Gorgeous creature, isn’t he? You have to be a robot if that doesn’t bowl you over,” he said.

Maybe this was why Mr. Schrub gave his company the logo of a hawk, which was something I had always wondered and had never read about.

Then the hawk flew off its branch and zoomed down to the field. I couldn’t track it with the binoculars because it was too fast, so I observed with my eyes. It plummeted to the ground and fluctuated its wings but without flying. “Use the binoculars again, and look at its talons,” Mr. Schrub told me.

The hawk’s talons contained a gray object. “What is that?” I asked.

“Lunch,” Mr. Schrub said. “And dinner. Squirrel.”

The hawk made noises that sounded like “kee yar,” and Mr. Schrub joked that it was trying to call my country’s name.

Through my binoculars I saw the hawk rip into the squirrel’s body with its claws and beak. “Watch him go. It’ll devour the whole thing right now,” Mr. Schrub said.

I turned my eyes to Mr. Schrub, who was smiling as he watched. I reviewed through the binoculars. The hawk was now eating the squirrel, whose fur was bloody. I shifted the binoculars slightly to the left so it would appear I was still observing it, but instead I focused on an area of grass.

“He’s hardly going to be able to fly after this,” said Mr. Schrub. “See how engorged his chest is?”

I said yes. After five minutes, Mr. Schrub said we should go back into the trail and watch more birds. They weren’t hawks, and none of them hunted animals, so I was able to magnify them.

As Mr. Schrub watched a downy woodpecker through his binoculars, he said, “I could never seem to get Jeromy or Wilson too interested in birding.”

“It can be difficult to make someone else interested in what you are interested in,” I said. “They have to have some initial interest independent of you.”

“Maybe so,” he said, and he put down the binoculars. “But you’d like to think a father and his sons would have some intersection. As far as I can tell, the only thing that drives them is having a good time.”

“If you drew a Venn diagram of my interests and my father’s interests, the intersection would also be minimal,” I said.

“Well, you don’t choose your parents. And, despite your best efforts, you don’t really choose your kids, either.” The woodpecker began contacting the tree with his beak. “Take a closer look,” he said, and he put his arm around my shoulders as I used the binoculars. I was glad the binoculars covered my face and Mr. Schrub was focused on the woodpecker, because my smile was possibly the broadest it has ever been.

When we returned to the house Mr. Schrub said he had to do some work in his study. Sounds ejected from the living room, where his sons were playing a video game and yelling. “I’m afraid that doesn’t sound too enticing?” he asked.

I said, “No, I would like to try to get to know them more.”

He looked pleased. “Thanks, Karim,” he said.

Although I’m a skilled computer worker and have optimal hand-eye coordination from racquetball, I’m poor at video games, as we were never allowed to have them, and the solitary way to become adept at any system is by practice. In addition, certain personality types excel at video games, and mine isn’t one of them.

It was a shooting game, and the television was bisected so Jeromy and Wilson could each see out of the eyes of his own character as they hunted each other. “My hunger for human flesh is insatiable,” Wilson said as his character ran through a dark tunnel. “My thirst for blood, unquenchable.”

“Bring it on, fat boy,” Jeromy said. “How were the birds, Karim?”

“It was educational and interesting,” I said. “I have not been in a true forest before, and I have never seen a hawk in person.”

“He does love those fucking hawks,” Wilson said, and I observed his eyes rapidly shift to Jeromy’s side of the television and then return.

“Yeah,” Jeromy said, and his face and voice looked and sounded like he was going to cry. “More than he loves his own family.”

Wilson crashed Jeromy with his elbow, and they both laughed. “Come on, play, you ADD-riddled piece of shit,” he said.

Wilson soon shot Jeromy and his character exploded and fell and blood leaked out of his body. “Defeated,” Wilson said. “Conquered, subjugated, dominated, enslaved, made my bitch.”

“You cheat. You always look at my guy’s POV.”

“I’m trying to understand your point of view better — to empathize with you,” Wilson said. “Karim, you want to try?”

I said yes. “I’ll coach him,” Jeromy said. “Let’s beat this arrogant spoiled brat.”

Jeromy instructed me on how to operate the controller, and soon I became efficient. Wilson’s character and my character were both in the same maze, and because it was a newly created maze, Wilson didn’t have a special advantage over me in finding weapons and power bonuses. In fact, because my spatial intelligence is robust, I quickly deciphered where these things were in the maze, and I could tell he was having difficulty because he was cursing to himself.

Then I saw Wilson’s character far ahead with his back to me, but because I knew he cheated and would rotate if he saw that I was observing him on my side of the television, I rotated my character 180 degrees and ran in reverse so that Wilson didn’t know I was near him.

Then, when I knew I was very close to him, I turned around again, and Wilson’s character’s back was directly in my targeting cross. Jeromy contacted my shoulder lightly with his hand to signal me to shoot.

But I didn’t.

Wilson’s character quickly rotated and shot me. My side of the television turned red like closed eyelids after looking at the sun.

“You had him,” Jeromy said.

“No one ever has me, ha ha ha,” Wilson said, and he put Jeromy’s head inside his angled arm and depressed his fist over the top of his head.

“I am sorry,” I said as I looked at the red half of the monitor and Jeromy pushed Wilson off and called him a motherfucker. “I will go upstairs now and allow you two to play.” They said good-bye to me and restarted the game.

I resumed The Grapes of Wrath, which I enjoyed for two reasons: (1) It taught me about U.S. history during the Great Depression through a stimulating story (e.g., there was no minimum wage in the time period of the novel, which causes problems for the workers on the free market), and (2) I liked partnering with the main character, Tom Joad. He attempts to provide for his family and has strong values, and he has an intriguing way of speaking to boot.

Then Irma knocked quietly on my door and told me dinner was ready. In fact it wasn’t dinner yet, but Andre carried a tray with a bottle of wine and crackers and several cheeses into the living room. Wilson and Jeromy wore higher-quality clothing now, and I felt foolish in my hiking clothing, but it was too late to change.

When Andre deposited the tray on a small table, Wilson reached for the knife and cut multiple large cubes of cheese for his plate and ate ASAP without crackers. Jeromy ate more slowly and with crackers.

“Save some room for dinner, boys,” Mrs. Schrub said.

Mr. Schrub watched them mutely and looked as if he were truly watching something in his brain. “Maybe we’ll have the ’94 Burgundy tonight,” he finally said.

“We had that last night,” Mrs. Schrub said.

“We had the ’93.”

“Dear,” she said as she put her hand on his leg, “I think you may be having a senior moment.”

“Do you want me to go down and bring up the inventory?”

Mrs. Schrub smiled and petted his head. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“You think I’m wrong, don’t you?” Mr. Schrub said. “That’s it, I’m getting it.”

“Derek!” she said. “Do you always have to be right?”

I remembered also that it was the ’93 and that he was right, and I also dislike it when someone thinks my memory has a glitch, so I said, “I think I can prove that Mr. Schrub is correct.”

Everyone looked at me. “I use a voice recorder to learn English.” I showed it to them. “If you give me a few minutes, I will locate the part when Mr. Schrub asked for the wine.”

They all observed me as I set the voice recorder on rewind and listened at different points on low volume so only I could hear. It was high pressure with everyone watching me, but I felt confident that I remembered. Then I put it on the table and played it for everyone to hear Mr. Schrub’s voice: “Andre, would you bring up the ’93 Burgundy?”

“Much appreciated, Karim,” Mr. Schrub said, and he picked up the voice recorder and inspected it before returning it to the table. He turned to his wife. “Do you have anything you would like to add?”

“I think it’s very admirable that Karim is so industrious about improving his English.” She kissed Mr. Schrub on the cheek. “We could all learn from his example of trying to better himself.”

Mr. Schrub looked at his sons. “Indeed,” he said.

I turned my face away from them all, especially Wilson and Jeromy, but a corner of my mouth curved up despite my attempts at restriction.

Then Andre told us dinner was ready, and Mrs. Schrub said they had a special treat for me. The dinner table had two lines of silver trays like expensive buttons on a coat, and when Andre opened them I saw kebabs, hummus and baba ghanoush, tabouleh, a lentil salad, and other Middle Eastern dishes.

It reminded me of when Rebecca invited me to see Three Kings. However, I was a guest, and once I saw it I did desire authentic Middle Eastern food, and I briefly felt my eyes hydrate like they did in the car with Barron, so I thanked them and quickly estimated the cost of all the food to reroute my thoughts.

The food was delicious. During the meal Wilson and Jeromy ate mostly the meat and didn’t try the lentil salad or the baba ghanoush. Mrs. Schrub asked them questions about their progress at Princeton. I didn’t ask anything, even though I wanted to know what a cream of the cream U.S. university was like, e.g., how the research facilities were and what class of visiting lecturers they host and if they could access the professors easily. That last subject is the area I especially wish I had in Doha.

Mr. Schrub asked about infrastructural development in Qatar, and I talked as intelligently as possible without appearing to be boastful, as I deciphered that Jeromy and Wilson weren’t interested and Mrs. Schrub was interested only to be polite.

As we finished the main course, Wilson and Jeromy argued over the last kebab. Jeromy said he had “called dibs” on it first, and Wilson said he had. When Jeromy pulled the kebab away from his brother, he crashed his elbow into mine, and it made me spill my spoon of cucumber soup. It landed on my shirt, which was my second eating accident with the Schrubs, although this time it wasn’t my fault and it stained my own material.

Mr. Schrub yelled at his sons for fighting, and when Jeromy saw my shirt, he said, “Shit, I’m sorry, man.” Wilson didn’t say anything.

Mrs. Schrub directed me to the nearest restroom to clean my shirt. “Actually, that one’s having plumbing trouble. You can use the one in Derek’s office.”

I left the dining room and walked down a long hallway to Mr. Schrub’s office and rotated the brass handle. I stepped onto a thick red carpet. In front of me was a dark wooden desk, and behind it a spacious window displayed a yard and the forest, and the walls contained bookshelves with hundreds of books. It looked simultaneously like an ideal and intimidating place to work.

I cleaned my shirt in the office’s restroom, and when I exited I noticed the trash bin next to the desk had a paper shredder on top of it and fully contained shredded paper. This was in some ways how Mr. Schrub presented himself to me: He gave indications of who he was but he shredded the data so I could not fully decipher him. There was much more about him that I was curious to learn, but I could not gain access. He said that this weekend would enable us to get to know each other more, but nearly all he had talked about so far was birds, and he worked nonstop. I had observed his relationships with his family, but I still did not know what he was truly like.

And I considered that I am most truly like myself when I am working and in my office, and this was where Mr. Schrub was so frequently, and without 100 % thinking through my actions, I took out my voice recorder and went to a bookshelf near the door and deposited it on a shelf at my height behind a thick book titled Democracy Through Prosperity.

I let my hand go. The voice recorder was hidden, and it would now record the hidden Mr. Schrub.

I exited the office and returned to the dining room. Without my voice recorder I felt naked, as I do when, e.g., I am away from computers for several days, but this was a different class of naked.

Only when I sat down did I consider what I had done. In addition to possibly being illegal, it was unethical. I had disobeyed Mr. Schrub’s trust, and if he found out, then I merited being fired and ejected to Qatar early. And it was not even intelligent: The only data it would record would be telephone conversations, which are not when people are truly themselves. My foot started vibrating on the floor and I felt dizzy, parallel to when I had smoked marijuana. I couldn’t believe I had acted so foolishly.

I had to return to his office for the voice recorder, but I couldn’t go right away again, and it was too risky to enter his office if others were around. And of course I couldn’t leave it there, because if he found it later he would know it was mine. The solitary possible time would be that night when everyone was asleep.

Mrs. Schrub cleared her throat, and Jeromy apologized to me again for the accident, and this time Wilson apologized as well. He said something like, “Even though it was more Jeromy’s fault, since I called the kebab first.”

“Karim, can you settle this and check your recorder to see who called it?” Jeromy asked.

My stomach rotated. I waited to see if their parents would ask them to stop the fight, but they didn’t say anything. “Yeah, the tape won’t lie,” Wilson said.

I said, “I just put it away in my luggage upstairs and deleted today’s material. I did not want to make any of you uncomfortable about being recorded.”

They stopped discussing the accident, although I kept thinking about the voice recorder. It was like the window Raghid broke, although much worse: That truly was an accident that my friends didn’t take responsibility for, but this was a disloyal action that I didn’t take responsibility for, and in addition I further lied about it.

Wilson and Jeromy said they were going to a movie about a fighting organization after dinner. Mrs. Schrub said, “Why don’t you boys take Karim along?”

Wilson and Jeromy visually contacted. Jeromy was friendly, but Wilson was difficult for me to be near. Frequently that was the case here with sets of two people. I said, “Thank you, but I am taxed from the hike and prefer to stay home and read.”

After they left, Mr. Schrub said there was no reason we couldn’t watch our own movie, and he showed me his archive of DVDs and VHS tapes. He said he had bought everything on a recent list of the 100 best American movies of all time, and asked if there were any I had not seen yet that I wanted to. I said I had not seen any of them yet and if they were evaluated as the best movies of all time then I wanted to see all of them.

He said we could start with one from the top ten. I recognized most of the titles. Although I was interested in seeing it at some point, I didn’t want to watch Lawrence of Arabia with them. I picked The Wizard of Oz, as I knew it was the movie least related to real life and wouldn’t cause any problems for us.

Andre brought us popcorn and Coke and Mr. Schrub invited him to watch. The story was intriguing, and Mr. Schrub explained many political and economic analogs for the 1890s, e.g., the yellow brick is the gold standard and the tin man equals industrial workers. I think I liked the tin man the most, but not because of what he represented. Finally Mrs. Schrub told him to stop talking, although it always interests me when an artistic work has a one-to-one correlation of meaning with other systems.

When it was over, Mr. Schrub went to his office to do some work before bed. I read The Grapes of Wrath in the living room, and Mrs. Schrub joined me later to read her own book, whose title I didn’t know, and when she saw what I was reading she said, “I just adored that book when I read it in high school.”

I felt foolish that she read a book in high school that I was reading now, but I said, “I am adoring it as well.”

“I devoured Steinbeck in those days,” she said. “All those ’30s writers. Odets, and West…”

She looked around the living room at all the wooden and mirroring furniture and moved one finger over the light pink couch she was sitting on, and then said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, huh? Though I suppose we all end up very different people from who we were at 16.”

I nodded again, because even though I was a skilled mathematician in high school, I never predicted at 16 that I would be working for Schrub Equities in New York and actually be a guest in the home of Derek Schrub.

And although I did aim to have as impressive a position as I do now, at that age I wasn’t thinking as much about making money.

We discussed the novel, and she told me more about the Great Depression and also about the charities she aided in New York. I lost count of how many she worked for and don’t remember all the names, but many of them helped the poor in the U.S. and outside the U.S., and she said the organizations she was most invested in supported females in developing countries.

I talked about Zahira and how I hoped to give her the opportunity to come to the U.S. at some point. Mrs. Schrub said, “That’s wonderful to hear. I wish more young men thought the way you do,” which was nice, but made me feel uncomfortable again because of the potential comparison to her sons.

Then we both read mutely for over an hour, and Mr. Schrub remained in his office, and because I periodically looked up to see if he was still there, Mrs. Schrub said, “I’m sorry Derek’s been holed up in there all weekend. You’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what we deal with.”

“I understand he must work frequently,” I said. “I am not offended by it.”

She closed her book. “Well, it’s past my bedtime,” she said. “Maybe the boys will be home soon and you can play some video games together. And if you get hungry, make yourself at home in the fridge.”

I thanked her again for hosting me and for dinner, even though I truly wanted to thank Andre for that.

I resumed reading downstairs, as I hoped Mr. Schrub would soon go upstairs, but he continued burning the midnight oil in his office. I was about to go to my room, with the plan to return in the middle of the night, when the door to his office opened and I heard Mr. Schrub say, “Karim, would you come here for a moment?”

My heart shifted position: He had seen the voice recorder. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t lie that I left it out and someone else must have put it in his office, because I had said that I put it in my luggage. It would be even more dishonest to blame someone else to boot. I would have to take responsibility and accept my punishment.

Mr. Schrub was already sitting in his chair, but he was facing the window. Only his desk lamp was on. We sat for several seconds in the partial darkness.

I was about to apologize when Mr. Schrub said, “Karim, I’m sorry.”

Even though it’s virtually silent because it’s digital, I was still afraid we might hear the voice recorder power on. His back was still turned, and I didn’t know if he meant he was sorry that I had been disloyal, so I asked, “What are you sorry about?”

He rotated back to me. His eyes were the color of red wine blended with water. “When you told me your mother died, after the Yankees game, I wasn’t very responsive.”

“You do not need to be responsive about that. It is not your problem,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “Still. My father died when I was a kid. How old did you say you were, again?”

I had not in fact said how old I was previously, but I told him 13. He pointed to himself. “Ten.”

He walked to the window. The moon produced some light, but the woods were dark. “It’s curious what you do and don’t recall from something that happened over half a century ago,” he said. “All I remember from when my mother told me is I was wearing this sweater. This navy blue sweater she’d knitted for me. I had to wear it every day in winter for two years because of the wool rations. And it had this loose thread, and I kept pulling it and pulling it while she explained to me what sometimes happens to soldiers during wars, especially brave fighter pilots, and finally she screamed at me to stop it or my sweater would completely disappear.”

“Sometimes people react in unpredictable ways when they hear about a death,” I said.

“Did you?” Then he turned from the window. “You don’t have to answer.”

“No,” I said. “I will.”

I talked about how several of my relatives came to Doha from around Qatar for my 13th birthday. “But they were truly coming to visit my mother for one terminal time,” I said, and I explained how she had breast cancer and the doctors had permitted us to move her to the apartment, which required transporting equipment and hiring a nurse. My father prepared much food the day before the party, including lamb, which was my mother’s preferred meal. “It was hard for her to chew the lamb, so he made hareis, which is cooked slowly and therefore fragile,” I said.

“I went to sleep stimulated about the party,” I said. “My father came into my and my sister’s bedroom that morning when it was still dark. Zahira was asleep. He said, ‘Karim, come with me, please.’ It was February and we did not have heating, so I was vibrating when I followed my father out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Then he told me, ‘I am sorry, but we will not be having your birthday party tonight. We will be having a funeral.’”

Mr. Schrub was looking directly at me while I spoke, which typically would make me nervous, but now I was concentrating on the story and I forgot about his presence.

“I was quiet for a long time,” I said. “And then I do not know why I did it, but I smiled. That is what I mean by unpredictable behavior, because of course I was not happy. My father asked, ‘Why are you smiling?’ and I did not know and did not answer, but he kept asking me and it kept making me smile more, and finally he slapped me on the left side of my face. Then I think I said, ‘I do not want a birthday party anyway,’ and ran away from him. I exited our apartment, even though I was in my nightwear and it was still dark, and ran through our courtyard to a big date tree behind the apartment complex that was there when we moved in. I sat underneath the date tree for a few minutes, but its skin hurt my back, and I turned around and punched it. It pained me, and because the tree did not move I punched it again and continued punching it for several minutes.”

I paused. It was strange how I was remembering all these details I thought I had forgotten by talking about them for the first time.

“I was upset about many things,” I said. “I think what upset me the most was that I never said good-bye to my mother, even though that might have been more painful to do. I do not even remember what our last conversation was. It was probably something insignificant.” I tried to remember it at that moment, but as I always did, I failed.

“In a few minutes my father found me,” I said. “He pulled me away and I tried punching him instead but he restricted my arms and I finally gave up. It was foolish to do, and sometimes my right hand still pains me, e.g., when I play racquetball for too long. But I came back inside with my father because I considered that someone had to tell my sister what happened in a way that would protect at least some of her feelings.”

I stopped. It was the most I had said nonstop to anyone since I arrived in the U.S. I felt slightly humiliated for revealing so much, but I also felt partially enhanced.

Mr. Schrub didn’t say anything. He only nodded. I valued that.

He picked up a glass of golden alcohol that looked even more golden from his desk lamp and drank from it, then held his hand under the lamp. “He had these hands, these huge hands. Johnny Bench hands. Skin like a deer hide, calluses everywhere. I always wondered when my hands would get to be that size, feel that rough. And they never did. Dainty little things.” He inspected his hand more closely and laughed quietly. “I get a manicure every two weeks.”

I understood, because I remembered looking at my father’s hands the same way when I was young, but now my hands are of equal size, although his skin is rougher.

“It’s funny,” he said. “You act a certain way, and you think you’re an absolutist, but every day there are these little shifts. They’re so small you don’t even notice them. And one day you look at yourself and aren’t sure how you got there.”

I said, “That is usually how change occurs. It is like physical growth. You cannot detect it on a daily basis.”

“Like a physical growth,” he said, although I had merely said “physical growth” and did not include the indefinite article. “Exactly. Like a tumor.”

I didn’t want to correct him, so I said nothing, and he looked at me and said, “I know listening to a drunken old man ramble on isn’t your idea of a wild Saturday night. I’ll let you hit the hay.”

As I exited the office, he said, “Thanks for the talk.”

I said, “You are welcome, Mr. Schrub,” and then I felt even worse about spying.

I went to my room. Now I would have to return in the middle of the night for the voice recorder. I considered his statement about the little shifts and what Mrs. Schrub said about being different now from what she was at age 16. My mother always told me the best jobs helped others, but my skill set does not make me a good teacher, and although I am strong at memorizing, I had difficulty with biology and therefore would not be an efficient doctor, and I am not very interested in the legal system because it is man-made and elastic to different countries and not universal the way math or programming is. Of course I am creating and distributing wealth through Kapitoil, but I am only indirectly helping others. To reroute my brain I read The Grapes of Wrath, and I stayed awake until I completed it.

I initially became angry at Steinbeck when the character Rose of Sharon gives birth to a baby that is dead. It was as if he didn’t want to write a happy ending, so he selected the unhappiest ending. But then she fed the dying man she didn’t know at the true ending with the milk that she initially reserved for her baby, and I appreciated the previous negative charge. It was possibly the first time a book made me think differently about a subject not because of a logical argument. I felt like calling Zahira to tell her about it, but I didn’t want to contact my father.

In addition, it was 2:30 a.m. and an optimal time to retrieve the voice recorder. If someone detected me, I would say I was making myself at home in the fridge.

I descended the stairs slowly. The house was muted, and the light under Mr. Schrub’s office door was out. As I walked down the hallway, I heard voices outside the front door. If I stayed near his office I would be caught, and if I ran back upstairs it would look suspicious, so I quickly entered the kitchen.

The sounds were (1) the front door opening with difficulty; (2) Jeromy and Wilson whispering loudly; and (3) a female voice laughing with them.

Mr. Schrub’s sons entered the kitchen with a female approximately their age. She was very tall and thin with blonde hair and a face that was slightly like a horse’s and a white scarf tied around her neck. I wished I wasn’t in my nightwear.

“Hey, what’s going on, Karim?” Wilson said. He sniffed and rubbed his nose several times and said, “Karim works for my dad. This is George.” I was surprised a female had the name George, but I didn’t say anything. “What are you doing up, man? A little midnight snackage?”

“I already ate some baklava,” I said.

“He already ate some baklava,” Wilson said, and he laughed and again sniffed his nose, and George laughed also, even though there was nothing humorous or original in his statement. Then he said, “What, you don’t like our country’s cuisine?”

“I very much like American food,” I said.

He asked, “And how do you like our house here?”

“I like it very much as well.”

“So if I go to — where the fuck are you from, again?” he asked. I told him. “Qatar,” he said. “Qatar. Qatar.”

He got up and ran to a drawer and pulled out a knife and put it behind his back. Then he said, “Cut her, cut her,” and returned to the table and grabbed George’s arms behind her back and commanded me, “Cut her, Karim, cut her,” and deposited the knife in my hand as he held her.

It was a knife for butter, so I knew he wasn’t serious, and she pushed him off and said, “You are such a cock, Wilson,” but she was laughing and then said, “And don’t be mean to him,” which was generous but made me feel like a child even though I was the oldest.

Wilson said, “But seriously, if I go to Qatar, you’ll put me up? We’ll hang?”

“Yes. Although we do not have as luxurious accommodations, I will try to show you the hospitality your family has shown me,” I said.

He nodded and smiled. “I’m just fucking with you. The only thing that’s going to cut her is a surgeon’s knife.” He compressed his hands over her breasts. “Give her a nice pair of D-cups.”

George pushed him off again, but Wilson asked, “What do you think, Karim? Does she need an upgrade?”

Although her chest was in fact very minimal, and the rest of her body was so thin that I could see light blue veins everywhere, I said, “I do not know.”

“Why not?” he asked. “You don’t swing that way?”

Jeromy said, “Come on, Wilson,” but he ignored him.

“I have not been observing your girlfriend in that mode,” I said.

“My girlfriend?” he said. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my sister.” He kissed George with his tongue for several seconds until she again pushed him away. “This is what we do with our sisters in America. We keep it in the family. Family’s important, don’t you agree?”

The room and the house were quiet. “Family is very important,” I said.

He put his hand on George’s behind. “And you do this with your sisters in Qatar?”

“No,” I said. “We treat our sisters with respect. If you truly had a sister, maybe you would understand.”

Then we heard rapid footsteps like a clock ticking quickly and Jeromy said “Shit” and in a few seconds Mr. Schrub opened the kitchen door with force. He was wearing the same clothing as before and looked as if he had fallen asleep in his office.

“How did you get home?” he asked Wilson.

“Drove,” Wilson said.

His face was as red as the hawk’s shoulders. “You’ve been drinking?”

“No,” Wilson said. “I had one drink. Maybe two.”

Mr. Schrub breathed in deeply through his nostrils. “Would you mind taking a taxi home?” he asked George. She looked very afraid and said she didn’t mind, and he gave her a $50 bill from his wallet and asked her to call for it and wait outside.

I didn’t know if I should leave as well, but I was afraid to ask. I moved to the kitchen door but Mr. Schrub said, “You can stay, Karim.”

Then he turned to his sons and commanded them to sit down. They both looked at the table as he spoke. I don’t remember all his words, but at a high volume he told them that they should call a taxi if they had even one drink and he wasn’t bailing them out for any more DUIs and they were irresponsible and he was fed up with them. In the middle of yelling at them he picked up the knife, which I had placed on the table, and he didn’t pay attention to it in his hands, but when Wilson interrupted him once to say he was 21 years old and legally allowed to drink, Mr. Schrub yelled even louder and bent the knife approximately 30 degrees with his hands and Wilson didn’t say anything else.

Mr. Schrub said one more thing that surprised me: “I’m furious with you two. You’ve really let me down.” I wondered if this was something all fathers said to their children, or if it was just that my father and Mr. Schrub had similar philosophies, even though my father said he wasn’t angry and Mr. Schrub said he was.

He walked to the door and stopped. “And if I ever, ever hear you talk to Karim, or anyone else, like that again, I’ll be much more than furious.”

Then he exited to the upstairs and I waited for 45 seconds while Wilson and Jeromy were mute before I returned to my bed.

I couldn’t get the voice recorder now, and I couldn’t fall asleep, so I looked out the window in my room at the light from the moon, which was half dark, and at the stars, which are invisible in New York and which I miss seeing when we visit our cousins in Al Khor. I’m not the class of person who believes that my mother is in the stars and observing me from there, but it’s profitable to remember that sometimes your problems are minor and the universe is infinitely larger and ultimately careless of what happens on earth, especially to one person, which can simultaneously make you feel alone.

I still didn’t fall asleep for several hours, and I woke up when Irma knocked on my door and told me it was time for brunch.

Everyone was waiting for me at the dining room table, and I apologized. Wilson and Jeromy both looked more fatigued than I was, so I didn’t feel as guilty.

“How late did you stay up?” Mrs. Schrub asked.

Mr. Schrub quickly looked at me, then looked down, and Wilson also did. It was as if I knew all their secrets but couldn’t say anything, even though I was the one with the real secret. “I stayed up late to read The Grapes of Wrath in my room,” I said.

Mr. Schrub and Mrs. Schrub had drinks of tomato juice with vodka. Mr. Schrub was in a positive mood and made many jokes which even I understood.

Wilson and Jeromy said good-bye after brunch. I shook their hands and they avoided my eyes. Mrs. Schrub told me the car to return to New York could leave as soon as I was ready. My opportunity to get the voice recorder was the opposite of golden. I packed my luggage slowly, because I was hoping Mr. Schrub might leave the house before I did. But I went downstairs and his office was still closed. When I was a few feet past the office, the door opened and Mr. Schrub asked to borrow me for a minute.

I again became panicked that he had discovered me. But he said, “I apologize for the scene last night, and for my sons’ behavior.” I said he didn’t need to apologize, and it was almost as if I could hear the voice recorder a few feet behind me.

Then he said, “Well, in better news, I have a proposal for you. My business people emailed it over this morning.” He showed me two stacks of several papers. “I don’t fully understand it, but apparently they want you to de-encrypt Kapitoil and allow our programmers access to the code, so they can make modifications to the algorithms, too. You’ll still be the point man on all this, and you’ll get a corresponding bump in salary.” He pointed to the number. It was double my current salary. “As far as I can tell, it’s a win-win for everyone.”

He gave me one of the stacks, as they were duplicates. It looked normal to me, and the money would be hard to reject. But more than that, this was my chance to compensate for what I had done last night. “I will sign it,” I said.

Mr. Schrub smiled and said he had a special pen for contracts, and he retrieved a Mont-Blanc pen from a holder on his desk. “Careful, it leaks easily,” he said.

As I was about to write my name, I noticed in the right corner of the front page the date and time it had originally been printed: November 12 at 9:16 a.m., which was Friday morning. Mr. Schrub said they had emailed it to him this morning. Sometimes computers have incorrect dates, but it made me pause.

Then I had an idea. In fact it was a double idea, but I didn’t have time to visualize the stars at night.

I started to sign my name, and I pressed very hard with the pen when writing the K. A large quantity of ink spilled and made the area for my signature a black puddle.

“I am sorry,” I said.

“No harm, no foul,” said Mr. Schrub. “I’ll print you up a fresh back page.”

Mr. Schrub worked on his computer. I walked back to the bookshelves to give him privacy. But I moved to Democracy Through Prosperity on the bookshelf.

Mr. Schrub was still clicking on the computer and the contract wasn’t on the monitor yet. I reached behind the book for the voice recorder. But I didn’t feel it.

The computer monitor now displayed the document.

I moved my fingers behind the books. Maybe he had already discovered it.

The printer began making feeding sounds like a car engine powering on. Then I felt something hard. I tried to pick up the voice recorder, but it was difficult because I had to reach over the line of books. It was similar to those machine games in which the user controls a device that retrieves stuffed animals with its metal talons. Zahira always wanted to play those when we were younger, and I had to tell her that they were designed to make the customer almost always lose money.

“Looking for something?” Mr. Schrub asked. His face was turned over his shoulder at me.

I moved my hand to the top of the book. “This book sounds interesting,” I said.

“It’s a free country, take a look,” Mr. Schrub said. He observed me for several seconds, as if he were deciphering a complex problem. I couldn’t remove it or he might see the voice recorder.

Then the printer beeped, and Mr. Schrub said, “Lousy printer,” and it was a paper jam and he had to remove the malfunctioning sheet and restart the job.

I took down Democracy Through Prosperity with my left hand and with my right hand I reached for the voice recorder and pocketed it and my heart accelerated as much as if I were playing racquetball. The printer respooled. I returned to his desk and he handed me the complete contract again.

The new page had the current date and time.

I looked at it for several seconds. Mr. Schrub asked, “Something wrong?”

“Possibly I should review this further on my own,” I said.

“Take your time,” he said. “Just get back to George whenever you’re ready.”

Mr. Schrub said he had enjoyed my company, and I thanked him and his family for hosting me. He removed a business card from his wallet and said, “In case you ever need to contact me,” although I knew I would be too afraid to contact him directly and would reach him only through his secretary.

During the car ride back to New York I couldn’t listen to the voice recorder of course, because Mr. Schrub’s driver, Patrick, was there. When we were static in traffic, Patrick called Mr. Schrub and told him he would be late returning to the house. After he disconnected, I asked how many days a week he had to work for Mr. Schrub.

“Just a few,” he said. “Mr. Schrub’s very generous with time off.”

I considered deleting everything on the voice recorder at that moment. It wasn’t my business and it was illegal. But sometimes even when you know the correct action, you can’t force yourself to do it.

In addition I felt bad about distrusting Mr. Schrub. It was an obsolete printer, and possibly it or the computer merely malfunctioned and displayed the incorrect date, and Mr. Schrub was telling the truth that he had received it that morning.

Still, I tried to read the contract more thoroughly in the car. It is long and the language is difficult for me to interpret, however, so it will take some time.

When I got into my apartment I immediately listened to the voice recorder, as if it were a present I couldn’t wait to open. I had to rewind through some sounds in the night the voice recorder had powered on for, and then I heard our conversation from last night.

The remainder of the recording was just our conversation in the morning. I don’t know what I was expecting to discover, but I was relieved it was nothing. I still saved our two conversations on the voice recorder. It was rare to have both a personal dialogue and a business conversation with Mr. Schrub within a few hours, and I always want to remember them.

acclimate = adjust to

at your earliest convenience = polite way of requesting a response ASAP

birding = observing birds

borrow a person = have that person’s attention briefly

bowl a person over = significantly impress that person

call dibs = claim ownership

DUI = charge for Driving Under the Influence (of alcohol)

full clearance = 100 % permission

heliport = airport for helicopters

Johnny Bench = baseball player known for having large hands

made my bitch = defeated = conquered = subjugated = dominated = enslaved

no harm, no foul = no serious damage has been inflicted

notes = variations of flavor in wine

POV = point of view

retire = hit the hay = go to sleep

talons = a bird’s feet that are used for containing a smaller animal

we’re not in Kansas anymore = revised line from The Wizard of Oz that indicates being in a new environment that is different and frightening

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 21

I bought a quality card with plant and bird designs and thanked Mr. and Mrs. Schrub for their hospitality, and mailed it to their home address in New York. I didn’t receive a response, so on Thursday I emailed his secretary to thank him again, and added:

Please also pass on my wishes for a happy Thanksgiving next week for the Schrubs. It is a holiday I do not know well, but I know that Americans use it to give thanks for what they have, and I am thankful for the opportunity Mr. Schrub has provided me.

The office would be closed next Thursday, and although the stock market was open on Friday, Schrub was giving the day off to most employees, including me. Everyone else was stimulated about having four days off from work, but I was anxious. I didn’t have anything to do or anywhere to go. I hadn’t needed to do much work on Kapitoil lately, because it was mostly self-running, and for the first time my work was slightly boring to me. Even the Y2K project required more problem-solving skills. Mr. Ray had told me I could use the time to work on new programs, but ever since I started finessing Kapitoil I wasn’t having any original ideas that stimulated me. So I hoped Mr. Schrub would possibly invite me back to Connecticut for Thanksgiving.

I saw Rebecca in the coffee room and asked about her Thanksgiving plans.

“I’m not really doing Thanksgiving this year,” she said. “It’s hard to justify flying to my mother’s just for a few days.”

I asked, “Where does your father live?” and then I remembered I shouldn’t ask about him because she didn’t mention him previously.

“New Jersey.” She poured herself more coffee even though her cup was almost full, and we discussed the Y2K project briefly before we divided.

On Friday Mr. Ray visited me in my office. “Just wanted to let you know we’re still thrilled with Kapitoil’s results,” he said. “Are you working on anything new?”

“I am continuously updating the algorithms,” I said.

“I meant any new programs.”

I said, “No, I have not innovated anything.” I should have said, e.g., “I am batting around some ideas,” as I heard Jefferson say to a supervisor one time, which is strategic because it is undefined and the listener will probably not ask for more details. But I am unskilled at that class of speaking.

Mr. Ray said, “Ah. Well, let me know if you’re struck by lightning with anything.” At the door he added, “And Mr. Schrub mentioned something about a contract?”

I had been attempting to read it over the week, but I couldn’t decipher most of its contents, and I couldn’t ask Jefferson or Dan or even Rebecca for help. So I said, “I am still reviewing it.” He said that was fine and he would recheck with me later.

I went to a bookstore on Saturday and bought another novel by John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men. I read it all in one day, and I liked it even more than The Grapes of Wrath, because it made a similar economic argument and had equal emotional power in a more efficient length. I emailed Zahira and recommended that she read it after her winter exams were over.

That night there was news of a small bombing in Pakistan on an oil refinery. Five people died as well. It would make the markets volatile and Kapitoil would profit on the vacillations. It was the class of event that happened infrequently, but when it did I tried to reroute my brain.

So I thought about Zahira some more, and wondered if she would pursue biology and possibly become a doctor, and if so if she would be a doctor who did clinical research to boot and attempted to cure diseases or simply a doctor who treated diseases. If I were a doctor I would prefer to do clinical work, as it’s more beneficial to prevent diseases before they develop than merely treat them after they have made an impact, and I would also be less valuable as a regular doctor because my interpersonal skills are weak.

Then I was struck by lightning.

What if I could apply the idea of using news reports, and an updated version of Kapitoil’s algorithm, to predict the spread of disease? The stock market functions like other systems of controlled chaos, such as viruses and epidemiology. Some diseases, e.g., cancer, are not possible to predict, because they occur independently of world events, but possibly I could anticipate how the flu virus or malaria spreads, or other diseases that relate to variables like poverty and sanitation and also political unrest that are discussed in the news.

But I will test out my hypothesis and create a prototype program to certify it has merit before I propose it to Mr. Ray or Mr. Schrub.

do a holiday = observe a holiday 100 % by spending it with family

struck by lightning = innovate a major idea

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 26

On Monday I received an email reply from Mr. Schrub’s secretary:

Mr. Schrub was pleased to have you as his guest, and he wishes you a happy Thanksgiving as well.

That was all. I was foolish to think he would invite me to Connecticut. He had his own family and other friends and business acquaintances. I was not an integral part of his life. “Pleased” was a word with such minimal weight. And possibly Mr. Ray told him I didn’t have any new ideas and therefore didn’t merit an invitation. I almost wrote to the secretary that I had a new idea about Kapitoil, but of course Kapitoil was still highly privileged information, and I had not even started testing out my new idea yet.

On Wednesday I went into my former pod and said good-bye to Rebecca. She was still working, and it was rare for me to exit work before she did. She had dark shadows under her eyes. I said, “Possibly you should not work so hard.”

Her mouth turned up slightly and she told me to have a good Thanksgiving. I asked if she was celebrating it with her roommate, but she said Jessica had gone home to California the previous day.

That night I watched television without truly selecting a program, which I don’t like doing. I considered finally calling one of the people in New York our family friends knew, the Bashar family. I opened my cellular and scrolled through the few numbers I had inputted so far, but stopped before I reached them.

“Hello?” Barron said.

“Hello, Mr. Wright. This is Karim Issar. I am the Schrub Equities employee you have previously driven from JFK Airport to my apartment, from the Schrub office to game four of the World Series between the Yankees and the Atlanta Braves, and from—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “What time and where?”

“I do not require transportation,” I said. “I would merely like to give thanks to you for the previous rides.”

He paused for a few seconds, then laughed. “You’re welcome. It’s my job.”

“Also, I would like to wish you and your family a happy Thanksgiving.” He reciprocated, and I asked, “Are you having a large Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Just having a few friends and relatives over, nothing too fancy,” he said.

“That sounds enjoyable.”

There was another pause, and he said, “You?”

“I do not have any current plans,” I said.

I could hear Barron intake his breath, and then he said, “Well, shit, like I said, it’s nothing fancy, but you’re welcome to come over here.”

“I could not infringe on your hospitality.”

“I wouldn’t have invited you if it was an infringement,” he said.

“Then I accept your offer, and I will bring some food with me as well.” He gave me his contact information. “Mr. Wright, may I infringe on your hospitality and invite someone else?”

He laughed again. Barron created high pressure when he didn’t speak, but when he laughed he depressurized the environment. He said why the hell not as long as I called him Barron and not Mr. Wright.

I called Rebecca, who picked up on the second ring. When I invited her to Barron’s, she said, “You don’t have to do that just because you feel sorry for me.”

“It is all right,” I said. “I was invited just because he felt sorry for me.”

She laughed and accepted, and I hypothesized that she and Barron would partner well because they were the only two people in the U.S. who thought I had a sense of humor.

On Thanksgiving I cooked hareis. It is my preferred meal to cook because it is like writing a complex program: It takes a long time to produce such fragile meat, you can innovate with trial-and-error experiments with different spices (e.g., I use more cinnamon than most cooks do), and removing the bones at the end is even parallel to debugging. Then you have a full meal made from several ingredients that would not be independently edible, minus the lamb and rice, just as a program combines several functions that have less value when solitary.

I also blended a complex juice of bananas, strawberries, peaches, and kiwis, which are independently edible but preferable in collaboration.

Rebecca and I planned to meet at Barron’s home in Jackson Heights, which I read was the most diverse area in the world. The subway was above the ground in Queens, and I tried counting the number of Spanish and Indian restaurants, but even I couldn’t do it. I also saw very few stores with names I recognized. Before I came to New York I expected to see this class of neighborhood more, but I haven’t found it in Manhattan.

Although I found this neighborhood intriguing, all the garbage on the streets suddenly made me wish I was in Connecticut with Mr. Schrub and his family and around trees and lawns and spacious houses.

I found a small brick house in a row of similar houses and rang the front door. A female with short black hair answered. She was Japanese.

I reviewed the number above the door. “I apologize,” I said. “I think I have the incorrect home.”

“For whom are you looking?” she asked.

“Is this the house of Barron Wright?”

“The house of Barron Wright and Cynthia Oharu, yes. Barron’s my husband.” She smiled, and I felt foolish for my original statement. “Karim, right? Please come in. And would you mind taking off your shoes?”

I said that was often the custom where I was from as well. She asked for the location, and I told her, and she made me guarantee to tell her more about Qatar later. Then she said my friend was waiting for me.

The living room had pictures on the walls of Barron and Cynthia and their daughter. Over a dozen adults and several children stood or sat on the two couches and multiple chairs. Everyone was black or Latin American, minus Cynthia, Rebecca, two white couples, and me.

Rebecca was eating and talking on one of the couches with another female. She told me to sit with them and introduced me. She introduced me to the people near us. She wasn’t a networker in the office, but she was more skilled here, similar to how she was at her own party, although that was understandable because the guests there were her friends.

There was a table near the kitchen with food on top of it, like at the Yankees game, including the hareis, but all the guests served themselves, so I did the same. The food was not the Thanksgiving food I previously read about, which slightly disappointed me, but there were fish and vegetable pies and dishes I believe were Latin American.

Cynthia made everyone laugh and transferred between guests frequently. She reminded me slightly of my mother, who was also a robust host. I briefly considered asking Jefferson later if he wanted to meet her, but his interest in Japan was not 100 % positive, and for him to meet Cynthia merely because she was Japanese was parallel to when I thought it wasn’t Barron’s house also because she was Japanese.

Barron was more like my father. He talked to a few of the guests at the party but remained in his seat, except at one point when he tickled his daughter, Michelle, which amused me, although of course I was not the target of the tickling. When I said hello to him, he shook my hand and thanked me for coming. This was more like my father when I was much younger. I don’t remember the last time we had a party in our apartment.

I said, “I would like to thanks-give to you and your family for inviting me.”

Barron’s brother was next to him. “Thanks-give?” he asked as he laughed at me.

Barron turned to him with a look I had never seen on his face. “Shut the hell up,” he said quietly. Then he said to me, “That suit still looks sharp on you,” and I thanked him, but he was incorrect, as it was in fact a different suit from the one I wore in the car, although he was correct in that it did look sexy on me. I felt enhanced until I saw his gray sweater had a small hole under the shoulder.

Several people enjoyed the hareis, and although the other children drank soda instead, Michelle repeatedly requested more of my juice.

I didn’t talk with Rebecca because Cynthia asked me much about Qatar and I also talked to a female social worker named Ana, who was originally from the Dominican Republic and who sometimes partnered with Cynthia’s law firm. She asked me, “Have you had any trouble assimil — have you had any trouble adjusting to life here?”

I said, “I have had some difficulties assimilating and acclimating, but I am not having a very hard time dealing.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t know that word,” she said.

“No harm, no foul,” I said. “I did know it, but I enjoy learning new words.”

Right after I said that, Cynthia said we should all play a game called Taboo. She explained the rules, which require a person to provide clues for his teammates to guess a specific word or phrase, but the person cannot state five other words, e.g., if the word is “baseball,” you cannot say: “sport,” “game,” “pastime,” “hitter,” or “pitcher.”

I would be very poor at this game, because I didn’t even know the word “pastime,” and if I didn’t know the censored words then I wouldn’t know the non-censored words either, and I would humiliate myself in front of everyone and Rebecca. So when Cynthia said we had an odd number of adults, I said I would not play. Rebecca tried to make me partner on her team, but I said I preferred to play with the children.

As the adults set up the game, I asked the children, “Who wants to play a game?”

All seven children approached me, and I said I had a fun game called Sleep Handshake. I explained the rules: “All the players walk around and shake hands, and one person also scratches one other person’s hand with his finger,” I said. “After several seconds, that other person ‘falls asleep.’ The other players must observe and guess who is the ‘sleeper.’” I used to play this game with Zahira and her friends to teach them analytical skills of observation.

“I know that game,” one of the older children said. “It’s not called Sleep Handshake. It’s called Murderer. And you don’t fall asleep. You die.”

“No,” I said. “That is a different game. In this game you merely fall asleep. Now I will choose a sleeper.” I shook everyone’s hand and scratched Michelle’s hand.

While we played, I listened to the adults play Taboo. They were all laughing and shouting with friendly competition. Because I am an adept multitasker with low-level problems, I studied the various strategies they used. The weaker players tried to describe the clues in elongated ways, but the stronger players, like Rebecca and Cynthia, used outside-the-box thinking to innovate clues and were more efficient.

The children enjoyed themselves as well, and at one point I saw Rebecca looking at us. Soon one of the adults said he had to leave.

“Karim, we need a sub,” Rebecca said.

Michelle put another child to sleep. “The children require supervision.”

“They’ll be fine,” Cynthia said. “Barron, move your fat ass.”

I was on the same team as Rebecca, which relieved me, as I didn’t want my teammates to become upset if I failed, and Rebecca was not the class of person to do that.

I studied more intensely as the other players provided clues, and because of that I didn’t try to answer any clues. I was very nervous just before my turn, but then I became calm when I remembered I must think outside the box, which is easy for me.

My first phrase was “Holiday Inn.” I could not say “hotel,” “motel,” “vacation,” “room,” “lodge.” I said: “A place you reside in overnight; non — work schedule plus non-out.”

Immediately Rebecca said “Holiday Inn!”

I used a similar strategy for the next phrase, “World Series” (I said “global iterations,” although I almost said “I attended this athletic event with Mr. Schrub”), and again Rebecca guessed it. When she correctly answered my third clue, Barron said, “You two married or something?” and I was slightly humiliated but remained focused.

My team guessed eight of my clues, which was the most of anyone, and Rebecca claimed responsibility for five of them. She was across from me, but she made her mouth move mutely so I could understand the words: “Nice job, Karim.”

It was strange to hear this compliment outside of the office, but it felt as good as when a higher-up praised me at work.

And I didn’t wish I was at Mr. Schrub’s house anymore.

The one time that was false was a few minutes after the game, when my stomach became turbulent. Probably it was from the large quantities of different foods I had consumed. I perspired, and Rebecca even asked if I was all right, and I said I was and that I had to make a telephone call, but instead I went to the restroom and turned on the water loudly so no one would hear me. I finished the toilet paper before I was completed, which panicked me, but then I located more under the sink.

We stayed until the other guests started leaving, and then Rebecca again moved her mouth to ask “Should we go?” I moved my mouth to say, “This is a strategic juncture to depart,” but she didn’t understand, so I nodded.

Because it was a holiday there were almost zero commuters. Rebecca talked nonstop about how much she had enjoyed it and continued thanking me for inviting her.

We reached Rebecca’s platform for the G train, which was empty. She again thanked me, and I said, “That is the sixth time you have thanked me.”

“I guess I’m a little thrown off by a Thanksgiving that doesn’t end in mutual recriminations fueled by gallons of cheap red wine,” she said.

We stood there for a few seconds without saying anything, and I heard her train approaching, and I said, “It is unsafe for you to travel home tonight because there are very few passengers. I will accompany you to your subway stop.”

“I’m a big girl,” she said. “Besides, it’s out of your way.”

I thought she was referring to her size, which was not thin but not big either, and then I understood, so I said, “That is true, but I would enjoy the company anyway.” She again said it was out of my way, but I maintained my position, and we boarded the train.

It was empty, minus a man and female at the other end. Their appearances and clothing were almost equal. The female rested her head on the man’s shoulder and he had his arm around her, and their eyes were closed. Rebecca and I sat next to each other, and on the trip we discussed nonwork subjects, e.g., Barron and Cynthia and Thanksgiving, but the entire time I was thinking how I wanted us to be in the same position as the couple.

Although no one was looking, I was too afraid to do anything. As we approached Rebecca’s stop, I said, “Rebecca,” and she asked, “What?” but I responded, “I should consult the map,” and I went to the middle of the train to investigate how to get back, even though I knew from the party at Rebecca’s apartment how to return to Manhattan and also I had memorized most of the subway system before I left Doha.

Rebecca’s stop at Fulton St. was next, and I had to stay on one more stop to transfer, and we didn’t talk as we decelerated into the station. I walked with Rebecca to the doors and she again thanked me and said, “Sorry, number seven.” This was the optimal time. Her fingers touched her hair and she looked through the windows of the doors at the station’s columns that passed by us like pictures in a slide projector.

I continued thinking I should kiss her, and commanded myself to do it, but the doors dinged and opened and she said good night and stepped out and the doors closed.

I watched her on the other side of the doors with her back to me, and I also saw myself in the window. I looked foolish standing there. And then the doors dinged again and reopened, as they sometimes do, and I thought this was a golden opportunity and not a random accident, and without thinking I said “Rebecca” as I did before, and she rotated and I leaned across the vertical plane of the train doors and kissed her, and she reciprocated, and I touched her hand, and we remained there for several seconds.

I could still taste the sugary milk from the Tres Leches cake she had eaten multiple pieces of, and the inside of her mouth was warm and the outside skin was cold, and my eyes remained open but hers were closed, and I wanted to remain in that position for much longer, but the doors dinged again and began closing and I pulled back so we would not get compressed.

Then the train moved and I watched her through the window as she looked down at her shoes, and I could not see if she was smiling or worried, and soon I was in the tunnel again. The entire trip back to my apartment I wondered if I should call her or not, and if I should, when I should do it and what to say. It wasn’t like a mathematics problem with a definite solution, and I had difficulty deciphering an answer. I couldn’t consult with my father and especially not Zahira. Possibly my mother would have been helpful for this situation, but I wasn’t old enough when she died to know.

a big girl (boy) = an independent female (man)

look sharp = clothing appears sexy

mutual recriminations = reciprocal insults

pastime = a leisure activity

JOURNAL DATE RECORDED: NOVEMBER 30

Because I didn’t know what to do in this situation, and because possibly Rebecca did, I waited for her to initiate a dialogue with me that weekend. But she didn’t call.

I tried to reroute my brain by spending more time on my idea about Kapitoil and epidemiology. Typically I can force myself to concentrate, but whenever I looked at the text on the monitor, I thought of looking at Rebecca’s closed eyes when we kissed, and whenever I moved my mouse I thought instead of touching her hand, and in my brain I smelled her watermelon shampoo and remembered the feel of her lips like two small pillows.

Then on Sunday I did something I have never previously done. I was using my computer’s painting program to diagram an object-oriented classes of viruses, but instead I tried to draw Rebecca’s face. However, I’m not a skilled artist on paper, and I’m even inferior on the computer, so it didn’t look like her. And then I was struck by lightning, although it was different from my typical class of lightning.

I employed one of the algorithms in Kapitoil and programmed a macro for it to utilize the painting program. Of course it didn’t draw a face, but a random piece of art like abstract expressionism that derived from a picture of a watermelon on the Internet. Except I knew it wasn’t random, because it was based on an algorithm, and when I analyzed it closely I could see the causes behind its decisions. I thought Jackson Pollock would green-light my design, and I titled it R #1.

And then the design did seem Rebecca-esque, as sometimes one object can mirror another one not because they look precisely equal, but because something more tangential feels similar, e.g., much of the painting utilized the visible spectrum near indigo, and if I think of a color to represent Rebecca, it would be indigo, because (1) of her personality; (2) most people cannot identify indigo between blue and violet, parallel to how some people might not notice Rebecca; and (3) I once saw a CD of hers by a female band with the word “Indigo” in its name.

On Monday morning I still had not heard from Rebecca, and I was afraid we were both acting like negotiating holdouts and not making an offer to increase our value. Although I knew I should wait longer, later that morning I emailed her:

Rebecca,

May I request a meeting at your earliest convenience in the coffee room to discuss certain subjects?

Sincerely,

Karim

She replied:

Mr. Issar:

Yes, but only if we can talk like that the whole time. See you in five minutes.

Formally yours,

Ms. Goldman

I didn’t know if she was teasing me or not, but when I reached the coffee room she was already sitting at the small table and tapping her right foot on the ground repeatedly as if she were timing a song.

“Would you like to begin?” I asked.

“I’m not dying to,” she said.

This was problematic, because I had hoped she would start and I could respond. I began talking without a clear plan, which is a tactic I would never use in business.

“I enjoyed spending Thanksgiving with you,” I said. “And the subway ride.”

“But?” she interrupted.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“You enjoyed it, but…” she said again.

I didn’t know if she meant she had an objection to my enjoyment, or if she was predicting I had an objection planned. So I said, “This is not a ‘but’ statement. I merely enjoyed it.”

She looked like she didn’t know what else to say. The periodicity of her foot’s taps was decreasing.

Another employee who always looks like he is asleep even when he is walking entered for coffee. Rebecca and I didn’t say anything the entire time he was there. When he spent approximately 30 seconds deciding between real sugar and false sugar, I had to restrict myself from commanding him to take both packets and decide at his desk.

He finally left. “In my experience, it is beneficial to repeat events that are enjoyable. Do you agree?” I asked.

She said, “In my experience, that’s also true.”

“I am available to repeat events on Saturday.”

“So am I,” she said. “Wait, am I supposed to say I’m not, to play hard to get?”

“I do not understand.” At times like this I wish I had more mastery of English, but possibly these kinds of exchanges are challenging even for fluent speakers. “Are you available or unavailable?”

She said she was available. I said, “I will shoot you an email with further details,” and she consented, and when she left I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, and in my office I even slightly punched the air with stimulation, although I contacted my fist on my desk and it hurt because I’m not used to punching, but the pain didn’t bother me, and in fact it felt good to be feeling sensations, even unpleasant sensations.

I spent Monday brainstorming for our date. Now that I had more money I could afford to take Rebecca someplace classy. Jefferson probably knew of good places, but I couldn’t ask him. So I researched places on the Internet that might impress Rebecca and made a list with pros and cons about different restaurants, e.g.:

Bavarian Haus

PRO: CON

Received 3 stars: Most non-Germans evaluate German food as low quality

It was more difficult than programming in many ways, because in programming if you can’t predict results, you can still test out new variables and use trial and error to arrive at a solution, but with people you typically have one opportunity and their motivations and reactions are more difficult to understand, especially with females.

By Tuesday afternoon I still didn’t know what to do. So I forced myself to work on my new Kapitoil-esque project instead. I made some progress, and soon I forgot about my nervousness with Rebecca and reentered the world of programming where I have ultimate control, and I worked through the night in my office, and I remembered how enjoyable it is to concentrate on a project that stimulates me, and by the end of the night I had hurdled some obstacles and received encouraging results, and once I finalize my program and presentation I will propose the concept to Mr. Schrub. If he was impressed with me initially, then this will bowl him over.

not dying to = not stimulated to proceed with an action

play hard to get = create the impression of limited supply to raise external demand