Homeland Elegies(37)

“Oh, no…I’m so sorry, Mr. Marek, I forgot,” she pleaded.

“Jasmine,” he said firmly.

“So many things happening at lunchtime, Mr. Marek. We have that delivery and Martin go to the parts store—”

“Jasmine, that’s not an excuse.”

The exchange sounded canned, like a routine they both knew a little too well. She turned to me. “I’m so sorry, mister…I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” she said with the same pleading tone.

I didn’t respond.

“So I don’t know what we’re going to do about this,” John said as Jasmine walked out.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Marek. You charged me sixteen hundred dollars I don’t have. And you didn’t ask me—”

“That was Jasmine’s mistake.”

“Be that as it may. It wasn’t mine.”

“You don’t need to get rude.”

“Rude? Maybe what’s rude is that I still haven’t even gotten an apology from you.”

John laid his cigar in an ashtray and sat back in his chair. He’d registered the thrust, and his parry was delivered with admirable aplomb. It made me think he was actually enjoying this: “I’m sorry Jasmine forgot to call you. That’s on us. But the truth is, if I’d known you weren’t going to want to have that converter replaced, we would have asked you to come pick up the vehicle. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I was letting my guys put a new gasket onto an engine with that converter. No, sir.” I didn’t know what to say. He had turned his evident racket into a story about the morality of driving with a defective catalytic converter—something my father had been doing for years. “Yes, sir. What’s right is right. I’m happy to hold on to the vehicle at this point while you figure out what you want us to do with it—”

“What I want you to do is take out the new converter. I want you to give me my car back. I will pay you for the line item that I approved. Here,” I said pointing to the invoice. “That’s what I want.”

He was entirely unperturbed. “Well, I already told you. We’re not doing that. I don’t even think we have that old converter. I usually have those sent to another shop where they strip them for the metals. Those can be valuable.”

“You didn’t have my consent, John. You did the repair anyway. Now you’ve pilfered my converter and sent it off to be stripped. Maybe we should call somebody to help us figure out the legality of what you’ve really got going on here.”

“And who would that be?”

“Maybe we have the authorities come by and sort this out. How does that sound?”

“You mean the police? Sure. Sounds great.” He leaned forward and pushed the phone toward me. “The local precinct’s on speed dial. Second button. I use it a fair bit. My wife works there,” he said as he sat back again. Was he lying? Did he even have a wife? He wasn’t wearing a ring. His fingers were covered in grease, so maybe, I thought, he takes it off when he comes to work. I wondered what his wife thought of that lurid, fading snapshot of a woman’s wet sex hovering just behind him. Or the receptionist and self-styled resident piece of ass manning his phone—and likely more—all too happy to play accomplice in his larcenous repair racket. And who was that fellow lost in the towers? He had John’s eyes and, come to think of it, those of John’s nephew as well. Was that his brother? Had the state trooper lost his father in the attacks? Is that why he was reading Larry Wright’s book? What did any of it matter, anyway? The man had my car. I was a Muslim with a funny name. Whether he had a wife who was a cop or not, his nephew certainly was, and I’d lied to him the day before. Oh…and did I mention he had the local precinct on speed dial?

John watched me hesitate. Instead of reaching for the receiver, I got up. “I need to make a call,” I said abruptly. As I passed Jasmine at reception, she flashed me a smile, a shoulder lifted, her head turned and tilted toward it. The seductive gesture made no sense to me.

Once outside, I didn’t call a lawyer. I didn’t know a lawyer. I called Wells Fargo. I had two cards with the bank, both maxed out. I’d recently torn up a letter offering to increase the credit limit on one of those cards. The letter had infuriated me, with its uplifting clichés about having the means to do the things that mattered most, the letterhead showing a gorgeous young interracial couple holding hands against the backdrop of a sun setting over Monument Valley. I had needed the money then—I always needed the money—and was tempted enough to find myself combing the fine print for the catch. I finally found what I was looking for: the clause explaining that by accepting the credit increase, I was agreeing to have any outstanding balance refinanced at the new APR of 22 percent. I tore the letter in half. Then tore it again. And again. And again. Until the pieces were so small my fingers could find no purchase from which to tear them any smaller. I still have no idea why this particular invitation to self-electing predation got further under my skin than usual, but it did. And yet here I was, barely a month later, waiting to have my call monitored or recorded for training purposes.

“Hello, Mr.—Akh-a-pana?” It was a woman’s voice, a slight delay and a practiced tone making her sound more like a robot than a human.

“Acquapanna? Is that what you said?”