Darius the Great Is Not Okay(66)

Not really.

Maybe Dad’s place had been empty too.

Maybe he’d figured out how to fill it.

Maybe he had.





THE VIRGO SUPERCLUSTER



With so many Persians gathered in such close proximity, it was inevitable they would reach critical mass and ignite a game of Rook.

This time, Babou played with Dayi Soheil against Dad and Dayi Jamsheed.

I did not understand how anyone could play Rook as much as Ardeshir Bahrami.

Sometimes I found him in bed, playing alone, the cards spread across a blanket on his lap as he formulated moves and countermoves with imaginary opponents and an imaginary teammate.

I found a seat in the corner and watched the Bahrami men—and Stephen Kellner—start bidding.

How did he do it?

How could he just join in like that?

“Darioush,” Sohrab said. “Are you stuck?”

“Huh?”

“You said sometimes you get stuck. Thinking something sad.”

“Oh.” I swallowed and pulled at the tassels of my hoodie. “It’s nothing.”

“Come on.” Sohrab pulled me up to my feet. “I won’t let you be stuck anymore.” He dragged me to the table where Parviz and Navid, Dayi Soheil’s sons, sat. Parviz was twenty-three, and Navid was twenty-one, which made them closer to me in age than anyone, except Nazgol the Nineteen-Year-Old Nazg?l.

“Darioush,” Parviz said. His voice was rich and creamy, like smooth peanut butter. He barely had an accent: It only came through in the sharpness of his vowels and the lilt in his sentences, as if there was the shade of a question in everything he said. “How come you never told us you play football?”

“Oh. Um.”

“Sohrab said you are very good at it.”

I tried really hard not to smile.

“He is. You should see him.”

“I’m not that good.”

“Yes you are! You should have heard Ali-Reza. He was so mad. He said, ‘It’s not fair! I’m never playing with you two again!’”

Parviz snorted. “You still play with him?”

“I thought he moved,” Navid said.

Navid’s voice was deep, like his mother’s. He’d inherited her elegant, arched lips, and Mamou’s long, dark eyelashes. I too had inherited Mamou’s eyelashes, which sometimes got me teased at school.

To be honest, though, I liked them.

I really did.

“He was going to move to Kerman,” Sohrab said. “But his father lost his job and they had to stay here.”

Ali-Reza had been a complete jerk to me—the epitome of a Soulless Minion of Orthodoxy—but I still felt bad for him.

It turned out Ali-Reza had Father Issues too.

Sohrab gave Parviz and Navid a complete play-by-play of our latest game. He made me sound way better than I really was, glossing over the passes I missed and exaggerating all the saves I pulled off.

It became a lot harder not to smile.

I felt like I was ten feet tall.

“After the game, Ali-Reza wouldn’t stop complaining. Asghar told me. Ali-Reza said, ‘They don’t even play football in America.’”

Sohrab threw his arm over my shoulder. He had showered before coming over, and still smelled soapy and fresh, like rosemary. My back warmed where his arm rested.

“But it doesn’t matter. Darioush is Persian too.”

I was a warp core on full power.

I was glowing with pride.

Navid and Parviz decided that, since I was so Persian, it was time for me to learn how to play Rook. Navid produced a pack of cards from his shirt pocket, the way a smoker would produce a pack of cigarettes, and began dealing.

Sohrab sat across from me and helped my cousins explain the game. I already knew the basics, but I’d never actually tried to play before.

“It’s okay,” Sohrab said. “Just have fun.”

I glanced over at Dad’s table. He caught my eye and smiled, like he actually approved of what I was doing.

I worried I would have to play Rook with him when we got home.

I did not think I could stomach it.

Sohrab started out our bidding. The inherent telepathy that made us such a good team at soccer/non-American football helped us with Rook too.

That was good, because I was pretty much terrible at the game.

Sohrab never got mad or impatient, though. And even Navid and Parviz were nice about it. After each round, they gave me advice on what I could have done better. It was probably the slowest game of Rook they had ever played.

It didn’t matter, though. We had fun.

When the night wound down, I escorted Sohrab and his mom out and said good night to the living room, where all the ladies sat sipping tea and talking over each other in Farsi.

Mamou pushed herself off the couch to give me a good night hug.

If Mamou made the best chelo kabob in the Alpha Quadrant, it was nothing compared to her hugs, which were easily the best in the Virgo Supercluster, of which our Milky Way Galaxy was only one small part.

When Mamou wrapped her arms around me, a whole new dimension of light and warmth opened up between them.

I sighed and hugged Mamou back.

I wished there was a way I could bundle her hugs up and take them back to Portland with me.

“Good night, maman.”