Checker and the Derailleurs

“Wife?”

“Sort of, but you’re not going to like it.”

Rahim wilted a little further. “She is ugly?”

“No,” said Check, smiling at the picture. “She’s a knockout.”

“So how is problem?” Rahim immediately cheered. “I marry pretty girl, stay in Amedica.”

“She’s no girl, believe me.”

“How she is pretty, she is old dog?”

“English lesson, Hijack. Pretty is for sweet girls with pastel sweaters and heart-shaped lockets around their necks. Pretty girls had braces. Pretty girls take a shower at least once a day and never have dishes in the sink. They keep their nails trimmed and their shoes match their pocketbooks. Or they may even wear black leather and metal studs and ride a Harley, but they still have a way of looking at you, a way of smiling, that means they’ll never hurt you in a million years. They like to hold hands and they’re nice, they’re relaxing. But Syria Pyramus isn’t a girl and she’s not pretty and she’s definitely not relaxing.”

Rahim’s eyes widened. “Fire lady?”

“Yes, but—”

Rahim leaned back and stretched out his legs as much as he was able. “Not bad, Sheckair. But she need discipline.”

Checker groaned. “That’s what she said about you.”

“I work at my market. She make supper. Have rooms clean, flowers—”

“Hold everything.” Checker took the candle and placed it ritualistically between them, crossing his legs on the floor. “This is the scam, my man: You make the supper. You have the rooms clean. You buy the flowers.”

Rahim Abdul, loyal Muslim and recent Iraqi immigrant, born and faithfully raised in the bosom of paternity, looked genuinely confused. “What you say?”

“She wants—an assistant,” said Check uncomfortably. “To cook and clean and shop. She wants—”

“Slave!”

Checker shrugged. “Yeah. Take it or leave it.”

“Leave it!”

As Rahim glared, Checker stood back up and stretched, pointedly knocking his arms into the pipes overhead. “Well, I guess we could get you a little lamp here, a table. And maybe a TV, though with Kaypro around all the time you couldn’t use the sound …”

“Don make funny.”

“Well, is it a joke, Hijack? That they’ll shoot you for draft evasion, was that just a good story?”

“No story,” said Rahim glumly. “Only—shoot if lucky.”

“And we might be able to rustle you out of here, but you could never come back. You’d have to leave The Derailleurs—”

“I never leave Derailleurs!”

“Sh-sh!” There was scuffling in the upstairs hall. “All right, then,” said Checker softly when the steps retreated, kneeling to his saxophone player. “This is the real thing, Hijack. Pulling this off is going to be tricky. We’re going to marry you in a wet basement, real quiet, no champagne. And even when you’re married, the INS is going to investigate you down to the drawer you keep your underwear in. Frankly, they don’t like Iraqis. I’ve done the best I can and we don’t have any money, the woman has to get something out of this, okay? But I don’t want to see you ground into a falafel just because you’re too much of a man to fix her one yourself.”

The expression on Rahim’s face changed, and Checker wasn’t sure he liked it. “We make me Amedican,” said Rahim, eyes glittering with complicity. “Then we teach this Fire Lady to make her husband falafel with warm, fresh pita and walk three steps behind him in street.”

“No way, Hijack—”

Rahim raised his hand. “I do how you say.”

“You do what Syria says and agree to it now or we can’t go through with this.”

“No problem,” said Rahim mildly, who had learned this neutralizing phrase only lately and found it immensely handy.

“You mean you agree?”

“No problem,” Rahim repeated.

“There’d better not be,” Checker warned.

“Is one more thing.” Rahim put a hand shyly on Checker’s arm. “She is—clean?”

Checker guffawed. “Syria?”

“No, I mean—she is not used?”

Checker paused, and said carefully, “I’m sure Syria hasn’t ever done anything like this before.” He had the sensation with this statement of balancing on a very thin beam—he held his breath, every word a smooth, sure step, as long as he didn’t look down. He knew Rahim.

“Excellent,” said Rahim. “Because in my country, if she—”

“You really don’t need to worry about that,” said Checker hurriedly. “We have a deal? With cooking and cleaning?”

Rahim only rose and said eagerly, “I can go now?”

“Kaypro likes it here, bridegroom. You stay put.” Checker left the Iraqi in the basement to stew, much like shutting a child in his room to restore his good behavior. But Checker remembered grimly that the tactic just created wilier, more rebellious children in the long run.

Sure enough, when Checker returned upstairs Gary Kaypro was back again, this time commiserating with Eaton about how the last thing you found in New York nowadays was “a real American.” Kaypro was drinking Wild Turkey, bemoaning the incompetence of the INS, and Checker wondered how Rahim had gotten snagged in one of its rare moments of effectiveness. As Kaypro went on about their tiny budget and ludicrous responsibilities, though, Check did start to feel sorry for him—though he wanted to play sax with The Derailleurs, Kaypro didn’t seem corrupt really, and he had a stupid, impossible job.

“But it’s flattering, isn’t it?” Checker intruded gently. “Immigration?”

“Yeah, how?”

“Well, we can’t let everybody in. But it’s nice to run a place that everybody wants into instead of out of. Nobody’s beating down any doors to get into Iraq.”

“God, no,” and Kaypro proceeded with a string of Middle Eastern horror stories, then back to nightmare bureaucracy and fraud. “You know, for a couple hundred dollars any wet can outfit himself with birth certificate, driver’s license, and social security card? They sell them in packets.”

Checker restrained himself from asking. “Where?”

During the week Checker dragged a doctor down to the basement and over to Vesuvius for blood tests, and stood in line for forms at City Hall. Most of his pocket money went to buying Rahim six-packs, most of his time to finding a minister, rushing pizza slices down Plato’s back stairs before the cheese congealed, and calming Syria after she inflamed at the least inconvenience this odd project cost her. But Checker didn’t mind being busy—he loved all forms of motion. He ran his errands with Zefal, and in January the roads were uncluttered with other cyclists, the air slapping his skin, sharp in his throat. Winter coloration in New York has a subtle palette—the ashen crust of dried salt on macadam, the dun scrub of dead grass in the parks, the dapple of tabloid pages flapping down cracking sidewalks, the flat cardboardy bark of beeches and ginkgos, the leaden loom and pulse of the sky—all these grays, depressing to some, were tender to Checker.

Friday, Kaypro showed up at Plato’s with his saxophone. He’d returned to the club every night that week, on the pretense of doing his job. Eaton, especially, seemed to like talking to the man, scattering their conversation with brands of shells and pedals and guitars, testing Kaypro’s knowledge of obscure bands and backup musicians. Eaton liked to prickle these games with “Of course, at your age …” “You must not get to …” “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of …” Check watched each “your age” hit Kaypro like a little dart. Eaton would casually refer to late-night recording sessions and wild impromptu coke parties by the river, full of spontaneous pranks and backslapping camaraderie. He must have enjoyed the pinched, left-out look on the officer’s face, an expression not even of nostalgia but of pure deprivation—Kaypro’s own youth wouldn’t have been like that, because nobody’s was.