Lion Eyes

by Claire Berlinski

  “I can’t feel the same way about it after last night.”

  “I know what you mean. I have some canned soup. And some rice. Oh! I could make pancakes! Do you have those in Iran?”

  “Of course. We invented them. We invented everything.”

  “What else did you invent?”

  “The windmill.”

  “What else?”

  “The Internet. Come here.”

  • • •

  “When did you realize you were in love with me?”

  I thought about it. “I think it was when your electricity went out, and I didn’t hear from you. Remember that? I realized it then. What about you?”

  My head was on his chest. He stroked my hair. “About six hours ago, I think. I think I was only in love with the idea of you before that. But I was very in love with the idea of you.”

  “You’re better in person.”

  “So are you.”

  “I wish Wollef liked me more.”

  “You can’t really blame him for being jealous. He’s never had to share me with anyone before.”

  “Really? There’s been no one?”

  He hesitated a bit. “No one who matters.”

  I wished I hadn’t asked.

  • • •

  “Damn, it’s 10:30 already, I should get going,” he said. “I should probably go over and register for the conference afterwards. Will you be here this afternoon?”

  “Of course. If I’m out, it’s just because I’m getting groceries and kitty litter. I should return the chairs to my dad, too. Should we arrange a time to meet so you can get back in?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how long the registration will take.”

  “Then take the spare key. Top drawer of my desk. Come back whenever you want.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t be that long, anyway.” He yawned. “A nap sounds wonderful. I should show my face at the reception this evening, but may I take you out for dinner afterwards?”

  “I’d love that.” I wondered what he would be feeling and what he would say when he came back. I had managed to put Sally out of my mind all night.

  “Will you make reservations somewhere for about nine o’clock?” he asked.

  “Sure; what are you in the mood for?”

  “Whatever you like. A nice bistro. A place where I don’t have to wear a tie.”

  “Okay, I’ll think of something.”

  “Great. I’d best go,” he said, pulling on his jeans. “How do I get to the Métro from here?”

  “Go out, turn right, go to the bridge, turn right. You’ll see it.”

  “Bridge, turn right. Okay, now where’s my wallet? Oh, there it is. Wollef, you be good.” He scratched the cat’s ears; then he kissed me. “See you this afternoon,” he said, and kissed me again, on my forehead, on my neck.

  As soon as I closed the door behind him, Wollef began trying to poke his paw under it, and when he realized his paw was too clumsy and fat, he sat down and began meowing. “Shhhh, shhhh kitty,” I said. “It’s all right.” I reached down to pick him up, but he squirmed out of my arms. “Okay, have it your way. I’ll be in the bathroom if you need me.” He was still meowing—loudly—an hour later when I got out of the bathtub.

  There’s no way to nap when a cat is crying in your apartment.

  “Wollef, Wollef sweetie, please be quiet,” I begged. I tried putting the pillow over my head, but I could still hear him, and I couldn’t sleep like that anyway. I had given him water and more tuna fish; he wanted neither. Was he unhappy with the litter box? Did he want something else to eat? I didn’t have anything else to give him. He wouldn’t let me pick him up.

  At last, desperate, I got dressed. I grabbed my father’s chairs and lugged them back to his apartment. “You look hungover as hell,” my father astutely observed. I declined his offer to share his home-cooked onion sandwich on white bread with ketchup. “You sure?” he asked. Then I walked over to one of the pet stores on the right bank of the Seine. The bright sunlight made my head ache. I stood outside the window of the pet store for a few minutes watching the puppies scrabble and wrestle in their cages. I looked at my watch: Arsalan had met Sally about an hour ago. I wondered what she had said to him and what he would say when he came back. I bought a dozen cans of wet cat food, the kind that always puts my father’s cats to sleep. I bought a litter box and some proper kitty litter. I bought a little cat toy—a birdie attached to a rod and string. Then, since I was out anyway, I picked up some groceries, and after that I stopped in a café and ordered an omelet with some fresh-squeezed orange juice, hoping it would help my hangover.

  “Here you go, Wollef,” I called out when I returned. “Special delivery!”

  He didn’t come. “Wollef? Woooollllllefffffff!” I looked under the bed. I wasn’t worried—cats tend to hide themselves well.

  Then I realized that the apartment didn’t look right.

  • • •

  I checked quickly: My jewelry box hadn’t been touched. There was no sign of forced entry. Nothing belonging to me was gone.

  But his suitcase—gone. His hanging bag in the closet—gone. Wollef’s toy mouse—gone. Everything he owned—gone.

  No note. No messages on my answering machine. No e-mail. No Wollef.

  I didn’t know the name of Sally’s hotel. Despite her warnings not to contact her by phone, I called her number in Istanbul. No one answered. I called her cell phone number. It rang and rang.

  I sat down on my bed, bemused, verifying and reverifying that yes, every trace of Arsalan was gone. I didn’t even know what narrative to ascribe to this turn of events. Was it a matter for the police? I imagined trying to explain it. See, I met this guy from the Middle East on the Internet, and he said he loved me, right, and I slept with him on the first date, and now he’s disappeared without a trace, and I’m not sure why, but I’m worried he’s in some kind of trouble—or maybe he just dumped me, I don’t know.

  And if I tried to explain that the CIA was mixed up in it? ’E ’as been missing for ’ow long? I see. And ’e ’as stolen nuzzing from you, but zee CIA ’as taken ’ees luggaige and ’ees pet cat. Vaire peculiaire . . .

  Maybe Sally had said something that so panicked him that he rushed back, grabbed his things, and got on the next flight out of Paris? But why would he not even leave a note?

  Should I be worried about him? Furious at him? Was there a logical explanation that in my sleepless state I was overlooking? I tried to imagine what could have transpired at his meeting with Sally that would have prompted him to do this. Had she told him his life was in danger?

  Was his life in danger?

  Maybe he had become furious at me when he realized that she was really a CIA case officer, and that I had lured him to Paris under false pretenses. Had he become so angry that he had resolved never to speak to me again—and if so, could I blame him?

  I called Imran. “Hello,” he answered in his calming psychotherapist’s voice, the one he used for suicidal patients, since only they would interrupt him in the middle of the therapeutic hour.

  “Imran, Arsalan’s disappeared. I went out and when I came back he was gone, and so was all his stuff. What’s the name of Sally’s hotel? I need to find her.”

  “Arsalan has disappeared.” He said it slowly. “How painful.”

  “Yes, very; where is Sally staying?”

  “Sally? Why would he be with Sally?”

  “He wouldn’t be. But she would have been the last one to see him. They were supposed to discuss that donor aid.”

  “Claire,” he said patiently, “are you planning to contact Sally to press her for details about your ex-lover? Because that would be neurotic. Compulsively seeking explanations is a way of not accepting that it’s over. I advise you to grieve your fantasy properly instead.”

  “I’m not sure that it is over—” I thought about trying to explain, then thought better of it. God knew who was listening to my phone calls.

  “Of course it is. Disap
pearing is rather an unequivocal message, don’t you think?”

  A vagrant memory came to mind. In graduate school, my friend Floyd had been dating a South African girl who was keener on him than vice versa. They went dancing one night at a club with UV strobe lights, and as the lights flashed, illuminating his white shirt, Floyd leaned into Violet and remarked, “I love UV!” To his horror, Violet threw her arms around his neck and screeched, “Oh, Floyd, I love you too!” He was so appalled that he excused himself to go to the men’s room, stopped at the coat check on his way, grabbed his coat, and disappeared into the night. He was scared to answer his phone for at least a year. Didn’t seem to me like the best way to handle the situation, but men and women think differently. Men usually can’t figure out why I think the best way to deal with a flat tire is to cry helplessly. At last I said to Imran, “I’m worried he might be—might have been in an accident.”

  “Very unlikely, Claire. It’s painful, but it doesn’t sound as if Arsalan had much respect for you. Sounds as if he made good use of you, said what was necessary to say to open the tap, then moved away easily when he’d had his fill. I see men doing this to women all the time.”

  Would he even believe me if I told him the whole story? I wasn’t sure anyone would. “Yes, you’re probably right. But I need to speak to Sally because . . . well, I just do.”

  “I see.” He sounded dubious. “Well, she’ll have left the hotel by now, I suspect. She was going back to Istanbul right away, she told me.”

  “What happened between the two of you?” I asked.

  He cleared his throat. “I helped her process her emotions more fruitfully.”

  “If she gets in touch with you, will you let me know?”

  “I don’t think she will. I advised her not to, in three separate five-minute speeches about what I could and could not offer. I’m sorry you’ve had such a painful experience with Arsalan. I’m surprised by his behavior. Very cowardly. Alas, this kind of pain is part of life. At least you had the courage to try. Grieve fully and well. I must return to my session.”

  I hung up and tried Sally again. No answer.

  Arsalan had never sent me his phone number in Isfahan. I called Dr. Mostarshed’s number in Istanbul. No answer. I looked up Isfahan University on the Internet and called their main line. “Hello; do you speak English?” I asked when a man answered in Persian.

  “A little,” he replied, to my surprise.

  “Could I please have the phone number for Dr. Arsalan Safavi?”

  “No,” he said suspiciously, and hung up.

  I tried Sally again. I tried Dr. Mostarshed again. I let both numbers ring and ring.

  I called and asked to be connected to the organizer of the conference. The receptionist put me through to a woman named Isabelle. I said that I was an old friend of Arsalan Safavi’s. Had he registered? “One minute,” she replied. She put me on hold. When she came back, her voice was strained, or perhaps I was imagining it. “Madame? Monsieur Safavi has had to leave. There has been a personal emergency.”

  “Did he leave a phone number where he can be reached?”

  “Not at all,” she said, and hung up on me.

  • • •

  From: Samantha Allen allens@aol. com

  Date: December 6, 2003 01:26 PM

  To: Claire Berlinski claire@berlinski.com

  Subject: Re: Re: Back home

  Sorry about Arsalan. I hate to tell you this, but the only reason he’d act like that is that he wasn’t that into you. I have to say, I didn’t think he was that great. He’s kind of pompous. And that accent makes him sound like an android; you were right.

  Anyway, I get home and there’s a letter from Lynne. She’s really angry, but she had a lot of questions, like—When was I planning to tell her? How could I have lied to her like that? So I wrote back as well as I could. I mean, I don’t really have any good answers, do I? I didn’t figure I’d hear from her again, but fifteen minutes later, I get another letter from her. She still doesn’t understand, she says—Was she just some lab subject? Was I just planning to use our whole relationship as a chapter in my book? It’s weird: we’ve been writing back and forth all night, except now she’s sending me hate mail instead of love mail.

  From: Claire Berlinski claire@.com

  Date: December 6, 2003 01:32 PM

  To: Samantha Allen allens@aol.com

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Back home

  I’d say it sounds as if Lynne is finding it hard to let go. Compulsively seeking explanations is a way of not accepting that it’s over. I’d advise her to grieve her fantasy properly instead.

  • • •

  “Sweet Jesus. Back-alley-Sally? They had her handling an Iranian? That’s incredible. That’s a goddamn disgrace is what it is—”

  “So you know her?”

  “Yeah, you should have asked me about her before you got mixed up in this. Why didn’t you call me before? She was one of the white chicks who didn’t get fired.”

  “For what?”

  “You calling me from your own phone?”

  “Yes—”

  “Well, maybe I’ll tell you someday. Not now. Trust me, if a black woman had done what she—”

  I interrupted. “What do you think happened to him?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have the first clue now, would I? Not like they tell me anything these days. But they put her on an Iranian! Jesus! That really chaps my hide. Man, knowing her she’s probably left his whole file in a taxi or something by now. Hope the wrong people didn’t find that like they did last time. If his people got wind he was talking to the CIA, by the way, he’s dead. Those guys have no sense of humor. And she’ll get another damned administrative warning just like she did the last time, and—”

  “Dead?”

  Charlene heard my voice wobble and catch. “Oh, don’t worry, honey. Look, maybe he was a bad guy anyway. Maybe we made him disappear. He’s in Gitmo or something. I reckon they don’t have e-mail there.”

  “My God. Would we really do that?”

  “Sure. We live in a bad world. That’s what happens to bad guys when we get our hands on them.”

  “But Sally said he wasn’t a bad guy.”

  “Well, of course she did. You wouldn’t have invited him into your home if she’d said he was some kind of head-chopping terrorist, would you?”

  “I’m sure he wasn’t. Isn’t it possible she recruited him? That he agreed to work for the CIA?”

  “Sure. Sure it’s possible—”

  “But then why would he have disappeared?”

  “Maybe they told him to. They don’t want their assets sleeping with someone who writes books called Loose Lips. Can’t really blame them, either, can you? Hold on, honey, gotta take this call.” She came back on the line a minute later. “That’s my conference; I gotta run. But I wouldn’t worry about it. Really I wouldn’t. In my opinion, it’s most likely that he just wasn’t that into you. Happens all the time. Guys are pigs.”

  • • •

  From: Claire Berlinski claire@berlinski.com

  Date: December 09, 2003 02:20 AM

  To: Arsalan arsalan@hotmail.com

  Subject: (No subject)

  Arsalan,

  Please—just let me know that you’re okay. I won’t contact you again, if that’s what you prefer. Just let me know you’re alive.

  Claire

  From: Mail Delivery System

  Date: December 09, 2003 02:20 AM

  To: Claire Berlinski claire@berlinski.com

  Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender

  This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

  A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

  arsalan@hotmail.com

  SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:

  <arsalan@hotmail.com&

  host mx4.hotmail.com [65.54.244.104]: 550 Re
quested

  action not taken:

  mailbox unavailable

  From: Prof. H. R. Mostarshed hrm86@farsinet.com

  Date: December 21, 2003 09:20 AM To: Claire Berlinski claire@berlinski.com

  Subject: Re: Arsalan Safavi

  Dear Ms. Berlinski,

  I apologize for not replying more promptly to your many messages. I have been away on a dig in Eastern Turkey. I am sorry but if Dr. Safavi’s e-mail address does not function, I do not know how else to reach him.

  By the way, I believe that perhaps I have left a yellow file folder marked “Hittite Empire” in your apartment. Have you by chance come across it? I would be most grateful if you were to return it. You in turn have left a beige garment here, which I shall be happy to return to you should you wish.

  Kind regards,

  Dr. H. R. Mostarshed

  • • •

  “U.S. Citizens Section; how may I help you.”

  “May I speak to Sally Melill, please.”

  “Who’s calling, please?”

  “Claire Berlinski.”

  “One moment, please.” A clicking on the line, then a different voice.

  “Hello, Sally Melill is no longer with us.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s gone back to Washington pending a forward assignment.”

  “Department of State.”

  “Hello, may I speak to Sally Melill, please?”

  “Do you know which section she’s in?”

  “I don’t, no.”

  “Could I have that name again please?”

  “Sally Melill, M-E-L-I-L-L.” A rustling of papers.

  “Miss Melill is unavailable right now. May I take a message?”

  “I’ve left half a dozen already. Is she going to call me?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, all I can do is give her the message.”

  “Directory assistance, what city?”

  “Washington, D.C.”

  “What listing?”

  “Sally Melill. M-E-L-I-L-L.”