I was sitting outside at my café, drinking an iced coffee, Posey at my feet, waiting for Rachel’s day camp to let out. She was not eight, of course, she could find her way home, but Rachel seemed to like it when I picked her up. Her friend Agatha had not come home for the summer. The friends who had come home she claimed not to like anymore. This came as a surprise to me. Mollie and Bryn. They were very nice girls, all of them. I used to buy them pizza, drive them to the mall. I expected Rachel to moan and complain, but she didn’t. She had perfected, instead, the unhappy “don’t bother me” look. She wanted an audience for her misery and there I was.

I had my sketch pad open, I was going to draw this summer, I was going to paint, and in fact, I had begun a sketch of Posey when I noticed a young man, a dark-skinned man wearing a long-sleeved shirt and linen shorts, stepping out of a silver car. Clearly he was not from here. It was a sad truth, the lack of diversity in our town, but there it was. You had to be married to a banker to afford a house here. That limited the population. The Armstrongs were African American; Donna and David were both lawyers. Of course, there were always exceptions. The silver car pulled away from the curb, and this young man simply stood there, arms at his sides.

He reached into his pockets, retrieved a pair of sunglasses, and put them on. He proceeded to make a full circle, not leaving his spot on the sidewalk, and then he scratched his head. He looked rumpled, hungover even. His hair hung in his eyes.

“Oh, Posey,” I said.

This, of course, had to be Rachel’s writing professor. It could be no one else. I recognized him from his author photo. He would want his dog back. It hadn’t even been two weeks. Rachel had said we would have her for the summer.

I felt a panic. I stood up, sat down. Posey stood up, too, but I told her to sit. She hadn’t seen him yet. I could pretend not to have recognized my daughter’s professor. I could walk with Posey in the opposite direction, fast, and hope he did not see us. My daughter’s professor did not know me, but he would know his dog.

The man obviously didn’t know where Rachel lived or he would have taken the car directly to our house. I tried to imagine what he was thinking. It was a small town. He could talk to some people here on the square and he would find my daughter, just like that. He was not too far off. He had been here for all of a minute and I had found him.

It was bad luck on my part. The idea of not greeting him was appealing. The man was obviously a mess. And he was attractive, enormously so. There was something lovely and lonely about him and suddenly I understood my daughter’s melancholy. Her writing professor.

Anyone but him, I thought.

I could feel other people’s eyes on this man.

Suddenly, I felt afraid for him. He seemed so ill at ease— there was a way he reached into his pocket, as if he was going to pull out a pack of gum and someone was going to think it was a gun. I was afraid someone would call the police. Like the two old biddies on the park bench across the street who had obviously noticed him and were whispering. Small-town America. Motherfuck.

“Zahid,” I called out. I was not going to cross the street. I would not make it that easy for him. The least he could do was come to me. “Zahid Azzam.”

What a funny name it was. Like a comic book character.

He looked at me, confused.


“Yes,...