Read Online Brief Encounters with the Enemy by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - Free Book Online Page B

mice. A group of ex-farmers, or people who looked like they might be ex-farmers, stood around a long table spray-painting assorted logos onto umbrellas. I was curious about their work, and the supervisor took me closer so I could see. The smell of paint was pleasant and reminded me of my kindergarten days. “It smells great,” I said to the supervisor, grinning. He looked askance at me, and within thirty seconds the smell had become so overwhelming, so noxious, that I feared I might vomit. “Let’s get away from these characters,” the supervisor said. He showed me the office where I would be working. It had a file cabinet and a swivel chair and a window that looked out onto the factory floor. I pictured myself sitting at the desk and wearing a tie, and the imageinvigorated me. Two days later, the supervisor called to offer me the job, and I told him it was too far away for me, but I thanked him anyway.
    Three blocks from my apartment, I could see that I had left the lamp on in the living room. In the dark, it looked like a beacon of sorts. The hair on half of my head was matted from the rain. A car approached from the opposite direction, spraying water on both sides. It steered toward me, and for a moment I thought that it might be some punks looking to drive through a puddle and splash me. Then it slowed and stopped completely, and the window came down and the anorexic waitress leaned her head out. “Get in, silly,” she said.
    There was another girl in the car, so I got in the backseat.
    “I just live right there,” I said, pointing, but instead of turning the car around, she drove over the bridge, past the railroad tracks, up into the hills.
    “This is my friend,” the anorexic waitress said, looking at me in the rearview mirror, but the windshield wipers were clacking and I couldn’t catch the friend’s name.
    She was in college, this friend. Or about to go to college. The anorexic waitress was going to the same college in the spring. I couldn’t hear what she planned to study. She spoke as if she were already weary of it. Her thin hands gripped the steering wheel. In her black waitress blouse, her arms looked the diameter of fingers. Could those even be called arms? But she drove with ferocity. Up into the hills we went, those dark hills that looked as if they were encroaching on the city. Shortly we were in the thick of them, and I was surprised to discover that, rather than being the heart of the rural world, they were the heart of the suburbs. Nice houses that lookedidentical were set catercorner to one another off the main road. Billboards directed us to more houses about to be built, and to a mall I’d been hearing about for a while. Another billboard showed an illustration of a spinning earth with an arrow pointing to a small dot that presumably was where we were. THE EMERGING INTERNATIONAL CITY , it read.
    Soon we were dropping the friend off in front of her parents’ large house. The house was dark except for one light that illuminated the driveway. “Good night! Good night!” she called.
    I took the front seat and I noticed how wet my pants were. I noticed how close I was to the anorexic waitress. Back toward the city we went. In the gloomy swirl of rain, I could see the giant office building with its antenna that, in the darkness, looked like a cross on a church steeple.
    “Do you want to hear a riddle?” she asked out of the blue.
    “Okay,” I said.
    She smiled broadly. Her teeth looked discolored. “There’s a cabin in the woods with two dead people. They are both strapped to chairs.” She paused to glance my way. “The doors of the cabin are blocked and the windows are sealed. The people did not die from murder, exposure, dehydration, suicide, fire, asphyxiation, disease, or starvation. What did they die from?”
    She concentrated as if she were also trying to think of the answer. I thought about the word “starvation.” I had no idea what the answer was, so I guessed