Checker and the Derailleurs. Lionel Shriver

      “Good point.” Checker was confused. It was lucky for this to work out, wasn’t it? Then why did he feel so depressed? “There’s another thing,” he added. “The INS is getting tougher. You’d have an interview—”

      “Sounds entertaining.”

      “And you’d have to live together, for a while, anyway.”

      “How else would he fix me breakfast?”

      Syria, Check was all too aware, didn’t know what she was getting into. He tried to imagine Rahim rising cheerfully in the morning to stand at the stove in a little white apron, making sure to put in the toast so that it would pop up just when the eggs were still loose; maybe in the other room Syria would be ordering more oxides, to stride into the kitchen immediately angry if the coffee wasn’t already dripped. He tried to see the Iraqi cringing and apologizing, slipping a spoon between the cone and the filter to make the coffee drip faster, a little trick he’d picked up from the neighbor next door—

      No way.

      “Your Iraqi friend, does he have a lover?”

      “Only me.”

      “Oh?”

      “Not like that. But Hijack is—around.”

      “He adores you.”

      “We’re friends.”

      “That must mean a lot to you, then.”

      “I tried to explain before. Everything means a lot to me. Bridges. Water. So you can figure how I might feel about human beings.”

      “What about yourself?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Never mind.”

      “So we have a deal?”

      “He’d have to work. I’m not the Statue of Liberty.”

      Checker went to get his coat, feeling chilly, though even with the gas low it must have been ninety degrees.

      They stood side by side before the furnace, staring at the eclipse around the door.

      “Now, Checko,” she said softly, right by his ear. “Now you may get out of it.”

      Checker leaned down and picked up a long glass drip he’d failed to sweep up, and held it up to the light of the fire. The bead at its end was crimson, frozen at the end of a thread of glass like a crystal tear. Sheckair! A wet napkin smoothed over his forehead; r’s rolled over his ears. “No,” said Check with a sigh. “I’m in.”

      It was over. So many dramas are decided in minutes, though the consequences may loiter in for decades, as leisurely as they are inexorable. Don’t worry. Sit back. Watch the show. It’s like after the polls have closed and there’s nothing to do but follow the returns, staring at the screen with Scotch as the numbers change, digit by digit. Once the votes are cast, it’s almost relaxing.

      They shuffled on their wraps with a curious embarrassment; the evening, especially the first of it—what is your story, long and easy on the bench—would not return. You are my good friend’s fiancée. I am the matchmaker, the go-between. The employee, too; a business relationship. Checker felt almost formal. “I’ll be in at nine tomorrow night.”

      “Just hold on there.”

      “What?”

      “How about my twelve dollars?”

      Checker laughed and fished out the tattered bills, counting them fondly one by one into her beautiful hands, so full of scars and hard work and twenty-nine years of stories.

      “Uhn-uhn.” She stopped him as he started to leave. “Twelve twenty-eight.”

      The last thirteen cents of Syria’s bride price were in pennies.

       Checker is about to make a mistake

       5 / bye, bye, miss american pie

      Just to play the devil’s advocate,” said Eaton, “don’t you think this inundation of aliens has to be stopped? According to Kaypro, the U.S. is on its way to being a full third Spanish.”

      “Hijack isn’t Spanish,” said Checker.

      “By the turn of the century, over half the school-age kids in this country will be Spanish.”

      “Hijack isn’t Spanish,” said Checker.

      “We’re being overrun by Hispanics.”

      “Hijack isn’t—”

      “Foreigners, then.”

      “This country is made of foreigners.”

      A tired point. “Granted. But while personally we all like Rahim—”

      Caldwell guffawed. “Come on, Strike. That little terror would send an army of raving Shiites after your ass in a minute. He hates your ever-loving guts. Let’s not play pretty.”

      Eaton sat tapping his foot. It was impossible to have an intelligent discussion with these people. “I’m trying to approach this politically. While I’m not saying you’re doing the wrong thing with Rahim—”

      “Then why make the point?”

      “There’s something to be said for ideological discourse,” said Howard.

      “What?” asked Check.

      Howard shrank, and shrugged. Howard was often paralyzed by direct questions.

      “See, I’m not much of an intellectual,” Check went on, “like Howard here—”

      Howard beamed.

      “—But ideas in the air. They’re funny animals. They seem to come kind of—afterward. Like, you decide you don’t like some Iraqi, or Spanish people, and then you grab one of these flying things and make it squawk.”

      “You’re saying all abstraction is invalid?”

      “Just seems like a shifty business, you know? To talk about Hijack but to say that the one thing we can’t talk about when we talk about him is—Hijack.” Checker raised his eyebrows innocently. “That make sense?”

      “Not much,” clipped Eaton.

      “Let me put it this way. Hijack goes back to Iraq—”

      “Thwack,” said Caldwell.

      “Exactly. Or at least he gets drafted, and this thing with Iran—”

      “Which isn’t America’s problem.”

      “Everyone is everyone else’s problem,” said Checker promptly.

      “That sounds—burdensome,” said Eaton. “How do you take it all on and keep from killing yourself?”

      Checker studied the table. “Interesting question.”

      Eaton took a shrewd look at the other drummer. “The point is: personal loyalty is one thing. But if you look at the big picture, our borders are being overrun. It’s practically a national emergency. And you’re about to engage in immigration fraud. Sure, you want to help your friend. But morally—even if you won’t recognize the category—your operation is iffy.”

      Finally Checker responded, with unusual gravity. “I live in a little picture. It’s the only picture I have. You say personal loyalty is one thing. I don’t think so. I think it’s everything. It’s the beginning of everything, anyway, Striker. It’s the bottom line.”