Grab a coffee?” Sam asked.
“I am sorry?” Darya replied, taken by surprise.
“Wanna get coffee? After class.” Sam shrugged. “Now that we’ve . . . we’ve . . . taken our spreadsheet knowledge to another level.”
He was trying to seem relaxed, Darya could tell. Mimicking their teacher to make her laugh. He liked it when she sighed in the middle of class, when she found Miranda Katilla a little too ridiculous. She could tell he enjoyed her reactions. It felt like they were teenagers. It felt like the beginning of something, when really, if one thought about it, what beginning was left for her? Except maybe the beginning of an ulcer or a tumor or gout.
“I know a coffee shop around the corner . . .” Sam continued.
“Please do not say it starts with ‘S’ and ends with ‘bucks’ because . . . that place is not my cup of tea,” Darya blurted. She didn’t mean to be rude but the Americanization of traditional Italian coffee into something so commercialized had always bothered her.
“Oh, this place does not start with ‘S.’ It’s a small mom-and-pop coffee shop. They serve other hot beverages too, you know.”
Parviz was expecting her. What would she tell him? Is this what it had come to? Going to coffee shops with Sams from basement classes?
“I must call my husband,” she said. “To let him know I will be late.”
“Sounds good,” Sam said. Cool dude, guitar man, laid-back Sam. Nothing seemed to rile him.
The pay phone receiver on Queens Boulevard was cold, and Darya didn’t have a quarter so Sam had to dig deep into his front jeans pocket for one. She watched his hand, then looked away. She blushed as she took the quarter. She dialed the number, then heard Parviz’s loud “ALLO!”
“Parviz Joon, it’s me. I will be a little late coming home tonight. I’m going out with, with some classmates,” she said in Farsi. Sam waited outside the pay phone booth, rubbing his hands together in the cold.
“Isn’t that wonderful, Darya Joon? You’re making new friends. I told you you would. Go. But I will pick you up. It’ll be too late to walk home.”
“No, no, don’t pick me up.”
“I will not have my wife walking home late in the cold. I will pick you up. How much time will you and your friends need? Nine thirty? Is that good? I will pick you up at nine thirty. Where are you going? To Starbucks, probably, no? I will pick you up at nine thirty at Starbucks?”
“Yes,” Darya said because Parviz was so protective, and she knew he’d worry if she said she’d walk home and because her head felt dizzy and she didn’t know what else to say.
SAM ORDERED SOME COFFEE THAT had about six names using the Italian words that seemed required in this godforsaken place. He’d only said “cool” when Darya told him that her husband insisted that they go to Starbucks and that he’d pick her up at 9:30. He ordered Darya some tea, and she pretended not to be disgusted by the leaf-filled bag floating in lukewarm water. They sat by the window, and part of Darya felt as if she were in a movie. It’s just coffee. It’s just tea. It’s just time after class with a classmate. Parviz is picking me up soon.
Sam asked her a lot of questions. About her children, about Iran, about how they left, and even about the Shah. He seemed to know a lot. He obviously read a lot. He said his favorite poet was Omar Khayyam and that he’d had Persian food many times. “So delicious, so real,” he said.
“Yes, real,” Darya said. That lumberjack shirt was growing on her. Part of her brain felt guilty for liking his shirt, another part was wondering when Parviz would show up (he tended to be early), another part wondered why she’d said she was with “friends” and not “a friend” to Parviz on the phone earlier, another wanted to know what Parviz would say when he noticed there were no “friends” other than Sam. A small part of her brain surprisingly thought the tea was hitting the spot.
Was this what fun was? Sitting in a chain coffee shop with this man, listening to him tell her that Persian food was real? Why hadn’t she done this before? Why hadn’t she had a million coffees with Sams? A spreadsheet came to mind. She couldn’t hang out with the Sams of the world and be Parviz’s wife. It didn’t work that way. It just didn’t add up.
When the door opened, a huge blast of wind swept through the room. Parviz stood there in his hand-knitted scarf and hat, both the color of turnips. Mamani had knitted them.
“Allo, hello!” Parviz almost shouted. Darya saw him scouring the tables near her and Sam, obviously looking for the rest of her friends.
Sam turned around and paused at the sight of the bundled-up figure in the doorway. Parviz looked as if he had stepped out of A Christmas Carol. Darya felt both embarrassed by and protective of him. Her Parviz, in the doorway, all lost.
Parviz strode over to them and extended his hand in Sam’s direction.
“Parviz Rezayi,” he almost shouted. Darya wondered if he’d make his handshake extra firm, the way his self-improvement tape advised.
“Sam,” Sam said. After an awkward pause, he added, “Sam Collins.”
Parviz looked at Sam, then at Darya, then at Sam again. “May I sit down?”
“Of course.” Sam got up and brought a chair from a nearby table.
Darya could not form words. Here was Parviz. Here was Sam. Here was a teabag in lukewarm water. There was the scarf her mother had knitted for the son-in-law she adored. He hardly ever wore that scarf. Why was he wearing it tonight?
“I am early, I know,” Parviz said. He looked at Darya. “I just thought I’d give your other friends a ride too if they needed one.”
She looked at her husband of over thirty years and felt ashamed. “It’s just me and Sam tonight,” she said finally.
“I can see that.” Parviz forced a smile.
It was only coffee. It was only tea. It was nothing, really.
But it was, in that smelly, busy place, a moment when Darya felt chopped off from Parviz’s love for just long enough to make her wish she could turn back the clock and not come here at all.
Persian politeness dictated the rest of the interaction. Parviz could not, would not, be small about this. He even went to the queue and ordered himself a whipped cream–laden cup of calories masquerading as “coffee.” Darya could no longer bear to swallow her tea. Sam, though initially caught off guard, soon regained his relaxed cool dudeness. How could someone not like Parviz? It was what made his patients adore him. It was what made even the postal workers smile at him. Parviz was a genuinely kind person who did not think ill of others and who treated all people with respect. His behavior toward Sam was no different. He asked Sam questions, a lot of questions. First about the spreadsheet class. Then about his work. Then about his instrument.
It was as though Sam were one of the men that Darya had graphed for Mina. Darya realized that Parviz was so accustomed to talking with potential suitors that he was perfectly comfortable making conversation with strange men. Only this wasn’t a potential suitor for Mina, and they both knew that. This was different. An air of awkwardness cloaked their table, their chairs, the way the knitted scarf cloaked Parviz’s neck. They could chat and laugh and drink together and pretend it was all perfectly normal.
But it wasn’t.
ON THE DRIVE HOME, PARVIZ was uncharacteristically quiet. He wasn’t positive. He wasn’t excited or zealous or passionate. He didn’t spout his self-help guru psychobabble phrases like “the universe is unfolding as it should.”
He just said, “I’m tired, Darya,” when they returned home and brushed his teeth and went to bed. There was no honeyed milk, no long lectures, no reprimands, no questions.
Quiet Parviz, Darya realized, was worse than all the other self-help, positive, overbearingly silly Parvizes she’d ever known.
Quiet Parviz took her by surprise.