The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

Author:Laila Lalami
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Driss

I remember that the park rangers had to put up a sign on the highway warning visitors that campsites at Joshua Tree were booked. The town was packed with hikers, bike riders, families from Los Angeles and San Diego who wanted out of the big city for Presidents’ Day weekend. Business had been a little slow that winter, so I was thrilled to see several parties waiting at the Pantry, spilling out from the entrance onto the sidewalk. A young woman in a bohemian shirt came in to ask if she could order a mimosa while she waited. Not for the first time, I wondered whether I should apply for an alcohol license, try to appeal to the kind of people who had been coming to the Mojave lately. I was working the cash register when Anderson Baker burst in. “Who here has a Land Rover Defender?” he asked. “It’s in one of my spots.”

“Just a minute,” I said. I was making change for an elderly couple, both of them after-church regulars. When I was counting money, I couldn’t talk, and Baker’s interruption forced me to put the bills back in the register and start over.

“It’s double-parked. It’s taking up two spaces.” He raised his fingers in a V, as if I didn’t know what “double-parked” meant.

“Just a minute,” I said again. I counted out the change and handed it to the couple, slamming the register drawer closed with my hip. “Thank you.”

The couple stepped away, and Baker took their place. “Whose Land Rover is that?”

I craned my neck to look beyond his shoulder at the parking lot. From where I stood, I could see only an old, dusty Buick and a blue truck covered with colorful stickers. A parking spot in the corner was still open, and anyway the bowling alley never got busy until after lunch. Before I could say anything, though, he snapped, “Well? Don’t just stand there. Find out.”

I didn’t know what had set him off like this. Of course, we’d had disagreements in the past, but they’d been about serious things, like the noise during the remodeling I’d done a while back, or the smell from the sewer line that broke under the bathrooms of his arcade. Now he was upset about a parking space. His face turned pink as he glared at me, waiting for me to fix a problem I’d had no part in creating. “All right,” I said, trying to calm him down. “Let me find out.”

I picked up a pitcher of water and went to the first table—a family of four, still in hiking clothes, still smelling of campfire smoke. I refilled their glasses, asked how their chicken-fried steaks tasted, and whether they happened to drive a Land Rover. Then I moved on to the next table. But Baker wouldn’t wait, he pushed past me into the middle of the diner, all six feet of him occupying the center aisle, and in a radio announcer’s voice, he boomed, “Land Rover Defender.

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