Only the Lonely - Softcover

The box was wrapped in a Buffalo News comics page. Asim didn't hear his brother leave it outside his office at the Bethlehem Theater because he had been lost in the University of Michigan catalogue, studying a photograph of students sitting cross-legged on a campus quad, nearby a Calder sculpture - a huge red rudder - rising into the air. Stuck into the ground was a little rainbow flag. One of the guys looked Arab, maybe Iranian, he couldn't tell. There was a blond girl, probably with Polish parents; a freckled, dopey-looking Irish kid; a handsome guy, maybe 19, with thick black hair, no doubt Italian. They were laughing. He thought, they must be gay.

Inside the theater, Shrek was playing for the last time; he could hear Rufus Wainwright singing "Hallelujah" while Shrek and the Donkey ambled to Town Square. Asim knew he didn't have a good voice like Sonia and Billy. He couldn't sing like his father. But he hummed along, listening for the lyrics: It's not a cry you can hear at night/It's not somebody who's seen the light/It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.

He tossed the catalogue onto the desk, and thought, how stupid am I, staying here. He looked at his watch: it was past the time Asim should have made an aisle walk. He'd forgotten to check on Sonia, who had been too tired to see the movie on opening night; he worried she might have drifted off in her seat.

On his way out, he tripped over the box. He poked into the lobby and went outside to the sidewalk. Across the street a white van with a Bubble Brush Car Wash sign pulled away and sped off. Shit, he thought, was that Tarik? Can he be back?

He took the box into the office. Taped to it was an envelope, and inside a cassette -- no note -- though he recognized his brother's handwriting on the label: For Asim. Paradise? Or Hell? Above the inscription Tarik had drawn little green birds flying in a purple sky.

He placed the tape into a portable Sony and listened:

"I am swimming in all of Allah's expectation. There are other ways to jihad, but this one is sweetest. The desert taught me about sacrifice, which Mother understood. I don't know why Father called her Sinai crazy. If she knew about me, she would shout out, `Praise Allah, who granted me honor with my Shahid.' Sometimes I think about you as a boy, not a dirty faggot, and I wonder, if only I could help Asim. I had to fight off Father's demons, too."

After a scraping silence, Asim thought the tape had finished, and just as he reached to click off the player, his brother's voice returned: "Why is that Russian bitch living at our house? I've got to see you. You should have delivered the imam's package. He had plans for you at Michigan. Now I think he believes that, with a brother like you, I can't be trusted. He'll see. Inside the box is a Jew's skull. The ashes are from an Afghan shisha. It is an inspiration."

He unwrapped the newspaper -- Doonesbury, Zippy, Garfield, Rose is Rose -- and opened the lid. The skull was about the size of a small cantaloupe. Its top was sawed off, and he could see the ashes in the cavity. He lifted the thing from the box and cringed. He thought, he's fucking crazier than I knew.

"What's that?" Sonia asked, from the doorway.

"A globe for a lamp in the lobby," he said, rushing to replace the lid. He opened the bottom cabinet drawer and put it in. He remembered the tape and popped it out and dropped it in, too. When he closed the door, he caught his finger.

"I thought I heard a voice. It sounded a little like Tarik," she said. "You're hearing things again."

She grimaced.

"You look sick," she said.

He ignored her and asked, "Did you like Shrek?"

"Who wouldn't," she said.