Текст книги "House of Sand and Fog"

Автор книги: Andre Dubus

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“Beh man beh goo, Behrani! Tell to me, what have you done?”My wife stands in front of me, her eyes small with fear. I rise immediately.

“It is none of your business what I have done or not done, Nadereh! Have you no faith in me? No respect? I told to you the man said nothing, only that I must remove my sign from city property, that is all.”

My wife tells me I am lying. She begins to tremble, raising her voice, demanding to know what is before us, her fears once again beginning to devour her. I must leave the bungalow, remove the sign, and contemplate what I am forced to do next, but Nadereh is screaming in front of my son that I am a kaseef liar, and a coward, and I seem to watch from far away as my hand slaps her across the face and I hold her thin shoulders and shake her, her head jerking backwards and forwards, and I am making some sort of noise from between my teeth. Then Esmail’s arms are around my chest and he pulls me backward onto the tea table. There is a moment of stillness before its legs break and I am sitting on my son on the floor against the sofa, my wife screaming and crying on the carpet before us. I attempt to help Esmail to his feet, but he stands quickly with no help from me. He looks at his father only a brief moment before disappearing down the corridor to his room. Nadereh remains on the floor upon her knees, screaming, moaning of her dead mother’s broken table, how I have ruined everthing in her life, everything.The black cosmetics have loosened under her eyes, and as I leave the bungalow she pushes me in the legs, but I ignore her, feeling curiously as if I am watching this moment instead of being a part of it, that it belongs not to my family, but another. Outside in the darkness, I smell the ocean. There are many stars above, but three and four homes down the street I am still able to hear my wife’s crying. She curses me in our mother language, and I am grateful it is a tongue no one in this village understands.

AT THE HILL’S bottom, in the dim yellow light of the streetlamps above, I see that my sign has already been torn from the utility post, a quarter of it still hanging from the tape. On the long climb back up the hill I am breathing with some difficulty, but I am not fatigued in the limbs, my mind is once again clear, and I no longer feel like a helpless witness to the unfortunate events of the evening. Why did this officer not have a police car in his possession? Why would he tear the sign himself? In such an emotional fashion? Why did he not have the name tag on his blouse that I have seen pinned to all other American law officers in uniform? And why did he hesitate in giving me his name, Gonzalez?

When I reach the bungalow I feel in my breast a very strong doubt that this is a genuine policeman at all. I know that America has its officials who operate over the law, but even corrupt county tax men fearful of a lawsuit would not send a uniformed officer such as that; they would send men who could not be traced back to them or their office. Dark men in suits. Savakis.

I cross the short grasses of my lawn and enter my home with a new resolve; tomorrow I will visit the same lawyer who advised me before. I will also visit the county tax office, as well as the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department to report to them of their “Officer Gonzalez” making threats. Or perhaps he was not making threats for any bureaucrats, but for this kaseef woman, Kathy Nicolo; perhaps he is her brother, or friend, or more.

I am surprised to see Nadereh has left the silver tea table broken upon the floor, a bowl of pistachios and wrapped chocolates scattered about. From her closed room comes the melancholy music of Daryoosh, that kunee singer with the pretty voice I have come to despise. But frekresh neestam, it makes no difference; I can no longer protect my wife from troubling news the way one would a child. If she is afraid and miserable and unable to adjust to our new lives as I have, if she cannot respect me or stand by me another day, then so be it. Een zendeh-geeheh, this is life. Our life.

I clean up the nuts and sweets, then inspect the broken legs of the table. They are made of cypress wood from Turkey, and two are split and broken. Tomorrow I will glue them. I lean the tabletop neatly against the sofa, the last remaining legs jutting out like a final salute. The door to my son’s room is open and he is lying upon his bed, still dressed in shorts and tank T-shirt, his legs crossed together, his hands resting upon his stomach. He regards me as I enter, then fixes his eyes once again on the wall. I take the chair from his desk and sit. In Farsi I say that I am sorry for the fighting between his mother and me. “I was wrong to strike her, Esmail-joon. When you are one day married, please do not do as I did this evening.”

My son says nothing. Nor does he turn his head to me. I reach out and squeeze his upper arm. He stiffens slightly, but I ignore it and tell to him how strong he is becoming. Soon he will be stronger than me in every way. My son blows air from his mouth, crossing his arms over his chest. He turns his head completely away from me now.

“Do not be disrespectful, son. Look at me when I speak.”

Esmail sits up quickly. “Why did you lie to me, Bawbaw? You told me that woman didn’t pay her taxes so they took her house.”

“Yes, that is why they took from her this house.”

“But I heard through the window everything that cop said. Why did he say she was the real owner?”

“Because they are all fools, that is why. The county tax officials made a mistake and took from the wrong person her house. Now she wants them to buy it from us so she may return here.”

“Then we should return it, shouldn’t we? Why don’t you give it back to her? We can live someplace else.”

I do not wish to discuss further these details with my son, but he regards me so intently, his dark eyes upon mine, I feel the time has come to give him something more of the burden I carry. “Pesaram, my son, I am sorry I withheld from you the truth, but that woman’s house wastaken because they thought she did not pay her taxes.”

“But you knew they made a mistake?”

“Not when I purchased the house. But now I am quite willing to sell this home back to them so they may return it to her.”

“Then why did that cop say he would send us back to Iran? Can he really do that, Bawbaw?”

“No. We are American citizens, they can do nothing to us.”

“But—I don’t understand.”

“The tax bureaucrats will only pay to me what I paid to them. You see, they will not allow us to earn the profit we deserve, Esmail. I am therefore forced to sell it to someone else. We have no choice.”

Esmail is quiet a moment. He looks beyond me at the wall. “But what about that lady?”

“I have told her myself she should sue the county officials for enough money to buy ten homes. With a good lawyer, Esmail, she could be very pooldar over this.”

“But that day in the yard she told me her father gave it to her before he died.”

I stand. “Her fight is with the men who took from her this place, Esmail-jahn, not us. We have done nothing wrong here. Remember what I’ve told you of so many Americans: they are not disciplined and have not the courage to take responsibility for their actions. If these people paid to us the fair price we are asking, we could leave and she could return. It is that simple. But they are like little children, son. They want things only their way. Do you understand?”

Esmail looks upon the floor, nodding his head. “I feel bad for that lady, Bawbaw.”

“You have a good heart, Esmail, but do not forget this woman is refusing this new opportunity before her.” I replace the chair beneath the desk. “I am pleased you have taken this newspaper job.” I lean forward and take my son’s face in both hands, kissing his forehead and nose. I smell traces of dried Coca-Cola upon his lips. “Soon all of this will be behind us. Wash your face before sleeping. Shahbakreh.”

HOURS LATER SLEEP has still not come to me. I lie upon a blanket on the floor of my office in the darkness, but I am unable to rest. Earlier I knocked upon Nadereh’s door but she did not answer, though I am certain she heard me over her music. But this is not what keeps me restless. It is that man’s final words to me, his threats of contacting Immigration. Of course he can do nothing to the Behranis—we are all citizens now—but there is Soraya’s new family; her husband has applied for his green card, while his mother and sister are still waiting to be granted asylum. But I did not tell him of the existence of my daughter, so perhaps he will miss this altogether.

These thoughts increase the speed of my heartbeat. The muscles in my back and neck become tight. I think of this Gonzalez telling me there are many things he can do. Late in the night an automobile passes by and I rise and walk to the dark living-room area in my underclothes. My bare leg knocks against the extended leg of the table, and I curse it on my way to the door. Its lock is secure. I turn on the exterior lamp, seeing nothing but a few flying insects, the small lawn beyond. I leave on the light and make my bed upon the sofa.

 

I WAS SMOKING BEHIND THE WHEEL OF MY BONNEVILLE WHEN LESTERmarched back down Bisgrove under the streetlights, ripped the House for Sale sign off the pole, then got in. I drove off, holding my question about what happened until we were on our way. When I did ask, Les glanced over at me, his hands on his legs, looking almost like he knew I would ask and sort of hoped I wouldn’t.

“This guy’s obviously not right off the boat.”

“What do you mean?” I flicked my cigarette out the window, my heart beating somewhere in my throat. We were riding out of town for the shortcut to San Bruno on the Junipero Serra Freeway. Earlier we’d decided to go to my storage shed and get some things to make life at the fish camp easier���a box of candles I hadn’t opened since Christmas, glasses, plates, silverware, and the small hibachi barbecue Nick used to grill mushroomburgers on in the backyard. Fog was beginning to roll in from the beach and my headlights lit it up in front of us as I plowed through. “Well, tell me what happened,Les.”

“He knew to ask my name, Kathy. I had to lie to him.”

I didn’t know how to read his voice. Whose fucking idea was this? Was he blaming me? I turned onto the lighted freeway where the fog was only a mist and I stepped on the gas. “So what did you say to that Arab prick?”

“He’s not an Arab, he’s Iranian. I think he’s probably got money coming out of his ears, too. Or at least he used to. There’s a picture of him on the wall with the Shah. The Shah.That guy had his own mint.”

“What did you say to him, Lester?” My hand felt tight on the wheel. I wanted to scream. Les looked at me, then out the window.

“I swear to Christ, Lester, if you don’t hurry up and tell me what happened back there I’m going to drive us right off the road.”

“I gave him an ultimatum.”

“What?”

“I told him I’d call Immigration on his family, and I hinted I could get nastier than that if he didn’t clear out.”

“You saidthat?” I let out a nervous laugh, accelerating to pass a muddy farm truck. “What did he do?”

“He asked me to leave, but I know I rattled him.”

“Did you mention me?”

“Not by name.”

“Shit, Les.” I laughed again.

“You can tell he’s used to giving orders all day long too. I think you were right—he probably buys up seized property just to make a killing. I did the right thing. He’s scum.”

“You think he’ll call the department?”

“Not really. It’s his word against mine. Besides, as far as he knows, I’m a Mexican named Gonzalez.”

We both laughed hard, though what he said wasn’t that funny. I was starting to feel like anything was possible again, and I think he probably did too. And that’s what we seemed to have with each other, wasn’t it? The feeling we could start out new again, clean, all our debts cleared.

At the storage shed in San Bruno, he held the flashlight while I went through my things for all we needed. We could hear a live band at the truck-stop bar next to the El Rancho Motel, a woman singing at the mike. I put the pillows and folded sheets in the backseat, and everything else in the trunk. My fingers were black from the hibachi and I went back inside the shed and wiped them off on some newspaper. I called out to Lester that I didn’t want to go back to the camp yet. He said he didn’t either but he couldn’t go anywhere in his uniform. I took his flashlight and found one of Nick’s blue button-down shirts. It was wrinkled and probably too big for Lester but he put it on anyway, the waist baggy when he tucked it in, the sleeves too short. He took off his gun belt and put it in the trunk, then stood there in just his police pants and those black shoes and that wrinkled shirt. I laughed. “You look like a laid-off security guard.”

He laughed back, put me in a gentle headlock, and kissed my forehead.

We didn’t drive far, just across the street to the truck-stop bar, which was crowded for a Monday night, mainly with truckers in work jeans, their T-shirts stretched tight at the gut. Some of them sat at small black cocktail tables with the wives or girlfriends they kept on the road, women who were dressed just like the men, some in matching T-shirts from rodeos or traveling carnivals. The floor, walls, and ceiling were painted black and the main light came from the theater lamps hanging over the band and the short plywood stage and small parquet dance floor. That end of the room was all red, orange, and green and the rest of us were in the shadows.

Les and I sat at one of the tables against the wall not far from the band, which was playing an up-tempo country song. He went up to the bar to get us something, and I lit a cigarette, a little preoccupied with what he’d bring me back to drink, and I watched a couple dancing out on the floor, a heavy man and woman, both in cowboy boots, jeans, and dark T-shirts, moving fast to the music.

Les came back to the table with a full pitcher of beer and two glasses. He poured me some until the foam started to flow over the top and I had to sit back and drink a third of it down. It was ice-cold and washed the cigarette taste from my mouth and throat. Les finished pouring for himself and he smiled at me, clinking his glass to mine, but the band was too loud for us to talk over so he turned sideways in his chair and we both watched the older couple dance. The band’s lead singer was pretty, only twenty-five or-six years old. She had curly red hair—or at least it looked that color under the stage lights—and she wore tight jeans and her singing voice was really strong. The bass player was bald, closer to forty than thirty; I tried to picture Nick playing in a band like this, in a place like this, but I couldn’t. One of the nights when I told him he should try and get a job with a local group, maybe play in the clubs, he just shook his head at me and asked if I’d already forgotten what the B in BEAST stood for. I told him no, I hadn’t, but I felt ashamed of myself. Clubs were nothing buta Boozing opportunity. But now, as I finished my first mug of beer and Les filled my second, my head loose on my neck, I was sure fear of drinking had nothing to do with why Nick never took his bass guitar out to an audition; like most addicts, he had the worst fear of all, that his dreams would actually come true.

And I hadn’t been in a barroom—warm and dark, loud and full of smoke—since I was a user working at the Tip Top with Jimmy Doran. But I felt okay because there wasn’t a white snake in sight and that time seemed so long ago anyway, almost like somebody else had lived it, and now I had a mature man in my life, and not some addict trying to hang his own recovery on me. I looked at Lester’s dark profile against the tangerine light in front of us, his deep eyes and small nose, the mustache under it. I drank most of my second beer and refilled my mug. The pitcher was getting light and I wanted Les to get us another one. He was such a serious man, and I knew he would get me back into my house and I wanted to make it worthwhile to him. I knew he was hurting over his kids. I wondered what it must be like to have children you have to live away from now because you no longer wanted their mother or father, and I got a nice picture in my head of his son and daughter visiting us at my house, sleeping in the guest room, or maybe even with us. I finished my beer, then poured myself some more, Lester too. He smiled at me and I held up the empty pitcher, but Les nodded at the dance floor that now held two more couples, and he stood up and took my hand and I was already feeling the alcohol, and I followed Lester Burdon out to the middle of the floor.

I WOKE UP to a patch of sunlight on my face. It came through the tree branches outside the loft window, and I turned over and kicked the sheet away. I was naked, sweating, and my mouth was so dry that when I tried to swallow, my tongue clicked a second to the roof of my mouth. I smelled coffee, which turned my stomach, and I could hear the crack of the woodfire going in the stove downstairs. I didn’t hear Les moving around anywhere. I had to pee, but I wanted something very cold and sweet to drink, watermelon juice or mango. I remembered Lester driving the Bonneville after we left the bar long after midnight. I was sitting low in the passenger’s seat, watching his face in the light of the speedometer as he drove, as he kept saying he was drunk but he wanted me, he wanted me so badly. Then we were parked off the Cabrillo Highway in the dark behind a beach shop, making love in the front seat. I must’ve been dry, because now I felt chafed, and I didn’t remember getting from there to here. When I sat up, my head felt topheavy and my eyes hurt.

I pulled on my underwear, shorts, and Nick’s button-down shirt Lester wore last night and I went barefoot downstairs. The tin pot of coffee was on the cool half of the stove, though it was still steaming, and I took a paper napkin and stepped out onto the porch. Lester wasn’t anywhere, the sun bright on the trees and brush. I only walked as far as the woodpile before I squatted and peed, closing my eyes to all the daylight, smelling the split wood. I wanted four aspirin and a Coke, an air-conditioned movie. It was Tuesday, my day off from cleaning. Maybe Les would want to go with me, maybe even see two back to back.

I was brushing my teeth on the porch, using a cup of ice water from the cooler to rinse, when he walked up the trail from the river. He was bare-chested, his black hair wet and dripping, an empty coffee cup in one hand, his T-shirt in the other. He smiled and asked me if I slept well. I was rolling water and toothpaste foam around in my mouth, and I turned away from him to spit it over the porch railing. I wanted to be in a bathroom. I wanted a hot shower, a clean mirror, and a locked door. I didn’t know how I looked when I turned back to him, but I hoped it was better than I felt. I wondered if he had a hangover like I did, but I didn’t want to ask; I didn’t want to draw any attention to my drinking. “I slept like a dead person. You?”

“I was too drunk to notice.” He pulled on his shirt, then stepped up on the porch to hold and kiss me. He tasted like coffee, but smelled like the river, like mud and moss. “I had a great time last night,” he said, but he looked kind of down when he said it, like it had happened a long time ago.

“Go for a swim?”

“Just my head.”

I followed him into the house and he poured me some coffee, then refilled his cup and we sat down across from each other at the small table beneath the window, a sunbeam lying across the tabletop. Les looked outside, his face in shadow. I started to reach across the table to touch his hand but something made me stop. “You okay?”

He looked right at me. “Sometimes I feel guilty because I get paid to roam the countryside and think about things. You know how your mind can just drift off? And next thing I know I’m thinking about Carol, and how much I’d love to see her married to someone who loved her the way she loved him.” He looked out the window. I wanted a cigarette, but was afraid if I got up for one he would stop talking.

“Once, outside El Granada, I drove up to a 7-Eleven right before they closed. Some boy had just pulled a Stop and Rob, but I didn’t know it yet, and I was getting out of my cruiser just as he came out the front door, this real skinny Filipino kid, no older than sixteen or seventeen, holding a bunch of bills and a silver revolver pointed straight up at the sky from pushing the door open with that hand. And neither one of us moved, we just looked at each other.

“I wasn’t calm, but I wasn’t scared either. There was only my blood and my breath, and his too. I could feel it. Like we were the same body. Then I asked him if he wanted to talk, and he nodded his head, still holding that hogleg up in the air. I had both my hands on the top of the door where he could see them, but he seemed stuck where he was—he couldn’t go back and he couldn’t go forward. I could hear the cashier moving around inside the store, so I told the boy to bring his gun over if he wanted to, but he didn’t have to give it to me, he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do.

“And then he started to cry, Kathy. I don’t remember leaving my patrol car but next thing I knew I was standing in front of him, and he was younger than I’d guessed—twelve or thirteen—and I was unloading his pistol and he was crying so hard I put my arm around him. His back felt so thin to me and I just held him, telling him he did the right thing. Everything would be all right. The store clerk came out yelling something, but I wasn’t listening; my hands felt oily. My voice sounded strange to me. I kept saying comforting things to this boy, but it was as much for me as for him.”

“Jesus, Les.” I reached over to put my hand on his, but he stood and took his cup to the stove and poured himself the last of the coffee.

“And I kept thinking of my own son, of Nate, and I vowed for the hundredth time I would take such good care of him he’d never have to get that desperate. Get that turned around.” Lester looked out the screen door, standing there tall and barefoot, his shirt hanging out of his jeans, his shoulders hunched slightly. There was something about him I’d never seen before, only felt, a goodness behind all the sadness in his eyes, maybe an acceptance for all we could never quite be, him included.

“I need to go home for a while today.”

I nodded, but something dark and hollow opened up inside me.

“I need to explain things to Carol better. And Nate and Bethany. I should be home when they come back from school.” He looked down at his hands and I was thinking how he’d just used the word “home” twice in a few seconds.

“It’s okay, Lester. I’ll go catch a movie or something and catch you when you get back.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Yes you do.” And I put on a smile, went over and kissed him, opening my mouth against his, but he cut it short and climbed up to the loft to get his shoes and all I wanted to know was this: was he telling himself he didn’t deserve me so he could leave me? Was he leaving me?But the question was so ugly inside me I was afraid if I asked it out loud it would come to life between us with claws and fangs.

We were quiet as we walked through the woods to the cars. I was sweating, and I was sure I must smell bad. At his station wagon, Les turned to me, then both his hands were holding my face and he kissed me hard and dry, said he’d see me later, and he got into his car and I backed mine out so he could leave.

I sat on the porch in the morning shade and smoked my last cigarette. My mouth and throat felt like one long ash, and my fingers were shaking a little, though I didn’t know if that was from last night’s drinking, today’s coffee and nicotine, or thinking now that Lester’s pain about his kids was so bad he really wouldn’t be coming back at all.

I drove the Bonneville to a mini-grocery gas station off the Cabrillo Highway and bought two Diet Cokes and three packs of cigarettes. It was still morning, but the sun was so bright off the white facade of the small building it hurt my brain just looking at it. I watched the sunlit cars and jeeps and vans go by, the people inside them young and cheerful-looking, and I pictured driving straight into them all. But no car was moving fast enough to do the job, to do more than just ruin the gift Frank had given me and Nick, my only asset now; no one was going fast enough to obliterate me.And that’s what I wanted: obliteration. Decimation. Just an instant smear of me right out of all this rising and falling and nothing changing that feels like living.

My hangover had settled deep and black into me. I started to feel afraid of everything that moved: the traffic in front of me, the gas station attendant pumping gas into a jeep, a lone kite hovering so tiny above the ocean, my own hand as I raised another cigarette to my lips.

I put the car in gear and made my way onto the beach highway heading north. I turned on the radio, but a DJ was hawking a free trip to Cancún, his voice full of good cheer, and I switched him off, the air-conditioning too. I rolled down the window and let the beach wind blow into my face. I drove through Half Moon Bay for El Granada and thought of Lester’s story of the Filipino boy, then I pictured him hugging his own two kids, his small son and daughter, and remorse moved through me so hot and thick my stomach felt queasy. I hadn’t thought about any of this the way the kids would. I only pictured them at my house laughing and playing, eating meals I cooked for them, sleeping in Nick’s old practice room. Now I imagined them crying themselves to sleep at night, and I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another. I drank from my Diet Coke, but it was just sweet empty chemicals down my throat, and I felt myself get shaky knowing that I’d been too weak to keep my situation in my own lap, and now I was letting myself have a huge part in destroying someone else’s family. As I drove through Montara, heading north for Point San Pedro and Corona, I tried to do what they used to encourage in Group: ask yourself the questions in life that scare you the most. But I already knew the answer; I knew why I had gotten drunk last night, was smoking so much again, and why I was sleeping with Lester Burdon: losing my father’s house had been the final shove in a long drift to the edge, and I thought about calling Connie Walsh again, just tell her to sue the county for as much as she could get. But that would take months, maybe years, and still my father’s only heirloom to Frank and me would be gone and even though it was just a little place in a low-rent beach town, I refused to be the one in the family who had let it slip away.

I started driving faster and kept seeing my mother’s face, a different look of hers this time, one she’d sometimes give me after Nick and I were married and rationally recovered, both working, when at a family gathering—a christening or a birthday, or Sunday dinner—I’d catch her watching me; I would just glance over and see her taking me in, her lips parted but slightly bunched, like she wasn’t quite sure what to think. Had she been wrong about me? Was I actually going to turn out all right? And somehow her watching me, looking like she was holding her breath doing it, was also me watching myself. I was her and she was me, and I couldn’t stand not tolerating my own company, not tolerating the very center of me.

The beach wind through the driver’s window was warm and I could smell car exhaust and seaweed. I was sweating under my clothes, sweating out the beer and last night’s nicotine. I wondered if Lester, in his drunkenness, had come inside me. I felt suddenly close to crying, and I didn’t know if that meant I loved him or not. I didn’t know. I needed badly to take a long shower.

As I drove into downtown Corona, slowly passing the one-or two-story shops, the glare of the sun off their windows making my eyes ache even with the sunglasses on, I thought about renting a motel room for the day just to recoup. But recoup for what? More waiting? More sliding over the dark edge? Instead I drove out to my Colma River residential, the divorced accountant’s house, and let myself in. I showered in the downstairs bathroom, wishing my suitcase was still in the car. Maybe I should have taken all my things from the fish camp, put them back in storage, and just let Les off the hook completely.

I towel-dried my hair and walked naked down the hall into the daughter’s room. Sunlight came through the sliding glass door to her small deck overlooking the river, and her bed was made. Propped against the pillows was a Cabbage Patch doll, a stuffed Garfield cat, and two teddy bears. I walked barefoot over the carpet, opened her top bureau drawer, and pulled out a pair of rolled yellow cotton panties. They were a little tight around my hips, but clean. I snapped on my bra, stepped into my loose khaki work shorts that still smelled like mosquito repellent and wood smoke, and used the blow dryer on her dresser to dry and feather my hair. Then I opened the rest of the drawers, pulled out an oversized turquoise T-shirt from Fisherman’s Wharf, and put it on, telling myself I would return it clean and folded. In the mirror my face looked pale, my eyes tired. There was a purple cosmetics bag on the dresser, and I poked around inside until I found some eyeliner and blush. The blush was too pink for me, so I thumbed away as much as I could, but it still showed. It was a color cheerleaders wore, so bright and instantly cheerful their faces could sometimes look almost fluorescent. It was okay if I looked cheerful, but I didn’t want to look cheap, not for the colonel’s wife. Somewhere between the fish camp and here I’d decided that’s who I had to talk to. If she really didn’t know the situation, then I would tell her. Just drive up there, wait for her husband to leave, and talk. No threats. No men shoving their weight around. Just two women talking out our problem.