This part of Kansas City is a confusing maze. Everywhere I look are short glassy office towers ringed with perfect landscaping and afterthought sidewalks. Saman is zoning out behind the steering wheel, driving with his usual languor, meandering through the traffic-choked streets toward a familiar destination. I listen to the quiet rumble of the engine, the hum of wheels on pavement, the blood pulsing in my ears. Above us the sky is metallic pillows with sunlight peeking through.

Eventually he pulls into an office park of cloned two-story buildings with parking lots like asphalt lakes. Suddenly our car is the only vehicle in sight. We wind around berms topped with FOR LEASE signs until we reach the very last building, unique only in the street number emblazoned above its entryway — #3129. Saman eases into the nearest parking spot. “You wait here. I’ll be right back.”

An awkward moment ensues. He pauses with his door open, considering me. I consider him back. Then he removes the keys from the ignition.

“I might as well come with you,” I say, trailing after him to the front doors, where he swipes at a card reader.

Inside the hallways are gloomy with murk and eerily silent. I breathe stagnant air as I follow his shuffling outline. He turns keys in a nondescript door and disappears into shadow. I grope after him tentatively, arms outstretched, reaching –

The silence is spoiled by a loud click. Instantly the suite is bathed in the cold glare of fluorescent bulbs. We’re standing in a reception area furnished with a couple chairs and a glass coffee table. The chairs are so unused that a faint sheen of dust coats the faux black leather. Saman follows the bland berber carpeting into a short hallway of closed doors. There’s nothing else.

“This is where you work?” I’m unspeakably disappointed. Uprooting ourselves every year for this?

“My office is over here.” Saman pushes through a nearby door. Inside are four walls and cheap-looking office furniture. Some kind of building plan hangs above a fake potted plant. His family stares out from framed pictures on the desk. I’m only present in our wedding portrait, beaming shyly, my crooked eye carefully hidden.

He’s busy rooting through a filing cabinet. “This is where I make it all happen,” he says happily.

“Make what happen?”

He shifts his weight from one tasseled loafer to the other and back again. A nervous motion. Traditional Iranian men never discuss business with their wives, or even in front of them. I can remember being hustled from the room along with the other women in his family. Back to the kitchen, back to the children, the men are talking business.

“Business deals,” Saman finally mutters. “I make business deals happen.”

“With your spreadsheets?” I don’t know what else to say.

“My uncles tell me I have a gift. They say I can make the numbers dance.” His smile is a wilting shimmer of pride and embarrassment.

“Is this what makes you happy? Working like this, wherever your family needs you?”

Saman straightens up with an armful of manila folders. “I guess so. I like the variety. There is always a new project somewhere. Something new to learn.” His tone is full of challenge, daring me to protest our itinerant life.

“Where do we go after this?” I ask limply.

“To meet my mother for lunch. Did you forget?”

“No, I meant — where do we go after Kansas City?”

“Maybe back to Indianapolis.” Saman looks at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time. Nooshin, a messy fact. An inconvenience. “Or maybe to Fort Wayne.”

I follow him back to the car. The day is darker now, the sky thickening into lead. I can’t glimpse a sunbeam anywhere. The vague dread I’m feeling solidifies into an icy strangling panic when I focus on it. Escape. I’m preoccupied with escape again. But even if I could escape, where would I go? Not back to my parents. They’ll chew me into tattered crying pieces. Maybe not even back to Nasrin, who can’t fathom why I’m so unhappy. And that’s the end of my list, especially when the only money I have in my purse is whatever Saman gives me.