Interior Design by Philip Graham Page A

concession stand is deserted, too. The last show must be ending and the employees are puttering around in the office. He slips inside and can just make out muffled car squeals and gunshots, a pulsating soundtrack. Why not take a quick peek? He hurries through the empty lobby, glancing back and forth nervously.
    â€œHey, you!” someone shouts behind him. Martin pushes through swinging doors into the darkened theater and a spectacular, technicolor car crash. Half stumbling down the aisle, he ducks into the first empty seat.
    As his eyes adjust to the darkness he watches an usher pace halfheartedly with a flashlight. The minimum wage certainly isn’t worth any possible trouble from finding me, Martin thinks, and anyway, for all he knows I’m just a homeless guy looking for a little warmth. All around him faces are turned up to the giant screen. Martin can’t imagine what an Isono villager might make of the swift pace of images: cars give chase, cars collide, cars overturn. Martin eases into his chair and breathes in the salty essence of popcorn.
    *
    Still awake in bed, Barbara listens to the click of the front door, then Martin’s footsteps to the edge of the bed—he’s back from wherever. She’s insulted that he assumes she’s asleep: it would be nice if he said Hello, or at least whisper Good Night. But when he lies down beside her his palm cups a shoulder blade, squeezes. His fingers slip along the smooth bumps down the ridge of her spine, and this reminds her of the Isono scarification marks: those little raised knobs of flesh forming unpredictable swirling patterns, interwoven arcs and circles. Martin traces patterns against the tight muscles of her back and she stirs, slowly pressing her ankle up the length of his leg.
    In the morning Barbara pages through her folder of the Isono scarification designs, laughing when she thinks that at first she and Martin called them beauty marks, a kind of jewelry that lasted a lifetime. How lucky she’d been one morning, when during her route of greetings she came upon a tense village meeting. The elders sat upright in a semicircle of wooden stools, wearing colored robes slung over the shoulder, facing two young men she had never seen before, dressed in sleek, well-tailored shirts and pants.
    Something secret was up, because just as one of the young men began speaking rapidly to the elders—the cigarette dangling from his mouth obviously an act of bravado—an old woman came up to Barbara and offered to show her a stash of traditional cloth. To refuse an invitation was extremely impolite, so Barbara pretended she misheard. “Tomorrow? Yes, I’ll come, then. Many thanks,” she said. But before she could ease away, a thin, firm hand was on her shoulder: the old woman spoke slowly and clearly, determined to be understood.
    When Yani came by later that day for more medicine—her frail daughter was ill again—she sat down by the desk under the palm frond veranda and anxiously watched Barbara spread cream over Amwe’s rash. “I’m afraid that my cousin is bewitching my child. Her own child was born breech and died—she’s surely jealous…”
    Yani recounted her fears while Barbara made careful notes on what types of relatives could bewitch each other. Yet when Yani was done, Barbara couldn’t help asking, “Who were those two men at the trial this morning?”
    Yani was silent. She cradled her child and stared off at the huge wall of trees surrounding the village, until finally Barbara said, “Yani, we’re friends. How can I truly understand you if I don’t understand your people?”
    Yani stood up. “I don’t think I can talk with you any more,” she said sadly. “Our farm isn’t strong this season, and I need to work in the fields more.”
    It was true that the sporadic rains might not produce the best harvest, but Barbara would not let herself lose