Sara Goudarzi

Excerpt from The Almond in the Apricot

New Jersey

Only a handful of folks were at work. I put my stuff down on the desk, went and picked up the newly printed contour maps for Mayfield Township from my mailbox, and walked over to Tina’s cube. It was just before 7:00 am. And her desk light was off. She wouldn’t be in the office for at least another thirty minutes. The folks who were in were busy with work. I casually peeked around her desk, then crouched down and looked under it, and finally opened the large file drawer, which I knew was where she placed her purse. Empty. I got down on all fours and started scanning the area under her desk.

“What. Are. You. Doing?” She said standing above me.

“I, I, my pencil, I lost my pencil.” I stood up and walked out to let her in.

Mistrust hung heavy between us.

“It’s behind your ear.” She pointed to my head and went straight to her chair.

“Huh,” I faked a plastic chuckle and reached behind my right ear. “What do you know?” I hoped my voice wouldn’t betray me.

She said nothing, nothing about the open drawer, about the fact that there were hundreds of No. 2 pencils in our supply closet and that no one in their right mind would waste their time crawling around looking for the one they’d dropped in someone else’s cube. And I said nothing, nothing about her being uncharacteristically early, about the basket of apricots I swore I’d seen the night before, and about her misleading me on my report. I had every inten- tion of confronting her when I went to sleep the previous night and when I’d woken up that morning but then wondered what good it would do. Either it was an honest mistake or it was a lie. Either she was a friend or she wasn’t. No matter, it was best I waited and saw what happened. Better if she didn’t know I was onto her if she were deceiving me.

“Well, I better get back to it,” I pointed to the rolled maps I had resting on her cube wall.

She put her purse inside the drawer, closed it, and turned her chair around to face the desk without looking at me, and I walked away carrying the weight of yet another secret.

I couldn’t concentrate on the contour maps. My eyes were heavy and my bones were rubber from lack of sleep. I sensed myself drifting, ghostlike. I thought of chess. I’d only ever played it a couple of times as a kid and knew hardly anything about the game. I turned my chair away from my work, faced the computer, and searched for “castling.”

What do you know? The damn move existed. A trickle of energy pumped me into a severe upright position, as if I had just found proof of something substantial. A special move, the only one in the game where two pieces shift at once—switching places and ending up suddenly beside each other, protecting the most vulnerable piece, the one in potential danger. The current of energy turned to a cold blow.

Peter had suggested chess one evening when he was watching a docu- mentary about lion cubs on television and Spencer and I wanted to play some- thing to kill the after-dinner lull.

“Okay, I found Trivial Pursuit, which means you have to play too, Peter,” Spencer said as he pulled a box off the top shelf of the living room closet.

“No thanks,” Peter responded without turning around, almost dismissively.

“Please, please, play with us,” I asked, my hands clasped in a pleading ges- ture, like I had many times in the past when it was just the two of us.

“You guys play,” he said, placing the burden of this and anything else he didn’t want to do with me onto Spencer.

“Wait, this is from 1984. Forget that,” Spencer said upon closer examina- tion of the dark blue cardboard box in his hand.

“Why?” I protested, sitting on the sofa with my feet on Peter’s lap. “Because the history category will be more like ancient history, mi amor,”

Spencer said. “Why do you even have this?”

“Because it’s an awesome game. Right, Peter?” Peter and I had played it once with friends when we first started dating.

Peter, more absorbed in the show about African lions than the two fools bickering about a silly game, didn’t hear me. Or pretended not to.

“And what in the world is Pente?” Spencer pulled out a tube and exam- ined it as if it were some mysterious artifact.

“Oh, I love Pente,” I said, having forgotten about that game. “You have to align five stones on the board—wait—and then . . .” I was struggling to remember exactly how it worked.

“If it’s so complicated that you can’t even explain it, I’m out.” Spencer put the tube back on the top shelf.

“Wait, you didn’t even give me a chance.” I walked to the kitchen to top my drink with more gin. “It’s originally Greek I think, or wait, no, Japanese,” I mumbled to myself.

“How about chess?” Peter said, snapping back into the Americas during a commercial break and reaching under the coffee table to get a hold of the nice stone set he’d bought me. It was sitting below the various coffee-table books I had on gardening and world beaches and exotic pools. The game was and had for some time been decoration, and I had unsuccessfully tried on several occa- sions to remedy that situation with Peter, who was a very skilled player.

Spencer and I secretly rolled our eyes at each other from across the room, both too lazy to have to think that much during a game, ever. And likely because we knew we’d be as dismal at it as we were at tennis.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that,” Peter scoffed. “I’m just surprised that of all people you two won’t play chess. You’d actually like it.”

“How about this?” Spencer pulled out a Connect Four set with two happy children, likely from the same era as the Trivial Pursuit edition, drop- ping chips into a bright yellow grid.

This time Peter rolled his eyes, intentionally in full view of the two of us.

But we paid him no attention.

I took the dusty box from Spencer and wiped it with a damp paper towel. “I didn’t even think I owned this anymore.”

“You probably shouldn’t!” Peter smiled, pleased with his joke.

“I so loved this game.” I held it to my chest, remembering the click-clack of the plastic chips hitting one another as my childhood friend Becca and I sat poolside, snacking on my mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies and juice. Spencer brought the box over and set up the game at the bistro table.

“Play first round and winner plays Peter?” He sat in ready position, cupping a large glass of gin and tonic with his left hand, the small flat mole on his ring finger in view.

“I’ll sit this one out,” Peter said with his back to us on the couch, happy to return to the Kenyan savanna on the screen and relieved of the responsibility of entertaining his girlfriend.

“Hey!” Tina knocked on the wall of my cube, disrupting my foray into game night and bringing me back to the present and the office and speaking as if nothing had happened. As if this day of all days called for a regular hey. She was carrying a yellow manila folder between her arm and side.

“Are those mine?” I followed her lead.

“Shirley said they just came in for you, data for the north part of Mayfield Township.”

“Oh, yeah, we’re starting inspections there soon.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Why was I revealing anything to this person who potentially lied to me?

“Well, here you go.” She placed the folder on my desk and took a step to walk away but turned right back after seeing my screen.

“You play?”

“Huh?” I looked at the screen and realized what she was referring to. “Chess? Not really. You?”

She nodded. “With my father, mostly when I was younger but a little bit now and then too when I go home for a visit. I’m not half bad.”

“I feel like I want to properly learn.” Why was I telling her anything?

Chess or otherwise. I kept forgetting about the previous day.

“That’s nice.” She almost smiled and took a step into my cubicle. “We can play sometime if you want.”

“Maybe.” I didn’t know what to make of the offer. “I’ll destroy you.”

She left me wordless, managing to shoot back only a look in response. “In chess, silly.” She was laughing.

Maybe it was her laughter that was just a bit too quiet, or the way the lines around her mouth deepened when it widened, or her declaration to defeat me. Whatever it was, it finally kindled the anger that had been just under the surface since the previous evening: “This might all be fun and games to you, but it’s my career you’re messing with.”

Tina’s smile faded instantly, and a look of genuine surprise took over her face. “It’s just a game,” she said, referring to chess.

“Can I interrupt?” Charlie stopped by the cube, standing outside it and resting his elbows on the wall, his sleeves rolled up. Tina and I fell silent. “I got your report, thanks for getting it to me last night, but I think you need to look through it again. It seems you forgot to include the southwestern part of the city in the infiltration and inflow section.”

“I did?” It was unlike me, this kind of mistake. I was a meticulous engi- neer, thorough, exact. But this had turned into a rush job. I was tired, and now errors. And a big one—missing a whole section of town.

“I’ve made marks where you need to make the additions. I’ll need the new version by midmorning to have it when I meet with them later.” His eyes were beadier than usual, a look of concern for both the report and me.

“Okay,” I said, knowing everything would have to go off without a hitch for me to be able to get it to him in time.

“You know, if you want, I’m happy to help,” Tina said after tucking her white button-down more into her tailored pants and standing up even taller. Her eyes glowing like a child given reign of a toyshop. Up until that moment I’d forgotten she was still standing there, and just like that she wedged herself into my conversation with Charlie and into my project, or tried to.

“I got it, thanks,” I said, coiled like a spring ready to unleash. I wanted to push her out of the dialogue, out of Charlie and me. In fact, I wanted to liter- ally push her out of my cube. It took all the power I had left in me to not aim a muscle at her. Instead I kept myself composed and sat up a little taller to com- bat how diminutive and messy I was feeling next to her, my hair in a wet and disorderly bun, dressed in an unironed and untucked blouse with jeans and slip-on sneakers.

“I’m just saying, I’ve studied Mayfield a bit and am familiar,” she said confidently.

Oh, are you? Studying? Since when?

“Well, it’s not a bad idea, given the time constraints. Thank you, Tina, for coming through. I love this kind of teamwork,” Charlie said, smiling first at Tina, clearly pleased, and then at me, encouraging the partnership.

“Really—thanks, all, but I’ll get it done.”

“Well, I’ll leave you two to decide.” Charlie tapped his pen on the top of the wall and walked away, leaving me and Tina in our tiny gray cube of a world.

Get the book

Emma had the perfect trifecta: a long-term job as an engineer designing sewers; a steady relationship with her reliable boyfriend; and an adoring and creative best friend (about whom she wasn’t quite ready to admit her unrequited feelings). Then early one morning, a phone call changed her world forever.

Now she’s having nightmares that threaten to disrupt the space-time continuum — nightmares of hiding from bombs in basements, of glass shattering from nearby explosions. But these disturbing dreams, in which she inhabits the body of a young girl named Lily, seem all too real, and Emma’s waking life begins to be affected by the events that transpire in this mysterious wartime landscape. Convinced she has been given a chance to save a life, Emma tries to rescue Lily from heartache, but ultimately it is through Lily that Emma finds her way back.

The Almond in the Apricot navigates connections formed across space and time and explores love, grief, and the possibility that the universe might be bigger than either Emma or Lily ever imagined.

Purchase The Almond and the Apricot

Sara Goudarzi‘s work has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, National Geographic News, The Adirondack Review and Drunken Boat, among others. She is the author of Leila’s Day at the Pool and Amazing Animals from Scholastic Inc. Sara has taught writing at NYU and is a 2017 Writers in Paradise Les Standiford fellow and a Tin House alumna. Born in Tehran, she grew up in Iran, Kenya and the U.S. and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Learn more about Sara and her work at saragoudarzi.com