“You’re not listening.” Hannah tries to think of what she misses about America; it’s not ham sandwiches or beer. She misses the change of seasons. Brittle leaves on the ground. It’s a week before Thanksgiving. They might have snow there.

“I heard you,” Summer says. “But it’s casual.”

“I guess.”

“I’ll find out when he wants to meet you!” Summer squeals, seeming as excited as if the date were hers.

Summer tells Hannah about rumors that a group of women—university professors and businesswomen—have been apprehended driving in Riyadh.

“They’re blacklisted. They lost their jobs.”

“Wow.” Hannah shivers. She misses driving, gripping a steering wheel, walking up the steps to her own apartment.

Three days later, at 11:30 a.m. sharp, Nasser delivers Hannah to the front gate of the consulate, and Hannah’s American passport gets her in. She passes through a series of narrow, hospital-green hallways to the small dining hall where Zee waits. He wears his desert fatigues and looks younger than she remembers.

He orders ham and cheese and a Budweiser. She orders Caesar salad and a Reuben. He wants to know how long she’s lived in the United States, how long she’s been in Saudi, when she’s going back.

“I’ve always lived there,” she says. “I took the semester off. I guess I have to go back in January.”

“Ohio’s not so far from Indiana.” As though there is some chance they can be acquainted beyond this isolated instant in history, this strange convergence of coincidences that has brought them together.

“Don’t you go wherever the military sends you?”

“Sort of. I guess my girlfriend wouldn’t like this.” He points back and forth between them. “And neither would your boyfriend.”

It’s a joke to reestablish the boundaries of their relationship, which belongs here, in this country, in the few spaces where commingling of the sexes is allowed.

“Been back to the tape shop?” Zee says, as though wanting to return to their almost meet-cute, their original point of entry into each other’s lives.

“My father doesn’t have a driver.”

“The music here is so much cheaper than at home. But I miss beer. And pizza.” He offers her a sip.

“They have pizza here.” She pushes the bottle away.

Another awkward half hour of conversation and he escorts her to the gate. He kisses her goodbye, though the guard is staring straight at them. She tastes beer on his breath. Is it the beer or being American that makes him so bold, so cocky?