But it had been Mourad who had gotten to her. In the last months, sometimes it was like something was scraping her chest, as if someone had taken an emery board to her inside and tugged it across, not quite down to her backbone but somewhere in between where it sat and her heart, not particularly painfully stabbing, just a sawing motion of sensation. She felt this whenever she thought Mourad was losing interest in her. It would begin in daytime at work, maybe because he had forgotten to do something they had been in the habit of doing—packing her lunch, for example. But say he hadn’t made the lunch. Then she would worry that his curiosity and need were lifting. Or around the end part of the day—and, let’s just say, after not packing the lunch—he didn’t call to say, Well, how is the plan for dinner? If she got home and he still wasn’t there, and there had been no call and no packed lunch, then she would feel it in her chest, a rubbing. He could do that.

He was probably the ugliest man she had ever dated. No, that wasn’t true. But he had an enormous nose, really not even within the range of being normal. And he had no chin. His cock was not fat and not long, as Rafik’s had been. He was shorter than Rafik. And he had had an unlucky bout with acne and had those craters that she feared she would get but, thank God, never did.

There were a few things that were better. Mourad had a deep voice. Rafik had such a squeaky voice, it could never go low, only when he had a bad cold, and then he didn’t want her around. So. Mourad did have the better voice. And he had large hands. This was a great thing. Rafik’s were small slender hands that were smooth. Mourad had calloused fingertips, and when he took her face in his hands, she felt the roughness and the strength and, for all she intended not to, all these many months, she loved him.