He crawled toward the other door. It was the bathroom, but he quickly realized it was also someone’s closet. There were shoes and shirts and dresses and suits, more clothes than he had ever seen except in a store. All he needed was a piss. He closed the door, got to his feet tenderly, and was relieving himself when the door pushed toward him. He heard a scream. There was Heather, or the woman he supposed was Heather, and here was he, with his dick in his hand, and there in the periphery was the mechanic, carrying the baby-blue lawn chair above his head.

Chapter 4

4

Aziz!” yelled Rafik, holding his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. Rafik was back from work just in time to answer it. “Aziz!”

Nothing.

“Where is he?” Rafik asked no one in particular. Two others walking in the kitchen shrugged.

That’s when Heather screamed. It was a short sound, followed by crashing. Over and over this crashing went, and it was still going on when Rafik and the others ran back toward the bathroom and saw the Parisian mechanic hitting Heather’s prone body, which Aziz, whose pants were down around his ankles, was trying to protect. It did look, to Rafik, as if Heather and Aziz had been—he knew this could not be so, but his eyes told him it was—grappling in some preempted rape, which luckily the Parisian had been able to hear and was now trying to stop. Heather’s arms were in her robe, but the rest of it was twisted away from her, revealing her rose-petal voluptuousness in a haphazardly erotic way.

Rafik joined the Parisian, punching Aziz in the head repeatedly. Aziz passed out and rolled off Heather. But to Rafik’s consternation, the Parisian was still whacking at Heather, who by now was saying, “Get that motherfucker off me. Get him off me!”

“Kamal,” Rafik yelled.

Kamal continued.

There was nothing to do but punch Kamal too, which Rafik did. But Kamal did not go down as easily as a weakened stowaway. Rafik and he snarled into fisticuffs and kicking. Heather, robe flowing, began making her move; she planned to push her thumb into one of Kamal’s eyeballs, but the appearance of Mrs. Massaquina made everyone, every last movement, stop.

“Police,” she said, not very loudly. “Police.” She paused, straightened her chest. “Police?” She enjoyed this word, its effect on them. Heather pulled her robe around herself. Kamal, bleeding from the mouth, wiped his chin. Rafik sprang up and took Mrs. Massaquina’s elbow.

“There was almost a rape,” he told her with sober respect. “But my friend here, he was able to stop it. There, on the floor, you see what we have done to the rapist.”

Mrs. Massaquina looked at Aziz.

“He was here earlier.”

“No!” said Rafik.