Linda never met Aziz, so he was more of an idea than a person, and a suspicious one. Rafik and Aziz were interchangeable in Linda’s mind, and Rafik, in her view, was too calm and too friendly and talked too much Arabic with his friends, saying just about anything, which for all she knew was “Linda is dumb” or “If only Linda knew.” But she didn’t want to let on to Heather about these worries, seeing as Heather had only ever done right by her, buying her groceries one time when she was broke, giving her an airplane ticket to get back to Texas because of a bad mix-up, and listening to her in the ladies’ room at work while she cried and cried about her crush on their boss, who had carried on with her as long as it suited him and then dumped her and taken up with his boss’s secretary. The name Rafik threw Linda. Not Brad or Rick. That’s who Heathers dated. The only time Linda’d heard the name Rafik was when a Filipino, who turned out to be Indonesian—or was it Malaysian?— moved into the apartment across the hall. Somehow this woman’s son, who happened to be named Rafik, had been in trouble and got put on a boat by those who didn’t like him and drowned. This son was Muslim, went away, came back different. Muslims, the ones who make nuns out of their women. Heather with that? But then Linda saw Heather and Rafik together when he picked her up from work one night, and there was this muy rico one with bedroom eyes. That’s when she saw the BMW too. Rafik said Heather’s dad got it for her.

Heather came from money, and you never knew when something might come of that. Heather’s father in Virginia was a basket that Linda hoped she could get closer to, and it was more likely to be in reach someday if she did this thing with the insurance. So she didn’t tell Heather that her husband, Xavier, had been out of the house, out of the state, and, for all she knew, out of the country since the summer. She played it so Heather would think she had risked a lot, that Heather owed her much. She would ask Heather, “What if my husband gets sick? Then what?” Another time Linda told Heather he was home sick from work. Heather offered to take him to the doctor, to pay for it out of her own money, but Linda said, No, no, that would be too much; he’d be fine. When he “got better,” Linda started asking, “But what if he gets hit by a car?” He won’t, Heather kept saying. He just won’t.