They were having a wonderfully happy time. He had never seen women in this place laughing like that. Mostly women here were nervous. They looked around and looked around and then they looked down. Others were so sexy, he almost feared them. Once, he had taken one of the sexy ones back to Brooks Street. She was naked before they were in his bedroom. She wanted to go down on him in the living room. This was something no one had ever wanted to do before. He had let her. He liked her. She liked him. She told him he was sexy. Sexy, what did it mean? So many women and so many men saying sexy, everywhere he went. It may have been the word he learned first, after yes.

“Ask her to dance.” Rafik always said that.

“I like to watch this one.”

“Her friends are not beautiful.”

“I don’t know. They are too small for you.”

“Small? That one, she is an ostrich.”

Yes, the giraffe was more of an ostrich. Aziz sensed she knew she was an ostrich. She did not care. She was a happy woman with happy friends.

“You like women who are pillows,” Aziz said. He often thought of Heather’s skin and her breasts, which were unbelievably full. Such softness, so easily given to Heather for no reason, and all hers, to have and to offer if she wished. But Rafik? How, why, did she want Rafik? They said he was handsome.

“I don’t see why the other blond one is not good for you,” Aziz said.

“That one? That waitress?”

“You! A man who moves boxes!”

“She is a waitress,” Rafik insisted, laughing.

“She is just like the other one. The Djara.”

“The Djara.” Rafik said this dramatically, swaying back and then left.

“Look, both blond, both dark blue eyes, both small.”

“Not the same, my uncle, not the same.”

“I know. But why?”

“Aziz, you are mad. Who cares why? Who knows why? Just— not the same.”

“I tell you,” Aziz said, “not one man here will talk to them.”

Rafik looked around. “No.”

“Who?”

“That one.”

There was a boy in a suit. Aziz picked up his chin to see. “Him?”

“Him.”

Aziz ordered another beer, and Rafik ordered a shot of rum to go with his.

“That is a boy,” Aziz said.

“In a suit.”

“And what are we—I am wearing this one you gave me, it—is what?”

“It is Versace. A jacket.”

“Very fine. Very much like this boy.”

“He is Saudi. And he is wearing a suit.”

“You know him?”

“No. But I know some who do.”

Rafik probably did. And it was bad policy to be wearing the clothes Rafik loaned him. Rafik stole them or got them from someone who stole them. When his brother came, he would end this habit. It was a few months off.

The Saudi could not have been more than eighteen.