“He goes to university,” Rafik was saying.

The Saudi was walking now. He walked three feet, then more, more, toward the table of the Djara and her friends.

“Uncle!” Rafik was triumphant.

“Wait, wait. Patience,” Aziz whispered. The Saudi was perhaps going to another table. Another one was near. But no, he addressed the one with the cigarette, but with overweening gestures and expressions.

“He is a boy!”

“A boy!”

“Look at them!”

“They are confused!”

Rafik grabbed Aziz’s arm. “I cannot watch this.”

“He is asking for a cigarette,” Aziz said.

“You are right, uncle, you are right. He is begging. He has a warehouse of cigarettes. He owns every cigarette in the world. See that man—he is snickering, he has a cigarette in his mouth!—he is the bodyguard.”

Rafik was standing up. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of Aziz’s pocket.

“I am going to help him.”

“Rafik, this is a bad idea,” Aziz was saying, even as Rafik was moving across the dance floor, briefly holding a woman’s arm who had spun into him and then started touching his face. Rafik was handsome. This was something that was most likely true. The woman was dancing with another woman, and she briefly delayed Rafik, but not long enough, because the woman with the fluttering hands at the Djara’s table was rummaging around in her purse when Rafik arrived at the table, and she was drawing out a cigarette as Rafik began speaking. Aziz could not hear. But he could see the Saudi was rabid, mad, rabidly mad. The bodyguard was moving in, another one was following, and the Saudi was developing into a smallish figure as the ostrich woman stood up to her full height and put her hand over her mouth. Aziz looked around to see if anyone else was paying heed to this tableau. Yes, they were. A semicircle of tables around the scene had fallen silent. The bartender was just looking up. The woman who had flirted with Rafik on the dance floor was standing still, watching.

So Rafik was now an Algerian without papers who had consumed five drinks and taunted men in a club. It fell to Aziz, if he would only do it, to pull Rafik back, to apologize to the Saudi, to explain deferentially to the self-important guards. Or he could let Rafik get punched by one of the guards, kicked by the Saudi. All Aziz would have to do was get his friend off the floor and into a taxi. They could not afford a taxi. But this would be a special case. He looked into his wallet. He had enough to get them home.