Aziz pulled Heather back toward him, so he could better shove her into the crowd. Then he rushed himself between Rafik and the Djara and turned his eyes hard and fast into Rafik’s.

“You, my friend, are fucked,” he said.

“Heather?”

“Heather.”

The Djara looked at Aziz. There was the blue that was her eyes. There were the narrow shoulders. But his disgrace made her less. He wanted nothing of the dance he had imagined.

“Sorry,” Aziz said impatiently. He would not come here again, not ever. His brother would find nothing of this.

“Wow, you’re really wet!” she shouted. She was the Djara’s twin sister, Aziz suddenly realized, not the Djara. Identical, but not. How her voice grated; he almost pushed her away. But wait. His mother’s hand rested on his shoulder. We are to be kind.

“Please, miss, my friend goes now; no dance is possible. Sorry. So sorry.”

Maybe she could not hear him. He shrugged and opened his hands to the ceiling, then pointed to his ear. She touched hers and smiled, nodding.

He tried to see where he could make his way through the dance floor and out again. The music was loud; one thought began before another one could finish, so he moved blind. He got to the edge and began pushing around a standing couple, past a girl’s mouth against another girl’s ear, a wineglass nearly empty in a hand. Someone pushed into his back. He felt the crowd move around him in a reaction, and then another elbow came, and he had to hold on to the back of a chair to stay standing.

It was the chair of the ostrich. He saw the tipped orange of her hair just before he saw the Saudi was no longer there, the bodyguards gone too, and there, looking as if she wanted to leave, unlaughing, was the Djara. Not the lesser version he had spoken to on the dance floor, but her, the actual one, with sapphire for eyes. She was looking right at him, and a sympathy—where was it?— passed between or around or inside them. He wanted to pull her by the back of her head to his mouth. To see what it was to have her against him with kissing that overcame her. He sank then, almost as soon as he felt the relief of her possible understanding. How was it he could tell these twin women apart, but Soumeya, when it mattered, he had not recognized?