Already the table was divided. Four boys were on the dance floor, and they were dancing with no one but themselves. He had seen women do this, never men. Two others were making paper airplanes from matchbooks and throwing them at women at other tables. Three others were drinking and loud, though the club’s din absorbed their raised voices. No one was talking to the Saudi. He was tapping a foot on the floor to the music. His leg looked like a goldfish on a carpet.

“All women believe they are ugly. They believe this, I tell you. The more beautiful they are, the more they believe this. They want these American idiots to tell them how beautiful they are, but because of these magazines, they do not.”

Why was it that these ones had come with the Saudi?

“So as you can see, an enormous opportunity is created.” Rafik had been drawing triangles and lines on the napkin to illustrate his points. Aziz looked down at it. Rafik started drawing some more. “See, this circle is the number of women who are beautiful.”

“Rafik, this is excellent.”

One of them had fallen down on the dance floor. He sat there, smiling and patting the cement with his palm. His companions bent over, slapping their knees and laughing. “Waiter, I say, waiter! Bring me a Pimm’s!” he shouted from the floor, as if he might stay there. Another boy slid next to him, put both elbows down, propped chin on palms, and stretched long legs across the floor. A woman tripped on his ankles and just missed falling. Soon a waiter delivered a nickel mug with celery and oranges flopping at its lip. Then a tall woman, slender, wearing patent leather boots past her knees, approached the Pimm’s drinker from behind. She lifted her boot and rested it on his shoulder so he could see it to his right, the high heel over his chest. One eye was smudged black as if she had been hit and her straight hair shadowed the other eye. Without looking up, the Pimm’s man closed his hand around her ankle and said something to his friend, who nodded. The woman knelt behind the Pimm’s man and put her cheek against his neck.

“On my cock.”

“She must know him,” Aziz said, not taking his eyes away from them.

“I think she does not.” Rafik’s voice was monotone. He sounded drugged.

The Pimm’s drinker had now taken the woman’s head in both his hands and was kissing her mouth. The force of him pushed her head back.

“Surely they will not fuck before us,” Aziz said.

“No,” Rafik said blankly.

But the kissing continued; the man wanted her like one starving. Her hands were helpless at her sides. The friend was still beside them, but he had turned on his back and he appeared to be studying the moving lights on the ceiling.