He said, “Well, you both know who I am. Now I need to know who you are.”

“I’m Audrey,” the bleached blonde responded.

“And I’m Christina. But you can just call me Chris.”

“Chris? Is that what everybody calls you?”

“Yes,” she answered softly.

Ivan extended his hand forward. “Well, are you ready to shop?”

“Of course,” they both answered.

The driver said, “I’ll be parked right around in this area when you’re ready.”

Ivan nodded to him. “Okay. That’s good.”

The girls began to walk toward the mall. It was an outside, multilevel shopping mall of high-end fashion stores—Gucci, Fendi, Prada, Coach, Bebe, St. John, Caché—with lower-end stores such as Banana Republic, the Gap, and Old Navy. It was anchored by larger department stores—Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, Belk—and mixed in were specialty stores, jewelry shops, a food court, and a movie theater on the top level. And it seemed that they had entered at the most expensive end of the mall.

“Oh, my God, this reminds me of an outside Bellagio in Las Vegas,” Audrey stated. She walked right into the Fendi store and started looking at the most expensive carrybags. Ivan looked at a few of the price tags and winced. Damn, all that for a purse?

Chris stood close by him and smiled at his reactions.

Ivan asked her, “Where are you from?”

“Seattle.”

“Do you drink coffee?”

Chris paused before she chuckled at his question. “I know, right? There’s, like, a coffee shop on every corner in Seattle. Why, have you been there before?”

“No, I just have friends who told me about it. But I’ve been to other places.”

“What’s the farthest place you ever been to?” she asked him. She acted as if she were uninterested in shopping.

Ivan lied and told her, “Japan.”

Chris grinned and said, “My father is Japanese.”

“Oh, yeah? I thought you had an Asian look to you.”

She smiled, giving her heritage away again. “My eyes, right?”

“Yeah, but you’re Japanese and what?”

“Black.”

“I figured that, too.”

“Because I’m dark?”

Ivan said, “You’re not that dark, but you’re dark for an Asian girl.”

“That’s because I’m not Asian. I’m only half Asian. But I’m darker than you.”

He said, “That’s not hard to do. I’m not dark at all.”

She asked him, “Are you mixed?”

“Do I look mixed?”

She looked him in his face and nodded. “Yeah.”

“What makes you say that?” he asked her. He figured he was still clearly a black man, even with his hair cut low.

She said, “You have black features, but your skin is light and you have those light eyes.”

Ivan asked her, “And do I look like an attractive man to you?”

She looked him right in his face and said, “Yes. I think you’re very attractive.”