“A rusty colander is pretty?” The man in black is playing to Vanessa, clowning it up for a laugh. “How much?” he asks her.

“All the prices are marked,” says Vanessa, who’s gone back to reading her magazine. You’d never have thought half a minute ago she’d been checking out the guy’s broad shoulders, the nice way his jeans ride low on his slim hips. He looks a little like Max. Vanessa’s always drawn to tall guys.

“I saw. But how much really?” His tone’s flirtatious, insistent.

Vanessa finally looks up. “What do you mean, really? Is this a course in metaphysics?” She laughs, addressing herself to the woman. “I don’t deal in real/unreal, I deal in things. The colander is really eight euros.”

He lowers his dark glasses, looks down at her, narrowing his eyes in exaggerated surprise. “Eight euros for a rusty colander? You could get a new one for less.”

“So get one,” shrugs Vanessa.

“I like it—it’s cute,” says his girlfriend. She fumbles in a drawstring purse that’s tied to her skirts, produces a crumpled red bill.

Rat wraps the colander in newspaper for her; Vanessa finds the change.

The girl moves on, but the cowboy dawdles.

“I haven’t seen you two ladies here before, have I? Do you do the market every week?” he asks.

Vanessa makes a noncommittal face. “When I think of it.”

“Where’re you from?”

Vanessa nods her head back towards the coast.

Her rudeness is a form of flirtation.

“From the sea? I could tell you were mermaids,” he says.

She laughs, uncomfortable. “You’re dreaming.”

“I like dreaming. Don’t you?”

Vanessa shrugs. “Depends what you have to wake to. Yes, ma’am? Can I help you?”

There’s a lady who wants to tell her that the record in the sleeve of the Enrico Macias album isn’t Enrico Macias, it’s some rumba group. The man in black—Johnny Cash, they call him later—moves on.

“Why were you rude to him?” asks Rat.

“Was I? I wasn’t rude. I don’t know—I get sick of people always trying to chisel you down.”

Rat’s surprised because usually her mother can bargain the hind legs off an Armenian rug merchant.