“She asked you what?”

“I told her that I was dating you, and she asked me what your name was. I said, ‘Reema,’ and she asked what you were. You know, like what nationality. When I said that you were Arab, she asked what color you were.”

Reema wondered how her face looked to Alex at that moment, illuminated by the lamplight. How did her skin look against the red wool of her coat, the white of her scarf? Did she resemble Agnes Ayres, gazing up at Valentino in his white turban, flashing a maniacal smile? Reema briefly considered clasping her hands together in a helpless gesture, and raising her eyes heavenward in a silent prayer for the preservation of her purity.

“And what did she do when you told her that I was—what? How did you say it?—a light brown? Dark olive? What? Was she relieved?”

He hesitated, then said, “I told her that you were the most beautiful woman in the world, and that she’d be as enchanted with you as I am.”

And Reema was certain she never wanted to meet his mother.

They continued to walk, had their fill of people-watching, and headed back to Reema’s apartment. She hoped that he would leave right away—her head was spinning and she needed to think—but from the way that he stroked her hair as she fiddled with the key, she knew that he planned to stay a while.

Starting to pull off her coat, she simultaneously headed for the kitchen to do the dishes, hoping that it would kill his notions, but he pulled her toward the couch instead.

“Sit down,” he commanded gently. When she did, he lifted her legs onto the cushions and opened her coat so that it formed a red pillow around her. He pulled her arms free and pushed the red wool up against her breasts.

“You’re tense,” he declared.

“I’m not.”

He began to rub her temples anyway, but the bun into which she’d pulled her hair obstructed that. He uncoiled the tightly-wound band and untwisted her hair, letting it fall around her face. She moved to brush a strand out of her eye, but he stayed her hand and settled it on the back cushion. “Let me,” he said, moving the strand away from her eye, but laying it along her cheek instead, curved slightly toward her mouth. Another strand pulled out and placed like Cleopatra’s asp along her breast (she knew that’s what he was imagining). A heavier section of her hair arranged so that it tumbled off the side of the couch in a black wave.

He lifted her left knee slightly, stood back and observed his work, and then lowered the angle that her leg had formed.

“You’re perfect,” he proclaimed, satisfied like Matisse, who must have occasionally sat back from his odalisque paintings once in a while and murmured, “Goddamn, that’s good.”