Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [136]
I open all my windows and stash the other bottles under my desk, but my office still reeks like a tavern.
Luke strolls in, stares at my carpet, and sniffs the air. “Well,” he says. “There goes the rest of your reputation.”
“Hey,” I say with false cheer. “At least vodka doesn’t stain. My carpet has never been so sterile.”
Our stalwart receptionist, Enass, without saying a word, walks in and hands me a bottle of carpet cleaner.
I have another special delivery that day. Abdurahman, Ali’s dad, calls to say he’s bringing me a bag of organic avocados, which cannot be found in Sana’a. I am so ecstatic I briefly forget the vodka. That evening, in my taxi home, I stroke them, just to feel their firm roundness under my palms. I can’t remember the last time I was so excited to put something in my mouth. Anne and Florens come over to help me mash the avocados into a dip for the party. Which turns out to be a roaring success, in that few people can remember the details of it the next day. I’ve never had such a crowded house. My mafraj overflows with people, several of whom I’ve never met. Everyone from Kamaran is there, plus Marvin, Pearl, and Ginny. I wear a short, sleeveless dress and savor the feel of it sliding up my thighs as I raise my arms to dance. It’s springtime, and it feels like it.
After we’ve all been dancing for a while, Marvin requests cowboy music. I put on a country song and he and Pearl actually two-step around the room, knocking over several drinks as they swish around. It feels like a real party. (Yemenis of course have parties too, but they are always sex segregated and usually revolve around qat and sugary tea.) The only thing missing tonight, I think, is romance.
IT ISN’T LONG, HOWEVER, before this last void in my life is delightfully filled by a twenty-six-year-old German water researcher for the Dutch Embassy. Tobias is intelligent and attractive, tall, with oversized feet and hands, like a puppy that hasn’t quite grown into his extremities. His square Germanic face is softened by floppy dark hair, large blue eyes, and an infectious grin. I meet him through Kamaran Island friends, and when he moves into a house nearby he begins inviting me over to parties and qat chews. Our mutual attraction is increasingly obvious, but weeks pass before we admit it to each other.
It happens on a weeknight. I’m exhausted from work but when Tobias asks if he may come over, I perk up. It’s the first time we’ve been alone together. We make drinks and curl up in the mafraj. After a while, he suggests watching a movie. I put on Half Nelson, and we press close together in front of my twelve-inch computer screen. Tobias moves his arm around me and I slide into his embrace. I have no idea how Half Nelson ends. I’m not even sure if we turned it off or just left it running as we made love, first in the mafraj and again, moments later, in my bed.
He wakes me at dawn. After we say good morning properly, he sneaks home and I get ready for work, feeling more cheerful than I have since I got to this country.
I skip the gym and walk to work. The spring is back in my step, the kind of spring that makes men on the street pay twice as much attention to me as usual. I dare not meet anyone’s eyes, I feel so incandescent with sensuality. When Luke walks into my office, he says, “Okay, what happened to you? Why the Cheshire cat smile?”
I say nothing at all.
TOBIAS SPENDS ALMOST EVERY NIGHT with me that week, and on Friday, we don’t leave my house. We spend about twenty-one of twenty-four hours naked and entwined, until hunger drives us finally out of bed, and Tobias cooks us pasta, which we wash down with a bottle of wine in my mafraj. The muezzins keep calling out Friday prayers, the wail of the preachers prompting Tobias to cry out, “You people don’t know what you are missing!” But we are praying, in our own way, to our own decadent gods.
As the sun slides down over the rooftops around us, filling my mafraj with gold, Tobias falls asleep in my lap, looking