The Man Across the Street

Her breathing subsided, and he lifted her back onto the soft bed, slipping on his clothes and watching her and then sat on the bed, massaging her belly with one hand while smoking with the other, in a strange mixture of closeness and detachment.

She wanted to say something, but lay back, looking at him, feeling exhausted, oozing, feeling his emission leak out of her, smelling the scent of their mingled lust.

When his cigarette was almost done she sat up and looked at his face in the candlelight, not a sensual smile, but a serene face like the Mona Lisa. Her whole body felt warm, lithe, exhausted, on fire with the senses, as if every nerve could feel the power of his hold over her. Would he let her go? Perhaps he would hold her as his slave.

Rachel slid off the bed and silently put on her clothes while Hassan spoke not a word. She nodded to him and they walked to the door of his apartment. He regarded her in the almost-darkness, stroking his chin before opening the door and letting her out, seizing her wrist in his usual manner, and dropping something small into her hand. It wasn't coins.

Rachel hurried away, down the two flights of stairs and across the street, climbing up to the flat roof above her apartment where she sat for a long time, watching the stars in the humid night.

She didn't go back to the store for a week, embarrassed to confront him. But one day she passed by the entrance and saw another clerk inside, so she came in the store. She found out that that Hassan was gone. He didn't work there any more; he'd moved on.

The object he had placed in her hand was a jet black stone shaped like a human torso, with two smooth bumps like breasts. It was a stone to touch and feel, and Rachel kept it in her purse, pulling it out on dark nights and looking out at the stars, rubbing it as if it would bring him back.