Sensing that I was too tired to make the trip home that night, I asked if I could stay at Aisha’s.

“Of course you can,” she said. “As long as you don’t elbow me in the face.”

“I can’t make any promises.”

It was past two a.m. by the time we finally made it to bed. I’d only been back in the States for less than a day, and already, I had nearly been thrown out of a pub and had lost my job. Tomorrow, I would begin the long task of applying for new jobs, although the pool of available reporting positions in southern Arizona was limited, to say the least. I might have to move somewhere else…but I could think about that tomorrow. Tonight, I was too tired.

“You know the worst thing about it?” I asked Aisha. We’d already put on our pajamas, eaten ice cream, and she’d helped me process my feelings. The only light in the room was from the glow-in-the-dark alarm clock on her nightstand. “I only hired Irene the second time because I was eager to get out to Qia and get my book back. And I never even got it. The whole trip was wasted.”

“Imagine what you could’ve done with it if you’d gotten it,” said Aisha sleepily. “Two hundred thousand dollars could have really come in handy if you found yourself out of work for too long.”

“But, of course, I would never have sold it. Not even if I was starving.”

“Right. Of course not.” It was hard to tell from her tone whether she believed me or not. “Cassie?”

“Hmm?”

“Wasn’t there a part of you that wanted to go on that trip? Apart from wanting to get the book, I mean?”

“I mean, I guess so.” I could just barely see Aisha’s eyes glinting groggily back at me in the darkness. “Salman was never the monster I think I painted him as—I realized that after I left. I think when we first meet someone, especially if they seem too pure for this earth, we’re inclined to be suspicious. I used to wonder what he was hiding, probably because I just find it hard to trust men, sometimes.”

“What made you change your mind?” I spent long enough thinking over the answer that Aisha thought I had fallen asleep. “Cassie?”

“I think maybe the fact that he didn’t sleep with me, even though he could have. I mean, he had me in his pocket the night before last. We’d already agreed to have sex, and he knew how much I wanted that book—”

“Maybe he wanted to keep the book,” said Aisha, shifting to find a more comfortable position. “Maybe he figured the only way to hold onto it was to keep stalling until you were too tired to go through with it.”

It was the theory that best fit with my own cynical view of men. I’d spent much of the trip home wondering why he had bailed on our agreement, and this was the most plausible explanation I could come up with. But the fact that it aligned so neatly with my own biases gave me pause. It didn’t mesh with what I knew of Salman, who had been a perfect gentleman for the entire weekend.

“Or, maybe not,” Aisha added, a little sarcastically. “Maybe he genuinely didn’t want to have sex with you because he knew you weren’t ready. Maybe he’s a dream human who always places the needs of other people above his own.”

“Maybe he is,” I said, and I meant it. “That’s certainly the impression I came away with.”

* * *

When I arrived home the next morning, it became immediately apparent that Clay and Leah had had another fight the night before. One of my canvases had been knocked off the easel, there were fragments of broken glass in the kitchen, and someone had wedged an entire slice of buffalo chicken pizza between the couch cushions. Why couldn’t they fight in their own apartment instead of coming over here? It seemed that Clay ran home whenever Leah became angry. Wondering where Patricia had spent the night and if she had gotten any sleep, I was just picking a lacy bra up off the floor when the doorbell rang.

Fearing that it might be Leah, back to berate my cousin, I glanced through the peephole before opening. What I saw was so puzzling that, at first, I thought the light must be playing a cruel trick on me.

What would he even be doing here?

But when I opened the door, it was no trick. There stood Salman, dressed in an immaculate three-piece suit, carrying a large package immaculately wrapped in parcel paper and tied with a green bow.

“Salman?” I asked with a dreamy feeling. “How did you even get here?”

Salman beamed; my surprise and bewilderment clearly tickled him.

“I took my own plane. We left Qia at around the same time, and I would have gotten here before you if I hadn’t been waylaid at customs. Anyway, I tried.”

“No, I actually just got home.” I had my eyes fixed on the package, which was suspiciously book-shaped. “I got in last night, but spent the night at Aisha’s house. I’d invite you to come in, but the place is a total wreck right now.”

“I really don’t mind,” said Salman.

“Well, I do. Give me a few minutes—I don’t want you accidentally sitting in queso dip.”

“Is that something you eat here in the States?”

“It’s something we eat here in Arizona.”

I left him standing in the doorway while I scrambled to pick up playing cards, denim short shorts, and shards of porcelain figurines from my aunt’s collection. Why she allowed them to continue coming over, I still didn’t know.

“Did you sleep on the plane?” I asked. “Are you tired? Hungry?”

“I’ll survive,” said Salman, removing a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his brow. “What I could really go for is a glass of water.”

“Right. Of course.” I was halfway to the kitchen before I realized he was still standing outside on the porch. “Oh, you can come in, now. I don’t think the house is going to get any cleaner in the next three minutes.”

My face burned in embarrassment as Salman stepped into the living room, taking in the glass coffee table, the kitchen counter, and the canvas on the easel by the window.

“Does your aunt paint watercolors?” he asked, pausing in front of it for an excruciatingly long moment.

“No, that’s actually one of mine.” It was a painting of a cabin in the mountains that I’d started painting, but never finished. “Please don’t judge me by what you see on the easel—it’s not one of my best works.”

“I rather like it, actually.” Seeing my dubious glare, he was quick to add, “I really think it will look lovely when it’s finished.”

“One hopes.” Standing in the kitchen, pouring him a glass of water, the surrealism of the moment struck me. Salman looked out of place here, surrounded by magazines and ashtrays and my aunt’s knick-knacks, like he had been digitally inserted into the scene. He ought to have been having dinner with foreign ambassadors on some remote balcony overlooking the Adriatic, not sweating in a suit in my living room.

“Again, I’m sorry the house is a mess,” I said as I returned to the living room with a glass in hand. “I think my cousin stayed over last night—”

“Stop, it’s fine. I’ve seen a lot worse.”

“Have you really? Because this has to be pretty shabby compared to what you’re used to. You can sit down, by the way.”

“Thanks.” Salman seated himself in the armchair in front of the TV.

Now that I’d overcome the first shock, I was beginning to panic, wondering whether I was demonstrating the courtesy owed to a visiting dignitary. Undoubtedly, there was some obscure bit of etiquette that I’d overlooked. Between his sudden arrival and the humiliation of losing my job, I was in danger of overcharging like a wire carrying more electricity than it could handle.

I sat there feeling dazed, trying to think of something to say that could fill the silence between us. Finally, Salman reached over the coffee table and handed me the brown parcel.

“Anyway,” he said, “I brought you this. You don’t have to accept it if you don’t want it, but I thought you might like to have it.”

Eagerly, gingerly, I untied the green ribbon and tore open the paper to reveal the book beneath. At first sight of the lion on the front cover, I let out an involuntary gasp; it was my mother’s copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

“Salman, you didn’t have to.” I hugged the book to my chest, incredulous. The sale of this book would have more than paid off all my dad’s remaining debts. “Why did you bring me this?”

“Because I realized how important it was to you,” he said, “and some things are too good to spoil with talk of money.”

I stared at the book in shock, trying to understand what would induce a person to give away all that money.

“I feel like the Salman I met in the lawyer’s office however many weeks ago would never have done this. What’s come over you?”

With his unaffected elegance, Salman had so taken possession of the chair he sat in that I almost wanted to give it to him. Leaning back with a casual air, he said, “I don’t like who I become when I’m with Asar. You listen to him talk, and he’s like the epitome of the hard-nosed capitalist who can’t see the worth of anything unless there’s a dollar sign in front of it. He’s incapable of being swayed by literature or poetry or love or a sunrise.”

“Yes, I had gathered as much,” I said coolly.

“But there’s something different about you,” Salman went on. “I could see it on the night we met, when you chided me for saying journalism is irrelevant. You said facts and the truth are always relevant, and that stuck with me. And then, the way you fought for that book—well, if my parents had fought that hard to save their marriage, they might never have lost it. I knew you weren’t a fool. There had to be something in it, something I was missing.”

“Did you read it?” I couldn’t resist asking.

Salman nodded. “I read it in the plane on the way here. And—Asar was right—it’s a weird book, and I didn’t get it at first. A man made out of straw? A whole country of porcelain china girls and men who can make their necks pop out like accordions?”

“I kind of wish they’d left that in the movie.”

“I feel like the movie was plenty weird already. But I sat there absorbed in this book for a couple hours, at least—and at some point, it just clicked. I think it was right around the point where Dorothy and the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Tin Man are entering the Emerald City. And the gatekeeper makes them put on these emerald-tinted glasses, and they’re amazed, because once they put on the glasses, the whole city is emerald-colored.”

“I remember.” That scene had confused me so much as a nine-year-old; it was only years later, thinking back on it, that I had really gotten it.

“It was just so absurd,” said Salman, beginning to laugh. “The whole scene—the whole book, really. Just utter and complete nonsense. And it served no useful purpose, and I loved it. I had to put down the book, actually, because I was laughing so hard.”

“Did you finish?”

Salman nodded brightly. “I’ll probably never understand what was going on with the Quadlings, but I love that this is your favorite book. It explains so much about you.”

He didn’t try to explain, and I didn’t press him to. I could sense what he meant, even if I couldn’t articulate it.

“Bet you thought you’d never get it back, didn’t you?” he added, looking eagerly from me to the book in my hands. “I should have given it to you on that first morning in Paris.”

“Salman…”

His smile faded as he discerned the unease in my face. “What’s wrong? Don’t you want it?”

“Of course I do.” I set the book down on the table on top of a magazine about the Rocky Mountains. “I didn’t know it was possible to want anything that much until I found out that my father still had it. And I’m grateful to you for coming all this way, but…I don’t know that I deserve this.”

“What are you talking about?” Salman asked, incredulous. “I can’t think of any single person who deserves that book as much as you.”

“Yes, but if you knew all the things about me…”

Tearfully, I confessed the whole story of the last twelve hours: how my employer had learned that I had been hiring a ghostwriter to finish my assignments and how I had lost my job. Somehow, I hadn’t cried during the firing or even after. Maybe I was still in shock. But now, all the tears that I had been fighting back since the end of that meeting came spilling out.

“So now I’m out of a job,” I said, “and I don’t know what’s come over me these last couple weeks. I guess maybe my father’s death affected me more than I thought it had. I’ve gotten reckless; I’ve done things I wouldn’t normally do; I haven’t been taking care of myself. Grief swallows you, even when you don’t want it to.”

I sank back into the couch, feeling exhausted with the weight of my confession. Salman’s face was impassive, and my heart gave a rapid flutter of panic, wondering if I had made a mistake in telling him. It seemed like all I did was make mistakes lately, and my honesty just made things a hundred times worse. Perhaps this was what I feared most: that I would expose my heart to someone and that they would turn away in disgust.

“Anyway, you can have the book back,” I added, resigned to his disappointment. “It’s a real treasure, and I don’t know if you want to give it away to someone like me.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” Taking my hands in his own, he said, “I feel like I disgraced myself when I wouldn’t give you the book. Honestly. I’m a coward who listened too much to his advisor and didn’t think a stupid book could matter that much to you. I’ve been trying to scrape my way back into your good graces ever since.”

“Well, you’ve done a good job of it.” Somehow, it had been easier to admit that I was a disgrace and a failure than to admit that I liked him and wanted him to like me back. “Salman, listen—I realize you probably need to be jetting off, but—how would you like to stay for a couple more days?”

Hope flickered in Salman’s eyes, and for a moment, his handsomeness threatened to blind me. “Do you think your aunt would mind having another guest?”

“She puts up with her son, so I don’t think she’ll mind you. And if not, we could always get a hotel.”

“I like that idea,” said Salman, tenderly stroking my arm, his voice a soft purr. “Perhaps we can finish what we started this weekend.”

“Ah, yes.” Pulling my arm away, I said, “I thought you’d given up on that.”

“I mean, we don’t have to.” Salman tensed, apparently thinking he must have said something wrong.

“No, I mean—I’m sorry, I should have phrased that better. The other night, when you left me standing in the hall—well, you can imagine what was going through my head. I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about sleeping with me. Like I was disgusting or something.”

“No, you were great.” Salman’s eyes softened, and I could sense he was being truthful. “It’s just—the more we talked that night, the more hesitant I felt about going through with our bargain. I wasn’t going to go through with it—not unless you really wanted it.”

It was funny—I don’t think I’d ever wanted him more than I did in that moment. “You know most men would have been happy to exploit my desperation, don’t you?”

“I know.” Salman smiled, and his eyes shone. “But I’m not most men.”

“Thank heavens for that. I’ll text my aunt and let her know you’ll be staying with us for—two days? Three?”

“We’ll say two. There’s an old saying in my country about how guests, like fish, go bad after three days.”

I had never heard that saying, but I breathed a short prayer of thanks that I hadn’t stayed longer than that at the palace. “Did you bring a suitcase? Clay might have some clothes you can borrow if you need them. He’s about your size.”

“I might, actually.” With a flush of embarrassment, he half-rose to reveal his brown-stained posterior. I blinked back surprise: it took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. “Is this…queso?” he asked.

“It’s bean dip,” I said with an exasperated shake of my head, and then ran for the paper towels.