“I’m sorry you lost the book, Cass, but that’s life,” said Patricia. “You’re not going to win every battle.”

We were seated at the island in the kitchen eating cold chicken casserole out of a plastic container. I had only just arrived back in Phoenix and, although it was the middle of the afternoon, was looking forward to climbing into bed and hibernating for a week.

“I know, but it sucks to be reminded that the world can be so cruel. I’ve never been more sure that I was on the right side of an issue—I mean, who would object to giving a woman a children’s book that belonged to her late father and was rightfully hers?”

“I get where you’re coming from,” said Patricia, “but I’m sure the worth of the book complicated things. When they looked at it, all they could see was dollar signs.”

“No, seriously,” I said angrily. “I tried to appeal to their better natures, but I might as well have been talking to the Wicked Witch of the West for all the good it did.”

I didn’t say what I was really thinking, because I didn’t want to alarm her—that if I wanted to get the book back, I might have to appeal to their basest instincts.

“Are you sure you don’t want to warm that up?” asked Patricia, eyeing the casserole warily. “I think I’m going to heat mine up.”

“No, I’m good.” After being on a plane for fourteen hours, I was feeling desperately hungry. “It feels like the whole trip was wasted, honestly. I sort of wish I had just stayed here and finished my assignment.”

“Did you not finish it?” There was a silence in which I stiffened, and then Patricia added, “You should be glad that you went to your dad’s funeral, honey. I know it’s hard to believe now, but give it a few years, and you would have regretted not going. Mine and your mom’s dad was pretty crummy, and when he died, it felt like a weight had lifted off of me. But, you know, there are still days when I miss him.”

“I don’t see how I could ever miss someone I hardly knew.”

I didn’t tell her about how I had cried at the funeral, or how I had lain awake that night, staring up at the frescoed ceiling and wondering where mediocre men went when they died.

Nor did I mention the fact that the creditor who had denied me the book was a man with whom I had hooked up on the previous night. I saved that revelation for Aisha when she came over for breakfast the following morning.

Wanting to make up for the fact that I had gone to Paris without her, I cooked an elaborate breakfast of crepes with crème fraîche and apricots lightly powdered with sugar, served with sparkling grape juice. I felt that champagne was too fancy—and too alcoholic—for eight a.m.

“You’re joking,” she said when I told her. “I can’t even…how?”

“Because the universe hates me and wants me to be unhappy,” I said with a shrug.

Aisha clucked her tongue. “Of all the joints in all the towns in the world, he walks into yours. It almost feels like fate.”

“Or the world’s most horrible coincidence,” I said as I stacked my plate with crepes. “I had hoped that maybe I could use our connection to my advantage, but no such luck. He refused to give up the book. Even though I had just made out with him. Even though we were planning on getting a room that night. I really hope he’s regretting that decision now,” I added viciously.

“So, you decided to take my advice?” asked Aisha, who was seated at the table wearing a white beret and a feather boa and looking nothing like any of the women I had seen in France.

“Yes, not that it did any good. Once the meeting was over, I took the first flight out. I spent half the trip home in the bathroom trying not to cry too loudly.”

“Oh, you poor dear.”

“Pity me not; I’ve survived worse than this,” I said in a lofty tone as I took the seat opposite her. “It was just a whirlwind trip, in retrospect. There was a funeral and tears and smooching and the world’s most humiliating rejection. All in one twenty-four-hour span.”

“A curse upon his house!” said Aisha with a look of savage glee. “I hope that every time he takes a woman out for dinner, she turns out to be someone who owes him money.”

“On the one hand,” I said, stifling a laugh, “I’m really glad you don’t have witch powers, because you would totally abuse them. On the other hand, I sort of wish you did right now.”

“Make me a list of men who have wronged you, and they will taste my wrath,” Aisha said lightly as she reached for the jam.

“If you could just curse his business advisor, that would be great. I really think he might’ve relented if Mr. Khan hadn’t been sitting there whispering in his ear like a totally cliché evil advisor.”

I told her about the argument that had broken out in the boardroom and how Salman had been reluctantly forced to side with Khan. Aisha cocked one brow skeptically as she slathered her crepes with jam.

“You know they were just playing ‘good cop, bad cop,’ right? Salman wanted you to think he was the good guy, but in reality, he had no more intention of giving up the book than his advisor did. It’s like in The Walrus and the Carpenter, how we sympathize with the carpenter, because even though he ate as many of the oysters as the walrus, at least he was nice about it.”

“Now, I’m really wishing I had read those books as a kid.” The Alice books were to Aisha what the Oz books were to me.

“Point is, Salman doesn’t deserve your sympathy. He’s just as scummy as this other dude. He put on that show of reluctance because he hoped you would feel bad for him and sleep with him when the meeting was over. But now, he will never, ever sleep with you.”

“Maybe not.”

Aisha paused with her fork in the air, instantly suspicious. “What do you mean, maybe?”

Reluctantly, I told her about the suggestive remark Khan had made as he and Salman were leaving the room.

“I felt absolutely disgusted when I heard that. But the more I got to thinking about it—hear me out—”

“Cassie, no.”

“I would give just about anything to get that book back. And what would be the harm in sleeping with him if it meant I could have it? Three days ago, we were planning on having sex, anyway. The only thing that’s changed in the meantime is that, now, I hate his face.”

Aisha glared at me as if worried I had taken complete leave of my senses. “Cassie, do you really want this book enough to trade your integrity for it?”

“Are you really going to lecture me about integrity?” I asked loudly. “You were the one who wanted me to sleep with him in the first place.”

“That was different!” Aisha set her fork down, her crepe untouched. “That was before he insulted you and harassed you and refused to give you a stupid book that belongs to you by right. You don’t reward someone like that by offering them sex.”

“I wouldn’t be rewarding him,” I said angrily. “I would be getting something that I wanted. I don’t want to sleep with him, believe me, but I’d do it if he’d reconsider. That doesn’t make me a bad person, it just—”

“Makes you seem more than a little desperate.” Pushing her plate away, Aisha poured herself a second glass of sparkling juice, sipping it with the air of a woman in her forties contemplating a divorce. “I love children’s literature as much as you do, but not enough to offer my body in exchange for a book I wanted. You wouldn’t see me trading sex for a copy of Through the Looking-Glass, even if it was signed by the author.”

“It’s not about that.” I stabbed ferociously at a crepe. “We could be talking about a dog-eared eighties paperback, and I would still want it, because it belonged to me. They haven’t just stolen a book, they’ve stolen a part of me. Both my parents are dead, now, and that book is really all I have left.”

“Cassie, sweetie, I’m as sentimental as the next person,” said Aisha softly, “but I think you’re investing too much worth in that book. Maybe Patricia was right. Maybe you really do need to let it go and move on.”

I shook my head in annoyance. I knew she meant well, but I wasn’t going to give up when there was still a chance that I could get the book back.

Maybe sex with Salman wouldn’t be the delightful time I had envisioned a few days ago, but I could lie back and take it. Within an hour at most, the ordeal would be over, and the book would be mine—assuming, of course, that he was willing to make the exchange. He had been desperate to sleep with me not too long ago. Would he still feel the hunger if he knew it would cost him two hundred thousand dollars?

I took our now-empty plates and rinsed them off in the sink.

“You are making me glad I’ve only kissed one man in my life,” said Aisha as she gathered her purse from the kitchen table. “Between the arguments and the betrayal and the theft of your childhood classics, I’m not sure that being in a relationship is even worth it.”