Salim spent the next day doing his work with only half of his mind, and even let his attention drift in the middle of a phone call with an overseas client. He was so busy hoping, planning, and scheming that he awoke suddenly to a voice saying of, "Hello? Hello? Umari are you there? Damn this phone line...I've been talking to myself for the last five minutes. Stella! Call back the son of a...click."
Salim tactfully called the other party back first, and apologized, saying he had gotten disconnected five minutes ago, and had been trying to call back since. He forced himself to concentrate on the call, and made up for his previous neglect with some understated but well-placed flattery. When the call was over, Salim dropped into his chair and leaned back, placing his feet on the desk. He was careful not to put his legs on the pages of English language exercises that were spread out there. They were only half-way done, and poorly at that. Part of his homework was to write sentences with the twenty new vocabulary words that the teacher gave him on a weekly basis, but today, he could not think at all.
On Wednesday morning he stood in his closet and felt at loss. He would wear a suit, that was a given, but which one? If he wore a silver tie, would that seem like too obvious of a cry for attention? His navy suit with the hand-painted silk tie was sedate but well-cut, but then, he had already worn that on Monday.
(Now who is acting like a woman?)
He settled on a gray suit with a patterned silver and maroon tie. It was a color combination that his tailor never failed to mention as "...very sophisticated, sir." He selected a platinum tie clip, one without extra ornamentation, and placed a hundred-dollar pen in his breast pocket. Then he went to his dressing table and frowned at the designer cologne labels. They were all too flashy, the scents were all piney, or floral in a manly way, or clean-smelling. He needed something sedate but masculine, he needed...(Aha! A little bit of musk).
Salim arrived at his office half an hour early to finish his homework, and when his secretary arrived, he ordered her to hold all calls until ten minutes into the workday. That way he would have 40 minutes to finish his work undisturbed. He wanted it to be exceptional, he wanted his teacher to read it and smile and say, "Good."
At 1:30, his lunch was delivered. He ate it quickly and went to his bathroom and brushed his teeth, his hair, his shoes. He straightened his tie and unbuttoned his jacket and went back to his office. She would be coming soon. The secretary had called her at noon to confirm her class, and to ask if she wouldn't need a ride today as well?
Salim glanced over to the clock. It was 1:50. He took his homework out arranged it neatly on the desk. At 1:57, the elevator hissed and the teacher's heels came clicking towards his door. The teacher came in and said hello.
He stood up and returned the greeting, and offered her the chair on the other side of his desk. She nodded and sat down, and instead of opening her bag, she looked up and said, "Your secretary asked me if I needed a ride. I thought she was going to send a cab, but your driver picked me up instead."
"Ah, that is Taylor, he insisted that he pick you up."
"Did he?" the teacher said, tilting her head to one side slightly, "He's such a quiet man."
Salim smiled cheerfully at the teacher, and thought he saw her eyebrows raise just slightly. Still smiling, he said, "Shall we begin the lesson?"
His homework had been done flawlessly, and Salim counted the times he heard his teacher say "Good." Five. He had never gotten five before. And by the end of the lesson, he had only dropped his pen once. It was the teacher who dropped her book instead, and when she moved to pick it up, Salim stood up and said, "Please, let me."
He walked around the tremendous mahogany desk and picked the book up from where it had fallen on the floor. As he crouched at her feet to pick it up, he felt sure that she must be able to smell his cologne. Why else had she shifted in her chair? He picked the book up and placed it gently on the desk, and then returned to his own chair. When the lesson finished, she assigned Friday's homework and began putting her books back in her bag. Salim leaned back in his chair and gazed contentedly at her face as she did this. When she looked up, suddenly, he said right away, "What is the status of your car?"
"The mechanic said that there was some problem with the battery," she said, averting her eyes and putting one last book away, "It won't be ready until Tuesday, I think maybe it's because he's busy."
"Taylor asked that he should escort you from here to your home until your own car was ready. He distrusts men who drive taxis. I do as well."
"Oh," she said quietly. "ok." And that was all. The driver knocked on the door and stepped inside. She stood up and followed him out.
Salim sat motionlessly at his desk, trying hard to suppress an elated smile. He was nearly bursting with excitement, he wanted to stand up and dance, he wanted to pump his fist in the air, he wanted to sing. He had expected her to primly refuse, to give some irreproachable excuse for not availing herself of his offer, or maybe even to have another car. Salim himself had three, a black one for work, a silver one for parties, and a red luxury sport utility vehicle for vacations. But she had agreed, and now there was nothing left to do before Friday but wait, and do his homework.
Salim worked especially well on Thursday, he felt alive and well-oiled, he skillfully flattered the appropriate parties and pleasantly threatened others. It was a good day. At the end of it he went home and did his homework enthusiastically.
(Make a sentence for the following vocabulary words:
Persistent: adj. refusing to relent, continuing firmly or steadily. A persistent man always gets what he wants.)
On Friday morning, Salim woke up early and showered. Though he hadn't attended a Friday prayer for years, he still made a small ceremony of bathing thoroughly on the morning of the Sabbath. He emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist and walked into his closet again. He had woken early enough today to dress himself at a leisurely pace, and so his took his time selecting a suit.
(Pinstripes? Too formal. Black? Too intimidating, or too much like a waiter. Blue? Wore that on Monday. Olive? Ah, olive. Perfect.)
Salim hummed as he stood and dressed before the mirror, a nameless but happy tune of his own improvisation. He selected the same musk he had worn on Wednesday and took care not to put on too little or too much. He gave himself one final appraisal in the mirror before walking out of the door, seeing how his tailored suit fit perfectly over his wide shoulders, buttoned neatly at his trim waist and set his own olive skin off exotically. In a dark blue or black suit that contrasted his skin, Salim could pass as an Italian, maybe even a Slav. But in olive, he had the unmistakable warm glow that only an Arab of medium skin has.
The morning's work went well, and by 12:30, Salim had quite an appetite. He phoned his secretary and cancelled his order-in lunch. He called Taylor shortly afterwards and headed out for a quick lunch to his favorite roof-top cafe. At 1:30, he looked at his watch, wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin and left the cafe. As he emerged from the building, Taylor held the door open to the backseat of the car, and Salim climbed in. Taylor got in the front seat and drove, turning the car once again away from the center of town.
Salim inhaled deeply and savored the atmosphere of the back seat. It was cool, and smelled of the leather on the seats and the musk on his suit. He placed his hand on the seat next to him, the palm down and the fingers spread and pressed into the leather. He wondered where she had sat the last time she rode in this car. He wondered what the look on her face would be when she sat down and saw Salim there. Salim tried to picture his teacher's smile, not the formal one she gave him every day, but the real one he saw her give to the secretary once. The friendly one, the soft one, the one where her lips actually parted instead of staying pressed politely over her teeth.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, thinking of nothing in particular, content to breathe and feel and anticipate. With his eyes still closed, Salim felt the car slow as it pulled into the teacher's driveway. He listened as Taylor opened his door and stepped out, and then listened to the sound of his footsteps go fading into the distance. There were a few minutes of silence, and then the sounds of footsteps crunching back towards the car. Salim turned expectantly towards the door and watched from behind the tinted glass as the driver reached for the handle. The door opened and Salim looked away as his teacher sat down, with her head still turned towards the driver. She was saying thank you. Salim cleared his throat.
The teacher turned suddenly and saw him, and Salim thought he saw the tiniest glimpse of something unpleasant. Alarm, was it? Or was it fear? Salim smiled graciously and said hello. She returned the greeting nervously, simultaneously moving farther away in her seat and smoothing the skirt over her knees. Salim straightened in his seat and pulled his knees closer together.
"I apologize for surprising you." Salim said smoothly, "I had an appointment before this and there was not enough time to drop me at the office and then pick you up."
"Oh?" she said in a strangely flat voice, "I called earlier and your secretary said you were out to lunch."
Salim, an experienced liar, laughed and waved his hand as if shooing away the misunderstanding. "Even lunch is an appointment for me, I had to schedule it three days in advance." He chuckled at his own joke, and the teacher smiled, but with her lips still pressed over her teeth.
"It is a cozy house that you have," Salim said after they had driven a few minutes in heavy silence, "the perfect size for just two or three people."
The teacher nodded, still looking out of the window. Salim turned slightly in his seat towards the teacher and said, "Do you live alone?"
He watched the teacher's profile as she blinked slowly, and then turned her body away from the window and towards him. "Yes, I live alone."
"I hope I am not rude for asking, but what brings you to this city so far from your home?"
"Many things," the teacher said without elaborating. Then she quickly looked up and turned the question back onto Salim. "And you?"
"I am here for my work," Salim said proudly, "Sometimes here, sometimes Berlin, often London, Madrid, Tokyo, I am more there than here these days."
"How often do you travel?" she said, repeating a question from last week's grammar lesson.
"You know as well as I do how many classes I missing these days. It is rare that I should have four lessons in a row. For that I apologize."
"Do you enjoy it?" she asked. It was yet another grammar-book question.
"It is tiring sometimes, one wishes that he could settle quietly someplace, but he wishes this only sometimes. At other times, it is very enjoyable."
The teacher launched a barrage of polite but impersonal questions at Salim all the way until the moment the car stopped before the glass tower that his office was located in. Taylor opened the door for her, and then for Salim, and they walked together to the elevator. Salim's mobile phone went off just as he was stepping into the elevator after his teacher, and he decided to take the call in the lobby and allow the teacher to go up before him.
He finished the phone call and went up in the elevator. This public elevator took him only as far as the 31st floor, where his company headquarters were located. Once there, he took another elevator, a private one that led up four floors and opened only to his office. When he arrived, his teacher was already seated primly in the chair on the other side of his desk, with books and papers laid out for the lesson. Salim said hello, and his teacher said, "Shall we begin?"
Salim got one 'good' and a nod at the end of his homework. The rest of the lesson was complex, and it was difficult for him to keep up. By the end, Salim had given himself a headache trying to digest all of the new grammar rules and long vocabulary words that his teacher had presented.
At 3:02, the driver knocked on the office door. The teacher shook her watch out of her sleeve, glanced at it and then closed her book. She assigned Salim homework, said good-bye and then left before Salim could respond.
As Salim numbly closed his book and gathered the notes in front of him, he realized what his teacher had done. In the car, instead of giving him a chance to direct the conversation, she had questioned him continually, about unimportant and impersonal things and robbed him of his chance to ask her anything personal or unrelated to English grammar. During the lesson, she had overwhelmed him with complicated lessons and rapid-fire questions about various grammar rules he was supposed to have memorized. She was in control again, and there was no mistaking that she had asserted her authority on purpose. Salim had lost the upper hand. He had also dropped his pen four times, splattering ink on one of his books.
On Sunday evening, Salim met Robert at a dinner hosted by a common business connection. "You look lovely this evening, my dear," Robert said, mocking him good-naturedly, "With your fair brows pushed together into a most charming state of distress. Your velvet eyes glazed with a far-away kind of look. It must be a matter of the heart then," Robert sighed dramatically, placing his hand over his chest.
Salim put his fork down and swallowed hard on his steak. "I beg your pardon!"
"Come dear, you can tell Uncle Robert, who's the foolish fellow who's broken your heart?"
Salim wiped his mouth with his napkin and stared at Robert with narrowed eyes. Robert noted the lack of real fire beneath the harsh gaze, and pushed forward.
"So you can tell me about Hannah and Eva, but not this one? And who was that German woman last time, the one with big teeth?"
Here Salim snorted and laughed into his napkin, losing all pretense of anger. "That was Gertrude," he said, recovering, "and her teeth were not so big."
"Gertrude..." Robert mused, "That's right. I should've remembered her name since it does rhyme protrude."
Salim covered his eyes with his hand as Robert laughed openly at his own joke. When he was finished, he wiped imaginary tears from his eyes and then leaned forward, speaking to Salim in a low and earnest voice. "Out with it then. Have you finally loved and lost your secretary?"
Salim shook his head.
"Good, I may have her then?"
"What does it matter to you Robert, you have a dozen stories of romance on a weekly basis. Tell me one of yours."
Here Robert straightened suddenly in his chair and held his head high, his chin out challengingly. "A true gentleman never speaks of such things."
"But I should speak of them?"
"You heathen Arab, you're no gentleman!"
"Nor you, English infidel."
The conversation deteriorated into an exchange of racial slurs, and the night ended with a few off-key songs in the back seat of Salim's car. The next morning Salim's alarm clock went off at seven, and as the electronic siren reverberated painfully in his sore head, he toyed with the idea of going in to work late. Ms. Alice Farr was an excellent secretary, she could come up with a hundred ways of placating neglected clients.
(Mr. Umari is in a private meeting, but he told me you might call, sir, and asked me to inform you that he would get in touch with you as soon as possible, as he is very eager to talk to you. He will call you as soon as he is able. Of course sir. Yes, yes.)
Salim slapped the alarm clock and pushed his face deeper into his pillow. He was still in bed when his mobile phone went off at 9:05, trilling Beethoven's Ode to Joy in progressively louder tones. He fumbled for the right button, he finally pushed it and said, "Hello?" It was his secretary.
"Good Morning Mr.Umari, Mr. De La Rosa has called for you twice since 8:30 and Mr. Robert Spenser left a message for you at 8:40. Shall I read it to you?"
Salim mumbled the affirmative.
"The message reads: Sincerest condolences on the loss of the aforementioned broken body part. Take two strong doses of Gertrude and call me in the morning- Doctor Robert."
Last night's memory was fuzzy, what was Robert talking about? A broken body part? Salim rubbed his eyelids with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand as he tried to recall the evening. His secretary waited patiently on the line.
It was coming back now, what was it that Robert had said? Someone had broken his heart? Salim suddenly remembered the conversation and the evening he spent fretting about his teacher…his teacher! She would be coming today! This was Monday afternoon, and his homework had not been done and now he had slept in and wasted what little time he had to do it. He gasped aloud.
"Sir? Is everything all right?"
"Alice, Send Taylor immediately to me. Postpone my calls, tell them I am in a conference until 10:30."
"Yes sir." Salim disconnected the phone and threw off his covers. He washed his face hastily but did not shave. He ran into his closet and grabbed a simple but pricey black suit. He put it on quickly, pocketed his mobile phone and ran out to the elevator.
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