A Girl Like That(47)

The girl, as expected, had different plans from the mother: i luv u n wil run away wid u, farhan, she texted me one day.

I never wrote back—not that I was really worried about entrapment or anything like that. I simply found someone else to e-mail. I almost always did.

Bilal said that girls had this crappy sense of entitlement when it came to being treated “right” by guys. “You have to see how far you can push them,” he said. “How much they will put up with before they tell you to back off. You can be really surprised by the lengths a girl will go to when it comes to pleasing a guy she likes.”

The girl from the deli, however, was different from the get-go. The way she walked a little ahead of me, as if she didn’t care whether I was following her or not—as if she was sure I would follow her—the way she stopped in front of my car—exactly my car, even though there was another black Beamer parked on the street outside. She stared at me again with a slight frown.

“Where do you want me to—”

“Not now.” Her voice was low and curt. “There’s a man watching us from the store. Be an elder brother, Rizvi. Pretend I’m Asma. Open the car and let’s get out of here.”

She’s playing your game, Farhan miyan, I could hear Bilal say in my head.

But the way she said my name, Rizvi, like she knew me the way Abdullah knew me. The way she knew enough not to get breathy and excited the way most girls I went out with did—at least not outside the car where anyone could see us. For a second I wondered if she was that chick Abdullah had been telling me about, the one who broke his heart along with his ego.

A slight smile hovered on her lips. “Scared, Rizvi? Maybe I should walk home.”

And in that moment neither Abdullah nor Bilal mattered anymore.

“I don’t scare easily,” I said.

*

Once inside the car though, I didn’t ask her where she wanted to go. I got the sense that she didn’t really want to go home anyway. Or maybe it was another game of push—testing her limits, seeing what it would take to freak her out.

A few kilometers down the road, the game began. “Corniche first,” she said. “It’s usually quiet in the afternoons. Good for a smoke.”

I said nothing and fiddled with the controls of the radio until I found a station playing some Calvin Harris remix. I wanted to see if she was like Nadia, if she would get pissed when I didn’t reply.

She didn’t. Maybe she simply trusted me. Maybe she could see through the game. Maybe both.

I pulled up to a parking spot parallel to the shore on the North Corniche, next to the mosque I used to visit as a boy.

I offered her a cigarette from my pack.

“Excellent.” The lighter sparked and the lower half of her face glowed orange for a brief moment. “So what kind of fridge do you have at home, Rizvi?”

Ignoring the question, I plucked a cigarette from the pack and lit up. “I thought you were gonna tell me more about your boyfriend back there.”

“Porus?” She rolled her eyes. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

I shrugged and exhaled cigarette smoke. “If you say so. I wouldn’t want to be the proverbial bone in the meat of someone else’s relationship.”

There was surprise in her laughter, a suggestion of genuine amusement. “Good one, Rizvi,” she said. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What kind of fridge do you have at home?”

“Before I answer your weird question, I’d like to know your name. Unless”—I leaned closer—“your question is simply an excuse to see where I live.”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous.” The smoke she blew in my direction stung my eyes. I leaned back again. “If we’re stopped by a muttawa or some other stick-wielding authority figure, we will obviously need to lie and say that we’re brother and sister. In which case, my name will be Asma Rizvi, not Zarin Wadia, which I will tell them before they whisk us off to separate areas for interrogation purposes and ask basic questions for which both of us should be able to give the same answers if—”

“Wait,” I interrupted, her words finally registering in my brain. “What’s your name again?”

She tilted her head sideways and smirked, almost as if she’d expected me to ask the question. “Zarin Wadia.”

“Would you by any chance be the same Zarin my friend Abdullah keeps talking about?”

“Maybe I am. Is there a problem?”

There wasn’t. Not really. It didn’t bother me that this girl had gone out with Abdullah in the past or that she’d unceremoniously dumped him over the phone a couple of weeks before. When it came to girls, Abdullah and I had a deal: sisters were off-limits, but not exes. Especially hot exes. I studied Zarin’s face—her short black curls, the smooth hollow at the base of her neck, the unusual paleness of her skin highlighted even more by the delicate blush on her cheeks. What her motives were for going out with me, I did not know. Then again, I realized, I did not care.

“Whirlpool,” I said finally. “The fridge I have at home, that is. It’s rather big. White, maybe off-white.”

“White or off-white? Be specific.”

She went through nearly three cigarettes while I shifted uncomfortably behind the wheel and answered questions about my parents, about Asma, about my aunt who gave Hindi tuitions in a building across from the academy’s girls’ section, even the name of the convenience store across from my apartment complex.