Jabbour Douaihy - June Rain

He did get caught a few times, however, like the day he went to Calabrese Restaurant and saw the plump redhead he’d met a month earlier and then shunned. When he saw her there having dinner he begged the earth to crack open and swallow him up, because she caught him doing his same act. He read it in her eyes as she watched how he coaxed the new girl he’d just escorted to the same corner of the restaurant he’d sat her down in. She could probably even predict which menu items he was going to suggest to his new little friend. ‘I highly recommend the fillet of sea bass in bitter lemon sauce…’

In that way, Eliyya became versed in the art of introductions of all kinds, including the art of persuading young women to come to his apartment, which was also adorned with various allurements, such as paintings, small statues and select furnishings. The stories he told and the details he gave to his ‘prey’ opened the floodgates of her imagination and fed her desire to discover the secret of this slender Easterner… The way he postponed going into the bedroom at first had the effect of putting his friend at ease as she attributed his restraint to his refined manners. But this delay tactic of his quickly transformed into the fear that Eliyya was merely delaying a test he would not perform nearly as well on as the preparations for it.

He hadn’t yet reached the age of settling down, but rather continued to eye up university girls a decade or decade and a half younger than him. He wound a rope around himself and never cut the cord, wound it tighter and tighter until he nearly choked, finally forcing him to yank his neck out of the noose he’d made with his own hands and run like the wind. ‘Escaping is two thirds of valour.’ He never knew how to end a conversation. He would excuse himself and make things up and invent all kinds of fibs, because he was incapable of severing any relationship, no matter how short-lived it was. If the other person didn’t bid him goodbye, he was no good at getting out of the mess. The moment he got the feeling one of his conquests wanted to move in with him and cling to his side because this Eastern man with the eloquent tongue had provided her in her time of need with the emotional support she so desperately required, he would run like the devil as if his rear end was on fire. He went as far as moving out of his apartment and moving to another one elsewhere in New York for fear that he would be forced to take in the Filipino girl who was intent on getting to know him fully; he also changed his phone number.

Over time he exhausted all his tricks and started feeling like he wanted to retire, that is until that day at one of his favourite hunting grounds, the department of Middle East Studies and Semitic Languages. He was sweet-talking the department secretary, Miss Davis, when he caught sight of the blonde American girl. There wasn’t anything in her eyes that indicated she was lost in the big city, and that was what attracted him to her. She seemed to be a child of the city. He imagined it: a happy childhood, her parents’ only child, she lived in the city and had sex without giving it much thought. He followed her into the library and managed to sit down beside her. He waited for her to take a peek at the book he was holding, A Perverse History of the Human Heart , another item in his toolkit. He waited for her to make a move before turning towards her and saying in one sentence that he thought she might be a student in the Arabic department, but he doubted she would accept his invitation to dinner the following Tuesday, bent as she might be on upholding her reputation as one of those young Baptist women born into a respectable and upright Baltimore family who tried to restrict herself from life’s pleasures. At this point he picked up another book he had in front of him for the girl to see the title, Dictionary of Small Pleasures , about going out into nature in the springtime to pick blackberries in season without worrying, just this one time during the year, about clothes getting dirty.

He said it all without taking a breath. Then he followed it with a nervous laugh with which he wanted to suggest that he was only pretending to play the role of the skilled ladies’ man who deployed prefabricated moves on the opposite sex, that in reality he wasn’t like that. His game came at the right time. The blonde was in an easy-going mood and didn’t correct his mistakes but rather responded to him as she was supposed to. ‘A French restaurant would be good. Come pick me up by taxi even if you have a nice car because that doesn’t impress me. You can start waiting for me out front, at 2 Arlington Avenue, as of eight o’clock. It might be a half hour before I come out, which is something I do on purpose to test your patience and desire to see me.’

She, too, capped off what she said with a studied laugh with which she made him realise that she wasn’t actually agreeing to go out with him; she was just pretending to go along with him. The game was exciting for both of them: ten minutes or more of a whispered parody in the silent library, while some of the people reading shot disapproving glances in their direction, until they finally agreed, as is expected when playing with fire, upon an actual date. Once it was concluded, he stood up from his chair in a celebratory manner with no concern for the groans of the other patrons, shook her hand and introduced himself, signalling, perhaps, that it was time to start being serious.

He told her his name was Eliyya, which made her think he was a Jew from some Middle Eastern country. She walked out of the library with him and they passed through the reception area under Miss Davis’s reproachful glare. He didn’t ever tell her he’d gained information about her identity and family background from the department secretary. He already knew her name: Heather Pollock, daughter of the Reverend Henry Pollock, Jr.

He took her to a French restaurant — and what a restaurant it was! ‘ Le Relais d’Arcachon ,’ he said, laughing. ‘French cuisine is one of the keys to seducing American women. Its effect on them is scientifically proven; tests verify it.’ He would run his experiment on her while she was in a state of submission. He didn’t hide his game. He admitted to everything he could be accused of. He would mess up the game and yet continue to play it. He fed her small doses of information about himself while she kept shouting at him, ‘Where are you from, for God’s sake?’

He smiled as if he’d succeeded in getting her right where he wanted. He took a long drink from his glass and a new kind of look came into his eyes — a mixture of pride and longing. He told her a lot of things, among them that the night made him anxious, especially Sunday night. Then he tied his white napkin around his neck, looked at the wine swirling in the glass he held with two fingers, closed his eyes and sniffed the wine as he stirred the glass before tasting it and spouting off expressions that sounded like they came straight out of the dining section of The New York Times . He requested that the waiter ask the chef if he still made the duck in orange sauce that he said had become a very popular dish. The kitchen manager came personally to answer his questions. It appeared to have all been set up in advance. He asked him about the prawns and whether they were freshly caught. He and his date argued back and forth. He made her laugh. She let her guard down and surrendered to having a good time. She had only one question left, which she kept repeating like a dumbfounded fool. ‘Who are you? Who are you?’

And he would keep at it, more and more. She’d burst out laughing hysterically, barely able to say, ‘Stop. Stop for God’s sake! Who are you?’

She described him in a letter to her friend as early forties, slim, eyes sparkling with intelligence. If you saw him on Sunday morning roaming in the streets before he put his contact lenses in, you might think he’s a novelist researching the subject of his next book about street people who depend on welfare and about the broken-hearted poor.