Noon Tuesday, June 10th, 2025

Lyrou met Marc at a nearby board game café before lunch, in a floral-patterned Ponte mini shift one-piece pocket dress and Italian leather & eco-knit heeled mules. “You look good,” he complimented her.

Marc looked very good, Lyrou thought, like nothing could ruin his day. Would she? After ordering their drinks, taking their seats, and a short exchange about the atmosphere of the coffee shop, they started a friendly chess match. As they took their turns, Marc began to share plans to go together for a neighborhood-wide scavenger hunt: “They’ve got 20 or so couples signed up on the online form. We follow the clues along the way to find filming locations for these hit sitcoms, and we take selfies reenacting scenes. If we win, we…”

Looking into her phone, Lyrou interrupted him; she had just checked the forecast for the date he mentioned. “It’ll be sweltering. I’m sorry.”

Marc, biting his thumb, said, “Oh? Good call. That would be a bad date, racing around out in the blaze.” He took his turn on the board.

Lyrou took her turn as soon as he’d moved his piece. “What are your plans? I mean the things you’d be doing with or without me.”

Marc took her to mean she wanted more insight into his daily-him, nothing he’d searched out to try and make-busy fun for them. “Ah, right. Let me think.” He moved a pawn.

Lyrou moved her pawn. “Was the scavenger hunt something you were all in for?”

He waved his hand in the negative. Marc thought to explain to Lyrou a couple of comedy shows he was behind the curtain on: “Darren, old bastard, he’s having a ‘comedian funeral.’ The premise is that every comedian becomes unfunny, the greats included, especially the greats, and instead of letting them tarnish their own reputation with corny sets, we let them die; we give them a wake. So Darren will lie in an open casket in a stained-glass funeral home we rented while a dozen of us take turns busting his balls, streaming.”

Lyrou giggled pitifully at the thought of it. “Normal elderly break their femur and get put in a wheelchair; grey comedians break their humerus and get put in a casket.”

Marc smiled. “It has to be done so we can remember them for who they really were, at their best. Then I’m off to help this guy Corey. He’s doing a stand-up show called ‘Clobbering Down’… you can guess.”

Lyrou took a sip and thought about it. “Like punching down but harder?”

Marc put all ten fingers together at the tips. “Corey is the most privileged it gets. His great-grandparents left their names engraved across South Carolina and Georgia. Confederates, tobacco plantations, that whole world. My job is to make sure his jokes don’t try to play it safe. If you’re going to punch down, you had better just clobber down; nobody will laugh if they can tell you’re chicken and you aren’t going for the throat. But if you’re going to stand from above and hock wads on the heads of the disadvantaged, it had better be smart-funny too. You have to tell the jokes that make a person not want to laugh, because ‘fuck you for making fun of people like me, but that’s just funny,’ and they can’t help it.”

Lyrou shook her head and grinned. “That… that would be a show.”

Marc shrugged. “Be there, or be there for one of them. Please.”

Lyrou interrupted him, sans segue, with a sigh and a sad smile, “It sounds spectacular; you outdo yourself.”

Marc lit up so handsomely. “Outdo myself? I haven’t heard such high praise since… I guess since flying out of Charles de Gaulle carrying my life with me.”

Lyrou, with a curious tone, asked, “What was your most exquisite experience when in Paris?”

“I was privileged to do work in La Grotte du Renne and La Chapelle-aux-Saints. I dream of revisiting those places,” he said with commitment.

Unfamiliar with these places, and surprised at herself that she’d not recognize locations in her home country when speaking to an American, Lyrou asked, “Where? Qu’est-ce qui était spécial là-bas?”

With a wide smile, Marc held his arms out and apart in a gesture of spaciousness. “Magnificent expansive caves full of Neanderthal remains, and that’s just the appetizer.”

Giggling, Lyrou bit her lip and asked, “Bien sûr, je comprends. Did you fall in love with a cave-woman cutie there?”

Hand tapping his heart, Marc affirmed, “Oh sure. None specifically, but I did fall in love with Neanderthals collectively.”

“How did grunting shelf-brows enchant a genteel sophisticat?” Lyrou played with her hair, twirling it as she took a slow sip of her coffee.

Inhaling deeply and looking out the window at passersby, Marc thought over his response. “Because… because Neanderthals were macro-inventors, not merely adapting what was previously created but mind-birthing what had never existed. They predate Homo sapiens in using birch tar as the first real adhesive, making composite tools, using awls and sewing needles as they were first with sewn clothes, their flutes were the first musical instruments on Earth, their art both illustrative and carved was the advent of all art, they made habitual, sophisticated use of controlled fires for heating, cooking, and hunting, they were the originals in personal adornments and using pigments, and introduced the profound practice of burying the dead. Bags, hair combs, footwear, and other basics modern people might never think go back so far were invented by another species.”

“How intelligent. I’d no idea.” Lyrou was sincerely amazed.

“Neanderthal brains were larger than modern people’s brains by 125 cubic centimeters.” Marc held his hands lightly around his head to show the gap in cranial capacity.

“I would’ve thought the opposite; brutish cannibals is how I recall their portrayal.” Lyrou looked aside, remembering lycée science classes.

Giving the table a knock with his knuckles, Marc said, “Oh, the irony. It was we who were the brutish cannibals. The bones of Neanderthals have been found by forensics with cut and percussion marks that match our progenitors’ lithic implements and meat-cleaving techniques for defleshing and marrow extracting, trousse du boucher de sapiens.”

“We ate them? Or are you joking again?” Lyrou snickered.

“No joke. To be fair to our uncouth predecessors, under their conditions, hunger is hunger and food is food.” Marc shrugged.

“Ah? Is that why the big-brains went extinct?” Lyrou leaned forward, looking into his eyes.

Marc gave a polite shake of his head, tapping his knee. “Perhaps that’s a small part of the reason, but it’s more to do with us sexing them to death. As humans migrated out through the then green Sinai and the then narrower semi-land bridge straits of Gibraltar and also Bab-el-Mandeb, we bred with them over 8,000 years until they were gradually diluted, and are today no more than 2% of our genome.”

“What a way to perish. What might’ve been had we ravenously hungry sex-maniacs not migrated into their habitat.” Lyrou smiled.

Marc gave a thoughtful sigh, adjusting his posture and raising his index finger. “Honestly, Neanderthals might’ve advanced more quickly than our prototype had they been uninterrupted and unabsorbed by wave after wave of us tall, dome-headed intruders. With the Ice Age over, they would have almost certainly become agriculturalists; out of necessity, given the extinction of the woolly megafauna they subsisted on, and possibly due to the cognitive prowess they demonstrated during the long deep freeze that forged them.”

Lyrou, with dreamy eyes, asked, “Did Neanderthals have marriage?”

“Now that’s an amazing question.” Marc clasped his hands in wonder.

Lyrou, with a somber face, said, “But Marc… well. You showed me an unforgettable night out. Unfortunately for us, as much as I’d like to see where a relationship with you would go, I can’t schedule another date with you.”

Marc paused, neglecting that it was his turn to move. “What’s wrong? Did I upset you? Was it my idiotic humor?”

Lyrou shook her head. “You’re a funny comedian. Don’t stifle that part of you, whether you bust up a packed stadium audience one day or if you’re the only person alive who gets your own jokes. That’s the silly, sexy you that you owe yourself. It’s nothing you did wrong.” She looked at him, a touch regretful that she’d have to let him go so early.

Marc leaned back, turned his gaze out the window at the passersby on the sidewalk. “I think I know why, but give me an explanation.”

She reached into her purse, pulled her closed hand out, then opened it to reveal her brilliant, heavy ring, taking it with her opposite hand so Marc could witness it, and slid it onto her finger. “It’s my marriage. I want to fulfill the vows we made. While I thought a new start was what I needed, and I was right, it’s to be a new start with my one man. If I lose him after everything, my mangled heart will give out,” Lyrou said sincerely.

Marc knit his brow, strands of bangs falling over his forehead. “I was just too impatient. I should have stood back and let you…”

Lyrou gently shook her head. “Non.”

Marc continued, “I was too forward and too eager; I didn’t give you the space and time to process your marriage, your exit strategy, and…”

Lyrou rolled her eyes. “You won’t miss me when finals are around the corner, and the freshmen are uncrossing their legs for A’s.”

Marc leaned in quickly, wide-eyed, voice lowered. “That was my bad bed-banter, that’s all. You didn't believe that, did you?"

Lyrou spoke over him, “Non! Marc, I’m giving you a sincere me-not-you, and you’re making it about you.”

Marc froze, put his finger to his chin. “I am? Am I? Yes, you’re right. I am. This is concerning.”

Lyrou grinned. “You’ve shown me…” She held her hands out high and wide, “… you and your amazing existence. But Marc, I can’t part with my spouse now. I can’t say I’ll feel that way in the future, but I can’t ask you to wait for me either. I think, I know that this is it. This is where we part paths.” She looked at him with a tear jittering in the corner of her eye, and smeared it away with her pinky-knuckle.

Marc and Lyrou sat silent for a moment. And then he exhaled through his nose, rubbed his hands together, as if washing, then opened them as if releasing a dove. “If that’s your true will and if he’s your true man, then that’s as if esoterically ordained by the comets, planets, and sidereal bodies.”

“A scientist bowing out to astral augury? You are a comedian.” Lyrou smiled big, looking up at Marc from under her brow, her hair falling over one eye. “Merci, Marc.”

Marc sat with his fingertip to his lip, foot resting up on his opposite knee. Lyrou couldn’t tell if he was taking it badly, if he was deep in thought, or both.

Softly, Lyrou said, “Marc?”

“Yes?” he acknowledged.

“What’s on your mind?” She turned her head curiously.

Taking a sip of his latte, he thought a second more and then let it out. “Can you do one favor, then?”

Lyrou was puzzled, her eyebrows knit up. “A… favor?”

“Yeah… one.” Marc smiled, perhaps shy to ask and expecting she’d turn it down. “I have a friend who I’m obliged to introduce you to. He bumped into us at the end of the play, as he’d been in the audience also. His name is Felix Bianchi. Dr Bianchi. I was his assistant in several courses.”

“I recall several faces kissing my hand that evening, but I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you which was Dr Bianchi. What’s his discipline?” Lyrou was game.

“That’s swell. He’s an anthropologist and an avid historian. He almost never talks about women, but these last days he won’t shut up about…” Marc grinned.

“About?” she pressed.

“About you.” Marc laughed a bit.

Squinting and grinning, Lyrou said, “Oh, Marc. What’s this? This is strange.”

“Uh, is it? You’re right, yes, it is. But you would really help me. You really would,” he pleaded.

“Explain.” Lyrou took a sip of her iced mocha.

Tapping the king piece, Marc said, “I owe him; he’s my maestro. And he’ll be disappointed if I cannot get him so much as a word with you.”

Willing but uncertain, Lyrou asked, “What does he have to say to me?”

“A sort of gig. But I can’t represent him better than the doctor himself. Let’s find out together. He has classes all day, but in an hour he has an interlude. Can I text him that we’re coming?” Marc stretched back to reach into his jeans pocket and pop his phone out.

Thinking it all unusual but not unreasonable, Lyrou said with a can-do spirit in her voice, “I can talk to him.”

Marc lit up. “Brilliant! I’ll let him know. Shall we?” And they strolled together out of the café.

In the ride-share, Marc spoke at length about Dr Bianchi’s world-spanning career. He’d written the authoritative books on several remote endangered cultures; he’d led teams that had unearthed lost artifacts and overturned historical consensus; he’d been interviewed for televised documentaries, and he was an astounding polyglot. “The intellect he possesses, phew! He was our savior during the anti-war protests last semester. The administration was on a mission from its wealthy donors to crush those student demos.”

Running her finger along her seatbelt and cradling her purse on her lap, Lyrou said, “I remember that in the news. It was getting out of hand.”

Marc patted his palm on his heart. “I myself was arrested and thwacked over the back with a baton. When I showed Dr Bianchi my bruises, he got this fire in him.”

“What did he do?” Lyrou asked, captivated.

“The students love him; so at his recommendation they took a deal. He asked the administration to offer venues for popular anti-war speakers, and the student protestors wouldn’t disrupt courses. He talked to some of the donors he knew personally, reminding them that socio-political fire was part of the whole higher education experience, like when they were students there during the Iraq or Vietnam Wars," Marc recounted with admiration.

“Bravo,” Lyrou said, her interest piqued. “That must have taken guts.”

Lyrou had gone from apprehensive about this meeting to intimidated. “Marc! What have you gotten me into?”

“What do you mean?” Marc guffawed.

“What can I say that will interest a man like that!?” Lyrou asked humbly.

Marc thought for a second, then said, “Yes, say yes.”

Lyrou laughed, looking out her backseat window at the passing traffic, then back to Marc’s eyes. “Yes to what?”

With a smile, Marc said, “We’ll find out.”

As they disembarked the vehicle, it began to rain, and Lyrou huddled up on Marc’s arm under his umbrella as he walked her from the ride-share across the campus and into the anthropology wing of an octagonal brutalist slab of a building. They navigated the halls and came to a large studio. “This is his workshop; come in. We’ll wait for him here.”

Lyrou hesitated to enter. “Are you sure that it’s OK? I don’t mind waiting in the hall.”

“That’s stupid. Come in, come in.” Marc tugged at her elbow.

Lyrou entered a panoply; the studio was a genie’s trove of odd and fascinating models and replicas of ancient megalithic structures, life-sized prehistoric peoples in mysterious furs, ice age landscape dioramas populated by stampeding wintry-furred graviportals and formidable spear-thrusting simian-faced humanoids of a genus between animal and man, skulls upon hominid skulls lining shelves, plaster footprints with opposable toes, and anthropometric instruments. Lyrou thought how Garin would recognize precisely and fully appreciate everything there, but she regarded much of it with marvel. She found a heavy metallic tray; in it a line of glass human eyes organized by shade. She read the captions beneath each: “It’s in German.”

Marc looked down over her shoulder, with a loud, nervous laugh, pointing to a Hakenkreuz in a Reichsadler on the underside of the box. “Made in the pseudo-science of the Third Reich, I give you the legendary Martin-Schultz scale.”

Marc took the box up in his hand and held it up beside Lyrou’s face. His eyes darted between hers and those in the box. “You’re a 13. Such lustrous chatoyancy.”

Lyrou smiled, her attention drawn to a set of quadri-pronged calipers. “A torture device?” She picked it up, held it high, shimmering in the light, and handed it to Marc.

“Not this one.” He raised it over Lyrou’s head, again face to face with her, and then lowered it onto her scalp, its tips entering her hair. “Stay still.” She watched his forearm tendons dance as his fingers articulated, adjusted, and dialed in the calipers until each prong was snugly poking the sides, front, and rear of her head.

“What’s the diagnosis?” Lyrou was tickled, erotic chills running as he read the calibration.

“Mesocephalic.” Marc removed the instrument as if removing a crown, with a slight bow of his head. “Your majesty.” And he smiled.

“Miscephaly? That sounds like an abnormality!” Lyrou burst with laughter.

A mature baritone voice entered the studio, “Vous n’avez aucune déformation. Vous semblez être la fille d’un dieu.”

Marc stood at attention. “Lyrou, the genius who inspired me to return for my PhD, Dr Felix Bianchi. Doctor, presenting Lyrou Sanou.”

Dr Bianchi was striking: close-cropped sides, curly salt-and-pepper hair, a sojourner’s tan and thick white stubble, meaty, hairy forearms popping out of his rolled khaki sleeves, thin golden-framed glasses, a pen in his breast pocket. There was a handsome gruffness to him, tempered by a refined cerebral countenance.

“Dr Bianchi, you have a hint of West African intonation. More than a hint, to be honest.” Lyrou gave her hand in greeting.

With calloused, warm hands, he greeted her, “I picked up my rudimentary French in Africa. Which brings me right to the purpose for which I asked Marc to bring you here. First, I need to get your opinion. Marc, can you dig out that pad and show her?”

“I’m a step ahead of you.” Marc had a touchscreen pad in his hands, and with a swipe of his finger onto the screen came a slideshow. They were photos of rather awfully done clay-like head busts of Sahelian women in what looked to be traditional garb and gaudy orange face markings.

“You want my opinion on these… recreations?” Lyrou looked to Marc, and then to Dr Bianchi.

Dr Bianchi held his hands out in receiving. “Your honest opinion, please.”

“They’re… I suppose they were meant to be stunning but…” Lyrou thought it might be rude.

“But…” Dr Bianchi rolled his hand and nodded.

“They’re ugly. Very ugly,” she said, unvarnished.

“They’re ugly. Yes?” Dr Bianchi seemed upset, but also vindicated.

“Look at their expressions; they’re cross-eyed, and their teeth look like candies falling…” Lyrou covered her mouth, spitting as she laughed, “… huge white candies falling from their lips!”

Marc smiled, suppressing his laughter. “These were professionally commissioned, and that’s what they sent Dr Bianchi.”

Managing his anger but shaking his head and pacing, hands on his waist, Dr Bianchi said, “They sent me these B-movie ghouls to publish in The Journal of Natural Science & Human Societies with my feature article… I can’t do it, Marc.”

“Then can’t you commission another set of busts?” Lyrou asked.

“Not with those kindergarten art school dropouts!” Dr Bianchi glared at the pad with the poorly fashioned busts glaring absurdly back at him.

Marc added, “And there wouldn’t be time. These Picassos took 3 weeks to finish, and the journal is being compiled for publishing as we speak.”

“What can you do?” Lyrou was at a loss.

Dr Bianchi mouthed something, then thought twice. “If I ask, it’s pretentious. Please ask her, Marc.”

“Ask me what?” Lyrou looked to Marc, mouth agape.

“Lyrou, Dr Bianchi unearthed a previously unknown 41,000-year-old culture in the deserts of Azawad, Mali.” Marc offered context.

Excitedly, Dr Bianchi added, “I’ve dubbed them the Tessalit Complex. My discoveries there eclipse everything revealed at Tassili n’Ajjer!”

Marc continued, “That’s the other big famous dig site, not a low bar, by the way. Among other misadventures, Dr Bianchi was kidnapped from his lodgings in Timbuktu, spirited away blindfolded and cuffed in the back of a bouncing machine gun-mounted pickup truck, and held hostage by Jihadist insurgents on suspicion of being a CIA spy.”

“They were going to put me before a shariah court and have me beheaded if Marc hadn’t petitioned a Tuareg tribal elder to radio the zealots at the last minute and vouch for me. I’d have been internet snuff.” Dr Bianchi let out a brief chuckle of grief.

With genuine concern in his eyes, Marc elaborated, “He went through that trouble to give voice to our amazing lost ancestors. This special 20-page article will introduce an extinct people to the scientific world.”

“My Tessalit people have waited desiccated beneath the Sahara sands for 526 lifetimes. They can’t be introduced like that!” Dr Bianchi stood his ground.

With a hand on his shoulder, Marc steadied his teacher. “Calm down, she might help us.”

“Yes, right, my apologies.” Dr Bianchi tugged on his vest, composing himself.

Marc couldn’t help but stare seductively into Lyrou’s eyes. “We need a live model.”

“A live model? Do you mean… me?” Lyrou pointed inwardly at herself.

Dr Bianchi waved his hand over his face. “You have the region-specific features to represent the Tessalit people. Our forebears would slap on the labels proto-Caucasoid or Boskopesque. And… and… by that they’d mean large-brained, gracile people, long-limbed, fine-featured, broad upper faces, prominent cheekbones, narrower lower faces and reduced prognathism.”

"Few women resemble them like you do, looking as good as you do." Marc quickly added, “You would draw the readers’ attention, to put it mildly.”

Lyrou sat on the nearest short wooden stool and thought. Marc and Dr Bianchi stood waiting, quiet in the studio, a hundred or so primitive skulls with their desolate eye sockets for silent witnesses. She looked to Marc, then Dr Bianchi. “I’ll do it.”

Dr Bianchi rejoiced. “You will? Marvelous!”

Professional in tone, Marc clarified, “I’ll text you the digital signature form while you remove your cosmetics, jewelry, and hairpins… if you would. There’s no publishing a pixel without that.”

Dr Bianchi looked around for a wipe of some kind. “I was sure there were wipes over…”

“That’s good, I have makeup wipes.” Lyrou cleaned her face bare, then took off her wedding ring, necklace, and pink-gold earrings Garin had given her. Off came the bracelet with her family’s names inscribed on mosaic beads threaded together with her name-beads that they had made and birthday-gifted to her. She put them in her purse, followed by the pins from her hair.

Dr Bianchi busied himself raising a screen backdrop behind Lyrou on her stool, a high-resolution rocky desert scene. “It looks better after it’s been through photo editing.”

Meanwhile, Marc set up a camera on a tripod, then positioned a couple of tall vertical lights on either side. One shone yellow and the other red; together they had the ambient effect of a campfire.

Dr Bianchi returned with a box. “These headdresses are faithful reproductions."

Then Marc returned with another box. “Tessalit women wore shells and bits of amber just like these.”

Dr Bianchi returned with yet another. “Animal furs for the cool desert night and sun-protection in the searing day.”

“Can you hold this?” Marc gave Lyrou a bone-tipped wooden spear. “Upper Paleolithic force equalizer.”

It was heavier than she expected and strained her wrist a bit to steady it upright. “Were the Tessalit women hunters?”

Dr Bianchi needed little prompting to expound on his project, his people: “Hunters and defenders. They lived in tents made of animal skins when on the move, and in rocky overhang shelters depending on the season. They were tough women; they protected their children from hyenas, wild dogs, lions, leopards, snakes, and giant birds prowling the skies.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to live then, no matter how tasty Neanderthals were,” Lyrou smirked at Marc.

Dr Bianchi clapped loudly with a toothy smile. “I see you’ve told her what you and your team found in Layer X of the Châtelperronian level.”

“No, my team didn’t dredge up anything to call home about; it was already well substantiated, and we…” Marc shrank.

With a scowl, Dr Bianchi raised his hand in a halt gesture. “Stop that. You and your crew added the final proofs that shut up the skeptical hold-outs once and for all. Marc is humble in a field of braggarts like me. Get cocky; you’ve much to stand on.”

“Thank you, professor.” Marc sat beside Lyrou and showed her in his left hand a wooden color palette. “The Tessalit wore red and yellow ochre body paint, which we have here. I can apply it as Dr Bianchi thinks they would have likely applied it.”

“Ochre?” Lyrou was amused.

Marc prepared the color. “Red hematite. Yellow goethite. White clay. Charcoal black. They ground them on dedicated stones and mixed them with fat, marrow, plant gums or water depending upon purpose: sun protection, hide preparation, adhesives, perhaps insect deterrence.”

Lyrou held still, face forward. With his thumb and fingertips, Marc fastidiously pressed dots and traced lines over her forehead, her cheeks, outlining her lips. Dr Bianchi carefully clipped small seashells onto her earlobes. “But thanks to them surviving then, by dint of their intelligence, the inviolable line of our predecessors persevered, and now we can be here today.” Dr Bianchi stepped back and looked over Lyrou. “Madam, you’re almost a Tessalit woman.”

“Do I look a better restoration than a camp horror, Dr Bianchi?” Lyrou joked, her face now transformed into a tribal mask of red and yellow.

Her joke turned Dr Bianchi thoughtful. “You’ve transported me to a moment in the epochs of humanity that I’ve poured my work into. With you, I’m for the first time face-to-face with these people I’ve studied and fought to give their rightful place in the literature. I’ll become emotional if I go on.” Dr Bianchi put his fist up to his lips.

“Thank you, Lyrou.” Marc poked tiny sharp specks of ochre at Lyrou’s hairline, down to her neck.

“It’s nothing. Am I that accurate of a depiction, or as you said… ‘almost’?” She was now devoted to doing the Tessalit people justice.

Dr Bianchi blurted out, “There are only three minor deviations, but they’re forgivable.”

Furrowing her brow, Lyrou asked, “What are they?” She was disappointed.

Pinching his fingers as he counted, Dr Bianchi explained, “Well, since you ask, we know they wore braids.”

Lyrou, with fascination, said, “Really. I’m stunned at how much could be known about people who left no written accounts. Did you find their hair preserved after so long?”

Marc nerded, “You’re right to doubt. The Venus of Brassempouy, a tusk-ivory figurine unearthed from a cave in your France, is 25,000 years old and is the very earliest indisputable evidence of a braided hairstyle. But we can infer from knots tied in fibrous materials and other cordage that people were braiding hair much, much earlier.”

Dr Bianchi chuckled, “Yes, infer. Marc held the Venus of Brassempouy in his own two hands. How was that, Marc?”

Marc smiled proudly, “I felt the power even through latex gloves.”

Lyrou smiled, without a word; her fingers met and began knotting a single long braid from her temple, resting down the side of her face. In the two minutes it took to finish, Marc and Dr Bianchi further readied the set and the camera for this session. “Done. Is this more like it?”

“You didn’t have to, but that’s a lovely detail,” Dr Bianchi said with approval in his tone.

“And the second inaccuracy?” Lyrou was dedicated.

“Oh? Yes, they wouldn’t have had the convenience of pretty fingernails.”

Marc interjected, “They’re in the shot with the spear shaft, but I can computer-shop them a flesh tone.”

Lyrou wouldn’t have it. “Non, they’re only DIY gel-like premium press-ons that look real.” Lyrou gently peeled and popped them off, collected them, and dropped them into an unzipped side pouch in her purse.

“You’re going above and beyond for this.” Dr Bianchi smiled.

“And the third?” she demanded.

With a nervous laugh, Dr Bianchi said, “Oh? Ah, I forgot. I don’t think there’s a third.”

“You said three inaccuracies.” Lyrou looked down at herself. “The clothes.”

Waving his hands in the negative, Dr Bianchi declined. “Well, I can’t ask that.”

“What would the Tessalit women have worn? I mean besides this fur over my back.” Lyrou pulled at the animal skin.

Dr Bianchi, with his finger to his temple, said, “They were, um, arid hunter-gatherers… they didn’t wear much at all to cover their bodies; they weren’t prudish about…”

“Professor?” Marc objected.

Flustered, Dr Bianchi tapped his foot. “I’m not suggesting she should!”

“You shouldn’t mention it.” Marc protected Lyrou.

Almost sputtering under the excoriation, Dr Bianchi clarified, “No, no… I…”

Raising and waving her hand to stop him there, Lyrou assured the two men, “No. I can do that!”

“Lyrou?” Marc wondered if she was sure.

“I’ve been skipping along nude beaches in Cap d’Agde for a long time. And who will recognize me in this face paint? I’ll be your ornamented odalisque.” Lyrou unbuttoned her one-piece, stood, and pulled it off over her head, standing only in her shoes and grey underwear.

“As you… as you will.” Dr Bianchi and Marc beheld Lyrou as she unhooked her bra and placed it aside out of shot.

“Are the two of you going to petrify right here?” Lyrou grinned, covering nothing.

“I’m speechless.” Dr Bianchi took in the sight of her.

Marc approached, being helpful. “I’ll move your clothes away from the ochre; it does stain.”

Lyrou looked down at herself. “I’ve already got some of it on my belly. Is that OK?”

“Better than OK. Tessalit women would have worn body paint all over themselves; it’s authentic that way,” Dr Bianchi reassured her.

“Really? All over themselves?” Lyrou dabbed her finger into the ochre dish and hesitantly looked for a place on her body to put it.

“Ah, if you make a kind of line across your collar. Old literature would’ve reached for sloppy Khoisan comparisons; visually you might squint enough to think of the Himba for the ochre as our best-but-poor contemporary approximation,” Dr Bianchi instructed.

Lyrou made the motion without yet applying the body paint. “Like this?”

“Yes, but…” Dr Bianchi struggled to show her how the line should be drawn if it were to be done just right.

Marc came forward and dropped to one knee. “May I show you? I’ll be liberal with the color.”

Lyrou put her shoulders back and chest forward. “Please.”

Marc deftly drew an intricately patterned line around Lyrou’s collar; he could see her goosebumps rise, and her carotid artery pulsating. He watched her throat bob as she swallowed, and his gaze went from short glances to unabashed gazing at her breasts as he became so hungry for her.

Marc swiftly went and bent behind the camera, looking expertly at Lyrou. Dr Bianchi whispered his auspicious approval, eyes peering over his glasses. The camera whizzed, capturing her, as Dr Bianchi said, “Lyrou, you’re channeling the apparition of an unnamed woman who had breathed, eaten, and loved in a savage and cruel unrecorded era so, so long ago.”

Marc returned beside Lyrou, placed a feathered headdress atop her, placed the spear aside, and slipped into her hands two chert stones, warning her, “These are scalpel-sharp; you would have used them to lift the meat of fresh kills right from the bone.”

Lyrou held the shiny, smooth implements in a pose as if she might be about to use them, and while she noticed Marc’s eyes and that they were branding her bare body into his memory, she held still and silent while he applied more ochre, now to her arms.

Marc positioned Lyrou’s arm by gently lifting and turning her elbow, and as he applied the ochre, their eyes locked. He could only break away from her when standing to return to the camera. “Please look to your left and a bit up, look startled as if you heard an apex big-cat snarling and sawing in the night… maybe I can get a sexy side profile.”

Lyrou asked, “Sexy? Were Tessalit women sexy?”

“Uh?” Marc, realizing he’d forgotten himself, scratched his head and tried to recover. “Think. Stone Age people had to be sexy, given how few they were, and here we are, their 8 billion posterity. Sex is survival.”

Dr Bianchi, clearing his throat, said, “Marc, in graciousness, Miss Lyrou, I trust the journal will have what it needs. I have a lecture to give, and I mustn’t be so arrogantly tardy to my own course for once. Au revoir.”

“Of course, doctor.” Marc gave a polite wave.

“Au revoir, a pleasure to be of assistance to you.” Lyrou smiled widely and gushed at him as Dr Bianchi removed himself.

Marc called her attention back to the camera. “We’ll do a few more, Lyrou.”

“Yes, as many as needed. What did Tessalit women do with most of their time?”

“Well… like many Upper Paleolithic women, Tessalit women’s remains, upon dental examination, reveal grooved notches around some of their teeth. The grooves were worn by pulling cords through while threading.”

Lyrou posed, speaking softly not to spoil her expression for the shots. “I’ve never heard of that.”

“I could show you. Would you recreate that for the feature?” the orange false-fire light reflected in his eyes.

“If you show me how, as you say, absolument.” Lyrou relaxed on her stool as Marc left his camera.

Marc rummaged in the prop piece boxes they’d brought out for the shoot. He pulled out a large zip-lock bag, and from it a small garment suited for an infant, half sewn with a long string hanging from it, a bone-needle tied to one end. Marc took the string in his hands, held it high in the light, and made a tiny loop, bringing it to Lyrou. “Think that you’re fashioning a warm rabbit fur swaddle for a Tessalit baby.”

With her fingertip, Lyrou pressed the loop onto a tooth. With the string now hanging from her mouth, she smiled from ear to ear. “I look silly?”

“Not at all. There is no one in the world who looks like you do right now.” Marc gave the string one gentle tug, pulling on Lyrou’s tooth and eliciting a snicker from her as he returned to the camera. “Keep it taut and hold your needle poised to put it through the next stitch hole.”

Indulging in the role, Lyrou did as coached. She was soothed by the clicking and whirring of the camera. In the face and body paint with its intricate patterns, in the fiery light, against the rocky wilderness backdrop, topless and sewing an infant’s rabbit fur swaddle, she was no longer herself, not possibly Lyrou, not possibly any modern woman. She wasn’t a different woman who one might meet anywhere, but a different kind of woman from a different kind of world, a woman against time, a stranger to any civilization, a woman totally ignorant and indifferent to all that Homo sapiens had wrought since it came crawling and climbing from the primordial disorder. Unaltered since man tamed himself, tamed plants, tamed animals, tamed land, sea and air, and did all he might to tame woman. Here she was untamed and innocent of any expectation that she should be otherwise.

“Lyrou…” Marc had approached her, and she didn’t notice.

“Oh? Are we done?” she snapped to attention.

“Yes. You can take the cord out unless you like keeping it in.” Marc smiled, so handsome she thought.

Lyrou tugged at the thread but found it too snugly looped between her teeth. “I can’t get it off.” She tried again with her finger and thumb inserted.

Marc bent and looked up into her mouth. “I see it; it must’ve slid up and tightened.”

“Can you get it off for me, please?” Lyrou asked, leaning forward, mouth open.

Marc hesitated but then poked his finger in. Faces so close that he could kiss her, Lyrou’s breath hot on his hand, her eyes closed, and the expression on her face so erotic. With a little scratching motion, he pulled the loop loose and then down off her tooth. “I got it.”

Marc sat face-to-face with Lyrou, looking lovingly into her eyes. He began to praise her, “Washing away the veneer of an atavistic Antediluvian Lazarus taxon leaping alive from the deepest caverns of the dark continent… I find Arno Breker’s feminine ideal, a genetically engineered designer woman, the supreme specimen of sexual selection. Your facial and bodily symmetry, the sway of your hips as you walk, the form of your breasts and nipples, full buttocks, womanly thighs, long slender neck and arms, lovely hands and feet, delicate fingers and toes, womanhood like the last woman in unrecorded time, the final natural woman… not Breker, you’re like an enfleshed Auguste Rodin sculpture.”

Lyrou wasn’t often made bashful, but now she turned pink. “Which Rodin sculpture?”

Marc answered without hesitation, “L’Éternel Printemps.”

Lyrou asked softly, “Do you mean to say we’re two lip-locked lovers made for La Porte de l’Enfer?”

“Made for, yes. The couple was never condemned, so their maker could not bring himself to join them in the flames.” Marc waxed romantic, the artificial glow of stage lighting casting imitation firelight on his face.

Marc’s hand came up with a wipe to clear a trace of ochre on the corner of her mouth. She shut her eyes and put her face forward to allow his help in cleaning her. When she opened her eyes, it was to Marc coming in for a kiss. In a fraction of a second, she turned, and he landed it on her cheek. “No…” He came in for a second and landed it on her bottom lip as she pulled back and away.  “Marc?” As her hands came up to press him away by his chest, he took her hands in his and nearly took her off her stool upon landing his third kiss on her mouth. “Mmmph.”

“Marc…” She got her feet beneath her and stood, but Marc pulled her into him, and she found herself pressed hip-tight against the long lab table with the cardboard boxes that had been cluttered onto it.

The colors smudging over them caught her eye, even in his embrace. “You’re getting covered in it,” she said, touching the stains her ochre body paint smeared onto his shirt. Not pausing, he grabbed his shirt at the hem and pulled it off over his head.

Putting her palm to his chest, as though she might stop him, she asked, “You want to do that here?” He met her weak objection with his own hand on her breast, squeezing gently, his other hand securing her waist, and then his mouth on her neck.

“We’ll make a mess,” Lyrou warned.

“Let’s make a mess.” With the weight of her breast in his hand, he mouthed the back of her neck as she twisted from him.

“I have another…” Lyrou tripped over her words and stumbled back against the lab table, Marc leaning over her with one hand braced on the tabletop.

“Yes?” Marc dared her to speak.

“I need to…” She took in his sweet smell, her lungs filling.

“To what?” He tugged down at her panties.

“Why now?” Her arm slid between them, and she took his bulge into her hand through his black jeans, feeling how sizeable he was.

Marc opened his jeans and shoved them down and off. “I’d have waited, but you weren’t going to give me another day.” Marc buried his face in her chest.

She ran her other hand down over his shoulder, feeling the moving muscles of his wide back. “So today?”

“Yes, today.” He sucked her nipple.

Relapse. Jouissance. Non, surfeit, outrageous. She hadn’t been away from this long enough to dare call what was happening a relapse. Why?! Her hand on the back of his head, “I meant what I said… about my marriage.”

Marc stopped in his action to look Lyrou in the eyes. “I wasn’t joking either. I meant what I said about your marriage. I wish it the worst.”

Shaking her head, understanding what she’d promised, Lyrou said, “Marc, if I let you have me now… sans doute…”

“Let me have you.” Marc held her face between his hands, kissing her chin and catching her bottom lip as her eyes locked shut and her whole body articulated in a dozen ways; feet extending, toes curling, fists closing over her thumbs, sweat under her arms breaking fresh and wafting rich with feminine pheromones. “What is your dilemma?”

Lyrou writhed under him, her legs wrapping around his waist. She turned and gritted her teeth, losing the fight against herself. “Oh my god, I want you.”

“I want you, Lyrou,” Marc whispered in her ear, his groin pressing meaty into hers.

“I want you! I can’t stop myself!” Lyrou whimpered, eyes wet, and otherwise wet. “Marc?” She locked her fingers together behind his neck.

“Kiss me.” He pressed his tongue between her lips.

Lyrou moaned between kisses, “Maaarc. Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” she prayed to fate.

“Because you’re impossible! Your body, your face, your voice, and your smell, the feel of you, it’s all captured me, and I know I can’t get it like I can get it with you, with anybody else.” Marc dripped with sweat, beads of it on his neck and chest, trails of it down his arms. He licked her neck and shoulder like he could consume her that way. “If I could make you my captive and use you up whenever I wanted, I would have you be my pleasure prisoner, and I would walk you around naked on a leash in public and at social dinners to show to everyone I know!” He inhaled her, face in her hair. “But you would know that it’s you who have me on a leash.”

Lyrou dug her fingers into the flexing muscle of his glutes. “How would I know that?”

Marc rolled his face between her breasts and then sucked her nipple aggressively. “Because you could have me wailing and raging like an addict if you denied me this otherworldly body for a single night.”

Lyrou finger-traced his lengthy, well-carved limbs. “You would walk me around naked to show people? Why?”

Marc mouthed around her breasts, squeezing them against his cheeks until he almost smothered himself in her soft, warm, womanly size. “Every man who’d see us would wish to be me and want my secret: how I could do it, how I could have a woman like you at my feet.”

“What would you tell them the secret is?” Lyrou closed her eyes.

Marc said almost in mourning, “If I knew the secret to it, then you could not have broken us up.”

His bulbous glans was in her hand, salty and wet, like a hot, slick ripe plum, and she felt his pulsing blue dorsal vein running along its upward bow. They fucked standing. Their bodies clapped with vigor. They shifted through several positions: standing and taking her from behind as she leaned over onto the lab table, then he turned her to face him, pulled her right leg over his left shoulder, and exposed their penetration wide to the air. He clambered up onto the table with her, and they did it in missionary, her arms hanging over the sides and then gripping the legs of the table not to be fucked off the end of it. Feeling the fullness of his long curve delivering his Stahlhelm-shaped glans into her anterior fornix, his corona ridge mashing her Gräfenberg spot with each stroke, the sensation almost of being pulled inside-out, his thumb vibrating against her clitoris, and then the sight of his sculpted lean body and handsome angular exerting face, his beautiful hair, his chest-hair, his Adam’s apple, his V-line, the sound of him panting like a dog, she neared her orgasm. He pulled from her, yanked himself from her with an upward force that sent a deep dragging tug through her engorged bulbs and crura, and she squirted over his abdomen in a lip-biting, shuddering orgasm. Giving himself a few rapid masturbatory strokes, his rod audibly slicked and slimed by her, he hissed through his teeth and shot over her, splattering her breasts, her rising-falling breathing tummy, and into her black pubic hair.

⚜

Morning Saturday, June 14th, 2025

Garin would meet Amina downtown early, now with two rings locked in his office safe. Checking his reflection in a sandwich shop window, he was sure he looked good, but it occurred to him he was dressed a mite too much, with a fresh, nicely sprayed haircut, and he regretted overdoing it. He tore off his bow-tie, stuffed it into his pocket, and unbuttoned his pinstriped shirt so that his chest could air out. Yet he still felt sartorially overcooked in skinny olive chinos and pricey beige brogues. That was until Amina arrived. She approached with a bashful gait and expression, in a silk ruffled, elegantly buttoned blouse, a hip-hugging skirt, her smooth, gracile legs in low block-heel ankle boots, a fashionable high-waist belt, a thin strip of a black leather choker, with her hair and nails thoroughly, artfully done. He greeted her, “You’re walking the red carpet tonight? I’ll be your paparazzi.”

And she did a cute twirl to show off, “My Papa Paparazzi…”

He had big plans for the day. They would grab coffee with breakfast sandwiches to go, and they’d take the ferry down the Hudson River with delightful morning views of the skylines on either side, passing with a close view of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, Governors Island, under the grand Verrazano-Narrows Bridge out onto the wide sea, and then finally disembarking at Rockaway to take a ride-share to Coney Island.  From the port then onto the boardwalk, the amusement park rides, and the aquarium… and a reserved dinner squeezed in somewhere there, Sicilian-American, with a terrific view of the Atlantic Ocean. While waiting to board their ferry, they sat and downed their breakfast sandwiches. Amina gushed, “I haven’t been to Coney Island.”

“Don’t lie. Everybody has. I’d second-guessed Coney Island because I thought it’d be cliché.” Garin disbelieved.

“Nope. Just never been.” She was sure.

Garin stared at her hair, and she noticed him noticing. Briefly, she touched it. “Do you like it?”

“Yes. Much yes. So yes.” Garin played, smiling big.

Amina’s phone jingled. “Excuse me, Garin.” And she answered it.

Garin listened to her. “George, hello? Yes. Where is she now? What then… what then… OK. No, it’s what it is. No. I’m in for it. What time? Boarding? OK. OK. I’ll make it. I’ll make it, but I need to go now. Yes, bye.”

Her face was so glum. Garin already knew, and for a second he thought about how now he was in Lyrou’s shoes when he’d been this capricious to her before. Amina hoisted her purse onto her shoulder. “Murphy’s Law isn’t just a firm. Garin, I got a bad call. Brenda, she’s a defense lawyer at our practice. She was needed in Boston tonight to meet our defendant before his trial reconvenes. He’s facing 5 years and a shredded medical license, and she’s been in the hospital since midnight with food poisoning. I got to be on a plane at noon.”

“Newark Liberty?” Garin asked without a hint of disappointment in his tone.

“That’s the verdict.” Amina nodded.

Garin stood and took Amina’s hand, leading her to his car. He drove her to her Fort Lee apartment. Beside him in the passenger seat, she deliberated and worked up the courage to say, “You would make a good husband.” She stammered from nerves, “I-I think.”

Garin smiled and took her hand again, resting it on her lap, feeling her palm and fingers. At her building, he accompanied her up in the elevator and meant to wait in the hall as she packed and gathered her luggage.

Unlocking her door, she turned and saw him waiting in the hall, and smiled. “Come inside, Garin, please.”

Garin stepped inside, and Amina closed her door behind him. He turned. “I’ll get you there in time; we’ve got plenty of time.”

“That’s so lucky, because we need plenty of time.” Amina vanished into her bedroom.

Garin took a seat in her kitchen on a high chair. “You keep this place so tidy.”

Amina called from her room, “Nah. I was expecting company tonight.”

While she hurriedly prepared her bags, Garin hunched over his phone and checked traffic en route to the airport, replied to a work email from Wayne, looked up Nexéo, looked up Eve Wright, replied to Wayne’s reply, then went back to browsing Eve Wright titles. She had appeared behind him silently as an owl and perched on his shoulders with both hands like talons.

“Shiii… ah!” He seized her wrists to cease her clawing.

“The Night Beast & His Baroness… you’re into rom-scare?” Amina pulled and twisted behind him, but Garin’s grip on her wrists was both gentle and unbreakable.

He pulled her around to face him, and he saw that she was completely naked, blushing and giggling. “You take off all your clothes to become the stealth stalker.” Garin grinned, pulling her into him as he remained on the high chair. “I’m the in-flight meal?” Garin joked.

Amina tugged back, her tits jiggling with the effort, but Garin was too strong. She laughed goofily and played at biting his hand to break free, but she only ended up being pulled deeper into his embrace. “Night beast!” Amina turned red with laughter and arousal.

Garin saw her jugular vein and kissed her neck, open-mouthed and with a hungry tongue.

Amina’s body slackened; she closed her eyes and put an arm around his head, then a leg over his lap to straddle him where he sat. Her feet hung off on either side of him, and she ran her hands under his shirt as he continued exploring her neck. They broke this embrace only for the second it took him to lift his arms for her to pull his shirt off over his head, subtly messing his hair.

She looked at him, and he stood with her wrapped around his waist and shoulders. They were mouth-locked as he walked with her hoisted to her bed, where he lowered her onto her comforter. Standing at the bedside, he undid his belt and zipper and dropped his pants as she ran her foot up and down his abdominal mounds, then up to his pectoral, stopping with his nipple and chest hair under her toes. She locked her leg straight and stiff, halting him. As he looked down impatiently, craving her nude body, she nudged and toed at his erection and ball sack with her opposite foot. “I didn’t expect to have you back here until later.”

“I can come back later then.” Garin cocked a brow and smirked.

“What will you do with this until then?” She poked his glans with her pink-painted big toe.

“Find a way to keep it up,” Garin answered, sure of himself. “There’s this feet-for-skeet program.”

“Oh? Like an exchange? Show me how you can keep it up, or I fear that program might be discontinued.” Amina curled her legs against her butt and propped her chin on her shoulder.

The sight of her like that, waiting for him to show her what she asked to see, made him harder. His cock visibly angled upward and bobbed with bursting pressure. He palmed his glans and then began stroking, slowly at first, but then with some speed.

Amina’s mouth fell open, her eyes widened, and her pupils dilated as she fixated on the performance: his hand cranking his reddening dick.

She crossed her arms over her as if she were the embarrassed one. “Are you looking at my breasts?”

“I am,” he answered, making a disappointed face as she concealed them under her arms.

“You haven’t seen my pussy,” Amina declared.

“I haven’t,” Garin confirmed.

Amina lay back and covered her crotch under one hand as she spread her legs. “Do you want to see my pussy?”

“Yes,” Garin answered, watching her fingers lift one by one, leaving only her index and middle to cover her slit.

“Ask,” she whispered.

“Can I see your pussy?” Garin asked politely.

“Come have a close look,” she invited him.

Garin knelt on the edge of her bed, face between her legs, and slowly she pulled her hand away. He was so close face-to-pussy he got a full whiff of her feminine musk. She had shaved everything but for some black stubble, and her pussy glistened. He observed how she had brown modest inner labia, tucked between thick, soft, puffy outer labia. His impression was that it was a pussy that’d been genuinely fucked before, maybe not all that long ago. Amina’s pussy was a pussy accustomed to getting cock, a pussy that periodically really, really needed cock. Badly. And he had just the cock for it now.

“Tell me one word that describes my pussy, Garin,” Amina whispered, almost afraid of which word he might say.

Garin raised and planted his knees in the bed, between her wide open legs, and tapped his cock against her clit. “Let me think.”

She closed her eyes and took her hair in both hands, clenching fistfuls and moaning, “Tell me… one word.”

Garin stirred his cock around in her entrance. “Fine, one word.”

She nodded, licking her lips. “Mm-hm?”

“This pussy is… tidy.” And he nodded slowly, self-satisfied with his eloquence.

Amina winced, and her hand clapped back over her groin. “I didn’t hear that. Try again, please.”

Garin slapped the underside of his cock atop her guarding hand. “Let’s see… this pussy is a frequent-flyer.”

Amina’s face turned red; she suppressed a smile. “Three strikes and you’ll be out. Careful. One more swing.”

Garin rubbed his precum across Amina’s fingers, hungrily wanting to get to the treasure they held beneath. He looked off into the distance, deep in thought, looking for the one fitting word for Amina’s pussy.

“So…?” Amina pressed her palm tight to her clit and rubbed, rubbing herself wet.

Garin understood there was no English word for Amina’s pussy. He recalled the correct word: “Your pussy, Amina, is habibti.”

Amina’s expression melted, her eyes filled with amorous ardor, and she pulled her hand away, raised it, and rested her fingertip on his lower abdomen.

And he plunged in and up, introducing himself to her G-spot. She gasped, her chest filling and propelling her breasts higher; she exhaled and gyrated her hips to ring her inner walls with his penetration.

Amina lifted her feet high and set them over his shoulders, her foot like a phone couched between his head and neck, her toe to his ear like the speaker and her heel at his chin like a receiver. He turned and kissed her little toe, which she pressed to his lip, and he gently bit. As he thrust his cock into her, he felt her internals loosen and slacken to accommodate his complete length and full girth.

Amina guided Garin’s hands to her throat. “Not tight, but strong.”

He touched his thumbs and fingers together around her neck, and she nodded in approval. “Tell me something you don’t like about me, tease me about it.”

Garin humped away, thinking what he’d tell her. Then he said, “You’re a busy bitch. Too busy for me.”

Amina smiled. “Do worse than that, and shake me.”

Garin grabbed hold of her neck, careful not to hurt her, but to let her feel it. “When you’re mine, you won’t be busy with anything else anymore. I’ll keep you completely occupied; you’ll serve me. Only me.”

Amina moaned, “I’ll serve you?”

Garin got into it for her; he shook her enough to send her hair flying over her face, and he pressed her into his cock by her shoulders. “You’ll clock in to get this cock in. The only jobs you’ll be on are hand-jobs, tit-jobs, and blowjobs. All day, all night.”

Amina shook, clenched, and shouted, “Mm-mm-mm-mm make me serve you! Ohmmm I’mmm cummming!”

Garin came with her, buried deep as she clenched around him.

But Amina was busy, and so with their fun had, her hair frazzled, they brought out her luggage, and he carried the bulk of it down and loaded it into his trunk for her. “Thank you, Garin.”

Then he drove her to departures.

As they neared, “Don’t pay for airport parking, Garin,” Amina insisted.

“I’ve got a couple coins jangling in my pocket I could throw away,” Garin countered.

A moment later, he helped to load her luggage onto an airport push cart. Arms at her sides and looking him deeply in the eyes, Amina said, “Sorry.”

He held both her hands, toe-to-toe. “You’ll save your client from the gallows and be back here by 6 pm to look at colorful fish with me.”

Amina’s face turned bright red, and she laughed, “So stupid. But I can’t call you stupid; you did everything for me this morning. I’ll be back in 2 weeks, or I should be.”

“The fish will swim just the same in 2 weeks as tonight, and so will I.” Garin nodded thoughtfully, raising his eyebrows as if he’d dropped deep philosophy.

Amina leaned into his hug and craned her head back to kiss him. “Will you still be swimming the same in 2 weeks? Is that really what you’re saying?”

“You hooked me with your worm… wait…” Garin stuttered.

Her smile uncontrollable. “Does stuff just come flopping out of your mouth until someone stops you?” Amina cracked up, kissing him again.

“Flip-flop. I’ll see you soon, and we’ll pick up where we left off. Enjoy the surprise flight,” Garin said, hands on either of her shoulders, impossible to tell if either of them would keep to that.

Kissing him a third time, Amina said, “Bye.”

She passed through the sliding doors, pushing her luggage cart, her haunches working as she walked, leaning into it. With Amina gone, Garin stood speaking to himself loudly and clearly enough that others passing by, rolling their luggage along, might’ve thought he was on an earpiece call that he wasn’t. “I know I would, because I am. Amina, I have a wife.”

He continued his monologue, voicing Amina’s part, “You do? Still?”

“An insane slut," he answered himself. A woman passing by turned and gave him a prune face but continued on.

Garin continued, "Are you cool with it?”

Garin imagined Amina standing there, hearing this, digesting this. And he voiced her part, “I don’t know. I wish you told me that sooner. Maybe. Is it cool if I have some time to think about it?”

Garin held out his hand to nobody. “You have five cool seconds to think.”

5… 4… 3… 2… 1.

He dropped his hand at his side. “That’s OK, Amina. We all have our boundaries, and I respect yours. I’d never want you to continue in an arrangement you didn’t agree to; believe me, I know what that can be like. Bye-bye.”

⚜