you want to know?”
He held his pencil as would a ten-year-old boy, with his fingers almost touching the lead. Its stubby point showed it has been sharpened not in a regular pencil sharpener but with a blade. I recognized the uneven marks around the edge of the pencil where it was shaved. It took me right back to my childhood, when I couldn’t find my pencil sharpener in class and didn’t want my teacher to know I had lost it. You took out a penknife—all of us had penknives—and in total silence under your desk shaved the edge of the pencil until, like a new tooth pushing its way out of the hollow of your gum, the new point began to emerge. Using a knife made you feel brawny, like a sailor with a dagger whittling away at a piece of driftwood because this is how he whiled away his hours when there was nothing better to do, because real men always found something useful to do with their hands.
“And write neatly,” she said.
Again, like a conscientious and dutiful young pupil, he leaned forward, his face so close to the table you’d think he had eye trouble, and penciled the date.
Voilà.
“Now you two can go back to your slop,” said Zeinab.
“Exactly,” he said, and turning to me: “So tell me about la quarante-deux.”
I told him the whole story again.
Kalaj said that if she had come upstairs with me that night it was because I had done one thing right: I had lingered, just lingered, because when I was standing in front of her as she sat smoking in silence on the stoop, I had not moved, had kept very quiet, had made it very obvious that I was aching and longing for her, that all I could think of at that hour of the night was her shoulders, and that I would make her laugh and be happy, that I would take care of everything, including the two chairs.
But, as always, Kalaj immediately corrected himself. She’d probably made up her mind about me the moment she’d seen me walking toward her, or maybe even on the rooftop weeks earlier.
“Now tell me about being naked on the terrace.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
“You mean how she suddenly sat on my lap naked and I felt the hair of her vagina on my zeb and couldn’t believe I could go at it again so soon?”
“Oké, stop!”
WE HAD HAD such a warm moment together that morning, that in the days and weeks afterward, I made a point of showing up at Café Algiers just as it was about to open. The place smelled of bleach and Mr. Clean, the chairs were still upturned as the floor was drying, and Zeinab was still mopping the kitchen area, all the while making sure the coffee was already brewing and Arab songs playing. When she was in good spirits, she’d put on George Brassens or, as I later found out, her favorite, Barbara, and she’d sing along to Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux and, in mock-cabaret-singer, sidle up to the man who happened to be sitting nearest to the kitchen and sing to him, and to him alone, her favorite verses of the song by Aragon.
In the back of Café Algiers, as always, that picture of Tipaza—in case any of us early birds forgot why we were there. This was more like home than anywhere else, and more home now than home itself, since no one really had one to go back to.
Kalaj was always in a rush. He’d stand up before finishing his coffee, busily start collecting all of his stray items on the table, and after taking one last gulp, he’d light up the cigarette he had been rolling while eating his croissant, and dash out through the front door, which took him through the tiny back lot where he normally parked his cab.
Once he was gone, I’d open my books and sink deep into the seventeenth century. I’d sit there till I needed to shake my legs and move to another locale. If too many customers started coming in, I’d leave to avoid the noise. Then I’d head to the library where I read for a good part of the morning.
I liked this ritual. I liked rituals. Rituals were like home.
Sometimes, after Algiers, I’d avoid the Square altogether and, because it was still warm, would head back to my apartment, change, and be back to my usual spot on the roof terrace—bathing suit, sunglasses, suntan lotion, books,