Chapter 5

At first Omar simply showed up at Balkhi’s place unexpectedly and struck up a friendly conversation. The cunning immigrant decided he had better win over his future sponsor. Then he invited him over to his own patch, supposedly just to spend time together. While Omar swept the street, Balkhi stood beside him, shifting from foot to foot, happy to have -- or so he thought -- a friend to talk to.

At that moment Annette happened to pass by. Confident in her own irresistibility, accustomed to attention, she was surprised that Omar paid her no mind. The beauty stopped and looked at Omar in puzzlement. Then she came over to him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Omar answered without any emotion, clearly more focused on his friend.

Annette liked this less and less. To cheat on your husband and suffer for it, while feeling that your lover worships you -- that is one thing. To cheat on your husband and feel you have been used and forgotten is not only shameful, but, damn it, hurtful!

“Will you introduce me to your friend?”

“Balkhi, this is my girl, Annette. Well, not my girl, I mean, but she’s like a daughter to me. She does gymnastics.”

“Yoga,” the increasingly displeased beauty corrected him.

“And Balkhi’s a janitor, same as me.”

“Whatever a person does in this country, you still end up feeling sorry for him,” Annette said distractedly, studying Omar’s friend in surprise. He stood there mute and awkward, looking as if he had just come out of the woods.

“What a peculiar creature,” Annette thought with disgust. She tried at once to drive that disgust away from herself ... and could not. She did not know that her husband was watching her from the window; he had begun peering intently out the windows whenever his wife went somewhere now.

“Why is she clinging to that Omar again? Is his cock dipped in honey or something?” Yuri thought nervously, at once wanting his wife to walk straight past the janitor and wanting her to behave like a slut and not let a single man go by! He wanted to see Annette both faithful and whorish at once! Yuri had somehow managed to join opposite selves inside himself.