Free Tidal Wave by Roberta Latow

white mosquito net hanging from the ceiling was draped back and tied to the bedposts. Arabella went to the window and cranked open the shutter. Another sound so familiar in Alexandria — the wooden-slatted shutters clattering up and down trying to adjust the sun and heat for comfort. She went onto the balcony and rolled back the green awning, hoping to get alittle more air into her room. She stayed there, drinking in the night under a blanket of stars. She saw the outline of the Englishman standing in the dark on the balcony next to hers.
    Feeling bad about how she had snapped at him before, she leaned toward him and said, “Are you as seduced by Alexandria as I am?”
    He smiled and said, “Yes, I certainly am.”
    The breeze, what there was of it, was still hot and not refreshing. The streets below teemed with life. Arabella heard a click and turned to look at him again. A lighter flame glowed, illuminating the Englishman’s face as he lit his cigarette. An arrogant face, she thought, one of breeding and polish — an aristocrat’s face.
    Arabella decided to be mischievous. As he was snapping his lighter closed, she said, “I think it is the sexiest city in the world. What do you think?”
    He turned to face her in the dark and, putting his foot on a chair, he leaned forward and said, “Erotic, I think. The most erotic city in the world.”
    They looked at each other in the dark. Was it a challenge she felt between them? If not, then most certainly a tension.
    Arabella said, “Are you here alone?”
    He hesitated and then answered, “Yes.”
    There was an uncomfortable moment of silence, which Arabella broke by saying “It would be very interesting if we could discuss erotic, sexual Alexandria together over dinner. Will you invite me?”
    Again she sensed his hesitation, caution, his conservative English manner.
    “Oh, dear,” she said, “you’re hesitating and you’re quite right. You don’t even know me.”
    “But I feel I know you.”
    “Oh, how strange.”
    “Not so strange. I’ve been listening to you make love for the last four nights. No, we are not exactly strangers.”
    “That’s the second time in less than thirty minutes I feel embarrassed with you,” she said.
    He laughed. “Don’t be. I think you are delightful. Yes, I will take you to dinner. Shall we say in an hour’s time in the lobby?”
    Arabella sat in her bath washing her arms with the large soft sponge wondering at how brave and self-assured you can be when youth is on your side. Anthony Quartermaine was the first and last man she had ever picked up. She smiled even now remembering how wicked she felt doing it and thought how desperate she must have been to have gathered up the nerve to carry it off.
    When Arabella stepped out into the lobby to meet her Englishman, every pair of eyes in the room was on her. She looked ravishing. The sun had streaked her blond hair silver white in places, her skin was a golden brown. She wore a dress that accentuated her wonderful figure and long, long legs. Her Galanos dress showed a bare back to the waist. It was so skimpy at the sides that when viewed from the back she appeared to have nothing on above the magnificent bone-color silk skirt that billowed out as she walked. She wore several antique Indian ivory bracelets trimmed in silver and reddish-gold antique Phoenician rings on her fingers. High-heeled bone sandals criss-crossed over her toes and feet. She carried over one bare shoulder a small purse, a
recamier
of spiral-chased gold with small sapphires set in the gold clasp on a spiral golden chain. This had been a gift from her mother, who had received it on her twenty-first birthday.
    Arabella was taken aback to see her Englishman not waiting impatiently for her but talking to two men, one looking like another stuffy Englishman and the other a dark, handsome Arab with the bearing of a sheikh or prince. He was in fact an Alexandrian Copt.
    Just as were everyone else’s in the room,