Read Online Vanished in the Dunes by Allan Retzky - Free Book Online Page A

tortured future of discomfort and occasional pain as well as hope.
    He doesn’t know her name, but steals looks across the room for the next half hour until he sees her standing alone near the door. He summons some hidden reserve of courage and approaches.
    â€œLeaving so soon?” he asks and feels the flush return to his face. When she looks at him again with those black eyes, he begins to sense he is lost. Utterly lost or bewitched, it doesn’t matter.
    They go to a neighborhood bar a few blocks away. Tiny Santa dolls share space on the shelves alongside gin and Scotch bottles. All-too-familiar Christmas songs are piped through a pair of speakers at the front of the room. A tiny tree at the end of the bar winks red-and-green lights. They laugh at the juxtaposition of Santa and the alcohol, and she wonders how he can safely drive a sled with a drinker’s red nose. They laugh some more and keep walking until they reach an empty booth in the back. He asks for a beer, and she takes a glass of red wine. They both order burgers.
    â€œI thought Muslims don’t eat meat?” he asks referring to her cultural disclosure during their walk.
    She cuts the air with a wave of her hand.
    â€œThat’s a Hindu thing, but I do many things Muslim women don’t do.” She stares intently at him, and then goes on.
    â€œBeef should be all right for Muslims if the slaughter is ritual and clean. We are also not supposed to eat pork. The same as Jews, part of halal or Muslim dietary rules. It’s the high level of uric acid in the pig that is of concern. But I confess I do like wine. Alcohol is discouraged, but one can’t be perfect.”
    She sips her wine before she adds, “Adultery is also forbidden, except that I’m not married.”
    Then she laughs and her cackle overrides the dim Christmas music that floats from the front of the room. She describes how she is a blend of three cultures; her parents’ Iranian background, heryears growing up in a rather strict Austrian world, and the much more laissez-faire American world, especially in New York.
    â€œAnd which do you prefer?” he asks.
    His earlier disorientation, for that’s what it was, has gone. He is now the consummate successful New York male his ego has constructed. And she knows nothing about him, with or without his private medicinal blanket, a condition he isn’t about to tell her. He wants to gain this woman’s serious interest. He hesitates to speak to avoid making dumb comments, yet when she reaches out and touches his hand, his voice all but disappears.
    â€œI think I prefer it here,” she says, her accent deeper than before.
    He stares at the generous hint of brown cleavage that rises above her scooped sweater neck, and calls for another round to mask the sound of blood rushing through his body. He wonders if she can hear the pumping. All his training tells him she can’t, yet she must see his fingers shake slightly as they grasp the new beer glass. She must see the white foam spill over the rim as he raises his glass.
    â€œProsit,” she says. “That’s how we toast each other in Vienna.”
    Later he trembles when she takes his hand and leads him into her studio apartment only a block from the hospital. A bed, a small sofa, a table wedged against the wall. She says it’s enough space.
    â€œWhat do you like to do?” she asks, as the sweater rises above her head and flies away.
    When he doesn’t answer, and just stares at her, she says, “Then let me show you what I like.”
    Later they speak long into the night about the Middle East. She abhors the mullahs that govern modern Iran, and he detects that part of her enmity was based on how her family had been treated. She dislikes the Israelis, not, she protests, because they were Jews, but because of the way they abuse the Palestinians. She had read Tolstoy and Shakespeare, and they laughed together when he