The moment that Marianne, no-last-name, the Grand Dame of Venus Day Spa & Bistro, laid her salve-softened 77 year old hands on her feet, Maya cringed inwardly. Her feet, accustomed to being bare unless absolutely necessary, were never going to respond to the kind of ministrations such hands could provide. This was followed by irritation: why did Marianne have to touch her feet in the first place? She had signed up for a spa facial, not a foot massage.

When my mother found out I was going to marry you she said, “A man like that, you’ll always end up sleeping at his back. He’ll never sleep at yours.” And I was ashamed, because how did she know it was already like that with you, that that was how we slept every night together? Our first night lying side by side, you slept with your smiling, open face to the wall and I was the one who curved to your back, stuck too close for comfort. 

The stranger didn’t have a carry-on, the unencumbered sort who never handled a piece of paper or had to wait in lines. Sunglasses at night: trying hard not to be recognized, he was conspicuous as a rock star. When the man stood beside him, apologizing in a husky voice, Prophet Alex recognized him. Kingsway—the Hong Kong pop star, Kingsway Lee, in coach!  An improbability great as a plague of frogs, great as God descending into a burning bush, great as a man walking across water.

Which is to say, a miracle, when Prophet Alex needed one most. 

By the time Neeli met Hassan he was a nobody. His last successful film was almost a decade ago and even that hadn’t gone beyond two weeks at the box office. He didn’t get invited to the annual award functions, wasn’t part of any film associations, and had slowly slipped through the cracks, well on his way to invisibility.

“It takes so damn long to get anywhere in Florida,” Lidia said then bit her lip and saw that her boyfriend, mouth hung open, was sleeping, in the passenger’s seat. She stepped on the gas, revving the RPM gauge on the Swedish sedan up to six thousand revolutions. Even before the halfway point on Alligator Alley, all the decent radio stations started scratching static so she shut it off; in the quiet and desolation she could appreciate the engine’s steady hum. Manolo had fallen asleep as soon as they’d left Dade County and it was getting dark. 

I hated Boones, but Dev always got a bottle for Val anyway. Me with the cool sister who came home from SDSU for long weekends and bought us booze with her fake ID as long as we promised we’d only drink at home. That was fine by me and Val—Dad was usually traveling for medical conferences and Val basically lived at our house anyway.