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fine.”
    â€œFine! Fine! Who are those peasants you’ve put at sixteen, Mr. Fine? What are they doing in my restaurant? What are they doing at my best table?”
    â€œThey were the first ones here. They asked for it. I couldn’t very well put them in Siberia.”
    â€œOf course you could. Armande does it every night. They’re drinking tap water.” Pascal closed his eyes very tightly, so tightly that his face wrinkled like a dried fig. “Nothing but tap water,” the fig repeated through clenched teeth. Rehv slipped out while Pascal’s eyes were still shut. In the main entrance to the dining room three Arabs stood waiting.
    Silvio, one of the older waiters, was approaching them with welcome on his face. Rehv wanted to shout, “Silvio!,” but it wasn’t that kind of restaurant. Instead he hurried across the room. Silvio was taking them to number four, in the corner of the room opposite sixteen.
    â€œGood evening, gentlemen,” Rehv said. They turned to face him. Two wore white robes; the third, a big man missing his left earlobe, wore a dark suit. Rehv knew that Abu Fahoum must be the younger of the two robed men, not so much from his proud military bearing, but from the black-and-white checked keffiyeh he wore on his head. “I’m afraid this table is already taken. We have another one for you in the Jardin.” He held out his hand to show them where it was.
    The older man and the man in the suit looked in the direction he had indicated; Abu Fahoum did not. “We prefer this table,” he said. He spoke with an Oxford accent.
    â€œI’m terribly sorry.” Rehv allowed his eyes for a split second to glance beyond them. Even from across the room he could see the anxiety on the faces at table sixteen: The woman’s lips were parted.
    â€œAre you really?” Abu Fahoum had drawn back his head and was regarding Rehv’s face very closely.
    â€œYes, sir, I am. But it is already spoken for.”
    Abu Fahoun turned to his older companion and said in Arabic: “You see why he’s making trouble, don’t you? He’s a dirty Jew.”
    Rehv almost grabbed him by the throat. He felt his rigid body churning out waves of rage, waves that swept across the room, unseen.
    The older man said, also in Arabic: “It’s nothing like that. He’s just doing his job. Besides, it is a better table.” He tugged at the sleeve of Abu Fahoum’s robe. Without looking at Rehv again, Abu Fahoum turned and walked with enormous dignity to table twenty-three. He sat with his back to sixteen. The big man in the suit sat facing him, the older man in between.
    â€œWhere the hell were you?” Silvio said in a low voice. “I didn’t know four was taken.”
    â€œIt’s all right.”
    Rehv hurried over to twenty-three to hand out the cartes. The man in the suit kept his hands at his sides and shook his head.
    â€œHe isn’t here to eat,” Abu Fahoum said with amusement, as if Rehv had just offered a menu to a dog.
    â€œVery well. Would anyone like something from the bar?”
    Again Abu Fahoum lifted back his head, almost the way a cobra rears above its coils. “It is forbidden.”
    â€œIn America the expression something from the bar does not necessarily mean alcohol. We have bottled water and soft drinks as well,” Rehv said. He tried to remember what politeness sounded like.
    Just beneath the skin of Abu Fahoum’s forehead a thick vein began to throb. He placed his hands on the table, as if to get up. The man who had not come to eat pushed his chair back from the table, very quickly.
    â€œStop it,” the older man said in Arabic. “Relax. He’s right.” In English he said to Rehv: “Water will be fine. Vichy for me. Abu?”
    Abu Fahoum said, “Perrier.” He made it sound like a threat. The man in the suit pulled his chair back to the table. Rehv saw him