I feel drained.’ Eritrea started to laugh. ‘You are drained, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes, very. I didn’t expect anything like that on our first meet...ng.’ I told Eritrea and Don I have to go because my mom would be home soon. We make arrangements to meet again Friday and Saturday. They walked me to the door and, as I’m about to leave, Don offers to shake my hand. I can feel something in my palm as we say goodbye. In the elevator I open my hand and see bills, five one hundred dollar bills. I can’t believe. ?” but he interrupted her by raising one hand.“Please let me explain,” he started, “Questions afterwards.”She subsided back into her chair and waited.“First, I must apologise for what happened to you. It was a mistake for which I am truly sorry. What happened was that I said I needed a female teacher of science, and that was interpreted as a wish to buy one in the slave market. My Chief Eunuch ordered one from a slave dealer, so you were kidnapped and brought here. It never occurred to my staff. ."I held up my hand once again to remind her of my intention to deliver rather than to receive."You have badly damaged our relationship. You have undermined the foundations of our marriage and cast doubt upon your fidelity. You have destroyed the one thing on which good marriages are founded: trust. You have brought doubt into my mind. Doubt I never had before. I am not sure our marriage will survive that."I saw her suck in her breath and her eyes go wide. I had hit her hard with that. I had. In the mottled shade below I sat upright on our homemade wood stool. Jennifer was using a palm-sized shard of plane fuselage to shave the stubble from my cheeks and neck. She had an uncanny knack of bringing an incredibly sharp edge to this crude razor. She could maintain this with a practiced swiping against the volcanic pumice she kept dangling on a low-slung belt about her bare hips.Developing this skill had come from the two girls' own need and incentive. Evidently hairy legs were a little.