Miss Fortune by Lauren Weedman Read Free Book Online Page B

forthree months in Indiana. An Egyptian boyfriend would be exotic forever. Hans taught me how to keep with the flow of bike traffic in Amsterdam and buy hard cheeses. Emad would teach me to ride a camel and buy spices from men in robes with monkeys on their shoulders. I’d come home for the holidays with dusty suitcases full of magic lanterns and beads and dried mice. “They eat them like peanuts over there,” I’d explain. Thanks to Disney’s version of
Aladdin
, I knew exactly what my future held.
    Best of all, I’d finally have a compelling reason to go to work besides free cookies: to see my boyfriend.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Heading out the door for our date, I was excited because Emad had never seen me in anything except my hotel uniform and I was looking goooood. It was a rare moment where my chin wasn’t broken out, my hair was taking the curl, and my skirt and shirt were the same shade of black. The gods must be pleased with the coming together of Emad and me.
    My phone rang. It was Emad calling to ask if I could bring a friend for his best friend, Mikhas. “Listen, Lauren, it’s Saturday night and Mikhas really needs to go out. I have to bring him.” Mikhas is Emad’s boss.
    It was flattering that someone from upper management wanted to tag along, but a double date was not really what I’d been hoping for, and it was a little last-minute.
    None of my expat, artsy girlfriends were the “Hey, put on your stockings, his friend wants a gal too, Madge!” sort. They were far too busy creating dance pieces about the AIDS epidemic as dreamt by Rumi. For a second, I thought about calling my single friend Rachel, an English painter who had just finished painting a series of “lonely flowers,” but she’d just broken off a relationship because shedidn’t like the guy’s hands. “He’s got funny knuckles,” she’d said. I couldn’t remember what Mikhas’s hands looked like, so I didn’t call, a decision I would deeply regret later that night when Mikhas was behind me in that sexual position made popular by sheep herders and the morbidly obese, and Emad was under me whispering, “I like you, I really like you. I mean, besides all of this.”
    Emad is giggly on the phone as he says good-bye. He’s nervous about our date, I thought. Or very high.
    We met at Rum Runners. Nothing says romance in Amsterdam like Jimmy Buffett blasting in a Caribbean tourist bar. Also nothing says romance like bringing your manager from work with you. On the barstool next to Emad was Mikhas.
    Emad continued to refer to the night as “our date” while the three of us sat and did round after round of Laser Beam shots—a neon-green concoction that gives you that “laser beam melting your organs” feeling that the kids love.
    Before the Laser Beams liquefied my insides, Emad told me he used to be an agricultural engineer back in Egypt. He lived in Libya for a while, married and divorced a white African woman, and moved to Holland.
    I like him.
    Mikhas and Emad kept excusing themselves to use the bathroom every few minutes. Any time one was gone the other would scoot his barstool over and whisper, “I like you, Lauren. I really like you. Oh! Here he comes!” It was hard enough for me to think of dealing with one guy falling in love with me, but two! Best friends and on the same night! I’d read about this sort of thing in
Seventeen
magazine, but I never thought it would happen to me!
    â€œTutti frutti, man!” Mikhas yelled as he ran out of the bar bathroom with a handful of flavored condoms. Mikhas and Emad high-fived each other.
    Oh, wait a minute. Do these guys think . . . ?
    By the time we got to my flat I was feeling woozy. All I’d eaten that day was a stack of sugar cookies called
Jodenkoek
, which in Dutch means “Jew cookies.” I hate to blame the Jews for