Suite Dubai (Arriving) (2 page)

She followed him past several rows of stalls to a patch of grass shaded in one corner by a large oak tree. Standing in the sunlight a man no bigger than a fifth grader looked no match for the tall darker than brown but not quite black horse. The color reminded her of her mother’s walnut dining table or the deep brown of brewed coffee. His coat shone and occasionally twitched as he stomped his feet in the grass. His ears pitched forward, alert. He saw them and tossed his head, pulling again against the rope.
 

“He looks nervous,” she said.
 

“Excited.” The man said. He seemed to be talking about himself too.
 

The horse jerked its head back and stomped the ground with a front hoof, sending flecks of dirt onto his blue-wrapped ankles. Ridges of muscle rippled against his dark coat. “He’s so beautiful,” she said. She wanted to touch him.
 

The horse’s owner must’ve sensed it because he said something to the trainer who led the horse a few steps closer.
 

“Shuf,” the man said. He held his hand up, palm out, several inches from the horse’s face and kept it there. The horse jerked its head back, twice and stomped the ground again. The man said something quietly in a language she didn’t understand, but kept his hand still. “Shuf,” he said again almost whispering. The horse took a step forward and tugged again at the rope before lowering his head bringing it closer to the man’s hand. Bit by bit he got closer until he pressed the flat spot just under his eyes against the man’s palm. The man stroked his head, whispering to him still in that other language.
 

“Come,” he said quietly. She was wondering if he meant her when he said it again. “Come.” She moved slowly as he had done until her hand rested where the man’s had been. He was warm under her palm, damp. His breath puffed against her elbow. She bent down and kissed him on the nose. “For luck,” she told him.
 

Back in the stands when that shot out of the 4th gate she jumped to her feet yelling his name, WAR CRY! She clenched her fists and her own legs tensed as he pulled into second and when the announcer said he’d won she threw her hat into the air. Her view of the track blurred with tears. Wilder was right about it being the most exciting two minutes of her life. Maybe that’s why she put the card in her nightstand drawer.
 

***

“It’s good money,” she told her parents. “I can pay off my student loan, some of it anyway. Get some work experience.” They still looked worried so she assured them that Dubai was safe. “I did searches on
Dubai
and
terrorism
and came up with nothing. They don’t
have
terrorism. In fact,” she said, feeling some momentum, “The crime rate there is lower than it is here. I’ll be fine. I’ll just stay a year or two.” She looked at her mom now, who had begun to cry. “I’ll write every day and come home for Christmas.”

When she walked down the concourse, past advertisements for Chanel scarves, Cartier watches and the Intercontinental Hotel, her loan was a week past due. A friendly reminder had been left just yesterday in her voicemail. Her credit card had been maxed with the purchase of three department store suits she bought for the job. Her bank account had less than a hundred dollars in it and her wallet about $33. She had arrived broke. That, and she’d forgotten who was supposed to pick her up at the airport. It was a man’s name, something that started with an “s”.

A line backed up in customs, where she waited almost an hour for space at one of the four counters. Finally a man in a beret signaled for her suitcase and she hoisted it onto the counter. He signaled again that she should open it for him. His similarly bereted friend asked to see her passport, again. Only because he didn’t want to stand around while his friend did all the work. He opened it and looked at her visa. The way he scrutinized it made her nervous.
 

“Al Zari hotel,” she said loudly. “Have you heard of it?”

“Al Zari?” he said.
 

She nodded.
 

The guy wrist-deep in her t-shirts and socks closed her suitcase without doing too much damage and waved her through.
 

Beyond customs, sliding doors parted to reveal a crowd. They craned their necks looking for whoever it was they had come to pick up. Some held signs, written in Arabic, and she wondered if any of them said her name. She stood there with her suitcase, carry-on bag digging into her shoulder, hoping someone would recognize her, which seemed unreasonable since no one here knew her.
 

A week after she sent the email to the sheik, a woman named Suki Kishida called. “I work for the hotel,” she said. She asked Rachel to confirm some items on her resume and thanked her for applying. A few days after that, Rachel found the job offer in her Inbox. She read each word and not trusting her own interpretation printed the offer and took it to her friend Emily. “I have the job, right? I mean, I finally got a job?”

“Where. The hell. Did you find this job?” Emily asked, scribbling down the name of the website with a pen she had chewed until the plastic cracked. She was on her second week of no cigarettes. “I’m so fucking tired of serving beer to drunk college guys.”

When they’d started their journalism degrees they both expected a job with a local newspaper that would eventually lead to a column in the New York Times or a wire assignment that required a khaki blazer and a handsome translator. Now all she heard was,
Journalism is dead. You need to start a blog
. She and Emily scraped up the money for domain names, but neither of them got very far. Her life had become so dull and disappointing she was too embarrassed to write about it.
 

Emily was having the same problem. “I could describe the texture of the vomit delivered to my left sandal by a guy in a Georgia Tech football jersey, or how I’ve started stealing my parent’s dog’s antidepressants. I’m serious,” she said. “Wally has better health coverage than I do.”

She heard the doors again and more passengers flowed around her. One after another they were reunited with family or friends. A woman in a purple dress and white headscarf rushed past her to a man and little boy. A woman about her age, dark ponytail, Louis Vuitton luggage, hugged her parents. She felt a flutter of panic that wouldn’t go away. What if no one had come for her? What would she do?
 

Then she saw the sign, white, with her name written in black marker. Rachel Lewis. She rushed to the man who held it, middle-aged and wearing a grey suit. The gold wire-rimmed glasses made him look friendly. He seemed relieved to see her too.
 

“Eh, Miss-eh Lewis? Rachel Lewis?”
 

“Yes,” she said. “That’s me.” She gave him another big smile, one that remained on her face against her will. This was not the professional face she’d practiced. It was the face of a girl watching a friend of her father’s pretend to produce a quarter from behind his ear.

“I am Sayeed.” he said. “The car is outside.” He picked up her suitcase and headed for the exit.
 

Outside there was no sky, just the glare of the sun. It stung her tired eyes and she had to blink several times just to see where she was going. The heat felt thick as fur against her skin as they crossed a road and walked along a row of cars, finally stopping at a white Mercedes.
 

From the back seat she watched banks and high-rise buildings play across her window like a movie, a Rolls Royce passed them on the right, then a big truck hauling men like cargo. They were packed tight on benches bolted to the truck bed, the ones on the end braced with their feet to stay seated. Their faces sagged, their shoulders, their arms and hands. They looked as tired as she felt.

Chapter 2

Sayeed pulled into the shade of a portico. A bellman opened her door. “Welcome to Al Zari hotel,” he said presenting his hand to help her out. Another lifted her suitcase from the trunk. She followed Sayeed up carpeted steps, through heavy glass doors, past marble columns, across thick carpets to the mezzanine. The air was so suddenly cool it gave her goosebumps. It smelled faintly of roses though she couldn’t find any, just tall date palms fed by light from a glass ceiling so high she had to crane her neck to see it.
 

A beautiful Indian woman at the front desk handed a card to Sayeed. “The room is ready,” she told him, like this was a very exciting bit of news. Her eyes creased when she smiled at Rachel. “Welcome to the Al Zari,” she said softly. “I hope you enjoy your stay with us.”

Sayeed led her across a marble and black onyx floor so beautiful it felt wrong to walk on. When they had reached the elevator he said, “Your suite is on the 19th floor.”
 

Suite?
She pressed her lips together to suppress another smile. They rode up, up past the tops of palm trees, past the roof of the atrium until she saw roads, cars, silvery buildings, and finally, the blue sea. She wondered what sea it was, the Arabian?
 

She liked the word Arabian. It had a taste almost, or a smell. The shape of the word made her think of a horse, with a delicate head and a bowed neck, the kind that pranced with its tail held high.
 
Everything she associated with the word Arabian seemed magical. Walt Disney was to blame, but so was her father. One summer, she must’ve been around 10 years-old, she had trouble falling asleep while it was still light outside. Her dad stretched out on the floor next to her bed, head propped on a folded-in-half pillow, and read her stories from the Arabian Nights:
Aladdin’s
Wonderful
Lamp
,
Ali
Baba
and
the
Forty
Thieves
,
Sinbad
. The collection started with
 
Scheherazade a young woman whose husband, the Sultan, had a habit of marrying a woman at night and having her killed the next morning.
He’s going to kill her?
Rachel had asked her father.
Just listen
, he told her, turning the page. Scheherazade had a plan to keep herself alive. Every night she would tell the Sultan a story and leave it hanging. 1001 stories later, he decided to keep her.
 

Images of smoke genies and magic carpets and embroidered, bejeweled shoes were still stuck in her head when Sayeed opened the door to her new suite. “Here we go,” he said, gesturing that she should walk in first. On the other side of the door was a short hall that ended in an Arabian archway, a fitting frame for her new bedroom. She gasped. The room had a king-sized bed with a soft creme and gold brocade spread. Across its yards of subtly shimmering fabric and closer to the sheer gold drapes, a chaise and two chairs made a sitting area. A metal lantern, which hung over the bed, sprinkled pieces of light like confetti on all the walls.
 

Sayeed must’ve noticed her looking at it. “Moroccan,” he said.
 

“Moroccan,” she repeated. “Of course.”

He put her card key on the console, making sure she saw where it was, and picked up a thin black remote. “This button calls room service. If you get hungry. Or headache.” He pushed another button to open the curtains and there it was again: the blue sea spread wide across her room. “For lights too,” he told her, he held it up with the control panel facing her, like it was the answer to all of her questions. “You will figure it out.”
 

He picked up another remote. “This is for the television,” he pressed a button and a framed tapestry moved to reveal a flat screen. From his pocket he produced a smartphone and handed it to her. “Your business phone,” he told her. He showed her the contacts list. “It has my number. Prince Al Zari’s assistant, Sahar, and Samantha Bryne, there. She’s the hotel manager. You will meet them all soon. When you are unpacked.”

A knock at the door interrupted them. It was the bellhop with her suitcase. Sayeed handed him some money and he set the suitcase on the stand. “Please,” he said to her, clasping his hands together, “Tonight at six, you will meet Prince Khalid Al Zari in the Nada restaurant for dinner. Okay?” His eyebrows raised above the gold rims of his spectacles.
 

“Absolutely,” she said. Only after he turned and closed the door did she think to ask him what she should wear to meet the...prince. And would little bluebirds help her with her hair?
 

She took off her shoes and curled her toes in the carpet. She noticed another arched doorway opposite the bed on the other side of the television. It led to a short hall with a wet bar, then a small room lined with shelves and places to hang clothes. In the center was a single leather ottoman. The clothes in her suitcase couldn’t fill one-tenth of it, but still. It was grand.
 

At the end of the hall another arch led to a marble bathroom, a soft white, that glowed like a seashell. The star of this bathroom, was a big jetted tub. Another thin black remote balanced on the edge of it.
If this turns the faucet on...
She pushed the top button and the curtains parted to reveal the sea, which sparkled in the sunlight. She pushed another button and a loud rush of air came through jets in the tub, startling her. A small dial dimmed the light from another Moroccan lantern which hung over the tub, turning her bathroom into a tasteful little discotheque. “Oh. My God,” she said out loud. Her voice echoed.

She ran hot water into the tub and from a selection of miniature bottles with gold caps, added some bubble bath. When it was full and scented like musk and rose, she climbed in, sank down, and closed her eyes. “Exquisite,” she mumbled, stretching out her legs in the warm water.