Suite Dubai (Arriving) (6 page)

Fly something in?

“How about the end of May? The weather is still, well it’s mild for Dubai. That would give you about 40 days to get this thing planned. How,” she asked, “does that sound?”
 

Impossible
came to mind. She fought hard not to say it. Part of her brain was still caught up on the words
fly something in
. “Sure,” she said. “Fine.” She could say anything, agree to anything. You want dancing hyenas, painted neon green. Sure. You want the hotel’s name written in storm clouds. Absolutely. “So, the last Friday in May?”

Samantha’s lips stretched to a tight little smile. “Friday, Rachel, is a holy day....like Sunday in the American South. Friday, everyone goes to mosque. Or they stay home while everyone else goes to mosque.”
 

Rachel watched Samantha’s mouth move, her little green eyes narrow, her thin pink lips draw closed like a purse, but she wasn’t listening anymore. This place was so different, even the days of the week meant something else. A Sunday was a Monday. A Thursday became a Friday. And Friday and Saturday, the weekend. She sat there with her legs crossed at the ankles, pretending to listen to Samantha and wondered what else she didn’t know and how would she know that she didn’t know it.
 

“So let’s do that Thursday, shall we?”

“Why not.” Rachel said, standing up. “Let’s do it Thursday.”
Let’s
do
it
tomorrow
.

“Good,” Samantha said. “The Prince has some time today at 4:30 to discuss the event. We can tell him we have a date, at least. We can also discuss the budget. I know you don’t have anything yet.”
 

“No.” Rachel interrupted. “I can have something. An estimate, anyway.”

“Good,” Samantha said. “I’ll meet you in reception and we can walk up together.”
 

***

Hamid had a way of poking his head into her office when she was most distraught.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked.

“Nope, just working,” she said, staring at her laptop screen, wishing he’d take the hint that she was busy.
 

Instead he walked in and sat in one of the chairs. “No problems?”

“Of course I have problems,” she said, “I have so many problems right now I can’t even list them.”
 

He stood up again. “Sorry,” he said. “I am bothering you.”
 

“Hamid, I’m sorry. I’m trying to do a budget and all I have is a list of prices. I have no idea what things cost here. I don’t even know the days of the week.” She put her face in her hands. “I’m sorry. I was rude. And I’m not even royalty.”
 

“You’re working on a budget?” he asked. “You have it in a spreadsheet?”

She told him she didn’t. “Just a list.”
 

“When do you need it? Wait, let me guess. Right away?”

“25 Minutes,” she told him.

“So I can help you,” he said coming around her desk. He bent down over her keyboard, close enough that she could smell his aftershave. He showed her how to open a new spreadsheet, how to make columns and rows, how to put in categories and numbers and how, once set up, it made the calculations for her.
 

“How many people are coming?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “How many do you think?”

“Let’s do a column for one, two, three and four hundred guests. Just to make this look good.” He added a column for each possibility and showed her how the costs could be broken down per guest. “See, you are ready for your meeting with his highness.” He said the last part with a bit of sarcasm.

She was so grateful she leaned over and hugged him.
 

***

They rode the elevator facing forward, not saying a word. Samantha clearly didn’t like her. In the meeting, she’d seen a different look on Samantha’s face when Kritika talked about playing the cello, when Hamid said he worked for the UN, when Anaton said he’d skated in the Olympics. Her face softened. She seemed almost pleased. When Rachel spoke, however, Samantha looked at her with something like pity. As the floors passed and they got closer to the top floor, Rachel felt a sense of dread.
 

She’d felt dread like this after the phone call from Truman. She tried to dispel the creeping feeling in the car, on the way to his apartment, by turning up the radio, twice and singing along to “I’m Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. It was one of the first warm days in April but despite the sunshine, she did not feel good.
 

“Can we talk?” He'd asked over the phone. That’s how it started, or ended really, with Truman. So cliché. So pathetic. A formal invitation to talk, something they had been doing quite naturally on their own until he'd began to avoid her. For two days he didn’t return her calls and now he wanted to talk? She needed an appointment?
 

She was careful with her tone when she answered him. “Sure,” she said, but even then she couldn’t breath. The circuitry in her arms and legs seemed to be misfiring. She put her hand to her forehead to check for a fever. “Do you want me to grab something to drink, some wine?” It was their little ritual, that when she came over she brought a bottle of wine.

Truman had been a decent boyfriend, her first serious boyfriend out of high school. They met in botany class and began to study together, equations for turning sunlight into sugar, the difference between coniferous and deciduous trees, that kind of thing. Studying turned into eating popcorn and watching movies. Then one night she stayed over. She didn’t even mean to date him. It was something that just happened. Then he met a guy named Brian and everything changed. They played Frisbee golf together, a sport Truman had once proclaimed was for losers.
 

 
“It’s just something to do,” he told her when she brought it up. Soon he’d started skipping classes, skipping movie night, skipping all nonBrian activities. He went instead to Brian’s apartment and which is where he must’ve met Brian’s cousin Kristi. Truman never told her that. Two months after they broke up, Emily had seen them leaving the local Cineplex, holding hands.
 
So cliche’.

He told her he wasn’t in the mood for wine, but she picked up a bottle anyway, just to spite him. She rented a movie at the grocery store,
Casablanca
. If he was going to tell her something bad, she wanted to look really, really good.
 

“Hey Rach,” he said when she walked in. The room was dark and he was sitting on his shabby sofa, leaned over, his forearms resting on his thighs. “I think we need some space,” he said looking up, finally, to gauge her reaction. She stared at him, too stunned to say anything at first. Then he puffed his cheeks and exhaled, like he'd carried a refrigerator up the stairs.

That’s when she said the thing about
Cosmo Magazine
, in a voice that was not cool, but shrill.
 

That was the first time it had happened. That was the first time she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
 
It wasn’t because she really missed him. “It’s rejection,” Emily told her. “It’s the worst.” She prescribed a night of drinking and then making out with a stranger. “Who wants to date a chubby, balding, Frisbee player anyway. Seriously, if you saw him in a bar would you choose him? I didn’t think so.”

A ding indicated they'd reached their floor. Before they stepped out Samantha turned to her. "Rachel," she said, lightly touching her arm, "I want to warn you that shaking hands isn’t as common here as it is in Britain, or America-r. Really, it’s best to wait for the other person to initiate it, or not. Just keep that in mind.” She gave Rachel a little smile and then stepped out of the elevator.
 

Behind Sahar’s desk was a glass panel with frosted letters announcing Al Zari Enterprises, under it etched in the glass was the jagged skyline of Dubai. Sahar wasn’t young or beautiful, but she was sharp, friendly. She wore reading glasses on a chain around her neck and low-heeled shoes. “Good to meet you,” she told Rachel. “He’s expecting you now.”

They walked in and she, trying to avoid looking at him right away, noticed the decor of his office. It was bigger than theirs by half, furnished with brown leather chairs, an octagonal table with bone inlay and topped with a brass tray and an ornate tea set. Displayed on the walls were artifacts from the middle east: a dagger in a holster made of dyed leather and silver studs, framed paper with what looked like Arabic writing in the shape of a stallion. The Prince, who’d been sitting, stood up.
 
"That was made by a famous calligrapher,” he said walking over to where she stood.

“It’s painted?” she asked, stepping closer to see the thickness of the lines.
 

“With a small brush,” he said. She stole a glance at him as he spoke, noticed how his dark hair shone in the light, how a dark tendril of it framed his forehead and ended right below his cheekbone. He brushed it back.
 

She looked away. “Are those your relatives?” She nodded at the row black and white photographs.
 

“Great grandfather,” he said nodding at the first. “His brothers,” he said about the other two. All three had dark beards, thick eyebrows, and expressions that made her feel even more nervous.
 

“They look like brothers,” she said. She was aware of his eyes on her now, on her face, her jaw. She wished he’d look away.
 

Behind them Samantha coughed. “Sorry,” she said.
 

“Shall we sit?” He said taking the lead, walking to the chair behind his desk. Rachel took the chair next to Samantha. She felt awkward around him, angular. She didn’t know where to look and when he focused his attention on her, she wished he wouldn’t.
 

"You have a date set?" he asked. Now they both looked at her.
 

She told them she did. “We,” she was careful to include Samantha, “have decided on the 28th of May, a Thursday night.” She stood, teetered a little in her heels and handed Samantha a copy of her budget. She walked to the desk and handed one to him.
 

“This is a very rough budget, but I wanted to have something to work from. You both," she looked at Samantha, “can let me know if I’m way off base. If I’ve overlooked something. Just,” she swallowed, took a breath and said in a quiet but steady voice, “let me know what changes to make.”

Not too bad, she thought. He was being polite and she couldn’t see Samantha’s expression at all. She guessed it was the same as it had been all day.
 

While the Prince’s attention was on the spreadsheet she looked at him, tried to judge his reaction.
 

“Is it too much?” she asked.
 

“No,” he said. “It's fine. It’s your first day.”

She felt a surge of gratitude. It
was
her first day.
 

They were interrupted by a buzzing sound and Samantha pulled her phone from her pocket again. She didn’t say bloody hell this time, but she did apologize for not turning it off. “I thought I’d done it,” she said. “There’s been an issue with William and the--”

“Go ahead,” he said, waving his hand like it was no big deal. “If you need to leave, Rachel and I can finish the meeting. No problem.”

Samantha looked at Rachel wondering if she
should
leave. She looked worried. “We’ll be fine,” Rachel told her.

Still seeming reluctant, Samantha stood, looked down at Rachel again, then walked out the door.
 

They were alone. Behind him seemed a safer place to look, at the view out the windows behind his desk. From her seat she could see the tip of a sharp skyscraper, blinking red to warn planes, and the line where the sea met the sky. They were almost the same shade of blue.

“So we have a date?” he asked.
 

“I’m sorry?” Her face flushed and because he likely noticed it, flushed more.

He cleared his throat. “The last Wednesday in May? The 28th?
 

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

“And,” he spoke slowly now to help her catch up, “a very early budget.”

“Right...so.” She reached up to tuck hair behind her ear, forgetting she’d put it up.

“Set up a meeting with Mr. Jensen. He’ll explain our accounting system, tell you how to pay for what you need, track expenses, that kind of thing.” He tilted his head and looked at her so intensely she couldn’t move. “Have you ever done one of these?”

It took her a moment to understand what he meant. No,” she admitted, “I haven’t.”
 

He gave her a that’s-what-I-was-afraid-of look and then picked up a pen from his desk and twirled it in his fingers. He seemed to be choosing his next words very carefully. “You know, I told Ahmed no. I told him I needed someone with experience, someone who had done this before. There was another applicant, a woman who had opened three hotels in Dubai and two in Tokyo. Samantha too had someone, a friend, who worked with her in London, planned events for Buckingham Palace.” His gaze shifted from the pen back to her.
 

So it was the sheik.
 

“Ahmed has been very good to me, better to me than my own father. Still,” he smiled, “I wanted to tell him no. That is my weakness, I can’t tell him no.”