The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott

by Jonathan Lowe

  Everyone had a minute, he guessed, when their curiosity was roused. At least until the end of whatever brief attention span television had left them. Being no exception, April replied, "I guess. What's this about?"

  "Shopping," he heard himself confess.

  3

  For a man who didn't own a suit, the store seemed indulgent, the clerk gay. When the tailor's tape began its measurements he sneezed, as though from an allergy. He looked down at the bald spot of the man kneeling at his pant cuffs, and asked, "Does this material breathe well?"

  "Yes sir, it should," came the reply. "It's not a winter suit."

  "Good," he said. Then he took in a deep breath, but strangely did not need to force the question, "Can you make me one in gray, and blue, and white too, then?"

  He bought matching shirts and ties next, some cotton, some silk. Feeling invigorated by the profane obscenity of it, he bought socks and underwear for the first time in over a year, and his very first pair of Speedos. Then he bought three pair of shoes, one Italian brand simply because it was the most expensive pair in the store.

  Taking April's advice, he then found a luggage store nearby, and there bought a set of high end tooled leather suitcases. On a lark, he also bought a silver liquor flask, and a pair of Bolle sunglasses.

  What's next? the curious voice inside him asked. A Porsche?

  No, he wouldn't need that. Not where he was going. He'd said as much to April, and she had agreed. Her tone was particularly dismissive by then, even after admitting her contract at the LBT might not be renewed, and that she also worked as a tutor at the University of Arizona to make ends meet. When he'd mentioned owning the diamond, she'd countered with claims of ownership herself. Although her diamond wasn't quite as big. It was only an engagement ring, after all.

  He imagined her sitting on her apartment's green overstuffed couch, one hand obsessively combing her long red hair, the other poised atop an appointment book as she waited for her lover's call. She would have his evening planned, no doubt. Along with the rest of his life. At least he hoped that was the case. But would she find enough conversation in common with her playboy to merit decades of interest? Could the guy bear discussing the significance of accelerating cosmic expansion on cosmological theory, or the mystery of gravity leaking into other dimensions? He wouldn't wait around to see. He had to let her go, and somehow find a way to let his mother go in the process. And the best way for that was for him to leave. To take a long vacation first, including a visit to France. To drink some red, red wine and discover what was next, if not the end. Maybe he would send April a postcard from one of Dubai's five star hotels, though. Unsigned.

  No, a voice inside him said. Let it go.

  ~ * ~

  The next morning, while packing for his layover in New York, he realized he was already letting go, in the physical sense, with emotions dutifully following in lock step. If nothing else, he reasoned, a vacation was a vacation, and wandering around the new ultra modern capital of world finance--also known to be a canvas for the unrestrained imaginations of all the best architects--certainly beat staring at the fading wallpaper of this dilapidated trailer, afraid of what tomorrow might bring. It was the perfect place to bury one's chrematophobia, too, along with any failed delusions of romance as well. Finally, it was also where Dr. Douglas Etherton, former colleague and director of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, often went. Not that Doug was rich, but rather because one of Etherton's newer friends--and the solar observatory's biggest private benefactor--was a citizen of the United Arab Emirates.

  He took out the brochure that the travel agent had given him. On the back of it he'd scribbled Doug's local UAE phone number, given to him by another Kitt Peak contact, John McBee, an astronomer at the facility's relatively new 3.5 meter New Horizons survey telescope. His first attempt at calling the number had reached only an answering service, but his call to Kitt Peak had also confirmed Etherton was “on another sabbatical” in Dubai, and no doubt staying with his benefactor-friend.

  David imagined joining them at various Dubai nightclubs, taking in the heady views of some of the tallest and technologically original skyscrapers on the planet, then shopping at what were described as the largest and most decadent malls in the known universe. Of course, he wouldn't impose on anyone's hospitality. No need. He'd cashed in his gold and gold shares, besides transferring the remaining cash balance of his bank account to an American Express Platinum card. The only thing that remained in his safety deposit box now was the diamond.

  Diamonds are forever?

  Maybe so, but he wasn't.

  He called a cab, and on his way out glanced back one last time at the corrugated metal box he’d thought of as home. "Who are you?" he asked through the open door. He waited for someone to appear with the answer, but when no one did he gripped the door with his right hand, and slammed it shut. "Wait for me here, then," he said, "whoever you are."

  4

  Overhead bag stowed, he buckled himself in next to the window, and tried not to look again at the face of the stewardess he'd passed in first class. Okay, now, she really does look like someone I know, an inner voice pressured him. April, blond hair notwithstanding?

  Luckily he'd resisted the extra expense, at least on the New York leg. So once the curtain was pulled, he knew he could order cocktails without a double whammy of squeamishness, and from a more matronly face. Yet, curiously, he also knew that such fears were unfounded. Knew that they were more like muscle memory than anything still justified. Being a changed man.

  After takeoff, when passengers were allowed to use their laptops again, he found distraction in going over the stats he'd previously downloaded on Dubai--from its financial problems to its resurgence with the rise in oil prices. He was certain few other of its annual ten million tourists would care, but he'd indulged a rigorous fascination for the place ever since reading an exposé about TV evangelist Ted Cashman, a former felon turned mega-gospel wunderkind. Cashman had begun with tent revivals in the Deep South, then switched to bigger buckets when he was offered partnership on a vacated CBN late night slot opposite Gus Van Buren, pastor of the ten-thousand-plus member Heavenly Wages Church of Dallas. (The vacated preacher was currently serving time at the Austin State Penitentiary for fraud and money laundering.) When Cashman was coerced by a disgruntled employee to finally “cash in,” after only two years on the air, he'd taken his retirement early, too, and bought a condo on the 43rd floor of the Al-Jumeirah Tower, where his maid servant called him 'Sayed Teddy Bear,' and where he frequently threw balcony Jacuzzi parties for supermodels, who were in turn photographed via long lens by the same CNN investigator out to nail Gus.

  He remembered the images he'd seen, looking down at his screen. Prosperity gospel televangelists, like those his mother had given her last dime to before she died, claimed their Citation jets and silver Mercedes were 'entrusted by God.' They had the same expensive tastes as the trust fund billionaires who flew from Palm Beach (when the Season was over there), to join a cadre of former investment banking executives and golden parachute CEOs. Together, they all mingled with oil sheiks and European royalty who came to see and be seen at the Crowne Plaza, or at the Metropolitan Palace, or along Jumeirah Beach. He summoned recurrent anger at the memory of his mother’s lost investments, but felt it only as an afterthought, a remnant of what he'd once indulged. What was happening to him?

  DUBAI, UAE

  Population: 1,792,000

  Industries: Oil, natural gas, finance, manufacturing,

  international trade, boat building, pearl production.

  Unemployment: negligible.

  Ethnicity: Indian, Pakistani, Filipino, Arab, Western Ex-pat

  Religion: Muslim, Hindu, Roman Catholic

  Events: Ramadan is followed by Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha.

  There are also concerts, plays, movies, art gallery showings,

  tennis exhibitions, car rallies, ballet, wine-tastings, horse

  races, yachting regatta
s, and golf tournaments.

  Customs: Meetings begin late, then proceed quickly. It is

  customary to chat prior to talking business. Friday is a day of

  prayer and rest. Never sit with your feet pointing toward

  anyone. Do not shake hands with Arab women who do not

  extend their own hand first. Handshakes between men involve

  touching the heart with one's right palm after shaking. Do not

  criticize. Dress conservatively. Normal business hours are

  Saturday to Wednesday, 8 AM to 1 PM, and 4 PM to 7 PM.

  Attractions: Dubai World Trade Centre, Creative Art Centre,

  Dubai Convention Centre, Dune Centre, Jumeirah Marina,

  Indian Playhouse, Ballet Centre, Dubai Museum, Grand

  Mosque, Sheikh Saeed Al-Maktoum's House, Wild Wadi Water

  Park, Wafi Shopping Centre, Dubai Sports City, Encounter

  Zone, Heritage Village, Dubailand, Restless Planet Theme

  Park, Deira Spice & Gold Souk.

  "What you reading?" the curious businessman beside him asked, following an interruptive lean and squint.

  On impulse, David abruptly closed his laptop. "Nothing important," he said. He looked over at the man, feeling a surprising and spontaneous diffidence overtake his hostility at the violation of space. "Ever been to the Middle East?" he asked.

  "Not hardly."

  "Me either."

  "Business trip?" the man inquired next, noting his pale blue dress shirt.

  "I hope not," he said.

  Then the curtain to first class parted, and he saw the stewardess who resembled April framed there, looking toward the rear of the plane. He followed her line of sight back to where the older flight attendant and a male steward had begun lumbering forward with a bulky silver food service cart. He imagined having their job, feeding random groups of needy passengers in such a confined space, all while traveling high above the clouds in a metal tube propelled to just under the speed of sound. What must it be like, he wondered, to always be moving, adjusting to shifting schedules, the eternal rush of air and whirr of engines framing the background as he vaulted forward through time and space with a minutely higher level of cosmic radiation streaming around him?

  He more than wondered. He wanted to know.

  When it was his turn, he ordered a gin and tonic. Decidedly, he declined the double plastic-wrapped snack.

  ~ * ~

  The jet scheduled for the ocean-jumping leg of his trip boasted wider aisles, and a full complement of amenities. Another bonus, since he was now seated in first class on a Boeing 777 International flight, was an open bar. This time he favored Baileys Irish Cream, together with warm chocolate cookies. His seat mate was a Frenchman named Jean-Claude something, a corporate head hunter for a pharmaceutical firm.

  "Tell me, if you would," David inquired, "what that's like?"

  The man's big, pointed nose angled toward him like the barrel of a small bore shotgun. "How do you mean?"

  He remembered reading somewhere that the French really didn't care what people thought of them, so the return question suggested puzzlement, not offense. "I guess what I'm asking is. . ." he began, then concluded, "what it's like to be you."

  Jean-Claude smiled, and turned back to his facing seat cushion, amused. At this David recalled that the French weren't obsessed with what a person did for a living, either. It was one of the reasons why he wanted to visit France after a stint in class and privilege obsessed Dubai--where itinerant Asian construction workers earned only $10 a day and lived in unsanitary dorms while native Arab residents were awarded a stipend of $55,000 a year for doing nothing.

  "I mean your line of work," David further qualified his question, "is rather unusual, is all."

  "Oh? And what do you. . . do?"

  "I design spectrometers and adaptive optics systems for astronomical telescopes." Or rather I did. "It involves the use of deformable mirrors phased to laser beams that create artificial guide stars by exciting sodium atoms in different layers of the mesosphere."

  Jean-Claude's nose angled toward him once more, before being scratched. "And you expect me to top that?"

  ~ * ~

  On the next and final leg of his trip, from Paris to Dubai, he slept most of the way. He dreamt of being sent from Mumbai to Rome to recruit a mafia don to head a Bollywood studio. Vividly he imagined sitting next to a rotund, balding man in a gray suit, the door to the Citation rattling as if about to open. Benny Hinn sat opposite them, grinning maniacally. He woke to the rumbling of a food service cart as it plied the aisles of the Emirates Airlines Airbus on a final drink round en route to Dubai International.

  Checking his watch, he reached for the air phone in the seat back in front of him, and, after engaging his credit card, redialed Etherton's contact number. The phone buzzed four times before a connection was opened and a familiar voice spoke.

  "Hello."

  "Doug! Hi. This is David Leiter calling."

  "David?" The voice sounded skeptical.

  "Yeah, you remember me, I hope."

  "Well, of course. What's up, buddy?"

  "Me, actually. I'm in the air, approaching Dubai. Flight six thirteen out of Paris."

  "You're kidding."

  "I'll explain later why I'm not. Think you can meet me sometime, maybe show me around?"

  "I'll do better than that. When does your plane arrive?"

  "About an hour."

  After hanging up, he lifted the shade on his window and studied the shifting patterns of clouds below. An occasional break revealed an arid, desolate landscape beneath. He leaned to rest the side of his forehead against the cool plastic frame of the window, and noted a tiny machined hole at the bottom of the inner layer of Plexiglas, guessing it had something to do with pressure balance. When the Airbus began its slow descent he scanned the horizon for bigger breaks in the clouds. There were none. But when the jet began to bank twenty minutes later, he looked out into the forward curve and saw open sky near the descending sun. Colors grew richer as shadows lengthened. Then, after a shudder of turbulence, the Fasten Seat Belts light came on, with an attending bell. A flight attendant clambered down the aisle, checking belts as the captain cautioned the landing--first in French, then in English. Minutes later the fringe of the cloud bank was reached, and long tendrils of vapor gave way to open space.

  David looked down, and for a moment could not believe what he was seeing. A garden of immense flowers appeared to have opened ahead, blossoming from the sandy shoreline out into the sea. On closer approach three of the flowers resolved into trees whose symmetrical branches were laid out in the perfect pattern of a palm. Another resembled a globe of the entire world, beneath which other islands representing the cosmos stretched, including a crescent moon, rising sun, Saturn, Jupiter, and beyond these an entire spiral galaxy. All of these epic designs, he knew, had been accomplished by judicious dredging and filling over a decade, and at the bequest and oversight of Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, a ruler so beloved he moved about the city without security escort.

  Along the graceful limbs of the Palm Jumeirah, and the individual country islands of the World development, he could soon see miles of spectacular homes, marinas, hotels, and the Atlantis resort where singer Kylie Minogue had once been paid $4.4 million to perform at its gala opening. A fine metal thread that arched over to the resort at the head of the Palm Islands he judged to be the aerial monorail which had since been used by Madonna, Shakira, Celine Dion, Elton John, Aerosmith, Amr Diab, and a host of other entertainers. But it was in no way the star attraction of the bold and defiant city. Next to all lavish developments meant to be appreciated from the air, he spotted a now inconspicuous dot suspended over the ocean: the Burj Al-Arab, long a signature hotel of Dubai, and one of the world's tallest and most expensive, rising like a sail from the water, with a helicopter pad and upscale restaurant dangling out on platforms near the top. Nearby was Jebel Ali, the world's largest manmade port. And further inla
nd, he glimpsed for the first time the fabled Jumeirah coastal belt, west of Dubai Creek, where Business Bay faced an impossibly high silver spire, the world's tallest manmade structure.

  The Burj Khalifa rose like a modern Tower of Babel as the city's new signature exclamation point, and whose upper levels now aligned with his circling plane. Whether it was a monument to progress or to ego, he was reminded nonetheless of a verse by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

  I am Ozymandias, king of kings.

  Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

  As his plane descended on final approach, he picked out The Emirates Towers, the Al Garhoud Bridge, Port Rashid, and the Dynamic Tower--whose every floor rotated independently. The crushed white shell beach below was now tinged with the glow of sunset, and further off to the south and east could be seen the rolling sand dunes of the Empty Quarter and the Hajar Mountains, red from both dusk and iron oxide.

  He tried to imagine the striped hyenas, desert foxes, oryx, and falcons out there, somewhere. He did so not to resist the critical voice in his head. Instead, he let the voice play itself out in the background, signaling its greed and graft, its fear and loneliness like the disappearing sound of rushing air to a flight attendant. What he was left with was a kindled rush like exhilaration. Like if he could somehow just let go of the past, it would all become real.

  5

  Doug Etherton hardly resembled the man he'd known two years prior. The frumpy college professor look had given way to a stylish neatness, slick yet underplayed. Gone were the thick black-rimmed glasses from his thin, patrician nose. No pocket protector adorned a plaid buttoned down shirt, either. The shiny royal blue garment which now hung from his oddly straightened shoulders bore no pockets at all, and tapered inward below the ribcage to hug tailored black trousers that ended at buckleless sandals. His hair was longer and unparted, too, and a short professionally groomed beard did wonders for his weak chin. Doug looked at least ten years younger, almost viral, and obviously tanned, even in the artificial light crisscrossing the airport's garage tunnel.