Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter One
People always asked how she’d met him. She wanted to tell them what he’d said about the Cave of Lascaux. How, underneath the chalky soil of southwestern France, near Montignac, hidden for centuries by underbrush, was a system of caves with prehistoric drawings. “People walked right by,” he said. “Their focus on the path, or the horizon. Can you imagine? They had no idea what was down there.”
He’d seen the ochre stags, charcoal horses, the handprints, a rudimentary map of the stars, some drawn or painted, some etched with a sharp stone, all illuminated, foot by foot, by the soft light from a lantern. “It was deep and complex as a dream,” he said, looking down, like he was remembering it, "it changed me."
She wanted to tell everyone who asked about them, how they met, about the day he compared her to Lascaux. Instead, she told them a different truth. She told them she needed a job.
* * *
Rachel migrated with the other passengers through the sunlit concourse. She passed men in crisp, white, floor-length dress shirts, checkered scarves flipped away from their faces like long hair. Women’s robes billowed as they walked. Some were completely covered by black gauzy material and moved like shadows along the avenue of duty free shops. She wondered if they recognized each other, by gait, by fragrance, or footwear. Or did they move among the crowds feeling invisible, anonymous?
She felt both underdressed and aware of her bare arms in a short-sleeved t-shirt and khaki pants. It seemed a comfortable choice for the trip around the globe. Now she wished she wore something like the Indian man in front of her in his tunic and loose cotton pants. His wife wore a bright green sari and a scarf that ended at her sequined shoes.
Between them, holding their hands, a tiny girl bent her legs, lifted her feet off the floor and let them carry her along like that. She giggled. They smiled at her in spite of the strain on their already tired arms. They seemed happy to be here. Rachel took that as a good sign.
“I’m really here,” she whispered, switching her bag to her other shoulder. Now both shoulders ached from the weight of the books she’d packed. She was wrinkled and travel weary, but happy to be off the airplane. After twelve hours of contorted sleep, she was almost there. Wherever there was.
Her parents didn’t want to her to take the job. They both thought it was a mistake.
“Where?” her dad asked, looking like he’d misheard her. “Dubai?” He always encouraged her to have a few adventures before she settled down. Now he seemed to be having second thoughts.
Her mom followed that up with: “Honey, I don’t know. Can’t you wait a few months, see if something comes up here?”
A few more months? She’d already waited a few months. Twelve to be exact. She'd filled out more applications than she could remember, for jobs she didn’t even want until they rejected her. She had a degree in journalism and couldn’t get a job working the front desk at the Motel 6. “Have you ever worked in hospitality?” A woman had asked her over the phone, missing the irony of her own inhospitable tone.
What did that even mean? Working in hospitality? She’d spent her whole life being unnecessarily friendly to people. On the phone, in person, even in heavy traffic. She was fairly sure she could hand someone a room key without causing a scene.
This job, the one waiting for her at the end of the concourse, had been advertised on a website with an international employment section which she read mostly to pass the time, something she had plenty of since graduating. The public relations position caught her eye, any job that listed writing in the description caught her eye, but she didn’t apply. She didn’t even know where Dubai was.
Then, rather than ask her mom for gas money, again, she threw some old clothes into the back of her Honda and headed for a consignment store. At a busy intersection she saw a guy dressed as a mattress, dancing on the side of the road, flashing a 15 PERCENT OFF sign at oncoming traffic. While she waited at the light a gust of wind came and caught the inflatable costume like a sail and blew him back a few feet. He stumbled, almost fell, before he regained his footing. His sign though, had blown along the strip of grass and he had to turn and chase after it, the wind blowing against the back side of his costume now. His legs, outfitted in grey tights, struggled this time to slow himself down lest he become airborne and delivered to the brick wall of the nearby Chick-Fil-A. She was scared for him and she was even more scared she might recognize him from one of her writing classes.
That day she drove home and rewrote her resume.
She added that she had done some public relations work for a local nonprofit (omitting that it was her mother’s nonprofit). She promoted an art auction that raised over 120 K for at-risk teens (omitting that she’d really paraded, like a woman on a game show, paintings around a banquet hall encouraging people to bid). She had been more of an art sherpa than an event planner. Yes, she embellished. That’s what writers do. She wrote a kick-ass cover letter about the lost art of storytelling in the business world and clicked send.
Two weeks went by without a reply. Then one night she remembered the business card in her nightstand. The one she’d had for over a year. The one she almost tossed in the garbage. When she put it in the drawer she wondered why she was keeping it, but she knew she’d never get another business card with the word “sheik” on it. After failing to find it by digging around in the receipts, gum wrappers, hair ties and scraps of poetry she’d written late at night when she couldn’t sleep, she dumped the contents of the drawer on her bed. It was still there, a simple white card embossed with the name Sheik Ahmed Al Baz. Maybe he could help her.
She'd met him, of all places, at the Kentucky Derby. She and her mom had gone as guests of man named Wilder Dent, the newest member of her mother’s board of directors. He invited them to stay at his horse farm. “We have plenty of room and I know, I know Miss Patti would love to have you all.” He instructed them to wear hats. “The bigger the better, he told them, “ And fancy as you can find. Hell, I had to get a bigger car just so Patricia Dent could get her hat in without knocking off a flower or a piece of fruit.” He told them the race would be “the most exciting two minutes of their lives, I can promise you that.”
It took two days for them to shop for the most exciting two minutes of their lives. “You look precious,” her mom said when she tried on a white linen and eyelet dress. Rachel rolled her eyes and took it off. “Now I know which one I’m not getting.” The wide brim of the simple hat she’d chosen made her feel claustrophobic. The shade it cast would protect her shoulders from the sun but she was worried about tripping or running into a wall. When her mom found an identical one, she forbid her from getting it. “At least get a different color.”
The farm was better than she imagined it. The morning of the race she woke early and sat in a wicker chair on the porch, wrapped in a quilt, watching the horses graze. She wrote it down in her notebook, how they were vague and then vivid in the fog that settled on the pasture. The smell was thick and sweet and, for days back home, hung in the air near her duffle bag.
At night Wilder poured them bourbon in short, heavy glasses and told them he’d never live anywhere else. Smokey Hills, he told them, had produced three derby winners in the last thirty years. “That may not seem like a lot, but the feeling of watching one a your horses cross that line can last a lifetime.” He swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “Not a bad record,” he told them. “Not a bad life.”
Wilder knew everyone at Churchill Downs, the valet; the red-headed boy about her age who checked IDs to get into the suites; and the gaunt-faced man, shirt-sleeves rolled up to his forearms, who put sprigs of mint in
their Juleps at the clubhouse bar. He left Miss Patti in charge of the guests mingling in their suite and took Rachel and her mother to the stands. “The only way to watch the race as far as I’m concerned.” They sat on benches and sipped their drinks and watched the crowd gather up. “Now that I have your attention,” her mother said, “Can we discuss the board’s role in changing the bylaws. There’s something...” Rachel took this as her cue to get up and explore. Her mom and Wilder could easily spend the next 45 minutes discussing organizational blah, blah.
She made her way back to Wilder’s suite and found a cold bottle of water in the refrigerator behind the bar. Even in the shade of her massive hat, she was hot. She drank half the bottle and watched Miss Patti buzz around the room, the hat she wore, a pink one piled high with peonies made her easy to spot. Rachel wondered if she got a little sad after the race was over and she had to wait year for the next one. Miss Patti spotted her, gave her a quick wave and then rushed across the floor with her arms wide. She was a hugger. “You look darling,” she said, kissing Rachel on the cheek. “I hope you’re staying cool out there.”
“This helps,” she said holding up her bottle of water. “Mom and Wilder are talking shop so I thought I’d walk around a little.”
“Well I don’t blame you one bit,” she said. “You know where you should go, down to the stables. There’s some real beauties down there. If it weren’t so hot I’d go with you myself. Now, if anyone tries to shoo you away, just tell them Miss Patti sent you.”
Rachel found the stalls and talked her way past two guards. Invoking Miss Patti’s name was quite effective. “Mind you don’t get yourself kicked,” one of them told her.
She started at one end of a long row of stalls and walked slowly, peeking into each, hoping to see a horse. Most were empty but sometimes one would come to the door and put its downy nose in the palm of her hand, breathe its moist breath on her fingers. She loved their names. Sea Charm. Thunder March. Juxtapose. Sound Decision. She took out the pocket-sized, spiral notebook she’d managed to fit into her tiny beaded purse and with the short stub of a pencil wrote them down.
When she reached the end of the row she turned left and left again intending to work her way up the other side. A man was there, leaning against the first stall door. He put his arms out to keep her from running into him. “Excuse me, he said, catching her by the shoulders. He let her go and took a step back.
He was an older man, the wrinkles around his eyes and the grey in his neatly trimmed made him look around her father’s age, perhaps a few years older. His skin was dark and his accent confirmed he wasn’t from Kentucky. “No, it’s my fault,” she told him. “I wasn’t looking.”
“And I always get nervous before the race. My mind goes somewhere else.” The stall behind him was empty but a wooden sign hung from a nail announced War Cry.
“You have a horse in the race?” She asked him.
He looked at her notebook and his expression changed. “Your a reporter?”
“No,” she said. “I just like the names. I was writing them down.” She didn’t blame him for looking confused. It was a strange habit of hers, to write down words that pleased her, not because she didn’t know them already but because she wanted to see them in her own handwriting. When she wrote them on paper it felt like she was inscribing them into her brain tissue. More than once she’d found a piece of paper with a word like “crisp” or “undulate” and wondered what had inspired her to write it down.
“Your horse is War Cry?”
“Yes, you know him?”
She shook her head no. “This is my first time here,” she told him. “How did you come up with the name?”
“Yes, I know,” he said, chuckling. “It is dangerous for a Middle Easterner to have a horse with this name. But it has two meanings, yes? I prefer the second meaning. That war makes sadness.”
“I like it,” she said. “I hope he wins.”
“Me too,” the man said. “Last year he was fast. But lately, he has been, eh, slower. The trainer has assured me he is simply saving his energy for this race. We shall see.” He looked down and scuffed the ground with his shoe. He looked at her again. “Do you want to see him? I can show you.”
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.
Suite Dubai (Arriving) Page 1
