The Moonlit Earth

by Christopher Rice

  In the lavatory, he removed his polo shirt, washed his armpits in the sink, and spritzed himself with the complimentary bottle of Salvatore Ferragamo cologne. Prior to landing, he would have to don his thobe just like his father, but for his long-awaited meeting with the flight attendant he had selected a different outfit, an intermediary outfit, a compromise between East and West. He slipped on a flowing white shirt from Hugo Boss that was like a shorter version of a royal robe. The light, silken fabric tickled his nipples and there was a part of him—a very drunken part—that wondered if he would be content to remain in the lavatory for the remainder of the flight, teasing himself with the expensive, silken fabrics of clothes purchased for a small fortune in Beverly Hills. Was not the anticipation as delicious as any pleasures the flight attendant could offer him?

  Most of the men he had been with had been other Saudis, and they took pleasure from one another as a matter of course. What else was there to do when so many of their women were walled away? But there had been one American. A designer from New York City who had been hired to redo his father’s house in Jeddah. He was the first man to tell Aabid how beautiful he was during the act itself. The flight attendant would be like that, he was sure. Confident. Aggressive. Grateful to have been given access to Aabid’s body. Perhaps he would not have to use the money at all.

  The business-class cabin seemed to go on for half the length of the plane. The seats were almost as wide as those in first class, and while they weren’t enclosed, they sat inside square plastic shells that allowed them to go completely flat. Only two seats fit in between both aisles, and only one against the windows on either side of each row. The cabin lighting had been reduced to a soft light-blue glow. Perhaps there was some sort of crew rest area farther back. He was hurrying in that direction when a pinprick of light caught his attention.

  On the opposite aisle, the flight attendant was reclined in one of the window seats, engrossed in a book. He had removed his blazer and white oxford, leaving him in his gray polyester uniform pants and a tight white undershirt. He is ready for me, Aabid thought. Perhaps he has been waiting. But the book held him rapt as Aabid squeezed through the empty seats to reach his aisle. Aabid stood in the aisle for what felt like several minutes as the flight attendant continued to read. On the cover of the book was a black-and-white photograph of a man and young boy, standing with their backs to the camera on a wind-swept beach. The title didn’t make sense to him; it was some American expression. Silently, Aabid cursed the author, this Quinn character, for stealing the first blush of this moment from him. Then he cleared his throat.

  The book went flying, and the flight attendant made a sound like he had been punched in the stomach. When he realized Aabid was standing right next to him, he let out a long, relieved sigh. He was about to say something, then he seemed to think better of it and laughed silently into his clasped hands. Finally, he looked into Aabid’s eyes, and something seemed to fall into place in his brain: the darkness and emptiness of their surroundings, the distance Aabid had traveled from his own private suite to find him. But the only words that came out of his mouth were, “Cute shirt.”

  “It is like you have your own private plane,” Aabid said.

  “I guess,” he said. He was adjusting himself, straightening in his seat and tugging the hem of his undershirt down over his flat, hairless stomach. “Actually, it’s more like your private plane. For tonight, at least.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But back here you have more privacy. And now that I am back here, with you, I have more privacy too.” Silence. “My name is Aabid.” The flight attendant hesitated before extending his hand in return, as if he thought this simple gesture might mark an irrevocable commitment.

  “Cameron.” He was studying Aabid so intently now, Aabid wondered if he would need the envelope at all. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Eighteen,” he answered. It was a lie; he would be eighteen in several months but he sensed a larger, more urgent question lurking behind this simple one, and he didn’t want to delay the asking of it.

  “When do they drop you off at college?”

  “Bakr and I were born thirteen months apart. I’m younger than him, but not by much.”

  “Right. But—”

  “I’m not going to college.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have no use for it.”

  “But your brother does?”

  “Bakr is restless. He asks many questions. The family tires of answering them.” These were his father’s words, and not his own. But he had no desire to ponder the subject himself. He could feel himself being led off the path.

  “And you downing an entire bottle of bourbon in a few hours makes you … what? Mild-mannered?”

  “There is no alcohol allowed in the Kingdom.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “So I drink it all before we land, see?” Aabid’s bright smile did the trick; Cameron erupted with laughter so forceful he clamped a hand over his mouth after a few seconds. “There are a lot of things I can do before we land.”

  Cameron glanced out the window at the black night sky. “Your brother. What kinds of questions does he ask?”

  “The kind that got him sent to college.”

  “So he got sent to college? He didn’t ask to go? Just like you didn’t ask to go?”

  “You find me to be uneducated.”

  “No. I find you to be drunk. Are you sad about your brother? Or were you just trying to work up the nerve to hit on me?”

  “You are here tonight because of me,” Aabid said. “Because I requested you.”

  Cameron was staring at him intently now. “I thought you requested both of us.”

  “I did.”

  “But you didn’t want your father to know?”

  “You are like Bakr.”

  “Too many questions?”

  “Far too many,” Aabid said. “All our lives, Bakr and I are at each other’s throats. In Saudi families, the eldest son is second only to the father. For us to be so close in age, he has never felt safe in his place. And I have never let him feel safe. And now he is gone and so I get many things to myself. Things you cannot get in college.”

  “Like what?”

  “Entire oceans,” Aabid whispered. “Swaying palm trees that are not being killed by the desert sun. Blue water all around. As blue as the sky.”

  “A boat,” Cameron said. “You’re getting a boat?”

  “The Moon of Riyadh.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “You have never seen her.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I will have men and weapons to protect me from pirates. And I can go anywhere from the South China Sea to the bottom of Australia.”

  “Oh yeah? Why not California?”

  “My father will not let me take it that far.”

  “So it’s your father’s boat?”

  “It is a yacht.”

  “Yeah. I gathered that.” Aabid was struck silent by the bite in Cameron’s tone. “Your father lets your brother go to California for school but you can’t take his boat outside of Asia? That doesn’t seem very fair, does it?”

  “He says only some of us may live in the West.”

  “But not you.”

  “No, for me he has chosen paradise. Who is it that he loves more?”

  When the flight attendant managed only a small, wry smile at this comment, Aabid said, “May we move into the middle seats?”

  “Why?”

  “Because then we can sit next to one another.”

  “I have to go back up front in a few minutes and relieve Jenny.”

  “I can make arrangements for—”

  “If you didn’t want your father to know you wanted me on this flight, he can’t very well discover us in the back of this plane, can he?”

  But before Aabid could answer, Cameron stepped out of his seat and into the aisle next to him and punched his arms into the sleeves of his dress shirt. His jacket was
slung over the empty seat behind his and he turned his back to Aabid as he wiggled into it. In a panic, Aabid fumbled for the fat envelope of cash in his pants pocket. By the time Cameron had turned to face him again, Aabid was holding the envelope out in front of him in one hand.

  For a few seconds, Cameron just stared at this offering, which made Aabid feel like a beggar, then he took the envelope from him and began counting the bills inside with a thumb and forefinger, so he wouldn’t have to remove any of them from the envelope itself. He must have counted out at least two thousand dollars when he decided to give up.

  There was pity in the man’s eyes as he took a seat on one of the armrests. From the limp manner in which he held the envelope against one thigh, it seemed he had forgotten about the money altogether.

  “Who’s going with you?” he finally asked.

  “I am sorry?”

  “On your boat. Sorry. Your yacht. Who’s going with you?”

  “I will have a crew, and I will have men to provide security.”

  The way he nodded and looked at the carpeting between them told Aabid he was disappointed by his answer. And the first flush of embarrassment he had felt upon turning over the envelope now threatened to intensify into a flood of shame. He could feel his face getting hot and his vision blurring slightly.

  “And I will have the world,” he added.

  “Your brother will have the world. You’ll have the South Pacific.”

  He was stunned by the directness of these words. But Cameron rose to his feet and tore the flap from the envelope. He removed a pen from his jacket pocket, then he smoothed the torn flap along the back of the plastic casing of the seat next to him so he could write on it easily.

  “When do you set sail?” Cameron asked.

  “You have no right to—”

  “When do you set sail?” he asked again, without looking up from what he was writing.

  “Two weeks.”

  “From where?”

  “Bangkok.”

  Cameron handed him the envelope flap he had just written on, and looked directly into his eyes, without any apparent recognition of Aabid’s silent, controlled fury. “Then in three weeks, you will meet me in Phuket. And I’ll show you what you can get for all that money.”

  It took Aabid a few seconds to look down at the piece of paper Cameron had just handed him. An email address was written on it. It was a startling about-face, but perhaps the flight attendant had needed to punish him before accepting his money. Like the rest of his family, Aabid was no stranger to the games people played once they were shamed by the realization of how easily they could be bought.

  There was a noise behind him.

  Several yards down the aisle was the flight attendant who had practically fondled him, the woman who had appeared in magazines around the world, along with Cameron and one of the enormous leather seats that currently surrounded them. The beautiful woman cleared her throat and pointed to her watch, and Cameron brushed past Aabid without another word, bound for the first-class cabin.

  Quickly, Aabid folded the slip of paper into his front pocket.

  They were to meet on the beach in Patong, at the southern end of Phuket. When he first read Cameron’s email, Aabid confused the place with Patpong, the red-light district in Bangkok where his uncles went to see prostitutes fire Ping-Pong balls from their vaginas. As a child, Aabid’s father had preferred to holiday in Switzerland, but as Aabid grew older, most European cities lost their tolerance for the decadence of wealthy Saudis like his father. So Yousef and his brothers moved their traveling carnival to Southeast Asia. They could forgive the childish, godless Buddhism of Thailand as long as there was a steady supply of smooth-skinned, eternally youthful girls for them to play with.

  But Phuket Island was a good distance south of where his father liked to play. There would be palm trees and empty beaches and clear, blue water, Aabid was sure. Not the rivers of motor scooters and abandoned skyscrapers of wretched, suffocating Bangkok. And despite the nature of their first meeting, Aabid was not on his way to meet a whore. No, Cameron was different, more special. Why, after all, had he refused to take the money? Perhaps he had just needed to see it, to get some small glimpse of what Aabid could offer him. He was obviously a person who asked far too many questions and these questions imprisoned him; something about the sight of all that money had set him free.

  Perhaps it is I who will rescue him, Aabid thought, as the wind ripped across the Zodiac. He who has such a high opinion of the West and what it will offer my brother.

  Ali was at the wheel, but he had insisted that Majed come along as well. They had also insisted he drop anchor far enough to the north of Patong Bay so that the yacht would not be visible from shore. Every time he called home, his father peppered him with questions about both of the men he had hired to escort Aabid almost everywhere he went. But Aabid was smart enough to know that Ali was on the phone with his father almost every day as well, sharing as much information about him as he shared about the men hired to work on the yacht.

  As they sped across the water, Aabid closed his eyes and envisioned a seaside paradise of thatched-roof villas terraced along verdant, green hillsides. He imagined his body entwined with Cameron’s beneath the stars. They would swim together in the night sea and pleasure each other up against the trunks of palm trees. And during a break in their lovemaking, Cameron would take the envelope of cash and cast it into the ocean winds like confetti.

  Then he opened his eyes and saw Patong. A few high-rises presided over a labyrinth of narrow, neon-laced streets. Most of the shoreline was choked with drab hotels and the beach was littered with small rowboats, the kind of boats the poor used to fish for their dinner. As Ali powered down the motor, the belching sounds of a hundred nightclubs blended with the insistent buzzing of motor scooters speeding along the traffic-choked coastal street. Aabid was about to tell them to turn back, that they had surely landed on the wrong shore, when he saw Cameron standing on the beach.

  His blond hair was blowing slightly in the breeze. The top three buttons of his powder blue collared shirt were open. His knee-length shorts revealed smooth, trim legs. All at once, Aabid’s disappointment in the garishness of Patong was immediately replaced by excitement about its apparent decadence. Ali killed the motor, allowing the small whitecaps to push the Zodiac toward the sand.

  But Cameron did not start walking through the water toward the raft as Aabid had hoped he would. So Aabid swung one leg over the side to test the depth. A hand clamped down on his shoulder. It was Majed, and behind him, Ali had stepped forward from behind the wheel.

  “You wait for us,” Ali said in Arabic.

  In English, Aabid said, “That is not necessary. I go by myself.”

  “Where is he taking you?” Majed asked.

  Aabid met the man’s stare; it was decidedly more relaxed than that of Ali, but concern still tightened his mouth and jaw. “Wherever he wants,” Aabid whispered.

  Aabid slipped free of Majed’s grip and splashed down into the water. It was only knee deep, but he felt the legs of his shorts getting wet as he strode toward the shore. “I will call you when I am ready to be picked up,” he shouted back.

  Cameron didn’t move an inch as Aabid walked up onto the sand. Was he waiting for the two men to leave them in peace? The Zodiac bounced on the swells, its motor dead, while Majed and Ali stared at them with the contained desperation of weary refugees.

  In Arabic, Aabid shouted, “I thank you for your understanding. And I trust that you will not tell my father of this evening. He would hate to hear that you allowed me to go by myself.”

  Ali let out a grunt loud enough to be heard from the beach, but Aabid had grabbed Cameron’s hand and was pulling him away from the water when the Zodiac’s motor growled to life.

  “What was that about?” Cameron asked.

  “They are protective. You are a stranger.”

  “I see.”

  They were almost to the sidewalk when Cameron gen
tly pulled his hand free of Aabid’s grip, which made sense, given Aabid had no idea where they were headed. But Cameron was shooting nervous glances in both directions, as if he thought their public display of affection might draw some kind of reaction from the drunken passersby.

  “You are afraid to hold my hand?” Aabid asked. “So funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Your country has prideful gay parades and yet American men cannot hold hands on the street. In my Kingdom, men walk down the street hand in hand and there are no problems. No problems at all.”

  “It’s gay pride parades. And we’re not in your country or mine, so it’s kind of irrelevant.”

  “Nothing about you is irrelevant to me,” Aabid said.

  It looked like Cameron was stifling laughter. But he reached out and placed a hand on Aabid’s shoulder as he steered them onto the sidewalk. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “I am ready for any and all things as long as they are with you.”

  Cameron’s smile was distant. They crossed the street and within a few minutes, they were walking down a neon corridor of raucous bars spilling their white, mostly overweight patrons out onto the street. He caught glimpses inside a few of the clubs. In several of them, groups of young bikini-clad women danced on stages, holding on to metal poles overhead with one hand. But there were so many of them packed onto various platforms that they only had room to sway in time to the bass beats of the pounding dance music with its spare, repetitive English lyrics.

  “I meant, are you ready for this?” He gestured to the scene all around them.

  “Do not think of me as some backwards Arab who has never seen the great wide world. I have been to Paris and London and I spent most of my summers in Switzerland.”

  “This isn’t Switzerland, honey.”

  “Where are we going?”

  Cameron stopped walking and looked back at him over one shoulder. “I told you. I’m going to show you what you can get for all that money.” Then he winked at him, a wink that made Aabid think of sweaty bedsheets, a spare hotel room with a makeshift wet bar assembled on the nightstand. Not the fantasy he had conjured during the days since their last brief email correspondence, but it would suit him quite well. If he could not buy romance, he would settle for physical corruption.