The Place That Didn't Exist

by Mark Watson

  The Centrepiece seemed a good place to start. Inside, the hot-to-cold transition hit him again. Signage informed him of the different facilities on the tower’s various levels: The Body, Mind and Soul Centre, Shop City, Catering Planet. Behind the heads of the reception staff was a photo of Sheikh Mohammed, a hawk-like smile on his face. There was a TV on which images of the Village rotated: a golfer swinging with fine technique at a ball, ice sculptures being shown off to delighted residents. A notice spelled out the Village Service Pledge.

  We will welcome with a smile

  We will take a joy in service

  We will meet all your needs

  We will bid a fond farewell

  He found his way up to Catering Planet on the sixth floor: it was a sort of upmarket food court, with a menu as thick as a telephone directory advertising a fusion of all imaginable cuisines.

  JIMMY’S BURRITOS – straight out of a ranch on the hot, sticky Mexican border.

  BOEUF BOURGIGNON – we learned to cook it this way on the banks of the Seine.

  FISH AND CHIPS AND MUSHY PEAS – just like in old Blighty! The skies may be grey, but the boys have brought in the catch . . .

  Tim’s jolted body clock could not tell him whether he should be thinking of this as breakfast or lunch: in the end, he ordered a God Bless the Stars and Stripes Burger. ‘That’ll be right with you,’ said the waitress, and he wondered if she had put on an American accent purely because of his order, and had a repertoire to cover other possibilities. This seemingly absurd idea was lent weight when ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ abruptly began to play from the speakers. Tim reflected that not far from here, there were people so opposed to the United States that they were prepared to die to make their point; in this environment, though, America – like anything else – was little more than an idea, a collection of shorthands.

  Tim’s travels had never taken him anywhere quite like this. The Callaghans had generally holidayed on campsites in damp corners of France, Mr Callaghan buying a loaf of bread and some cheese every morning before revealing a punishing schedule of bike-rides. At most there would be one or two cafes near the site, and they’d ‘eat out’ on the final night. Tim wondered what his parents would make of the Village: a place where, as was already clear, the restaurants and gym facilities were not to serve a destination, but were the destination themselves.

  The WorldWise office was on the top floor; Tim stopped in briefly to say hello. He found Ruth and Raf deep in preparation for the arrival of the film star. There was no sign of anyone else from the team, though maybe that was not surprising. The Fixer, Ruth had told him last night, worked to no timetable at all: his contract simply stipulated that he had to be within twenty minutes’ reach at all times. ‘He’s worked on those terms since the Ropers got here,’ said Ruth, ‘and never once failed.’

  ‘I have Jason to be picked up by Superior Limos at four,’ Ruth was saying now into the phone. ‘Yes, and his agent.’ A pause; she rolled her eyes at Tim. ‘Yes, we’ll make sure no one speaks directly to Jason.’

  ‘Can you get off the phone and come and look at this?’ Raf asked Ruth.

  ‘Could you email it to me?’ Ruth mouthed, still listening to the demands of the famous actor’s representatives.

  ‘I could,’ said Raf, ‘or you could do what I’m saying.’

  Ruth winced; Tim felt as if he’d witnessed someone being slapped. He backed out of the sliding doors and went in search of the Body, Mind and Soul Centre.

  Like many people in London, Tim went to the gym almost passively, as if it were an unavoidable part of being alive. The array of apparatus in the Body, Mind and Soul Centre, however, made him feel as if his gym in Shoreditch belonged in a doll’s house. At least a hundred running machines, bikes and cross-trainers were arranged in banks of ten. Above them, TV screens played dozens of channels at once. There was a pop video, a rolling news station – . . . WARN FINANCIAL EXPERTS, said the back-end of a headline – and a horse-race with the caption ENDURANCE CITY. Keening motivational music filled the air: I wanna get so high, someone sang. And there was further encouragement on the walls, which were dominated by energizing slogans: THE ONLY BAD WORKOUT IS ONE WHICH DOESN’T HAPPEN.

  At the moment, however, a lot of workouts were not happening, since there was almost nobody in sight. The absence of exercisers made the hyperactive music sound a little desperate, like someone trying to get applause from an undersized crowd. As he went to the water-cooler, however, Tim caught sight of Jo. On a crash-mat next to a big soft ball, she was executing press-ups with a grim precision. He thought of last night, when she’d been smoking and drinking more than anyone else. Now, girders of muscle stood out on her arms as she lowered and arched her lean body. He watched her just long enough to feel as if he were doing something inappropriate, and left in search of the ‘Mind’ and ‘Soul’ areas.

  Here, too, the clientele was sparse: pan-pipe music whistled like wind through a haunted house. A lady in a kimono greeted him from behind an orchid-strewn front desk.

  ‘You would like massage?’

  This again was the sort of thing that people were always discussing at work – Stan regularly boasted that he’d ‘had the shit beaten out of his back’ in Soho – but which Tim himself had never got the hang of. Why not now, he thought. He was far from home. This was a place of possibilities, and already he was unusually relaxed.

  ‘I’d love one,’ he said.

  He was shown to a room where another woman introduced herself with a single-syllable name he couldn’t have transcribed. She gave Tim a cup of hot green tea and casually instructed him to take off all his clothes. ‘You will please put these on,’ she said, handing him a pair of underpants made of something like crepe paper, ‘and lie on table with your head in the hole. Which soundtrack you like?’

  He examined the CD case she handed over: the tracks included ‘Secrets of the Forest’ and ‘The Wondrous Ocean’. It had been made by a company called Weapon, in Basingstoke. He opted for ‘Pure Island Bliss’.

  Lying as directed with his face staring through a gap at the end of the table, Tim felt at first like a patient awaiting surgery. Without his glasses, the floor was a fuzz below. As soon as her hands spread oil across the small of his back, the helplessness translated itself into pleasurable abandon. He thought how good it was to be touched: not sexual, but warming, human. It was a little while since he’d split with Naomi, and even she had rarely explored his skin with this sort of confidence. He was relieved when the lady beg an to speak.

  ‘You are working here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tim, ‘making an advert.’

  ‘Advert . . .?’

  ‘A commercial.’

  ‘Oh! Commercial,’ said the masseuse, seemingly charmed by the idea, as if he’d said he was looking after wildlife. ‘Lot of pressure?’

  ‘Well,’ Tim said, ‘any job has its pressures, I guess, but no, my role is really just to supervise the—’

  ‘No, pressure like this,’ she clarified, applying her fingers a little harder to his shoulder-blades. Tim felt himself colour.

  ‘Oh, I see. Er – this is perfect, thanks.’

  ‘Can try a little more pressure for the extreme relaxing,’ she suggested. Tim agreed. The masseuse sprang with feline suddenness onto the table, and drove the point of her elbow into the middle of his back so forcefully that he gasped.

  ‘No, I think . . . back to the one before.’

  For forty minutes he lay in a state of sleep-like repose, punctuated by the occasional sensation of pure pleasure. He thought yet again how remarkable it was that he could be doing this while normal people were at work. But the thought was as out of focus as all the others; off it went like flotsam.

  Afterwards, it felt as though no one would ever make a loud noise again. Tim sat for five minutes in a curtained enclave, sipping more green tea, clad in a dressing-gown. When at last he stood up to leave, and drew back the curtain, he started in shock: Jo was sitting in a wicker armchair wit
h an American newspaper – some headline, again, about the markets – in a gown just like his. He glanced involuntarily at her bare ankles. Jo laughed.

  ‘You should have told me! We could have gone together!’

  The joke sounded flirtatious. Tim had to remind himself that she was the client, a massively important client.

  ‘I didn’t plan on a massage,’ he said, somewhat sheepishly.

  ‘You don’t need to plan!’ Her face relaxed when she smiled, becoming almost girlish; but it tightened again quickly, as if she didn’t like to be caught like that. ‘You’re on holiday.’

  ‘Not really. It’s meant to be work.’

  ‘I’m meant to be working.’ Jo sipped her glass of water with a wry expression. ‘But I’ll be at it till god-knows-what-o-clock tonight, networking with all the ghastly people at the launch. I mean, sorry, valued partners. So, right now is playtime.’

  ‘How often do you come here?’

  ‘Is that a pick-up line? “Do you come here often?”’ She was enjoying his discomfort, he felt, and it was possible he was enjoying that in turn. ‘Work out every day; spa every day as a reward.’

  ‘It’s quite a place, this,’ said Tim.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ said Jo. ‘And you’ll get a bit of a look at Dubai itself tonight.’

  He said he would see her there, and picked his way past saunas, where electrically fired furnaces strained to maintain a temperature only a few degrees higher than the temperature outside. At the desk, he tried to pay for the massage, but the kimono lady shook her head with a soft smile. ‘Is already paid for.’

  ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘By the man, the Fixer.’

  As he waited for the lift, Tim tried to work out how the Fixer could possibly have seen him entering the massage place, and why he would have made arrangements to pay for something that was clearly not part of the ad’s budget. There was no way of answering these questions, and such was Tim’s state of relaxation that he didn’t consider them for more than a moment.

  The chalet had been so meticulously serviced that it was as if Tim had never set foot there. The air-conditioning purred happily to itself; on the bed, the sheets had been lined up with geometric precision. A pineapple, sliced, sat in a bowl: it was Fruit of the Day, according to a note which went on to describe where pineapples were grown and how they could be used in cooking. Tim left the chalet door open, unwilling to part entirely with the luxury of everything outside. He could hear music floating out of the beachside bars. The afternoon felt like a huge cushion on which he could lie for as long as he wanted.

  4: THE FUTURE IS TODAY

  Ruth and Bradley were already waiting outside the Centrepiece, although Tim had got there a few minutes early. He’d spent the past hour or so on the terrace with his laptop, researching Jason Streng. Most of what came up was already known to him. Streng was a young-looking thirty-four; his parents had come to the UK from Antigua. He had been a track athlete, and after making a series of commercials for Nike had completed a surprising transition into a mainstream movie actor, starring first in a wisecrack-heavy heist movie. It was popular with American audiences because it took place in a London that Londoners struggled to recognize. In the car, as they discussed the actor, Tim tried to conduct himself as if it was quite normal that from tomorrow Streng would be delivering lines he had scripted – admittedly only a few, but even so.

  ‘I liked it when he did the, erm, what do you call them?’

  ‘BAFTAs?’ Miles guessed.

  ‘No. You know.’ Ruth was wearing a black polo-neck dress, covering up the cluster of freckles around her sternum; her hair hung loose down her back. What do you call it?’

  ‘Comedy?’ Tim joined in. ‘Theatre?’

  ‘The peregrine falcons. He did a series on them, for the Discovery Channel.’

  ‘Sounds thrilling,’ said Raf.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re actually going to meet him tonight,’ said Jo from the front seat. Christian had gone on ahead to greet the star in person before the event began. ‘I bet I’m going to get all giggly and schoolgirl-ish.’

  ‘I bet you will, too,’ muttered Ruth, out of her earshot, and Tim tried to deflect a twinge of jealousy by taking in the scene out of the window. They were heading downtown. Billboards nestled on rooftops and yelled from the roadsides. Dirham prices were plastered over images of sports cars; phone networks and satellite-TV suppliers jostled for motorists’ attention. There were huge posters bearing nothing but the beaky, affable face of Sheikh Mohammed. But mostly, what was advertised was the city itself. BE PART OF SOMETHING EXCEPTIONAL, urged a billboard for a chalk-white, tree-dotted residential development. DUBAI PEARL: WHERE THE FUTURE IS TODAY.

  Tim remembered Christian saying that he had shares in this place. The Ropers had shares, by all accounts, in half of Dubai. Their actual home was on the Palm, a collection of millionaires’ rows sitting on a promontory which had been created from scratch by dredging earth from the seabed. This sort of wealth was distant from Tim’s experience, and it was probably vulgar to be attracted to it even in the superficial, touristy way he was. All the same, as the forest of super-high-rise buildings sprung up alongside them, against a sky that was still midday blue as evening approached, Tim could feel himself falling for the story all great cities tried to tell: that this place in some way belonged to him.

  The Sands Mall, the venue for the launch, was still open when they arrived, but in a final-hour lull which felt terminal. A handful of Emirati were browsing the windows of designer shops with fronts done out in imitation brickwork; outside a branch of a British menswear shop stood a Royal Mail postbox. The convention hall was reached via a glass lift which scooped them like a giant’s hand onto a mezzanine. Here, behind a series of doors guarded by increasingly muscular men, was the action. Plinths shimmered with the familiar photos of WorldWise projects. Bradley Ford Richards – who had arrived early, with Christian – was consulting a set of cue cards and mouthing key phrases to himself. About forty or fifty people were being served cocktails by staff who seemed to turn their eyes away each time a drink was taken. In a corner, next to a determined-looking blonde who must be his agent, sat Jason Streng. He wore a dark suit and was, from a marginal glance, at least as handsome as he seemed in the movies. He sat sipping Coke Zero – the drink also favoured by director Bradley – and listening impassively as his agent described his wishes to Raf.

  ‘Jason doesn’t want to read the stuff you sent. He’ll just speak briefly and then you can introduce him to three people, as per the contract.’

  Tim glanced around to see if anyone else had heard this and was enjoying the absurdity, but even Ruth barely flinched. This would make a great story when he was home, Tim thought – in fact, he sensed he was going to have a whole pile of them. He moved away and took a cocktail from a tray, thanking its bearer warmly in an attempt at bridge-building which immediately sounded crass to his own ears. He found himself on the fringe of a group of British people, women teetering on heels and stocky-necked men, one of whom was telling a story.

  ‘You remember? Rich and Poor Dinner?’

  There were several affirmative chuckles and the story-teller went on. ‘So the whole thing is, you paid, like, 300 dirhams a head, but the catch was, half the people got a massive meal, booze, all lovely; and the other half just had to eat bread and drink water. You know. To show how unfair it is, the rich–poor divide, that stuff.’

  ‘Tell them what happened,’ goaded one of the narrator’s friends.

  ‘So, Colin. He pays his 300, right, plus he brings some bird, a Thai bird. Then Christian Roper stands up and does his speech about how, if you’re pissed off that you’re not eating properly tonight, imagine how it feels to be one of the dispossessed. And it sinks in with nearly everyone. But Colin’s been drinking all day and he shouts out: I’m not paying all that money to eat this shit! Christian says, that’s the whole point! This dinner is about injustice! Colin says, for 300 di
rhams I’d rather eat in a restaurant and worry about injustice another time! And then – and this is where it gets tasty—’

  But the end was cut off by the Fixer. He had placed a firm hand on the storyteller’s shoulder and the gesture seemed to drain the man of his energy.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the Fixer, ‘it is time for the main event.’

  And indeed the lights were going down. There was some tipsy ‘ooh’ing. Christian Roper went to the microphone, greeted by applause and a couple of ribald-sounding shouts. Christian gave a précis of the speech from the previous night: that this campaign would help to counter inequality by getting people to donate; that they were lucky to have Jason Streng; that they hoped to reach twenty million people with the ad and its digital spin-offs. Tim felt intoxicated by the scale of things once more. ‘And now,’ Christian concluded, ‘I’d like you to welcome a commercial director who needs no introduction: Bradley Ford Richards.’

  The American had to slant the mic downwards to compensate for the difference in height. Sweat glinted on his nose as he placed his cue cards on the lectern with a slowness Tim found difficult to bear.

  ‘What is a commercial?’ he began at last.

  ‘It’s an advert, you silly sod,’ muttered Raf.

  ‘A commercial is a piece of work which asks for a reaction,’ Bradley said in answer to his own question. ‘So, it’s a conversation between its creators and the audience. A negotiation.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Raf loudly.