by Greg Rucka
"Are they?"
"The Marina isn't so good for that, at least, not during the daytime. Other hotels are better. But maybe all of them, they are whores of one kind or another."
"What does that mean?"
"They're here the same reason I'm here, Danil. They're looking for money."
I moved my attention back to her. She was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit she'd picked out and that I'd bought for her from one of the multiple hotel shops this morning, after she'd finally awoken. I'd slept on the couch, despite her offer to share the bed, a freebie bonus to the "consulting service" deal we'd negotiated the night before. Bathing suits and breakfast, it seemed, were part of the package, as well. Compared to what the other women were wearing, her suit was practically modest. Outside of the hotel, it would get her fined; on the road to Abu Dhabi, it could get her killed.
"That's why you're here?" I asked. "For the money?"
"Not at first." She finished chewing, swallowed, smiling ruefully. "No, you wouldn't believe me."
"Try me."
"Maybe I'm looking for Mr. Right."
"Your search has taken you far from home."
"I sure as hell wasn't finding him in Tbilisi."
"And how's it going?"
She sipped again at her mimosa. "I've been here for three years, and I'm still single. The money is good, but it's not enough, not for what I want."
"Nine hundred dirham a night, that's-"
"About a hundred and fifty euro," Kekela said. "Most of the time it's not for the night with me. Three hundred for two hours. If it's a good night, I can make six hundred euro. At home that's good money; here, it's enough to get by. I have to pay the government, I have to pay rent, buy clothes, food, medical, everything. Then there are bribes-you have to pay the places you work out of, the clubs and the bars. I try to send money back home, too, you know. And because everyone here has so much money, everything costs so much money."
"You pay the government?"
"For my work visa, as an entertainer. Sixteen hundred dirham, every couple of months. Prostitution isn't legal, but it isn't so illegal they want to stop it. Three to one, like I said, and of those three, many are like you, traveling alone on business of one sort or another. Dubai wants their money, so they make it easy for them to spend it on the things they like."
"Maybe you should raise your rates."
"I'd price myself out of the market," she said, without a hint of irony. "I already charge the most I can get away with for what I am. The Chinese and Asian girls, they're the cheapest. Then you get the Africans, then girls like me, the CIS girls they call us, all the Confederation of Independent States that used to be the Soviet Union. Russians, Uzbeks, Georgians, Ukrainians, Kazaks, you know. We're mid-range. The really high-end, expensive ones, those are the regional girls. Except for the Iraqis, they used to be more expensive, but there are so many now, the price for them has dropped."
I drank some orange juice, thinking that Kekela talked about her work with the same disconnect that Alena and I talked about ours.
"Still doesn't tell me how you got here."
Kekela brushed stray hair out of her face. "A friend from my village, she had been abroad. She came home, said that there was a lot of work for girls in Dubai, that I could get a job in a restaurant, or maybe even singing in a club."
"You believed her?"
"I didn't have a reason not to. And rich Arabs had to be better than where I was." She turned her champagne flute in her fingers, looking at her reflection in the glass. "It's not like with your Tiasa, Danil. I came on my own, I paid my own way, I had my own papers, so I was in a better position, I could make a choice."
"Is that what this is for you? A choice?"
"You are asking me a lot of questions."
"That's the arrangement, isn't it? I ask questions, you answer them."
"The deal didn't cover questions about me."
"I'm curious."
She put the glass down, removing her sunglasses. I'd bought them for her at the same time I'd bought the bathing suit. At her request, of course.
"Worry about saving one girl at a time," Kekela told me. "I'm going swimming. Would you like to join me?"
I shook my head.
"Then I'll see you back in your room. Say, three hours."
She headed into the water, diving from the edge of the pool, breaking the rippling sheet of blue. I watched as she swam the length, reached the opposite end. She took hold of the ledge, looking back toward me, and there was enough distance between us that I couldn't make out her expression. She was probably laughing.
I charged the meal to my room, then went to find the health club, hoping for an outlet for my impatience and my doubt. Two hours managed most of the impatience, but the doubt still lingered as I made my way back to the room and into the shower. Kekela's game was obvious, and we both understood it. She would take me for everything she could, but in the end, she would have to balance that with a result, something to square the account. The money didn't matter to me. What mattered was the time.
But until the sun went down and the expats flooded the clubs, there wasn't much either of us could do but wait. I was out of the shower and going through Bakhar's address book for the eleventh time when there was a knock on my door. When I checked the spyhole, I saw Kekela, in her swimsuit, towel wrapped around her hips and another around her hair. Beside her, with a hand on her upper arm, stood a grim-looking Filipino man, short and burly, in the plainclothes uniform of hotel security.
"He needs my passport," Kekela told me when I opened the door. She spoke in Georgian, her tone flat as a board.
"Mr. Joshi," the man said, using English. "This woman says she's your guest?"
"I hope that's not a problem," I said.
He released her, and I could see the color on Kekela's skin from where he'd held her arm tighter than he'd needed to. I moved out of her way, letting her into the room.
"We need to make a photocopy of her passport," the man said. "It's hotel policy."
"Sure," I said. "Just a second."
I left him holding the door open, stepped around into the bedroom, where Kekela had left her clothes from the night before. She'd already opened her purse, had her passport in hand. I took it from her.
"It's not a problem," Kekela said, in Georgian. "It happens, it's happened to me before."
"Did he hurt you?" I asked.
She looked surprised, needed half a moment to recover. Then she shook her head. "No. No, I'm fine."
From my wallet, I took out three five-hundred-dirham bills, folding them together once and then once again. I tucked the money inside the front flap of her passport. The document looked legit, dog-eared and well thumbed, and according to the vitals, Kekela's name was Kekela Alkhazovi, and she was twenty-seven years old.
"Get dressed," I told Kekela, then went back to the door, where the man from hotel security was waiting patiently, just as I'd left him. I handed him her passport.
"I trust you'll bring it back promptly," I said.
The man ran a stubby thumb along the edge of the document, feeling the bulge made by my bribe. "Right away."
"And I trust this won't happen again."
He frowned slightly. "Will you be bringing any other female guests to the hotel, Mr. Joshi?"
"Not planning on it."
"Then this will certainly be the last of the matter. You have my apologies for any inconvenience."
I thought about saying that I wasn't the one he should be apologizing to, then thought it would be an absurd thing to say. Prostitution was clearly such an open secret the hotel felt obliged to keep their own records of the transactions, the same way they kept records of their guests. Everyone, it seemed, knew the part they were to play, except for me.
He departed, and I shut and locked the door. The shower had started in the bathroom. I returned to the desk where I'd been working, pulling out Bakhar's little black book once more, again checking it against the files I'd pul
led off the BlackBerry. Neither had any numbers for Dubai, and I wasn't finding anything new.
Eight minutes after hotel security departed, there was another knock on the door, this time a bellboy returning the passport. He'd brought a complimentary bottle of champagne up, as well. I sent him away with a tip, thinking that it bordered on farce, that I was giving money in return for a gift that had come from a bribe as a result of the prostitute in my room.
I locked the door yet again, turned back to see Kekela emerging from the suite's bedroom. She was naked. She also, it turned out, shaved her pubic hair.
"You're not looking in my eyes," she remarked.
I corrected myself. "Put on some clothes."
"We're not going to be able to start looking for your girl until tonight." She started coming toward me, grinning. "Ten at the earliest. That gives us seven hours."
"Plenty of time," I said. "Get dressed, I'll take you to the Deira Souq, we can go shopping."
"It's too hot to go out."
She stopped in front of me, took the champagne and the passport out of my hands, then dropped them on the floor. The champagne hit the carpet with a solid thump.
"Kekela," I said. "Put on some clothes. Now."
"If you're afraid that you'll catch something, Danil, please, don't be. I get checked every two weeks, and I have an AIDS test every month."
"Yes, you're very clean, I can see that."
I stepped around her, heading toward the bedroom. She followed me quickly, rushing past at the last minute and throwing herself across the bed. Then she rolled onto her side, flipping wet hair back over one shoulder. She held open her arms for me. I didn't break stride. There were two complimentary terrycloth robes in the closet, and I yanked one free from its hanger and tossed it onto her on the bed.
She sat up, and from her expression I could see she still didn't get it, that she was trying to puzzle my behavior into something that made sense to her. She pulled the robe onto her lap, but didn't open it, made no further move toward covering herself up.
"Is it a kink? Do you need me to play with myself first? Do you want to watch?"
"No," I said, and the exasperation started to creep into my voice. "I want you to get dressed, Kekela."
"You don't like my body? I don't turn you on?"
"Don't be stupid."
"Then why not? What are you so worried about? You have a wife? A girlfriend? She'll never know."
"I'll know," I said.
She stared at me, and I couldn't tell if it was simple incomprehension or pure disbelief I was seeing. Then she snorted, began pulling on the bathrobe as she slid off the bed. When she had tied it closed, she spun around once, in place, then threw up her hands.
"Happy now?"
"No," I said. "But I can work with what I've got."
"You are fucked up. Are you gay, is that it? I mean, seriously, it's fucking sex, that's all it is."
"I know what it is."
"Everyone cheats. Every single one cheats. Your girl, she cheats, too. Right now, I'll bet she's cheating on you. But you won't touch me."
"Not everyone."
"Yes. Everyone."
"No wonder I feel so lonely," I said.
CHAPTER
Twelve At ten minutes past eleven on my third night in Dubai, with Kekela on my arm, I came off the stairs into the UV lights of a nightclub called Rattlesnake, full of cigarette smoke, bad music, and working girls. Given the state of Dubai above-ground, the nature of the off-season, I'd expected the place to be nearly empty. I could hardly have been more mistaken. Kekela kept a hand on me, just above the elbow, much the same way that hotel security had escorted her to my door, and with much the same grip, I imagined. It wasn't because she was afraid I'd run off.
I counted twenty-eight women looking to do business before I gave up trying to keep track. They were as Kekela had described. Perhaps a third of the women hailed from China. The rest looked either CIS or African, with a smattering of Southeast Asia thrown in to round them out. Ages ran from late twenties to early fifties, the different ethnic groups self-segregating into discrete pockets.
"The Chinese girls wait for you to come to them," Kekela shouted in my ear as we edged our way to the bar. "The others, they'll look for a cue, maybe you meet their eyes, maybe they think you look like a good prospect. Be prepared."
I nodded, sparing my voice, trying to take in the room without inadvertently soliciting a come-on. I was having a hard time finding alternate exits, mostly due to the lighting, but also in part to the crowd. In addition to the night butterflies, as they were called in Russia, there were easily another fifty or sixty men, most of them appearing my age or older. Most wore the wearied, desperate energy of business travelers, and these comprised as international a group as the women. Unlike with the women, however, I was seeing a Middle Eastern clientele, as well, though how many were local, I had no idea.
"Are they all like this?" I asked Kekela, shouting in Georgian.
"You mean the clubs? The bars?"
I nodded.
"There was this place, Cyclone, the government had to shut it down a couple years back, just after I'd come here. The mongers called it the United Nations of Whores."
"Mongers?"
"Whoremongers," Kekela said. "Punters, the British call them."
"What are we doing here?"
Her smile was sly. "Buy me a drink, vodka and tonic. I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere."
The last sounded as much like a warning as a request. She detached from my side, waded into the darkness. The black light made her glow like a ghost, the cigarette smoke as if she was disappearing into a mist. I got the attention of the nearest bartender, bought a drink for Kekela and a club soda for myself. Before they came, the space she had vacated on my right was filled by a blonde. At my left appeared a companion brunette.
"Have you been in Dubai long?" The blonde used English, and her accent was German.
"A couple of days."
She watched as the bartender delivered my drinks. "Those both for you?"
"I'm waiting for my friend to get back."
"We are very friendly," the brunette told me. Her accent was closer to Russian, but it was hard to make out over the music. "Or very nasty. Six hundred, you can have us both for two hours."
"No, thanks. I've already made arrangements for the night."
The blonde looked in the direction Kekela had disappeared. "She's not coming back."
"Did you pay her already?" the brunette asked. "How much did you pay her?"
"We're still negotiating," I lied.
The brunette laughed. "You never pay in advance," she advised. "Half, at most."
"We can beat her price." The blonde returned her attention to me. "Two-for-one offer. Where are you staying?"
I picked up my drinks and stepped away from the bar. "Nice talking to you."
They let it go, or at least I didn't hear it if either of them offered a comment as I left. The band fell silent, breaking between sets, and the noise level dropped appreciably, enough that I could make out voices. Most were in English, all were loud. I saw a youngish-looking Chinese woman dancing in the middle of a wolf pack, all of them ogling her, passed a tall African woman negotiating with an Indian, telling him that seven hundred would cover the night. He asked if she meant dirham or euros.
I found a table, set down my drinks, and felt myself being sized up by almost every set of female eyes that fell upon me. The appraisals felt clinical and made me feel like a piece of meat. The way people lurked and lunged in the black light made us all look like zombies.
Kekela emerged from the smoke. She picked up her drink and drained it in two gulps, then reached for my hand, to pull me to my feet.
"I want you to meet someone," she said.
"Who?"
"An old friend. Come on."
She dragged me after her, along the floor. A club mix had begun playing on the sound system, and more people were dancing to that than had done for the band
. We skirted their edge, pushed through a clump of laughing men and women, reaching another table wedged near the back wall, by one of the stacks of speakers. Two women sat at the table, speaking to a Caucasian man. The women were both Chinese, one of them perhaps in her thirties, the other one younger, but it was hard to tell by how much. The man I put in his forties.
"She's new," the older one was telling the man. "She needs someone who can teach her."
"You're asking me to do you a favor," the man said. His English was American, the sound of it jarring. I hadn't heard an American accent outside of my own, it seemed, for a long time.
"Six hundred."
"For the night?" He shook his head. "Xia, you're asking me for a favor. Four hundred."
"Five hundred."
"Dirham?"
The older woman, Xia, nodded. Seated beside her, the younger one didn't move, didn't speak. The smile on her face looked like it had been injection-molded in a factory, and about as sincere.
"All right, done," the man decided.
Xia turned to the woman beside her, speaking quickly in Mandarin, or Cantonese, I couldn't tell. The younger woman perked up immediately at whatever was said, however, and the plastic smile turned to something approaching genuine. She rose, moving around the table, and the man got to his feet, and they headed off together.
"This is your friend?" Xia asked Kekela.
"Danil," Kekela said. "He's from Georgia, too."
Xia turned the palm of her right hand, sweeping it at the empty seats.
"Xia was the first girl I met when I got here," Kekela told me. "She's been here for ten years. She knows everything."
"She's being generous."
Kekela shook her head. "No, no. If it wasn't for you, I'd have been in a lot of trouble."
"You're very sweet, Kekela."
Kekela smiled at the other woman fondly. Now that we were closer, I could see the beginnings of lines on Xia's face, found myself revising my estimate of her age upward, into the mid-forties. Unlike the other women I'd been seeing, even Kekela, Xia's outfit was more subdued, speaking less of sex than experience.
"Kekela is my friend," Xia said to me. "And if you are hers, then I would be happy to help you."