by T. Warwick
“I never want to leave this place,” he said to her as he followed a passing bus with his eyes. She was busy with her stylus comparing the brands and prices of the clothing passing women were wearing.
“Then you should stay,” she said as she continued her fashion searches.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? There are many Chinese staying here.”
“I have visa problems.”
“Oh?”
“And money…”
“You’re planning to pay me, right?”
“You want your money now?”
“I stayed the night.”
“Yes, you did. And now I’m buying you breakfast,” he said, pointing to the croissant on her plate.
“You know that’s not enough.”
“How much is enough? What do you think you’re worth?”
“More than a croissant.”
“Here,” he said, handing her a neat stack of currency. “And you can keep the soap you stole from my hotel room.”
“OK,” she said as she casually placed the money into her purse without counting it. As she stood up, she handed him his AR glasses and stuffed the last corner of her croissant into her mouth. He watched her walk away and waited for her to look back. She didn’t. They never did.
4
Charlie arrived in front of the smoky glass and brushed steel lobby on the back of a taxi scooter. He was wearing a black poncho that the driver had handed him when it had started raining. He remembered the place. The last time he had been here was with Tonya and some brokers from Chi. They’d bought several rounds of vintage Grand Marnier for everyone at the bar and run up a tab far greater than his current net worth. He took off the glossy black poncho and handed it to the driver along with some bills to cover the fare and walked into the lobby without making eye contact with anyone. There was an elevator to the right of the others with Chemical X projected on the doors. When he got to the roof, the downpour had ended. He spotted Tonya sitting at a table under a large umbrella at the edge of the roof. The clear glass barrier at its edge was only knee-high.
“Nice view,” Charlie said as he sat down.
“Yup. Sure is,” Tonya said.
“Interesting choice of place…a little pricey for me these days…so, Chemical X…they mean opium, right?”
“The largest refinery in town used to stand here, but that was a long time ago. Anyway, I’m paying. Relax. It’s OK. I already ordered mango fois gras. I know how you love the fusion stuff.”
“That’s funny. You’re funny. Really.”
“You know Lauren went to work for Keith, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re together, Charlie.”
“No, I didn’t know that.” Charlie felt the barometric pressure change.
“Funny how he pulled it off. Kept his book of clients and got on the next plane. Don’t know if he’s making his clients money.”
“What about you, Tonya? How’d you come out of this all happy and unscathed?”
“That’s simple. I’m Vietnamese.”
“You’re American.”
“Well, that too. But you know how things work here.”
Charlie looked out at the setting sun, which produced vivid shades of purple, red, and orange the way only a polluted city sky could. “You’re a good lawyer.”
“As good as they let me be. How much money do you have?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmm. I heard about your dong-dollar position. It was going well for you.”
“It was.”
“Have you tried looking for a job?”
“Where? Here? Who’s going to hire me? You?”
“Look, Charlie. I probably shouldn’t tell you this…”
“Right. What?”
“I have some friends who seem to think they want to pin this whole thing on you.”
“I’m innocent. I wasn’t involved with any of that stuff.”
“You’re not that naïve. You’ve just never been in this situation. You’re a white guy in Asia, Charlie. A lot of people have lost a lot of money.”
“Yeah, they have. But not because of me.”
“That’s kind of neither here nor there.”
“And you call yourself a lawyer.”
“You know, Charlie. I know people in…well, less-reputable brokerage houses that would be willing to employ you. You could work off the books… pick up a percentage and get yourself a decent lawyer for your defense.”
“The token white guy? I’d say that’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”
“Suit yourself. I don’t know what else I can tell you. I’m not cheap.”
“I never said you were.”
Tonya laughed as she looked through the smog at her private AR session displaying a flock of colorful parrots as the waiter silently placed their plates on the table. She waited for the waiter to leave before she spoke. “The point is—I’ve offered you a way to get things back on track.”
“And I appreciate that. I really do. We’ve known each other long enough. I didn’t know what was going on—you know that.”
“I know, Charlie. But that’s history now. So, what’s it going to be? What are we going to do?”
Charlie inhaled deeply through his nostrils as he stabbed a sliver of mango with his fork and held it up at eye level. “You know…I like mango fois gras. Sweet. Succulent. I missed it.”
“It doesn’t have to end this way. I know that’s what you’re thinking, ’cause you’ve lost a lot of money and everything seems to be going down the drain…But you can fight. You can make that choice.”
“Fight. Yeah. I’ve been doing that my whole life…I loved to take risks. And I loved the market—its unforgiveness.”
“There are other options.”
“Like what?”
“Now we’re talking about something outside of the law.”
“Like how outside of the law?”
“I have contacts. It’s possible to get you a new identity.”
“I told you I’m broke.”
“This wouldn’t be a legal service, per se. It would get you out of the country. After that, you’re on your own.”
“I don’t think that’s an option I want to consider.”
“Then leave.”
“What?”
“Leave. Leave now, and they can’t come after you.”
“How so?”
“Because you’re not convicted…yet. If you leave now, getting you extradited back here is a long diplomatic process. The worst they can do to you is ban you from banking and brokerage for life. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think they care if you’re in prison here or convicted in absentia as long as they can say it’s a foreigner who did it.”
“But I don’t have my passport. How do I get out of here?”
“Easy. I get you a local passport, like I said before—”
“And I said I’m not interested.”
“Hold on. You use it to get out. Once you’re out, you declare your passport lost and get a new one.”
“Wait. Did you say a local passport?”
“Yes.”
“How exactly is that going to work?”
“Easy. Use your imagination.”
“It doesn’t sound easy.”
“I know. You’ve got some hard choices to make.”
“Yeah, I know.” Charlie looked up through a sea of AR profiles at a muscular female sumo wrestler wrestling a tiger. “OK, let’s do it.”
“You sure?”
“Never been more certain. The facts are fresh in my mind.”
“That’s the best time to make a decision.”
“I know.”
“OK. I’ll be in touch. Don’t worry.”
“Hey, do you have a contact for Keith?”
“Are you sure, Charlie?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“I don’t know where he is in Jakarta. He might not even be there… but here’s a ca
rd with an address in Vung Tau.” Tonya flicked him the AR card and watched the elegantly scripted white parchment float to him like a feather in the wind.
“Thanks.”
5
Going through customs at Manama International Airport was a tedious bore for Harold, but it was faster than going through Dammam. He resented their searches. The officers had insisted on looking through everything, but they lacked the Saudis’ penchant for scanning AR glasses and making arrests for alcohol possession. Although alcohol was legal in Bahrain, bringing in duty-free alcohol wasn’t allowed for Muslims. When he finally got through, a cluster of Bahraini taxi drivers were waiting; red AR beacons shot straight up to the ceiling of the airport. “Come,” one of them said as he turned on the heels of his black patent leather shoes. His thobe had the characteristic sheen of silk, and the black tassels dangling from his gutra swayed as he walked.
It wasn’t winter, so readjusting to the climate was easier than at other times of the year. He eased himself out of his gray-and-black herringbone jacket as soon as he felt he was beginning to sweat. One night in Paris had felt like a year, an altogether separate life. As always, he had given himself a night to adjust before reentering Saudi Arabia. The taxi driver stopped his banter about visiting the Tree of Life just as soon as Harold held up his SSOC identification card with a smirk and twirled it around his fingers like he was doing a card trick.
As the taxi approached the main entrance of the Sheraton, the Indian porter came rushing and opened the door with a smile that could easily have been mistaken for a sign of sincerity. Harold watched the AR gold coins flying in two directions as he paid the taxi driver and tipped the porter. The porter nodded appreciatively and complimented him on his blue onyx ring stylus. He looked through him and proceeded to the reflective black glass door, which swished open. As he was approaching reception, the sensory data on his AR glasses went blank and was replaced by a translucent 3-D rendition of the Kiblah hovering in space in front of him as the elevated moan from the mosques in the area penetrated the lobby. He watched the black cube rotate for a moment before bringing up his credit card. The last tribal council meeting had concluded they still wouldn’t require the shops and restaurants to close during prayer times, though certain conservative elements within the government felt they should. He removed his glasses and took out his SSOC card and Chinese passport from his blue blazer’s breast pocket as he sat down at the check-in desk. The receptionist, an Egyptian man with wire spectacles, returned to explain that his bags were in his room already, and he had sent up a bottle of bai jiu from Harbin. Harold listened absently as he looked down at the geometric patterns of black-and-orange marble, noticing the glances of a blonde woman with a face slathered in white makeup. She had lifted her black abaya on one side to reveal shiny black plastic boots up to her thighs. She looked at him and tapped her black-gloved right hand on the empty burgundy velvet armchair next to hers. He invited her to his room with an AR snowman with his room number written on it in blue neon gel nearly obscured by the AR snowstorm app. After the Kiblah faded and contracted, he saw she had sent him a menu with photos and videos of herself. It was a bold move. The Bahraini police weren’t usually together enough to filter individual messages or offshore web accounts, but it was a bold move nonetheless.
There was a light tap on his door no more than a minute after he had entered his room. She was swift and efficient and safe; he didn’t even realize there was a condom on until he looked down. For the first time, he experienced the feeling of being toxic. The condom was for her protection. He removed the condom and increased his payment to her with his ring stylus. “Darling, I’m not Russian,” she said. “In England we play by the rules…of course, I’ve never been there,” she said before slipping another one on with her mouth.
“No, you must do natural way.”
“Oh, must I?”
“Yes. You must.”
“Then I suppose you must pay me more money.”
“No problem.”
Her technique was methodical, and the conclusion was as efficient and businesslike as checking in to the hotel. She smiled cheerfully through the receipt of his credit deposit and into his dilated pupils before kissing him on the cheek in passing as she made for the door. “Darling, why don’t you stop by Seppuku tonight. You can meet my girlfriends. I’m Stephanie, by the way.” The door clicked behind her, and the room felt quiet. He downed a few glasses of the bai jiu and peeled an orange from the fruit bowl while looking down from his floor-to-ceiling view of the traffic below. London taxis rushed below a lonesome wind turbine jutting from the side of a tall black glass building, reflecting the streetlights amidst the sea of three- and four-story white buildings around it. The streets were empty of pedestrians with the exception of two men in thobes with Hawks hovering just beneath the height of the streetlights, projecting screens beneath them. He became aware of his vision beginning to blur from the bai jiu.
As he lay on the bed, he let his mind fade into AR renditions of childhood remembrances of eating candied Hawthorn fruit while walking through one of several ice renditions of the Taj Mahal and cathedrals and ancient Chinese temples with a myriad of multicolored LED lights embedded in the ice walls and ceilings and stairs. He focused on a green neon light embedded in one of the walls until it consumed everything, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
He awoke with the full weight of a regretful mind running alternative scenarios of things he might have done differently. Darkness and the refracted city lights appeared through the black glass like the streetlights reflected off the black, coal-soaked snow and ice of his childhood in Harbin. A pop-up message and links from the woman in the boots were glaring back at him beyond his new prayer-time app that featured multiple moons the size of soccer balls featuring listings of the coming week’s prayer schedule as it related to the lunar orbit. He brought up his bank’s site and winced at the quick flash of the iris-scanning app before getting his balance. It was sufficiently embarrassing. He knew men who after just two years in a similar position were able to go home and buy a woman an apartment and get married and relax for a while. But things hadn’t worked out that way for him. A chat session window with a message from Cameron popped up:
Waverunner party tomorrow?
“No,” he tapped back with a keyboard floating beneath the dialogue bubble made to look like a cartoon. In his haste to get tested in Paris, he had forgotten all about the hash in the submarines. At their slow rate of speed, it would take a week to get them to pass around the US Navy base and its anti-terrorist sonar and robotic retaliation vessels. He was slipping. This was a definite sign. He needed to focus on the moment. One moment at a time. Breathe. Exhale. Breathe again.
Between putting down a year’s savings on oil futures that had evaporated in value in a few days as a result of a new oil find in the Empty Quarter and frequent time off out of Saudi Arabia, he was in no position to leave. He just needed to put together enough to get back in the market. There was always talk of the possibility of another attack on a pipeline or processing plant, and that was all he needed. With a few thousand dinars, he could be back in the Manama Exchange with a leveraged account. That was the only way to make real money. That was his only option. But at least it wasn’t summer yet. In the summer it became hard to remember that there was a world outside as the searing temperatures made it difficult to breathe and killed everything and anything down to the molecular level within a few hours. After the months of coastal fog that pressed inland all the way to Abqaiq, there were only the dust storms that pushed through the edges of windowpanes and could cover everything in a room in a fine layer in just an afternoon. But not in Bahrain, a small island ensconced in gentle Gulf breezes, and certainly not at his hotel.
He lay on the bed and flicked through the spa menu with his stylus before settling on a Reiki treatment. After a parliamentary debate, it had become the only spa treatment that a woman could perform on a man in Bahrain, because there was no actual touc
hing involved. He clicked the receptionist icon and got an appointment that gave him just enough time to shower first. After showering, he changed his mind and deleted the appointment with a slash of his forefinger. He put on a short-sleeved navy blue Zegna shirt and black tropical wool pants that had faded from the hot desert sun and the high salinity of the tap water but had retained a worn-out elegance.
He got into the elevator and stood next to a woman with platinum hair and luminescent porcelain skin. She was speaking dramatically in Arabic with her head cocked to the side just so and her eyes looking up toward the corner of the elevator. But beneath the dyed hair and the bleached skin was an Egyptian or Moroccan, judging by her features. Leaning back against the black velvet elevator wall next to her was another woman with downcast eyes, brownish-black hair, and delicate facial features of untraceable origin. They were an interesting combination, clearly expensive.
He walked out of the elevator and through the entrance without even looking at the doorman gesturing to a taxi. He strolled past the fountains and onto the eternally new sidewalk that was never used before taking a shortcut through freshly cut bioengineered grass that looked like plastic. A disclaimer featuring safety reports of bacterial infections from the fertilizer popped up in AR, the last thing he needed now. He noticed that he was walking faster than the cars in the two single lanes of traffic. The weather was warmer than Paris but cooler than the usual immobilizing womb of summer in the Gulf. It felt like spring. He needed to be around people. He kept walking.
6
Charlie’s credit accounts, the only accounts the Saigon police couldn’t seize, were rapidly dwindling. As he walked through District 7, the conversations and laughter from the sidewalk cafés were muted by his thoughts. This was where programmers who understood the finite nuances of gesture and personality and eye movement came to unravel. Young models congregated around them and hoped that some aspect of themselves would become the hot new thing for renditions. The green AR leprechaun he was following stopped and pointed up at the building to his right. Looking upward, he saw the sharp purple laser projection of the Recreate™ logo on the white concrete edifice.