by T. Warwick
“Good night, my friend,” Saleh said.
When Saleh had left, Harold noticed a group of Chinese women gathering in the corner, tossing cute AR animals in the air and watching them circulate around the room. He grabbed the bottle of bai jiu and approached the column they were standing around.
“Where are you from?” he asked in Mandarin.
“Shanghai,” they responded in unison.
They were always from Shanghai. None of them ever came from a Manchurian village. “I remember Shanghai…beautiful city.”
One of them flicked him a price. He wiped it away and looked down into her sullen brown eyes. “Here. Keep this,” he said and handed her the bottle of bai jiu. He walked to the exit.
When he stepped outside, he turned on his snow app and selected the blizzard setting. The air felt like a hair dryer. He opened his animation menu and lined the street with snowmen alternating with replications of a video he took years ago of a Shanghai go-go dancer. He added a colorful flock of parrots in a flying formation just above the cars that kept pace with him as he walked. Thickets of Arabic script obscured his view. He brushed it aside and turned down a side street that was lined on one side with parked cars. It was just wide enough for a small car to pass through. He made his way onto the narrow sidewalk and began brushing aside the plethora of club and bar invitations that came swooping down like tree branches in a jungle.
He came upon the Blue Nile. He recalled the name from somewhere. Two Nigerians, clad in maroon top hats and overcoats, patted him down in a friendly manner. He flicked them the cover charge, and they smiled mechanically in unison. The long, narrow passageway with concrete and tile mosaics and a strip of LEDs led him to a small auditorium. Saudis were drinking around tables covered with dirty black tablecloths as four pasty-white blonde women with clumsily attached white angel wings danced on a main stage in matching yellow and pink bikinis. He walked toward an empty table as a Saudi pranced across the room to purchase a ruffled blue plastic wreath from the Indian waiter before racing to the stage. As he carefully placed it around the neck of one of the dancers, he began caressing the side of her face. Harold counted four seconds before three lanky Ethiopian guards came and seized the man and proceeded to carry him out of the club. He ordered a whiskey and soda and left after a few minutes.
When he got outside, his ears felt hollow like they had when he had been on special assignment in Shenzhen during a typhoon. Suddenly there was the sound of a gasoline engine revving louder as the car came diagonally toward the club’s entrance. Harold moved just in the nick of time as the car smashed through the entranceway and sprayed a wave of shattered glass where he had been standing. The driver, his disheveled gutra now cockeyed and obscuring his view, opened the door and staggered forward. It was the man who had been thrown out. The car was jammed between the crumpled metal remnants of the vestibule. He made a gurgling howl as he pointed his finger at one of the Ethiopian security guards. Harold started walking.
8
Lauren flipped her hair to one side and leaned back in the plush turquoise velvet chair. She grabbed the snifter of Remy XO and allowed it to trickle down her throat without losing her lock on the older man’s gaze. It was difficult to estimate his age, given the premature aging effect of the desert. He was older, but his eyes were youthful and disturbed. Far from being a gray husk, he emanated a radiance that seemed to come from beneath his skin. Around her was a cluster of pale redheaded women smoking AR cigars and blowing fake smoke that shaped itself into blue hearts containing their profile details. They looked as though they hadn’t seen a minute of sunlight for at least a year, or at least since their last visa run to Doha.
There were few reasons for a man to be there other than for choosing a woman and leaving, but Cameron enjoyed the ambience. He disliked the game of pretending they weren’t prostitutes; it always cost more. The two British blondes sitting across from him had finished their tapas and margaritas and left to go dancing. Lauren smiled at him gently as he played with a limpid AR depiction of them that was dissolving and dribbling the blue from their eyes and the blonde from their hair, which coalesced into marbles on the floor. He returned a blank look and seemed indifferent, which was intriguingly unfamiliar to her. She broke eye contact with him as a Chinese waitress with platinum blonde hair and luminescent porcelain skin walked by with a reindeer ambling around her in a snowstorm. He continued to swirl his drink. She flicked through nearly a dozen drink offers from Saudi men at the bar and then continued to observe him through an AR game of mah-jongg she was playing with some Chinese women in Shanghai. Harold had taught her to play the previous Christmas Eve after she helped him decorate the small synthetic white Christmas tree in his Ritz-Carlton suite, not long after she had left SSOC. The lounge was so empty she could feel her own pulse. It was such a drastic change from twenty minutes ago, when she had been dancing with some Saudi men and lunging through luminescent fields playing twelve different kinds of piercing tones that made her spiteful and angry and happy all at once…so deliciously furious over nothing.
She watched the man get up from his seat and walk away. She turned her head back with an air of indifference. The front door was a dark purple velvet stage curtain that lifted itself upward as he left. She would have captivated Cameron during his first years in Saudi, but his years as a Bahrain resident had transformed what had seemed like magic into a cheap party trick—a transparent charade. Money was the only thing that ever brought men to the Gulf, and it was even truer for women. Why he had never seen the apparent truth of that when he first arrived remained a mystery to him.
He walked to the curb and flicked the ear of the AR cat that stood perched on an AR postal box to summon the next taxi. He got the Bahraini driver to drop him a few blocks from his residence as a security measure. It was always better to see it coming than to get blindsided. The cracked black marble façade of his apartment building appeared beyond a river of gently rustling eddies of plastic bags. The building, St. Martin Lofts, had been intended to be a luxurious residence for affluent Western retirees. But its isolated location had left it overlooked and forgotten following the last expat diaspora. Years of neglect had resulted in peeling wallpaper and dangling fixtures that sparked. Some floors were just off-limits, claimed by Indian and Filipino guest workers who had stayed past the completion of whatever construction project they had worked on and now scavenged the skeletal remains of the city’s hubris. Abandoned expat dogs had multiplied and formed packs that wandered the streets of the abandoned British Highlands quarter beyond the LEDs of the CBD where the columns of AR “for sale” signs flickered in the moonlight. Clutching his walking stick to keep the dogs away, he spotted the glowing eyes of a dog peering around the adjacent corner and was careful to avoid direct eye contact with it. He looked around to make sure he hadn’t been followed before walking slowly into the lobby.
He was home. It trumped the life that was left to him as a subcontractor in the wake of 100 percent Saudization. Unlike the Chinese, he was no longer permitted to reside within the SSOC compound. His life within the compound with its tennis courts and expansive lawns had been retracted. His small villa with pool access had been replaced by an apartment outside of the main compound above an Afghan restaurant, and the VR café next door had replaced everything else. The park in the center of town contained the only gratuitous foliage, but access past the black metal fence was restricted to Saudi families.
His apartment in Abqaiq had a concrete floor and bare cinderblock walls. He had given up on sweeping up the sand and dust that accumulated every day, and he began to regard it as an extended camping trip. Evenings were AR renditions of his Thai girlfriend in Manama, and the days were the rumbling turbines that forced ever-greater quantities of desalinated water down into the earth to retrieve ever-smaller quantities of crude oil. The weekends in Bahrain were live music and the exposed faces of women and his girlfriend’s naked body amid flowers and aloe plants and the filtered sunlight of her greenhouse wit
h a view of a marina that had previously been just a balcony. Harold had encouraged her to grow marijuana, but the yield after it was converted into hash would have been negligible.
Retiring to Bahrain had seemed like a smart move at a time when every Chinese was scampering after condos and cocktails and call girls. Yet it wasn’t the same as when he’d rolled in from Abqaiq, adrenalized by the expression of life around every corner. On the first night he lay on the roof trying to differentiate stars from satellites as Jessica tabulated the yield on his savings using an AR app featuring the latest trading models. It didn’t take him more than a week after that to figure out that she had been maintaining other avenues of income with other men. “You don’t want to be with me,” she stated plainly when he confronted her. They sat across from one another, staring into each other’s eyes without saying a word for several minutes. Finally, she held up her palm revealing an AR lotus flower suspended in gentle ripples of clear water that filled the apartment and made it seem blurry; a silent ending.
Returning to Atlantic City was the sort of change that he had craved. His unrecorded memories of it in the time before AR had clung to his mind like a beneficent parasite that refused to die. But the income from the money he had saved was only enough to eke out a stale existence. He rarely broke even playing the slot machines. Alcohol was available everywhere. When winter came, he began a ritual of filling a thermos with hot coffee and rum, which he drank in a comfortable spot in the sand beneath a pier, looking out toward the horizon. He stood by the waves one evening and threw away his AR glasses with images and renditions of her. When he started talking to the rats, he checked out of his windowless motel room and got on the next solar liner that stopped in Bahrain.
A wave of his stylus brought to life the mirrored elevator that glowed deep yellow beneath a film of smudged desert dust. He clicked on the button for the thirty-third floor. The hallway was pitch-black, so he used the projector on his phone. It showed an Al-Jazeera fluff news story about the milk generated from a goat modified with the genes of a camel. The intercom rang as the door bolt clicked behind him; it was the drunken drawl of a Chinese whore that sounded more like the imploring meows of a stray cat. More messages continued. He muted it with a finger snap and listened to the silence. From his kitchen window, he could see the lights of downtown Manama. A rumbling sound came from the hallway. He opened the door with the phone projector still playing the same news report and shone it down both ends of the hallway. He heard it again. It sounded like a cat or a rat running through the ventilation shafts. He’d met only one of his neighbors, a squirrelly redheaded man from South Africa with tired eyes and the same gray shirt that had been ironed so many times its sharp creases had become faded. He would mention the sound to him the next time he saw him.
The scale and breadth of the construction of residential apartment buildings in Bahrain had been so great that even after the Chinese influx, there was still hardly a building in the less-desirable areas that was more than 50 percent occupied. Even the US Navy sailors preferred not to live in outlying areas like the British Highlands quarter. It was the newly created islands that were the most sought after—the newer, the better. Outside of the British Highlands quarter, the prices and rents of the luxury apartments that hadn’t been abandoned had remained steady over the last few years. There were buildings that had not been abandoned, and the investors who had financed them preferred to keep them empty rather than accept a sub-par offer. That suited Cameron just fine. He had a space heater for the mild winter and a standard window AC with a generator backup for the rest of the year.
The skyline of Manama was a shimmering blue-and-green swathe of LED lights through his glass balcony door. He grabbed a bottle of Armagnac from the plastic case next to the refrigerator and took a long drink until he felt the warmth emanating from his heart. Leaning back in the brown faux-suede recliner, he cradled the bottle and drank more until the city lights blurred. The Indians at the local licensed alcohol shop were always repeating the same rumors about restrictions on buying alcohol or new taxes for non-Muslims in an effort to get him to buy more cases, but he always left with a single case. Bahrain was changing; that much was certain. The small armies of white women in the trendy bars and clubs in the CBD were growing and competing with many more Filipinas and Thais. They couldn’t work as hair stylists or massage therapists, because jobs involving that kind of interaction with men were strictly for men. They could work as dancers, but the real money was in relationships. The glowing message on his contacts forced his eyelids open. It was Saleh.
9
Cameron wasn’t the only one who thought living in Abqaiq was a stupid idea. If it were ever bombed, the whole town would be vaporized. Ultimately, it was the boredom of commuting through the flat desert that never changed except for the blinding autumn fog and the occasional camel crossing that convinced him to rent a place during the week. The SSOC compound with its renowned golf course and squash courts had a number of vacant furnished apartments, but they were reserved solely for Chinese nationals and Saudis. Renting an apartment in Abqaiq had been difficult, because there were few buildings that allowed single men. Finally, an Egyptian supervisor took pity on him and his predicament and found him an Egyptian realtor who was willing to overlook his nationality and rent him an apartment. If he had been listed as American, the police would evict him. Americans had to live on compounds, but there were no compounds in Abqaiq, apart from the SSOC compound.
The last bombing attack in Abqaiq had happened more than ten years ago. He’d heard the stories of how a group of kids high on meth had rammed their way through the gate in a truck. The security guards had scattered and run. The only reason the car bomb hadn’t gone off was because they had detonated it under a water pipe instead of an oil pipe. He remembered the guys who had seen the report on TV the night before and had driven up warily from Bahrain and Al Khobar the next morning. What they found was that nothing was different. In the morning, the security guards were scrutinizing IDs and parking permits, but there was nothing different about work that day. A few days later, each team received a live sheep and set about slaughtering it and draining its blood and cooking it next to one of the pipelines beneath the moonlight and the refinery floodlights.
Cameron approached the main entrance to the SSOC Abqaiq compound and flicked on his AR car tag that allowed him access strictly for work-related tasks. “Where’s Harold?” he asked the Saudi guard.
“Harold?” His expression became perturbed by the non-routine inquiry. “Open trunk,” he commanded.
Cameron waited as he examined the trunk and played the predictable charade of examining the underside of the car with a mirror on an extendable aluminum pole. The cases were in bags, and he made no attempt to open them. When he was finished, he stood by Cameron’s open window and indicated the small guard station building behind him. “Harold inside,” he said.
“Hallelujah,” Harold boomed as he entered the office.
“Hi, Harold.”
Harold finished off his triple espresso with a long swig. “Come with me,” he said.
“Sure.”
He led him out the back entrance of the small guard station and out of the piercing AC cold. “Here,” he said deliberately. It was a brown manila envelope of Bahraini dinars—lots of them. Cameron counted them without emotion. “OK,” he said when he was finished.
“Let’s go,” Harold said as he slapped Cameron firmly on the back. They walked back through the short hallway with its rows of bright white LEDs on the ceiling and walls, back out the front entrance, and into Cameron’s car. Immediately, Harold engaged the SSOC police escort system with a wave of his AR ring and a quick entry of the daily code in midair onto the AR projection. Cameron frowned as the car began its slow-motion process of turning around.
“Bahrain!” Harold shouted jovially as he slapped Cameron on the back a second time.
“Yup. You better believe it.”
They passed through a guard s
tation with a checkpoint that Cameron had never crossed. Harold put the window down, and the guard waved them through. One of the five Saudi guards made a gesture for them to stop. Harold slowed the car down to an amble, expecting to be waved through. But they signaled him to stop. He could see they were being unusually thorough as they checked the car next to him. He recognized it as the procedure they followed when they had been alerted to a security threat. He slammed his foot on the accelerator and pulled ahead to the side. The guards shouted and threw their arms up in the air. If it had been a team of Chinese guards, there would have been no problem. One of the guards came running to the car. Harold got out and opened the trunk. He held up his ID card, and the guard saluted him. The guard made a show of looking at the trunk and nodded for him to proceed. Harold closed the trunk and got back in the car.
“Life is good, Cameron,” Harold said as they looked out at the lush green golf course that came into view after they passed a high gate with blue plastic panels. “You Americans used a sand course, but no good…” He grinned. “Now, this grass grows anywhere…and everywhere.”
“Look, Harold. I need to get to work.”
“Of course. No problem, boss. Very soon. Don’t worry,” he replied with noticeable sarcasm, forgetting again to emphasize his Rs.
They approached another guard station behind a long row of cars. Harold pressed the window button and displayed his laser-embossed SSOC ID card with a roll of his eyes, and they were waved through, past reengineered redwoods with peeling bark that had already sprouted to over fifty feet. A small flock of a half dozen Hawks was migrating to another guard station.
Cameron had never seen this part of the compound since, as a contractor, he was prohibited from entering without an invitation from someone who lived within its hallowed walls. Harold had certainly made it clear in all their previous dealings that he was not welcome. Once he had invited him to a square-dancing event sponsored by a Chinese country and western club, but it was during a weekend when he was in Bahrain. After passing a row of tennis courts, they continued on through generic American suburbia with blue-and-white street signs from the last decade before AR was introduced. Everything looked new. The black asphalt shone raw and moist in the sun, and the trees and dark-brown brick houses covered in ivy seemed to meld in suspended animation so well that he blinked and restarted his AR contacts.