by T. Warwick
“So how many pickups have you made?” Cameron said as he eased himself into a corner booth.
“I don’t know. I stopped counting after twenty.”
“Harold’s getting you a new visa, right?”
“For Saudi? Yeah. I’m getting a little sick of hopping the train to Doha, though. What’s with all the questions?”
“I don’t know why…but I had a good feeling about you.”
“How so?”
“You’re lucky?”
Charlie laughed. “Oh yeah? I think you might have me mixed up with someone else.”
“No. Trust me. You’re a lot luckier than you give yourself credit for.”
“If you say so.”
“Harold’s getting your visa as a security consultant for SSOC—it’s short-term. But Saleh can get you an employment visa for a company here.”
“Doing what?”
“Same thing you’ve been doing…working for Saleh. That’s what Harold does.”
“Harold works SSOC security.”
“And he works for Saleh. It pays more.”
“I don’t know if I want to take on that risk.”
“Life is a risk. And there’s a new salvaged boat at the marina. Saleh wants you to have it.”
“Why?”
“For not fucking up.”
“Thanks. That’s quite a gesture.”
“It sure is. But don’t thank me—it’s all Saleh.”
The next morning Charlie awoke to the call to prayer rattling the windows, which Cameron assured him he wouldn’t hear down at the marina. The eight hours of AC in his room account expired just as he left.
He clicked on Cameron as soon as he arrived at the marina. It was strange not having any visual representation of him—just his flashing phone number.
“Meet you on the main dock,” Cameron said.
Beyond the white boats, Charlie could see a mangled and burnt mess of a boat listing to one side. Cameron emerged from it and climbed down a small ladder at the stern into a small inflatable boat with a silent solar engine. He tied off at the pylon next to Charlie with the familiarity of pressing an elevator button.
“So.”
“Is that it?” Charlie asked. “Yup…another sad story. Brand-new American boat with European electronics. Thing burned before it even left the dock.”
“Sounds fishy.”
“Yeah. You’d be surprised how fishy the boat-salvaging industry can get.”
“Nice dingy,” Charlie said, looking down at the silver inflatable raft. “Is it new?”
“No, it’s old. You’re welcome to use it. That’s my dingy,” Cameron said as he pointed to an outboard motorboat with twin outboard ninety-horsepower engines.
“Looks like it can handle the job. I thought that was Saleh’s.”
“It is—technically.”
“OK.”
“It’s cheaper if you dock outside of the harbor. It can get a little choppy on some days, but it’s just the wind. The Gulf is more of a lake than a sea. It’s like any other piece of real estate—location determines price.”
“So it’s cheaper out there?”
“Even cheaper if you don’t use the marina facilities. I can get you a solar sail later if one becomes available. That gives you enough power to cruise around the island if you want.”
“What about now?”
“We painted it with solar gloss…that’ll run your AC.”
“That’s enough?”
“Oh, most definitely. It’s a small cabin in there.”
23
Upon awakening, Charlie could not relate the rocking of the boat with the AR pine forest obscuring the walls and ceiling. Instinctively, he brought up the charts of the major world indices, the last remnant of his compulsive addiction to the rhythm of the markets. He had no money to trade, but the display was free. He took the glasses out of his sockets and emerged from the chilled cabin just in time to see the sun setting. The sky over the Arabian Gulf was white with orange clouds, and the air was hot and thick with the enveloping reassurance of a vast womb. The water was calm—like a sheet of evaporating glass—and the fog erased the horizon and made the freighters look like they were floating on air.
He remembered he still had a boat to finish washing. The solar panel on his inflatable dingy was broken, so he had to paddle to the marina. He passed a deep-blue catamaran sailboat anchored amid a flotilla of much larger white motor yachts. Emerging from below the deck was Stephanie in a purple plaid skirt, black PVC plastic thigh-high boots, and a reflective gold T-shirt. She waved her arms for him to approach. He started paddling toward her.
“Throw me your bow line!” she said just before his dingy bounced off of the right pontoon of her boat. Charlie tossed her the line, bemused by his own recent understanding of nautical terms. She began walking slowly and adeptly around the periphery of her boat while pulling him. Charlie marveled at the skillful way in which she managed to walk on the curved surface of the pontoons without losing her grip.
“I didn’t know you lived here. You live on your boat alone?”
“Aren’t you the curious one? I’m sure every girl in Bahrain is anxious to get you alone in that bobbing burnt kebab you call home. Why, I suppose they’re swimming over from Saudi to wait their turn.”
“That’s not very nice.”
“No, it isn’t.” She smiled mischievously as she stopped pulling the bow line and gave him a critical look from head to toe.
“How long have you been docked here?” Charlie asked.
“Why? You want to wash my boat, darling?”
“Not really.”
“You’re going to meet Harold at Seppuku.”
“How did you know that?”
“You’ll like it. I’ll buy you a drink. Besides…you don’t know who else you’ll meet there.”
“Like who?”
“Just don’t be late.” She spun around and went back into her cabin.
As he paddled to the main dock, the sunset prayer echoed softly through the marina. The solar-charged LEDs on the boats and the edges of the docks came on all at once. He began washing the white salt from the white fiberglass frame of the boat as the last traces of the sun flickered out. He looked down at the plastic gray dock. Cameron was displaying a broadcast from Doha of a camel race in AR. The translucent camels were as big as some of the larger yachts in the marina.
“Do you ever wonder why they don’t have Indians or Filipinos washing the boats here?” Cameron said.
“Never,” Charlie said. “You have a bet on that race?”
“A little. But nothing serious.”
“What happens if one of those robot jockeys falls off?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s ever happened before. I guess they’d do the same as when one of those Pakistani kids fell off before they had robots.”
“What did they do then?”
“Got a new one.”
“Yeah. That seems to be their answer for everything.” Charlie squeezed out his sponge overboard.
“Just about.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I need to get out of here. Are you going to Seppuku?”
“No…not really my style.”
“Harold asked me to meet him there.”
“He likes those kinds of places. It’s a bad habit to develop.”
“What is?”
“Wasting your money in this place. It’s not worth it. Go somewhere real.”
“Like where?”
“Anywhere. Anywhere but here.”
The harshness of spring had already eradicated the traces of emerging microbial life coaxed into existence from the rainy days of winter. Charlie made it to the CBD just in time to witness the departure of swarms of Indian and Filipino office workers from the polished oval glass hives. They managed to avoid a group of four Bahrainis standing in front of the building with shiny green Dragonflies the size of Hawks hovering above them, projecting some statistical information that they were swapping
among their screens. Some of the office workers smirked at the antiquated technology as they passed before getting lost in their own AR. AR Lauren walked ahead of Charlie briskly, and the Arabic script with an adjacent English translation seemed archaic and quaint as it wisped its way through her. There were only occasional advertisements, and they weren’t overwhelmingly intrusive. The ads came sliding in from the periphery with colorful video slice-of-life depictions of Arabic family life. A young Arabic woman’s gleaming bleached-white oval face peered through her abaya as she examined some laundry and seemed to smile right at him. It was liberating not having a marketing profile. Commercial spots were flung at him randomly. He had no profile, so there were no marketing parameters targeting him. Freedom. And boredom. A clear connection in a sea of useless bandwidth. Lauren bounded forward in a scarlet dress shredded into tatters as she served as his directional beacon. She flipped herself forward and backward like a gymnast. He noted the display above her head, which indicated there were exactly 2.3 kilometers to be covered at the current optimal route.
It was a little after eight when Charlie turned off the main road and wandered down the quiet street lined by green lawns and glass office buildings set back behind undulating hills. A cedar-chip path led to the black onyx cube on stilts above a goldfish pond set amid a dimly lit Japanese garden. He went through the body scanner and waited as the lead bouncer gave him the once-over. “Welcome to Seppuku,” an anonymous, gentlemanly voice said. A man with round occluded spectacles and a long white cotton trench coat stood motionless at the entrance. Charlie walked in past a row of complete sets of samurai armor watched over by three Filipina women in white sundresses and a dozen AR blue jays. He reflected that such expense would not be wasted on physical objects in Saigon. AR Lauren, wearing a short black cocktail dress with frills around her thighs, looked back playfully over her shoulder at Charlie as she walked ahead of him through a sea of wispy white women in colorful silk dresses interspersed by corpulent Saudi men in white thobes. His gray suit drew no attention. In the main lounge, there were more white women sitting on clear plastic sofas chatting enthusiastically; their grating insouciance attested to their expense. He sat at the end of a long row of empty large burgundy velvet chairs at the bar. AR Lauren stood next to him, mouthing the words to the Italian opera that was barely audible over the rumble of conversation and laughter.
“What are you thinking?” AR Lauren’s innocent purr came through his right earbud and caught him off guard as he surveyed the room. He looked at her and took the earbud out as he set her speech to captions. She gave him a cute frown. The women found the large white cotton thobes of the Saudi men ideally suited to sharing projections. Charlie saw a few fragments of some animated Goyas and more than one dancing Rodin. The words “Cogito ergo sum” were snaking their way up and down the large thobe of a Saudi—a joke that had a group of women in strapless sequined dresses in tears of laughter. In AR they created cartoonish likenesses of the Saudis that mimicked their walks and gestures.
Harold was nowhere to be seen. Charlie wondered what he was doing there. He didn’t belong. He belonged back in Cities of the World at a sidewalk café in Buenos Aires, savoring the rhapsodic awakening of espresso and Cointreau—a real place with real women. He refreshed AR Lauren, and she sat next to him with her legs crossed and seemed to give him an empathetic smile.
“Charlie!” Stephanie clamored his name as if she hadn’t seen him in years. She grabbed his hand and took him on a whirlwind trip of dashing in and out of conversational groups—the same groups he had just been scanning. Saudi men seemed to be lining up for the occasion. “This is Omar!” She beamed at the Saudi, who seemed to convey an immense gratitude that she had bothered to take the time to say hello to him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the real Lauren. He looked back and blinked, and there was just the constant turning of dresses like at a dry cleaner’s.
He traversed through the crowd with Stephanie, tacking back and forth like sailboats, before dropping down on a vacant black velvet couch.
“So what’s your deal, Stephanie?”
“What do you mean? How did such a lovely young woman like myself come to find solace among such barbarians?” She gave a nasty look to a large Saudi man twice her width sitting diagonally across from her.
“I don’t think anyone comes here for the sand,” Charlie said.
“No, they certainly don’t. They usually come here for the money. That’s what my father did.”
“He was an engineer?”
“No.” She looked uncomfortable and signaled a Filipino waiter by pointing at a bottle of Grey Goose. He brought the bottle and two shot glasses for them.
“So?” Charlie looked at her, waiting for a response after they had both finished their shots.
“One more?”
“OK.”
She leaned over and whispered in his ear, “He smuggled hash into Bahrain.”
“What happened?”
“He was caught. The Saudis executed him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not. I got the sailboat to myself.” She looked at him, waiting for his reaction, and then almost spit into her shot glass from laughter.
“You used to share it with him?”
She laughed again. “No, we lived in the eye of the dolphin.”
“That’s a nice island. One of the nicest in Bahrain from what I hear.”
“A nice community,” she said.
“Yeah. So what happened?”
“It was seized. The Saudis and the Bahrainis work together.”
“You mean the police?”
“Oh, everyone’s working with everyone these days.”
“I guess.”
“You look tired,” she said. She stared into her glass for a moment. “Yeah. They took everything. But they let me keep the boat because it was registered in my name.” She sipped her drink.
“This is Harold,” Stephanie said as Harold walked over unexpectedly.
“I know,” Charlie said. He put out his hand, but Harold just looked at his extended arm.
“Hi.” Harold grinned from behind fully occluded glasses that gleamed like black onyx. He was navigating his way through animated Gauguin paintings that were brought to life as an interactive game with some of the Russian women in the club. It was a promo they were trying to sell to prospective boyfriends.
“Walk with me, Charlie. We must discuss,” Harold said.
“Excuse me,” Charlie said. He stood up and followed Harold up a black steel staircase in the corner to the roof. The listless air was being purposelessly blown around by a singular fan. Charlie watched as Harold waited for the door to close. The floodlights at the entrance and the distant streetlights were the only source of light.
“You like money, Charlie?” Harold spoke Mandarin, but Charlie’s Mandarin app needed to refresh itself. After a few seconds, he saw the question scroll across his line of sight.
“Yes,” Charlie said.
“Good.” Harold had brought back the occluded sequence of pale-as-ivory Russian women traversing thickets of Balinese jungle. “You want to make more money, right?”
“What are you offering?”
“I need a driver to cross the causeway to Saudi. Five hundred dinars.”
“I’d have to think about it.”
“Bahrain is a strange place for you to be. You like being a boat boy?”
“Not really.”
“This is the man you must contact. He will go with you to the Saudi Embassy.” Harold handed him a business card obscured by a green cloud that hovered around it.
“For what?”
“For a visa. Think about it. Let’s have another beer.”
They walked back down the stairs. “Asahi?” Charlie asked as they approached the empty bar.
“No. I am Chinese.” He pointed to the display of Tsing Tao and flicked the payment for it plus one Asahi to his tab in the AR menu above the Filipino
waiter’s head. The Ethiopian woman behind the bar placed the beers in front of them.
Charlie held his can of Asahi up to Harold’s glass of Tsing Tao and waited for him to finish pouring.
Harold swirled his glass of Tsing Tao and examined the foam. He motioned delicately with his stylus ring, and his glasses ceased being occluded. Charlie was able to see his eyes for the first time. “I need an answer soon.” He placed his unfinished glass of beer on the bar and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
Charlie had started to get up to leave when he saw her walking over in a pink cocktail dress, a champagne flute dangling from her right hand. She gave him a wry smile and stood in front of him, twirling a lock of her hair that had come down just so.
“Lauren?” Charlie said. She had an AR entourage that consisted of a constantly changing assortment of likenesses of herself wearing gigantic hats—very expensive. He looked beyond her and saw Harold and Stephanie snaking their way through rivers of evening wear and AR animation.
“Hi, Charlie,” she said
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I had to go to Vungtau to find out.”
“Find out what?”
“That you’re here.”
“You followed me here? Why?” Lauren leaned closer to the bar and rested her elbow on it as she propped her chin up with her hand. AR Lauren, wearing a burgundy silk dress of a similar cut, stood to the right of her and mimicked her. “What do you love about me so much, Charlie?” she asked with a disinterested expression.
“Everything.”
“Like what?”
“Everything you do. Everything you are.”
“You mean, like my ass?”
“Among other things. It’s not just the physical. It’s everything else.”
“Like what? My lips?”
“The way your eyes look when you look up at me. The way you raise your eyes.”