“Our clientele are both business and pleasure travelers. We are close to the banks, close to the best shopping, the beach is across the street.” The next time he glanced down at his hands she took a deep breath. “We have some European and American guests, but most are from the middle east-- Jordan and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.” She liked the way his tongue tripped through the names of places: Jor-don. Le-Ban-On. She found it easier to watch his lips move than look into his eyes. He spoke so quietly she was afraid she might miss something he said. A syllable or a word, something she needed to know. The candle seemed to be making her face warm. She took a sip of water to cool down.
He stopped and looked at her as if waiting for a question. In her lap, she balled her hands into fists and then stretched her fingers. “Mostly men or women?” She managed to say. “I mean, who do you think chooses the hotel, for the family?”
He smiled and looked down at his plate. “Men, mostly. Though I suspect women are involved in the discussion. There are still many families who believe women should not travel without their husbands' permission. In fact, that is still the law in some places. Not here,” he said, “but elsewhere.”
Encouraged by his smile or, perhaps, the way he tilted his head to the side and lifted his chin, she asked. “Your wife? Does she make the arrangements? Or do you?” She asked it without thinking and when she saw his expression, wished she hadn’t.
His eyes narrowed a little. Something shifted in his face. “Your job, Rachel,” he said. “Is to handle media relations, advertising, that sort of thing. We have a web site, but the designer is not a writer. So that’s why we have you.”
“We’ve been open a few months,” he continued. “But we haven’t had a grand opening. That will be your immediate challenge. You will organize an event for the media, invite some local business owners, diplomats. That sort of thing. We’ll invite his majesty, of course.”
She had just realized he was annoyed with her and had also just said something about inviting “his majesty” when the waiter came through the door with a large silver tray. He took the clay tops off their dishes and the smell of spices, cinnamon and pepper, and broth filled the room. Her stomach growled. Just eat, she told herself. After some food and a good night’s sleep this will all seem like less of a tragedy.
She took a bite and then another. She kept her focus on her plate and didn’t look up once. Not until she’d finished the whole meal.
“You liked the lamb,” he said, breaking the silence.
“It was delicious. I’ve never had anything like it.”
He sat up and put his napkin on his plate. “Do you have any other questions?”
“I, I can’t think of any at the moment.”
“Good,” he said. “Samantha Byrne will be in touch in the morning. She’ll go over some of the details. Now,” he said, standing, “if you don’t mind, I have another meeting. And I’m sure you are tired.” He whispered something to the waiter, who had been standing near the door, and walked out of the room.
She sat for another minute, looking at her empty plate. Then she stood, tried to smile at the waiter, and walked back through the restaurant.
In her room, she fell back onto her bed, wishing she had the energy to cry.
It occurred to her that she could leave on her own, before she’d made a fool of herself. She could tell them, tell everyone it had all been a mistake. A quick search informed her a ticket home would cost, without advanced notice, several thousand dollars. She didn’t have enough money for a taxi ride to the airport.
She kept the lights off and in the darkness poured herself another glass of wine. The sky was a deep inky blue now and the moon never looked more like a massive rock set low on the horizon. Surely there was someone else out there who was as lost as she was.
****
It was still dark when she woke up on the chaise. Her shoes were off, but she was still wearing her suit. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. She was still in Dubai, still expected to do a job for which she’d been flown around the globe, for which she’d been given a room costing several thousand dollars a night. It was only 4 a.m. but she was wide awake with all she had to do.
She switched on an electric tea kettle and made a cup of tea. She found a pad of paper and pen in the desk drawer. Just under the Al Zari Hotel letterhead she wrote Grand Opening. It made her feel strangely heroic, like she could make something happen just by writing it down.
Under that she wrote food and drink and music and guests. As she wrote the words she saw long tables with trays of canapés and crackers topped with caviar. Flutes sparkled with champagne, guests laughed and began to clap when she stepped up to the microphone.
Now her throat felt tight. Never mind that.
Yesterday’s newspaper was still on the floor by the door and she flipped through it, noting journalists who might cover a grand opening. Several pages in, on the right hand page she found a feature story about a man who used all his savings to buy a camel, from a lot at the camel souks. Camel lots? She laughed. Camelots?
The man in the article bought a no name camel and against the odds, won his money back and more. Even here they wrote stories about the underdog. The under-camel.
Ali Al Khadar had written the story. She wrote his name down.
Just get started. That would be her motto. If she could make it a month, she could earn her own ticket home. She could leave with some of her dignity intact. That was her new plan.
Feeling better, she typed a quick email to her parents telling them she'd arrived safely. That she had a beautiful hotel room. That she'd met the owner and he was nice. It wasn’t really a lie, because she guessed he was nice, to someone. She promised to write more once she’d had a full night’s sleep. She told them she missed them. That was especially true.
By 7 am she had showered and dressed and was heading down to the big restaurant on the first floor. Just off the elevator she smelled coffee and baking bread and followed the scent of breakfast to the main dining room, a much larger space, full of white-clothed tables and buzzing waitstaff. A waiter led her to a small, two-top table near a window with a view of the pool.
She ordered the cheapest thing on the menu: continental breakfast.
The waiter brought her a silver pitcher of coffee, a smaller pitcher of cream, and a plate of sugar cubes. She had just taken her first sip smooth sweet coffee when her phone buzzed. It was a text from Samantha Byrne. Welcome to Dubai, it said. I have a meeting just now but can meet you at 9 am at the front desk. Until then look around, get a feel for the hotel.
She had been nervous about how she would pay for her meals. So she was relieved when the waiter told her to write down her room number and sign it. It would add up quickly but at least she didn’t have to pay now.
She found the fitness center, the spa and the indoor pool. The hotel lobby was getting more crowded. Men sat in the chairs, sipping from small teacups. A little boy in a khaki suit tumbled around on a square of silk carpet. More children ran past her. A woman called to them. The energy made her walk faster and gave her a reason to smile. Welcome to the Al Zari Hotel, she wanted to tell them.
The brochure mentioned tennis courts, which she guessed were out near the pool. She walked back through reception with the intention of finding them when she noticed three men coming through the front entrance. It was him, with two companions who were both older, both with dark beards and traditional clothing. He looked so young and elegant in his suit, his head turned to them as he spoke. One of the men nodded and the other, the heavier of the two, laughed. He took another step, then turned his head to see where he was going and caught sight of her. He recognized her. Just as she smiled at him, his gaze shifted away and the three of them walked right past her.
***
Samantha, a tall woman with short, red, aggressively styled hair, was right on time. She stood near the front desk in a poppy-colored linen jacket with a full silk skirt. Her smile seemed pursed and a little too much like a smirk.
“Are you Rachel Lewis?” She asked, in a sharp British accent.
“I am.”
They looked at each other for several seconds. Samantha seemed to be taking measure of her. “You look quite young,” she said still smile-smirking.
Rachel stumbled over a response, saying a “yes, well” and then “thank you.” Though it didn’t seem to be a compliment. “I’m 23,” she said finally and realized it had come out a little more defensive than she’d planned.
“Twenty-three,” Samantha repeated. “Well, you look nineteen.” Her voice was cheerful enough but she spoke with the corners of her mouth turned down. “Cute as a button though.”
“Now,” she clasped her hands together, “if you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your new office.” With that she turned and began to walk.
In a private reception area Samantha, still walking, said. “This is our assistant, Kritika. Kritika, this is our new public-relations-and-marketing-person, Rachel.” Rachel smiled and held up her hand to say hello and goodbye.
Samantha walked down a hall, turning her head as she spoke so Rachel could hear her. “The Prince has his own assistant, of course, Sahar. His office is on the top floor. And you met him last night?”
Rachel wasn’t sure this was a question until Samantha stopped walking and looked back at her.
“I did.”
“This is Hamid,” she said, nodding at an office on her left. A few more steps and Rachel saw a guy about her age with dark curly hair sitting at a desk “He’s the tech guy,” Samantha said. “Keeps our network up. Go to him if you have any problems with your laptop.” Hamid waved. Rachel waved back, walking faster to keep up with Samantha.
A stocky woman with a rocking side-to-side walk came toward them. “Judith,” Samantha said. “Head of housekeeping.” Judith did not slow down but she did say hello.
Samantha stopped at the last office on the left. “Your office.” She pushed open the door.
Like her suite, it was better than she imagined. Against a left wall was a small, cream brocade sofa. To her right were two chairs facing an enormous cherry wood desk. It was a corner office so she had window on two walls. “You can see out,” Samantha explained, “but no one can see in.”
Rachel tried to hide her amazement. Her mom was executive director of an organization and her office wasn’t nearly this beautiful. Not even close.
Samantha walked around the desk and opened a silver laptop. If you prefer a desktop we can order one. But this, you can take to meetings. Take to your room if you need.” She began to type. “Hamid has you all set up.”
“Password?” She asked.
“Simon,” Rachel said quickly, like a game show contestant.
Samantha looked at her now like she was being silly. “Simon?”
“My first dog,” Rachel explained.
Rachel noticed how one of her eyebrows dipped as she typed it in. “How sweet,” she said hitting the final key with a flourish.
Something in Samantha’s pocket buzzed. She pulled out her phone and frowned at the screen. “Oh bloody hell,” she said before answering it. “Yes, yes, of course. I can be there in five minutes.”
She put the phone back in her pocket and sighed. “Rachel, we’ll have to finish this up later, I’m afraid. We have a staff meeting today at two, down the hall in the conference room. I’ll see you then?” Before Rachel could answer, she walked out and closed the door.
Rachel sat down and looked at her laptop screen. The words WELCOME RACHEL LEWIS stared back at her, waiting for her to do something.
Her day felt like it had been building up to something. Like everything that happened after breakfast would be even better than the croissant with butter and jam. She’d seen him among all those people in the lobby, a person who knew her. He made her feel invisible, like she wore one of those black veils.
Now she was beginning to think that breakfast might be the best thing to happen all day and that the rest of it might be her trying to keep her new coworkers from realizing how little she deserved an office like this.
It was the middle of the night in Atlanta. Her parents were asleep down the hall from her old room, converted to her mom’s office when she went away to school, and now housing a futon, her parents subtle message that her stay with them was very temporary. “Just until you get on your feet,” her mom liked to say, implying that Rachel was still in some later stage of infancy. Were she home she would be on that futon reading, or looking at job postings, or wondering what was wrong with her and why couldn’t she get her act together.
There was nothing left to do but get started. She found the notes she’d made that morning in her handbag and read them over.
A quick Internet search provided a grand opening toolkit for owners of Best Western franchises. This hotel was no Best Western but it was a place to start. The timeline suggested planning in phases of 90 days out, 60 days out, and 30 days out and gave specific tasks for each phase.
One item listed under the 60 days phase “secure entertainment” gave her a flutter of panic. She suddenly saw herself in front of a sparkling crowd, clutching a microphone, eyes wide with panic, opening her mouth and nothing coming out. It had happened before.
Her last semester in college she’d written a speech against capital punishment for a final presentation in her college speech class. It was a decent speech, compelling. She used some of the lyrical techniques Dr. King had used in his “I Have a Dream” speech. She practiced it in the shower, in the car. She could recite it without even thinking about it. It came out of her mouth whenever she opened it. She imagined her class being so moved their eyes filled with tears, then jumping to their feet and clapping like maniacs. She, at the urging of her textbook, envisioned success.
Instead she had failed. She stood at the lectern and looked at all of her classmates grinning back at her and her skin went cold. The notecards she thought she didn’t need were suddenly very necessary. She couldn’t look away from them. All those words scrawled in blue ink. Her eyes following the loops of her es and ls. She read the introduction with her voice cracking, crumbling like concrete into a gravely whisper and her throat tightened until she felt like she was breathing through a plastic coffee stirrer. Her hands shook. Her classmates looked at her, quietly, expectantly. She took a deep breath and started again but still her voice came out in a whisper. The memory of those few minutes trying to get out the word “executions” still had the unique ability to make her feel faint.
The story shocked her mom. “Really?” she said wiping crumbs from the kitchen table. “You’ve never been shy. Why, you were more likely to walk up to a stranger and introduce yourself. Even after two “Stranger Danger” classes. Your dad and I were sure you’d be kidnapped before you got to middle school. What happened?”
What happened? Three weeks earlier her boyfriend Truman sat on the couch in his dark apartment and told her he thought they should take a break. He told her he “needed space”, needed to figure out “who he was”, which explained why he hadn’t called her for two days and hadn’t answered his cell phone. “Wow,” she said in a voice that sounded almost hysterical. “Where did you fucking get that? Cosmo Magazine?”
She spent two months just trying to swallow food. She watched “When Harry Met Sally” over and over until she fell asleep on the couch and had dreams she was falling from a bridge, from the empire state building, from the crab apple tree in her grandparent's back yard. She didn’t even love Truman. Of course she’d said it but only because she didn’t know what else to say after so many months together. Then he broke up with her and seemed to confirm something bad about her, something everyone but her could recognize. She wasn’t good enough for him and the truth was, she never found him all that good.
Chapter 3
“You must be busy,” Hamid had come to show her how to get into her email, how to work the messaging system. He seemed so calm, so confident as he leaned back against her desk with his arms crossed, like he h
ad nothing else to do that day. “With the grand opening to plan. Everyone’s been talking about it since I got here. Every conversation begins with the words, after the grand opening.”
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