Relative Danger

by Charles Benoit

“He’s a Yank is what he is,” Betty the troll said, popping the golf ball out of his mouth.

  “Like this,” Rachael said. “Every year. Tourney here in Bahrain. Teams. Expats. The Gulf. Good times. Traditions. Aloha shirts. Ladies’ names. This tourney,” he said, pointing to his chest, “Rachel.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Doug said, trying hard not to sound sarcastic.

  “Fun, yeah, of course, but it makes it hard to meet women,” said Anne, as if it was just this damn tradition that slowed him up.

  “And you? You’re a Heather,” pronounced the big guy.

  “Heather? I don’t think….”

  “Heather, Heather, Heather…” the ladies chanted until Doug raised his beer in acknowledgment, only to find a golf ball sitting at the bottom of the glass.

  “Sorry mate,” Rachael said, “eyes open. Keep it covered. Gotta drain it. That a boy. Shame though. The time. Five after the hour. Right hand drinking. Chug another. Or a shot. Take the shot. Won’t bloat up fast.”

  “Drinking games at eight in the morning. You guys don’t get out much, do you?”

  “Work in Kuwait,” explained Rachael. “Dry.”

  “In more ways than one,” shouted Betty the troll. He had to shout to be heard over the singing, part of another drinking game.

  “Right. Dry. Don’t get out at all. Come here to party. Wives, girlfriends at home. Start drinking. Rugby tourney just bonus.”

  “Rugby?” Doug said. “Hey, I’ve watched it on ESPN. I never really understood the game but I always wanted to give it a try.” The singing stopped and everyone at the bar—even the bartender—was staring at Doug, smiling.

  “You know rugby?” asked Anne.

  “Always wanted to play?” asked Rebecca.

  “Give it a try, right?” asked Sally.

  “Are you sure?” asked Betty.

  “Shut up, ya twat,” Rachael said, slapping the troll on the top of his bald head. “So. Wanted to give it a try?” Rachael said, plopping his arm on top of Doug’s shoulders. “That’s funny. Isn’t it, ladies?”

  “Oh yeah, funny,” said Anne.

  “What a coincidence,” said Gladys.

  “A sign from the gods, if you ask me,” said Sally.

  “Like this, Heather,” the big guy said. “Big tournament. Paperwork. Passports. Customs. Trouble. Travel ban. Mate stuck in Kuwait. Us here. One player short. So….”

  Chapter 24

  Singapore, according to the in-flight magazine, was a “miracle of modernity, poised for global economic leadership in the new millennium.” Doug leaned his forehead against the window, feeling the vibrations as the flaps shifted for the landing. The vibrations echoed off the back of his skull and prompted a throbbing deep behind his eyes that he knew would stay with him the rest of the day, perhaps through the new millennium as well.

  From the air, everything looked green. Doug didn’t know if it was the lack of vegetation in Egypt that made the greenery here stand out or if this miracle of modernity was built in the heart of a jungle. He didn’t know much about Singapore other than what the in-flight magazine tried, in vain, to explain to him. He didn’t know if it was above or below the equator since the lines on the Singapore Airlines map kept jumping around when he tried to look at it. He didn’t know what he was going to do when the plane landed or why he was even here. There was so much he didn’t know.

  But he was learning. He learned that what should have been called a touchdown in rugby was called a try. This had bothered him much of the game, this and hearing members of the other team saying “hit the Yank.” He learned through observation that a man with a broken arm just needs to be taped up and handed a half a glass of whiskey and he’s ready to play some more. He learned that a rugby-playing regional manager for British Airways can pull enough strings to get a Singapore Airlines ticket changed—irreversibly changed, as Doug also learned—stranding a traveler in Bahrain so that he can play rugby too. “Who got you that ticket?” Sally asked. “There were more chiggers on it than a Bombay bint.”

  “What?” Doug said. It was early afternoon of the day he should have been on a nine a.m. flight, but there he was, in the hotel coffee shop, trying to keep down dry toast.

  “That ticket. There were all sorts of ‘hang-ons’…electric bugs and special instructions—automated crap—so somebody could keep tabs on you. You a terrorist or something?”

  “Yeah. Osama bin-drinking. Who put the….”

  “Chiggers.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Who put them on the ticket?” The toast was staying down all right, but the hair of the dog—Anne’s idea—was beginning to growl.

  “No way of telling, mate. All deleted now. You’re free as a bird. But,” Sally said, slapping the ticket on the bar, “no more favors.”

  “Favors?” Doug said. He would have yelled but it would have hurt too much. “I never wanted it changed.”

  “Not you, mate. Rachael. Every trip he pulls this stunt. I’ve only got so many connections.”

  And Doug had learned that, despite his total lack of progress, Edna was thrilled.

  “This is going so well,” she said when Doug explained his time in Egypt, leaving out just about everything significant that had happened there. “And now you’re off to Singapore—how exciting for you!” They had tried to make arrangements for her to send the last installment of memoirs and anecdotes and some expense money but decided that it was smarter to wait until he arrived in Singapore. “The more you learn about your uncle…” she said. The more I cheer on his killer, he thought.

  The stewardess was passing out white and red landing cards and Doug fished his passport out of his carry-on bag. Printed on both sides of the card, in impossible to miss, seventy-eight point red boldface type, was a simple declarative sentence:

  The punishment for drug smuggling is death.

  Doug felt his stomach roll over. As he sat in the prison cell in Cairo, Doug had sworn that he would always double-check his bag and here he was, flying into a place where, with great civic pride, the number of executions for drug smuggling was printed in the in-flight magazine, with luggage packed by the same person who had a history of putting drugs in his bag. The more he thought about it, the more his stomach rolled.

  The approach, the smooth landing, the fifteen-minute taxi to the gate and the ten-minute wait for his checked bag all passed without Doug really noticing. When the customs man asked if he had anything to declare, Doug mouthed a weak no, and didn’t start breathing again until he was wading through the crowd of well wishers who filled the lobby, waiting for someone else. After eight hours of sitting on the plane he found he needed to sit some more and by the time his blood pressure and stomach had returned to normal, he had exchanged what was left of the traveler’s checks, picked a budget hotel from a discarded tourism magazine, and arranged for a cab to the city.

  The forty-minute ride as a front seat passenger in a car with the steering wheel on the right was not as traumatic as he thought it would be, although several times his foot shot out, looking for the missing brake pedal. If it had been Cairo, where driving is a contact sport, neither his heart nor his stomach would have lasted the full ride. But this was Singapore and the ride had a soothing effect.

  At a hundred and eighty dollars per night—U.S. dollars—the budget hotel was out of his budget. “Ask your cab driver,” the beautiful and efficient desk clerk had told him, “he will know of other places that are more within your price range.” And she didn’t even sound condescending when she said it.

  “I’ve got a place, real cheap. You like, yes,” the cab driver said, all smiles. “I have an uncle who owns a hotel. Real nice for you.”

  The Geylang area of Singapore was twenty minutes back towards the airport and well off the tourist track. It wasn’t as bad as the bad areas of Cairo—the worst parts of Singapore were better than the best areas of Cairo—but it lacked that miracle of modernity feel to it that downtown Singapore promised. Turn-of-the-century buildings, with thick
concrete pillars and ornate, pre-cast moldings, all soot-stained and chipped, were wedged between modern concrete buildings in a nondescript international style, equally soot-stained and chipped. The signs, suspended above every doorway or screwed to any available wall space, were mostly in what Doug guessed was Chinese, and the few that were in English announced Coke, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and 7-Eleven. After ten minutes of driving around what Doug would have sworn was the same street, the cab pulled up in front of a building that looked like the front of every other building, the cab driver springing out to fling open the passenger door and grabbing the luggage in one artistic sweep. He led Doug up a short, narrow flight of steps to a landing in front of a solid door. The cab driver shouted something into the speaker by the door and they were buzzed in.

  It wasn’t a lobby as much as it was a hallway between office cubicles. Through openings in the frosted glass walls, Doug saw desks piled with papers, massive two-ring binders and Post-it-notes clinging like little yellow butterflies that swayed under the low-hanging ceiling fans. He could hear the clicking of computer keyboards and the antique metal clacking of a real typewriter, but the cubicles near the door were empty.

  “I think you got the wrong place,” Doug said. “I’m looking for a hotel.”

  “This is hotel. Just wait you here.” The driver set down the bag and ran from cubicle to cubicle, poking his head in and saying something that Doug could not make out. Down the glass row, a middle-aged Asian woman poked her head out of her doorway, smiled and waved to Doug. While he was deciding whether or not he should just leave and find another cab, the driver came around the corner with a tall, well-dressed man who seemed to be in charge. The driver was trying to keep up with the man’s long strides while trying to tell his story in both his version of English and through elaborate mime-like gestures. Deciphering one of these, the man nodded and, twenty feet away, extended his hand to Doug, guiding it in with the last three giant steps.

  “Welcome to the ZRZ Publishing Group,” the man said, pronouncing it “zed-r-zed.” “My name is Dexter Lee. How can I help you?”

  “There seems to be some mistake. The driver said he was taking me to a hotel. I’m sorry to bother you. Perhaps you could explain to the driver….”

  “This is a hotel,” Lee said, “and a publishing company. It may not look like much, but my family is starting to turn it from an office building to a fine hotel. We haven’t had many guests yet so we’re excited that you chose to stay with us. Everyone is buzzing each other on the intercom system,” he said sweeping his arm back, suggesting hordes of Lees, all peering over the tops of cubicles scattered throughout the building. “Until we get it all finished we won’t get many walk-ins, so your business really means a lot. And we’ll give you the best rates in town. Can I show you one of the rooms?”

  Doug sighed. He was a sucker for that kind of talk and he knew it. He had wanted a hotel in the heart of the city, a real hotel with a pool and room service, but the sad-story sales pitch was hard to resist, especially when he had no real idea where he was anyway. “Yeah sure, why not,” he said and pulled out his wallet to pay for the cab.

  The publisher/innkeeper said, “The tip, you can understand, is on me.”

  “Great. Thanks.” That sealed it, he had to stay now.

  At the end of the cubicles, the corridor branched left and right. To the left were dozens of filing cabinets and bookshelves, to the right, plastic potted plants and a dozen identical framed prints of the English countryside. A freight elevator took them up and the sales pitch continued during the slow elevator ride.

  “It was my grandfather who started Zed-R-Zed Publishing shortly after the war. His picture is down by the door, did you see it? It’s the classic rags to riches tale. He started with wedding invitations and business fliers and moved on to short-run books and technical manuals. He worked a thousand hours a week and passed the business off to his son and his son passed it off to his eldest son.”

  “That would be you?” Doug asked.

  “That would be my brother. When my dad died my brother got out of the business and passed it to me. I was studying business law in San Francisco, now I’m here. A lot has changed since my grandfather’s time. At one point we were one of the largest publishing houses on the island, now we’re not even the biggest one on the street. The competition is fierce and when you have a family business you have to think of the family first and business second—well, you don’t have to but we did. My father decided to specialize in publishing encyclopedias.”

  “Like Encyclopedia Britannica? That kind of thing?”

  “Sort of. We focused more on the low end of the scale, Robert’s Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Gallactica, that sort of thing. Maybe you’ve heard of them? They were sold mostly at supermarkets as part of a promotion.”

  “Yeah, I remember that,” Doug said, smiling. He did, too. Over at the Smart-Shopper about twenty years ago. Every week there would be a new volume on sale. What was the name of the encyclopedia they had? He could see the fancy gold binding and red stripe but the name was lost. His family, like everyone’s family, started strong, getting the free A, the ninety-nine cent B-C, and the dollar ninety-eight D-Em. But En through Z was where the supermarkets made their profit and the price went up noticeably with each alphabetic jump. Doug had turned in school projects on airplanes, bears, Cincinnati, diseases and the Empire State Building. The big holes in his education began with England.

  The elevator inched to a stop and Dexter Lee waited for the main doors to open before sliding back the black iron grate. Clones of the plastic plant and the English countryside print lined the wall. Maybe a side business, Doug thought.

  “Business was good in the Sixties and Seventies—it’s just down the hall here—but with home computers and on-line encyclopedias, no one buys print encyclopedias anymore. We were too specialized to change, the market was already filled with high-quality publishers, so we decided to sell off the remaining stock and convert the building to a hotel. It’s kind of sad, but that’s business, right?”

  Dexter Lee stopped at a room with a black stenciled A on the door, turned the key in the lock and held open the door for Doug. It was a large room with polished hardwood floors and slowly rotating ceiling fans, fifteen feet overhead. White Venetian blinds covered the floor to ceiling windows, obscuring the view of a brick wall. There was a deep, walk-in closet and an industrial-looking bathroom across from the windows and a king-sized bed in between. A television sat on a rolling cart beside the bed. And along all the open walls stretched ten-shelf bookcases crammed full of encyclopedias. Shelves lined the walls of the closet and the narrow spaces between the windows.

  “Great room,” Doug said, tossing his bag on the bed, “I can even catch up with my reading.”

  “Sort of,” Lee said, handing Doug the key. “Until we get rid of our stock, we keep the books separated by letter. Nobody buys full sets, just replacement volumes. This is the A room. You can catch up on your reading, as long as you want to read about something that starts with A. It’s funny,” Lee said, looking around the room, “we always sold more As.”

  Chapter 25

  Plans for a quick cold shower, a cup of coffee to wake up, and a full day exploring the city turned into a long hot shower and a five-hour nap. A quick cold shower, a cup of coffee to wake up, and Doug was ready for a full evening of exploring the city.

  The woman at the cubicle that served as the reception desk and the overseas phone order center assured Doug that four p.m. in Singapore was the perfect time to call Toronto, adding—just as Edna was saying hello—that would be four in the morning there.

  “Damn, Edna, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it would be so early,” Doug stammered.

  “Hold on a second, Douglas,” Edna said. “Hey guys, hold it down please. I’ve got a call.” Doug heard her hand cover the mouthpiece, muffled laughter and then she was back. “Sorry about that. How are you?” Four a.m. and she’s got a party going. Doug felt old.

/>   “I’m doing good, Edna. Look, I’m in Singapore.”

  “Of course you are, dear. Isn’t that where you were heading? You’re not in jail are you?” Doug heard her laugh before she was able to cover the mouthpiece again. Was she drunk? “Sorry. Back again. Shall I send you a file in a cake?” The word “cake” slid into an uncovered howl of laughter.

  “Uh, Edna? Should I call you later?”

  “Oh, definitely don’t call later. He shouldn’t call later, should he?” More laughter, more muffled voices. “I’m glad you called, you little rascal. I want to send you some money. How much should I send him?” she said off the phone. “You are soooo generous. Yes you are so. Stop that. Oh Doug, are you still there?”

  “I haven’t gone anywhere Edna. Look, I’m staying at this hotel….”

  “Good. Don’t sleep on the subway, baby….” More laughter with singing this time. “Look, Doug, are you still there?”

  “Yes, Edna, I’m still here.”

  “Look, Doug. Look. I’ve got this caller ID thingy. Stop that. Not you Doug. Look. I’ll call you back, okay? Doug? Are you still there?”

  Oh boy, Doug thought. “Yeah. Sounds good,” he said, just as the line went dead.

  “See?” the cubicle lady said. “You call now. Best time.”

  ***

  The SMRT station was less than a quarter mile away and easy to find. Down the short escalator Doug encountered some of that miracle of modernity promised in the vaguely remembered in-flight magazine. The subway looked like something out of a movie that was set just a bit in the future. It was the best—and first—subway Doug had ever seen. Everything was in English, the lingua franca as the magazine said—whatever the hell that meant. He took it to the Orchard Road exit, just like the cubicle lady instructed, and exited into a seven-story, two-block-long shopping mall. It took Doug thirty minutes to get oriented and almost as long to notice he was standing around with his mouth half open, looking like a backwoods, “golly-they-don’t-have-this-back-at-home” yahoo.