by Dave Eggers
Alan glanced at Brad, to see if he was serious. He was.
It seemed to be plugged in. But it was about thirty yards from the tent and thus probably useless to them. Again they stood, squinted, looked around. They saw clusters of workers in jumpsuits, purple and red, installing bricks in the promenade or sweeping sand from it.
—Is that a tower? Alan asked. There was a two-story metal structure, something between an oil derrick and a weathervane, in the middle of the promenade. They walked to it, and saw no wires extending from it. Whether or not this meant anything to them was unclear. They walked back to the tent, no smarter than they were before.
Inside, Rachel and Cayley were now in opposite dark corners, again crouched over their screens, like mothers tending to infants.
—Anything? Brad asked them.
—Not really, Cayley said. Comes and goes.
—You get an email out? Brad asked.
—Not yet, Rachel said.
Alan needed to recover for a few minutes from the heat, so he took a folding chair and sat in it. Brad took the seat next to him.
—We’ve been trying to email Karim, our contact over here, Brad said.
—Where is he? Alan asked.
—Supposedly here at KAEC.
—In the building? The Black Box?
—I think so.
—You try walking over there?
—Not yet. I’m not going back out in that heat if I don’t have to.
And so they continued to sit in the tent.
IX.
ERIC INGVALL AND HIS stupid face. Sitting there at that long granite table, reading Alan’s report with those ugly lips pursed. Alan had wanted to punch that face. Punch his smarmy face till it showed him some respect.
—I really need you to be organized on this one, Ingvall had said.
Ingvall was a renowned anal-retentive. When things were not presented the way he liked, his face cinched into a tortured pout. He was dissatisfied with Alan’s report on KAEC. Alan had been asked to prepare something before the trip, a look at KAEC, what Reliant’s prospects were, and Alan had done so. The report was finished early and was far longer and more detailed than Ingvall had asked for.
—But you leave so many questions unanswered, Ingvall said, his face pained. And that makes me uncomfortable.
Alan chuckled and said there were questions unanswered in the report because he hadn’t been to Saudi yet and couldn’t presume to know the lay of the land — much less the state of Abdullah’s mind.
—This is sales, Alan said, smiling. You make estimates, you make a plan, then you go there, everything changes, but you make the sale.
Ingvall did not smile and did not agree.
—I need reassurance that you’re the right man to send on this, Ingvall said. You’ve been on the sidelines for a while, and I need to know you’re sharp. That you’re a gamer.
Alan glanced outside, at the harbor below.
Alan’s people had come to America from Ireland during the famine. Three brothers left from County Cork and landed in Boston in 1850. They started manufacturing brass buttons, and the buttons led to a foundry in South Boston, doing wide-ranging work in tubing, valves, boilers and radiators. They hired other Irishmen, and then Germans and Poles and Italians. The business boomed. The brothers built second homes on the coast. They hired tutors for their children, and their children learned Latin and Greek. Their names were all over buildings in Boston. Churches and hospital wings. Then there was the Depression, and everyone started over. Alan’s father had no second home in Chatham. He was a foreman at the Stride Rite factory in Roxbury. He did fine, and saved enough for his son, Alan, to go to college. But Alan dropped out of college to sell Fuller Brush products, and then sold bicycles, and did fine, extremely well for a while there, until he and others decided to have other people, ten thousand miles away, build the things they sold, and soon left himself with nothing to sell, and now he was in this conference room overlooking the harbor, and he was staring at this pinched-face Eric Ingvall, who owned him and who knew it.
—I think it’s a slam dunk, Alan had said.
—See, that’s what worries me, Ingvall had said. Your overconfidence does not reassure me.
X.
CAYLEY PULLED UP a chair. —So. How many people do you think he’ll bring with him?
—Who? Alan asked.
—The King, she said.
—I don’t know. I guess about a dozen. Maybe more.
—You think he has sole discretion to make the decisions on IT here?
—I would expect so, sure. The city has his name on it.
Now Rachel joined them. —Have you met him? she asked.
—Me? No. I knew his nephew about twenty years ago.
—Was he a prince?
—He was. He still is.
—And will he be here?
—No, no. He’s in Monaco. He doesn’t get himself involved in business much anymore. He flies around, gives money to causes.
Alan pictured Abdullah’s nephew, Jalawi. His peculiar face. His mouth was lopsided, as if drawn by a shaky hand, and this gave him a wry, mocking look. But he was very sincere, very curious, and quick to cry. He cried all the time. Widows, orphans, any story brought on the tears and opened his wallet. Jalawi had been advised to limit his exposure to people. Everyone he met he became involved with and tried to transform. Word was he was dying of bone cancer.
—Anyway, Alan said. King Abdullah won’t be here today. You should relax.
They sat in silence for a moment. It was obvious that Rachel and Cayley wanted to get back to their laptops, but their manners demanded they engage Alan, the senior member of the team, a man of mysterious provenance and presumed importance.
—You see much of Jeddah? Rachel asked him.
—No, not much yet, he said.
—You get some sleep? Cayley asked.
Alan told her the truth, that he’d been awake for almost sixty hours and had finally, at six or so that morning, fallen asleep. They all urged him to go back to the hotel, to rest. They could handle things for the rest of the day.
—Do you have some kind of sleep aid? Cayley asked.
—No. I figured I’d be executed at customs. You?
None of them did.
—I had an idea, Brad said. He looked to Alan, as if testing the very notion of having an idea. Alan tried to look encouraging.
—Well, I wanted your opinion before doing it, Brad ventured, but I was thinking we call corporate and let them know that conditions here are less than satisfactory.
Alan looked at Brad for a long moment. How would he tell him that this was a terrible idea? He tried to think of a way.
—Good thought, he said. But let’s table it for now.
—All right then, Brad said.
—My appointment with Karim al-Ahmad is at 3 p.m., Alan said. I’m sure that’ll clear everything up.
The young people nodded, and they sat together, silent, for a spell. It was just after noon. It seemed, already, that they’d been in the tent for days.
—Do we know where we eat? Cayley asked.
—I don’t know, Alan said. But I’ll find out.
As if trying to rescue a souring mood, Rachel leaned forward. —I have to say, she said, I think this is all pretty amazing. Did you see the health club at the hotel?
Brad had, Cayley had not.
—It has a thighmaster, Rachel said. A Nautilus one.
And so twenty minutes passed this way, discussing the ways that their situation was new and strange and ideal or not so much so. They wondered if food would be brought to them. They wondered if they should go to the Black Box to get it themselves. They wondered if they had been expected to bring their own.
Cayley talked about a new phone she’d gotten, and showed it to everyone. She said she’d looked for a while at the site for a place to toss her old one, and in the end had just thrown it on a mound of debris.
Alan soon lost the thread. He drifted off and
found himself looking outside. The tent had a series of plastic windows that gave a gauzy impression of the sand and sea beyond. Alan wanted to be out there, in the light and heat.
He stood.
—Time to see what the hell’s happening, he said, straightening his shirt. He promised that he would take care of the food question, the wi-fi signal question, the question of just why they were in a vinyl tent by the sea.
XI.
ALAN LEFT THE TENT, the heat a brief assault, and walked toward the Black Box. He followed the promenade to the glass building, dodging unfinished areas, piles of dirt or stacks of stones, clusters of tools. He leapt over a palm tree waiting to be planted, crossed the street and stood before the office building. There were about forty steps up to the front door, and by the time he reached it, he’d soaked through his shirt.
The lobby was bright, burnished, air-conditioned, the floors a blond wood. It looked like a Scandinavian airport.
—Can I help you?
A young woman, wearing a headscarf loosely, was sitting to his right at a half-moon desk of black marble.
—Hello, Alan said. What’s your name?
—My name is Maha, she said. Black eyes, an aquiline nose.
—Hi Maha. My name is Alan Clay from Reliant Systems. I have an appointment at three o’clock to see Karim al-Ahmad, and—
—Oh, you’re early. It’s just past two.
—Yes, I know. But I’m with Reliant, and we’re out in that tent down there by the beach, and we can’t get a wi-fi signal, which is essential to our presentation.
—Oh, I don’t know anything about the wi-fi down there. I can’t imagine that they have a wi-fi signal in the tent.
—See, that’s the problem. Is there someone I can talk to about this?
Maha nodded vigorously. —Yes, I think Mr. al-Ahmad would be the one. He’s in charge of the vendors presenting in the tent.
—Great. Is he in?
—No, I’m afraid not. He’ll probably be arriving here just before your meeting. He spends much of the day in Jeddah.
Arguing the point seemed useless. Alan’s meeting with al-Ahmad was only an hour away.
—Thank you, Maha, he said, and left.
But he couldn’t go back to the tent. He had no news for the young people, and had the idea that if he could stay away until the meeting, then it would seem to them that all the while he’d been engaged in a lengthy sit-down with al-Ahmad, during which all the issues had been solved.
As soon as he passed again into the heat and light, he remembered the food. He hadn’t asked about the food. But he couldn’t go back to the Black Box now. It would look pathetic, this sweating man with his many needling questions, and now having forgotten the central issue of food. No, he would ask all the questions at three o’clock. Until then the young people would make do.
He walked down the promenade, a bending design of inlaid bricks, thinking it all through. He was fifty-four years old. He was dressed in a white shirt and khakis and was walking along what might someday be a seaside path. He had just left his team, three young people tasked with setting up and demonstrating holographic communications technology for a king. But there was no king, and they were in a tent, alone, and there seemed to be no knowing when any of this would be rectified.
He lurched forward. His foot had dropped into a hole where bricks had yet to be laid. He righted himself, but he’d twisted his ankle and the pain was acute. He stood and tried to shake the pain away.
His body was scarred everywhere from the accidents of his last five years. He’d become clumsy. He was hitting his head on cabinets. Crushing his hands in car doors. He’d fallen in an icy parking lot and walked for months like a man made of wood. He was no longer elegant. Someone called him that, elegant, decades earlier. It was summer, a warm wind, and he had been dancing. The woman was elderly, a stranger, but the word had lodged within him, had given him solace. Did it mean anything that an old woman had once thought him elegant?
He thought of Joe Trivole. That first day together, at the first door they approached, he’d told Alan to let the woman inside know they were there. Alan instinctively had reached for the doorbell.
—No, no, Trivole said, and then knocked on the door, a quick and happy musical riff. He turned to Alan. A stranger rings, a friend knocks, he said. The door opened.
A woman stood behind the screen, looking confused. She was about fifty, wild grey hair, glasses hung by a copper chain. Alan looked to Trivole, who was grinning as if he’d stumbled upon his favorite grade-school teacher.
—Hello! How are you today?
—I’m fine. Who are you? she asked.
—We are representatives from the Fuller Brush Company, based in East Hartford, Connecticut. Have you heard of Fuller Brush?
The woman was amused. —Of course. But I haven’t seen one of you guys in years. You’re still out there, huh?
—Indeed we are, ma’am. And I appreciate you giving us a few seconds on a wonderful day like this.
Trivole turned to survey the yard, the trees, the blue sky above. And then he turned back to the door and began wiping his feet. Instinctively, the woman took a few steps back and opened the door wider. She had not asked Trivole and Alan in, but now she was making way for them — simply because Trivole had begun wiping his feet. Suddenly Alan had the same feeling he had while watching a hypnotist or magician — that there were people in the world for whom the world and its people were subjects on which to cast spells.
Alan continued down the makeshift walkway. He was approaching the pink condominium. Up close, it resembled something he’d seen a few hundred times along various Florida coasts. It was undistinguished, enormous; its wide flat face looked to the sea with dull resistance. There were likely three hundred units in the building.
Looking in the windows he saw something plausible. The first floor was built for retail and dining, and some of the future tenants had staked out their spots. Pizzeria Uno, Wolfgang Puck. Maybe there would be people here someday, eating and laughing and seeming alive.
He could still do this. He thought of his silver bike, the prototype he’d had made. It was so beautiful. Everything was silver and chrome, even the gears, even the seat. Had anyone ever made a more beautiful object? You could see it from space it was so bright and shone so defiantly.
He’d brought Kit to see the prototype.
—You built this? she asked.
—Well, I had it built. I helped design it.
—It’s stunning, she said. Can you ride it?
—Anyone can ride it.
She touched it, stood back, taking it in, reassessing.
—This is very good, Dad.
When he got back to the hotel he would write Kit a letter. She’d written him a humdinger a few days before, six pages in her orderly hand, most of it condemning her mother, Ruby, wanting nothing more to do with her. Now Alan found himself in the odd position of having to defend a woman who had tunneled through him so many times and so recklessly that he felt lucky to appear, from a distance, whole. Kit’s letter was denunciatory and final, a document marking, justifying, celebrating, the end of her relations with her mother.
Alan couldn’t have it. He had to repair the damage. Alan didn’t want to be the only parent. And he worried — or rather he knew — that if Kit could find her mother unworthy, then using the same tools of reassessment, she would find Alan unacceptable, too. He needed to draw a line. He needed to prop Ruby up.
He and Kit had been sending each other letters for years. The first was after Ruby’s DWI. He wanted to put it all in context for Kit. Nice letter, Dad, she’d said after the first one. Since then, Alan had been putting his thoughts on paper for Kit, letters of three or four pages, and they had some impact. She returned to them in times of doubt, she told him. They cooled her exasperation, brought her back from various ledges. Usually she wanted to leave her mother, to sever ties entirely. They were constitutionally different, it was obvious now, Kit having more of Alan�
�s stolidity — Ruby would call it bourgeois — but in any case Kit was tired of the spirals, was exhausted by the deep cleaning Ruby tried to do every time they talked.
First, though, Kit needed strategies for cordoning off the chaos. To circumscribe contact. Alan hadn’t figured out how to do that himself until recently. Email had been the key. He and Ruby had agreed to limit their communication to messages pertaining to Kit, and nothing over three lines. It had worked. Alan hadn’t spoken to Ruby on the phone for two years and the break in battle had allowed his nerves to strengthen, his mind some respite. He no longer jumped at the sound of loud voices.
—Alan!
He turned. It was Brad. Alan was startled, but feigned calm.
—How’re things going back there? he asked.
—Fine, Brad said. But it’s almost three. You heading to the office?
Brad tossed his chin over his shoulder, toward the Black Box.
Alan looked at his watch. It was 2:52.
—Yup, Alan said. Just running through my pitch.
He followed Brad back along the promenade.
—Don’t worry about the food, Brad said. Rachel had some crackers in her bag. So we’re all set there.
Faint sarcasm. He did not like Brad.
When they passed the tent, Brad stopped. —Good luck, he said. His face was full of worry and wonder. Alan knew at that moment what it would be like, decades later, when he was feeble, unable to take care of himself, when Kit would first catch him soiling his pants and drooling. The look she would give him was this, the one Brad was giving him now — that of gazing upon a human who was more burden than boon, more harm than good, irrelevant, superfluous to the forward progress of the world.
XII.
MAHA WAS SIPPING an iced tea.
—Oh, hello again, Mr. Clay.
—Hello Maha. Is Karim al-Ahmad in?
—No, I’m afraid he’s not.
—Should I wait here? We have an appointment at 3 p.m.