by Dave Eggers
After the animal was dead, the owners sent a photo of the dog. Or dropped it off. An envelope in Alan and Ruby’s mailbox, a photo of the dog inside, in happier times, wearing a bandanna around his neck.
But enough of the dog. He’d settled the matter of the dog. He poured some more, drank some more. Now there were just the matters of the DWI, the clearing of all of Kit’s possessions while she was at school, the strange presence of Ruby’s boyfriends at Kit’s most delicate ceremonies, confirmation and graduation among them…
He was feeling good, despite the letters. He was feeling buoyant, flexible. He wanted to go jogging. He stood. He couldn’t go jogging. He called room service and ordered a basket of breads and pastries. Wanting to be presentable for the waiter, he brushed his teeth and straightened his hair, and while in front of the mirror he had a notion. He would need a safety pin.
He looked through the room’s drawers and found nothing. He looked in the closet and found a sewing kit. Even better.
The bread came and he signed for it, holding his breath. He did not want trouble with the muttawa. Alan had brushed his teeth, yes, but perhaps the waiter would know. Alan glanced at him as he set the tray on the bed, but the waiter’s eyes seemed benign. He was not interested in Alan, and he left, and Alan closed the door behind him and felt spectacular. He lay on the bed and ate his pastries, looking at what he’d written thus far to Kit. It made no sense.
‘I would not do what Charlie did, in case you’re wondering,’ he wrote, then crossed it out. Kit would not have thought such a thing in the first place. Stay focused, he thought.
‘Oh God Kit I’m sorry for that time in Greenville. I was part of that stupid decision. We were getting squeezed by the unions in Chicago and we decided to move it all to Mississippi, where we wouldn’t be bothered by any organizing. Oh hell what a mess. The bikes we made there were junk. We’d tossed out a hundred years of expertise. We thought it would be more efficient and it was the opposite. And I was gone all the time. I was already onto Taiwan and China. I missed a few years there. I didn’t want to be in Taiwan, did I? But everyone else was. I missed a few of your important years there and I regret that. Goddamnit. More efficient without the unions, cut em out. More efficient without American workers, period, cut em out. Why didn’t I see it coming? More efficient without me, too. Hell, Kit, we made it so efficient I became unnecessary. I made myself irrelevant.
‘But your mother was there. Whatever she’s done that has displeased you I want you to know that you are who you are because of your mother because of her strength. She knew when to be the tugboat. She coined that term, Kit. The tugboat. She was the steady, she navigated around the dangers lurking below. You think of me now as the steady, but did you know that all that time it was your mother?’
He knew as soon as he finished writing he wouldn’t send any of this. He was a mess. But so why did he feel so strong?
He went to the mirror and found the needle. He had in mind the trick when baking cakes — insert the toothpick, see what sticks. If it comes out clean, the cake is ready.
He looked for a match. He had no matches. He was drunk and tired of looking for things. The needle seemed sterile enough. Turning back to the mirror, he held the lump between with his left hand and aimed the needle with his right. He knew what it would feel like; he’d punctured the skin before. But now he needed to go deeper, deep enough that whatever cancer was there would adhere to it. Of course it would. The foreign clings to the foreign.
It would be best to go fast, he thought to himself, and plunged the needle in. The pain was acute, white-hot. He felt like he would pass out. But he stood, and he pushed the needle further. He knew he needed an inch at least. He pushed and twisted and the pain, miraculously, diminished. It was dull now, throbbing everywhere, throbbing in his heart, his fingertips, and it all felt very good.
He removed the needle and stared at it, expecting something grey or green, the colors of debasement. But he only saw red, viscous red, as the blood poured down his back in tendrils as it had before.
He felt good, he felt satisfied, as he dabbed at the blood on his back and washed the needle clean. This is progress, he thought.
The next morning would be the start of the Saudi work week. He was still half-drunk but ready to get his act together. He called Jim Wong and told him to fuck off, that there was money coming imminently, and if he wanted it he needed to grow a pair and remember they were supposed to be friends. He did ten jumping jacks and called Eric Ingvall and told him that the King was coming next week and everything would be taken care of. Ingvall couldn’t prove otherwise and Alan could always retract. And anyway, Ingvall could fuck himself with a fucking disease-ridden telephone pole. Alan was feeling strong. He did two push-ups and felt stronger still.
He re-applied the bandage, finished the moonshine and got into bed. Grandeur, he thought, and laughed to himself. He looked around the room, at the phone, the trays, the mirrors, the towels soaked in blood. This is grandeur, he said aloud, and felt very good about it all.
XXIV.
IN THE MORNING, feeling spry, Alan took the shuttle with the young people. The sun, hotter than any other day so far, screamed obscenities from above but Alan did not listen. He talked loudly to the young people and made plans. Today, he told them, he would get at least some semblance of a timeline. Some assurances, some respect. He would check about not just the wi-fi but the air-conditioning in the tent. He felt capable this day, and because he hadn’t bothered anyone in the Black Box for a while, he could stride right in, make demands and ask questions, as many as he wished.
—Whoa Alan, where’s all this bluster coming from? Rachel asked.
Alan did not know.
He left the young people in the tent and strode to the Black Box.
—Hello, Maha said.
—Hello Maha. How are you? Is Karim al-Ahmad in today?
Alan heard himself speaking like a salesman from another era. His voice was loud, confident, almost overbearing.
Money! Romance! Self-Preservation! Recognition!
—No, I’m afraid not.
—And will he be in?
Maha seemed to look at him differently now. Now he was loud, vital, full of expectations. She appeared to cower before him.
—I don’t think so, she said, meekly. He’s in New York.
—He’s in New York? Now Alan was almost yelling. Is Hanne in?
—Hanne?
Alan realized he didn’t have her last name.
—Danish woman? Blond?
He meant it as a question but it came out like a command: Blond!
Maha lost her footing and said nothing.
Alan saw his opening.
—I’ll just go upstairs to visit her.
What had just happened? The visit with Dr. Hakem had given him some strange power. He was a healthy man! He was a strong man! Soon he would have a simple operation and would then grow stronger still, and would conquer, conquer! Blond!
And so he walked into the building and toward the elevator. Maha did nothing to stop him. He felt like he could fly up to the third floor, but instead he took the elevator. Once inside, as if it were some kind of Kryptonite chamber, he returned to his previous self, the power draining from him.
When he arrived on Hanne’s floor, he found her office and found it empty. He saw no sign of her having been there at all that day.
—Can I help you?
Alan spun, and found himself looking at a young man, no more than thirty, in a black suit and a violet tie.
—I was looking for Hanne.
He tried to sound like the man he’d been in the lobby, but couldn’t find the register. —The Danish consultant!
There it was. Maybe it was just volume? One notch above civilized and you sounded like a president. Immediately the man’s attitude changed. He straightened, adopted a more formal face. Volume was the difference between being treated like a nobody and being treated like a man who might be important.
&nbs
p; —I’m afraid she’s in Riyadh today. Can I help you?
—Alan extended his hand. Alan Clay. Reliant.
The man shook it. —Karim al-Ahmad.
The man he’d been chasing.
—You’re not in New York, Alan said.
—No I am not, al-Ahmad said.
They stood for a moment. Al-Ahmad assessed him. Alan did not blink. Finally al-Ahmad’s face softened into a glossy smile. —Should we have a chat, Mr. Clay?
The conference room had an unobstructed view of the entire development. The canal was visible, the welcome center and the water beyond. Al-Ahmad had apologized for the delay in their meeting and welcomed Alan to the conference room.
—Soda? Juice?
Alan accepted a glass of water, still trying to figure out why this unattainable man was in the building when the receptionist had claimed he was not. Your receptionist said you were out today.
—I’m sorry for that error. She’s new.
—Were you here the last two days?
—I was not.
Alan stared at Karim al-Ahmad. He was young and handsome and overpolished, as if sculpted from chrome and glass. His teeth were blinding, his skin had no pores. To look as he did, so crisp and well-groomed, and to speak as he did, with that posh English accent, made it difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt. They modeled movie villains on men like this. As if knowing Alan’s thoughts, al-Ahmad did something with his face just then, twisting it into an apologetic smile, making himself just a bit less handsome.
—It’s not acceptable how you have been treated thus far.
Alan liked that. Not acceptable.
—I assure you no vendor is more important to us than Reliant.
Alan decided to take him at his word. —I’m glad to hear that. But we have some issues.
—I am here to solve them.
Al-Ahmad pulled out a leather-covered notebook and fountain pen, uncapped it, and readied himself. The theatricality of it was jarring, but Alan forged on.
—We can’t set up our presentation out there.
—Why not?
—We need a hard line.
—I cannot do that.
—We need wi-fi at least.
—I will have it fixed. What else?
—The air-conditioning doesn’t work. My staff is suffering.
—It will be addressed immediately. What else?
—How do we eat? We’ve been bringing food from the hotel.
—Starting tomorrow, you will have catered meals every day.
Alan was feeling immensely powerful. He had no clue if any of this would actually happen, but it was fun to pretend. He went for the most important question of all.
—How long will we wait for the King?
—I do not know that.
—Do you have a ballpark?
—A what?
—An estimate on the timeline?
—No, I don’t.
Now al-Ahmad was putting away the notebook.
—Days?
—I do not know.
—Weeks?
—I do not know.
—Months?
—I hope not.
Alan had nowhere else to go. The man had given him what he asked for, and he hadn’t expected him to know anything about the King anyway. He was resigned to the fact that no one here knew anything about King Abdullah’s movements. Satisfied and eager to bring all this news back to the staff, he stood and extended his hand to al-Ahmad. As they shook hands, Alan saw a strange sight, far off in the canal below.
—Is that a yacht?
—It is. It arrived yesterday. Are you a sailor?
In minutes Alan and Karim al-Ahmad had been driven out to the canal and were being shown the workings of the vessel, a thirty-foot sport-fishing yacht, white and untouched. It had three miles on it. It was brand new.
—You’ve driven something like this? al-Ahmad asked.
The closest thing Alan had piloted was thirty years old and worth a few million less, but he wanted to try this thing out.
—Pretty much, he said.
—Excellent, al-Ahmad said.
The man taking care of the yacht, a wisp of a man named Mahmoud, had a brief Arabic conversation with al-Ahmad, during which, Alan surmised, al-Ahmad was convincing Mahmoud to allow Alan to pilot the yacht down the canal. It was the kind of privilege Alan was used to as an executive — or had become accustomed to back in the day. There were Aston Martins to test, there were prop planes to briefly take command of. But more than anything there was fishing. The Schwinn guys fostered a culture of fishing, on Lake Michigan and anywhere else. There were weekends up on Lake Geneva with the VPs, with a chosen few of the best retailers. Alan missed all that.
Al-Ahmad handed him the keys.
—I’m trusting you to captain us.
Alan put the key in the ignition and turned. The engine rumbled awake. Alan wondered what kind of speed or course would be prudent here, in a canal of unknown length. Did it extend to the sea at a depth where he could leave the city and motor onto the open water?
—As long as there are no hidden sandbars, we’re fine, Alan said, and they both laughed, because the canal was as flat and clear as a swimming pool.
Alan pulled back on the throttle. They left the berth and were soon cruising down the turquoise waterway. There were no blemishes to any of it — not a dot of debris in the water, not a scratch on the floor.
The air, which had been stifling moments before, was now blessed by a wonderful wind, blowing back their hair. Alan turned to al-Ahmad, who was smiling widely, raising his eyebrows as if to say, Did I set us up or what? Alan loved the man, and loved the boat, and the canal, and this nascent city.
They passed the beginnings of more buildings on their right, and saw an overhead pedestrian bridge ahead. Al-Ahmad explained the plan for this part of the development.
—You lived in Chicago, right? he said.
It was to be a bit like that, he explained, a bit like Venice. Promenades on each side of the water, frequent berths, step-down restaurants, water taxis. It was an aesthetic thing, but an environmental choice, too. The air around Jeddah had a tendency toward smog, and there would be discharge from the plastics factories, so they were trying to reduce any and all emissions. People can kayak to work.
—Take a water-bike, hire a gondolier, anything, al-Ahmad said. Turn here.
The canal split off into a smaller tributary, Alan followed it, and soon saw the makings of the financial center, the place the American architect had been talking about at the embassy party. There wasn’t much of anything there now, just an enormous disc of land in the middle of the water, but it was stunning nevertheless. Those glass towers, rising from and reflecting in this crystalline water.
Alan wanted to stay here. He wanted to watch the city grow, and he wanted to be a charter owner. Maybe in Marina Del Sol. What had they wanted for condos there? After this deal, he could afford it. And the deal, now, seemed well in hand. It was just a waiting game. Al-Ahmad liked him, and trusted him enough to allow him to pilot a gleaming white yacht through the pristine canals of the city. Alan was already part of the early history of this place. He circled the financial island twice, three times.
They were both happy men, men of vision. Alan felt, for the first time since he’d arrived, that he belonged.
Back at the tent, Alan burst through the door, finding two of the three young people awake and working on their laptops. Cayley was asleep in a corner. When he woke her and gathered them and gave them the news, they became, more or less instantly, the motivated and capable people Reliant had hired them to be.
Within the hour, the wi-fi was strong enough to work with. Al-Ahmad had kept his promise and proved to be, much to Alan’s relief, a man who could get things done. Soon after, technicians were inside the tent, fixing the air-conditioning. By early afternoon, it was a cool sixty-eight degrees and the young people had set up all the equipment — the screens, the projectors, the speakers
. They’d taped down the marks on the stage, had done a brief rehearsal.
By four o’clock they were ready to test the hologram. They got in touch with the London office, the closest Reliant outpost that had the capability to do it, and by five o’clock, just as the shuttle arrived, they had completed two full run-throughs of the twenty-minute holographic presentation. It worked fluidly. It was astounding. One of their colleagues in London appeared to be walking around the stage in their Red Sea tent, could react to live questions, could interact with Rachel or Cayley on the stage. It was the kind of technology that only Reliant had, only Reliant could deliver for a price. Making the prototype in the U.S. had been catastrophically expensive, but they’d found a supplier in Korea who could build the lenses to their specs, at about a fifth of the cost in America, even cheaper if they shopped it out to a Chinese factory. Reliant would make a robust profit on any unit, but more than that, the telepresence technology was part of an overall Reliant juggernaut of baseline telecom abilities, the ability to wire an entire city, and on the higher end, this kind of astonishment. Alan was utterly confident that the presentation, when Abdullah arrived, would seal the deal quickly.
When the second demo was finished, Alan instigated high-fives all around, and the young people laughed at his enthusiasm. But they laughed with a newfound respect for him. He was a new man, a vital man. They knew he had gotten the job done. He’d fixed what needed to be fixed, he’d paved the way for their success, he was again captain of the ship.
XXV.
THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed like clouds. But on Wednesday, when they arrived at the turnoff to KAEC, it was bedlam. For the first time since Alan had been passing through the gates, there was traffic. There were ten vehicles in front of the shuttle — SUVs and trucks carrying palm trees, and a cement mixer, and a string of taxis and vans. Everyone was honking.