“Get dressed,” I told Kekela, then went back to the door,
where the man from hotel security was waiting patiently, just as I'd left him. I handed him her passport.
“I trust you'll bring it back promptly,” I said.
The man ran a stubby thumb along the edge of the document, feeling the bulge made by my bribe. “Right away.”
“And I trust this won't happen again.”
He frowned slightly. “Will you be bringing any other female guests to the hotel, Mr. Joshi?”
“Not planning on it.”
“Then this will certainly be the last of the matter. You have my apologies for any inconvenience.”
I thought about saying that I wasn't the one he should be apologizing to, then thought it would be an absurd thing to say. Prostitution was clearly such an open secret the hotel felt obliged to keep their own records of the transactions, the same way they kept records of their guests. Everyone, it seemed, knew the part they were to play, except for me.
He departed, and I shut and locked the door. The shower had started in the bathroom. I returned to the desk where I'd been working, pulling out Bakhar's little black book once more, again checking it against the files I'd pulled off the BlackBerry. Neither had any numbers for Dubai, and I wasn't finding anything new.
Eight minutes after hotel security departed, there was another knock on the door, this time a bellboy returning the passport. He'd brought a complimentary bottle of champagne up, as well. I sent him away with a tip, thinking that it bordered on farce, that I was giving money in return for a gift that had come from a bribe as a result of the prostitute in my room.
I locked the door yet again, turned back to see Kekela emerging from the suite's bedroom. She was naked. She also, it turned out, shaved her pubic hair.
“You're not looking in my eyes,” she remarked.
I corrected myself. “Put on some clothes.”
“We're not going to be able to start looking for your girl until tonight.” She started coming toward me, grinning. “Ten at the earliest. That gives us seven hours.”
“Plenty of time,” I said. “Get dressed, I'll take you to the Deira Souq, we can go shopping.”
“It's too hot to go out.”
She stopped in front of me, took the champagne and the passport out of my hands, then dropped them on the floor. The champagne hit the carpet with a solid thump.
“Kekela,” I said. “Put on some clothes. Now.”
“If you're afraid that you'll catch something, Danil, please, don't be. I get checked every two weeks, and I have an AIDS test every month.”
“Yes, you're very clean, I can see that.”
I stepped around her, heading toward the bedroom. She followed me quickly, rushing past at the last minute and throwing herself across the bed. Then she rolled onto her side, flipping wet hair back over one shoulder. She held open her arms for me. I didn't break stride. There were two complimentary terrycloth robes in the closet, and I yanked one free from its hanger and tossed it onto her on the bed.
She sat up, and from her expression I could see she still didn't get it, that she was trying to puzzle my behavior into something that made sense to her. She pulled the robe onto her lap, but didn't open it, made no further move toward covering herself up.
“Is it a kink? Do you need me to play with myself first? Do you want to watch?”
“No,” I said, and the exasperation started to creep into my voice. “I want you to get dressed, Kekela.”
“You don't like my body? I don't turn you on?”
“Don't be stupid.”
“Then why not? What are you so worried about? You have a wife? A girlfriend? She'll never know.”
“I'll
know,” I said.
She stared at me, and I couldn't tell if it was simple incomprehension or pure disbelief I was seeing. Then she snorted, began pulling on the bathrobe as she slid off the bed. When she had tied it closed, she spun around once, in place, then threw up her hands.
“Happy now?”
“No,” I said. “But I can work with what I've got.”
“You are fucked up. Are you gay, is that it? I mean, seriously, it's fucking sex, that's all it is.”
“I know what it is.”
“Everyone cheats. Every single one cheats. Your girl, she cheats, too. Right now, I'll bet she's cheating on you. But you won't touch me.”
“Not everyone.”
“Yes. Everyone.”
“No wonder I feel so lonely,” I said.
CHAPTER
Twelve
At ten minutes past eleven on my third night in Dubai
, with Kekela on my arm, I came off the stairs into the UV lights of a nightclub called Rattlesnake, full of cigarette smoke, bad music, and working girls. Given the state of Dubai above-ground, the nature of the off-season, I'd expected the place to be nearly empty. I could hardly have been more mistaken. Kekela kept a hand on me, just above the elbow, much the same way that hotel security had escorted her to my door, and with much the same grip, I imagined. It wasn't because she was afraid I'd run off.
I counted twenty-eight women looking to do business before I gave up trying to keep track. They were as Kekela had described.
Perhaps a third of the women hailed from China. The rest looked either CIS or African, with a smattering of Southeast Asia thrown in to round them out. Ages ran from late twenties to early fifties, the different ethnic groups self-segregating into discrete pockets.
“The Chinese girls wait for you to come to them,” Kekela shouted in my ear as we edged our way to the bar. “The others, they'll look for a cue, maybe you meet their eyes, maybe they think you look like a good prospect. Be prepared.”
I nodded, sparing my voice, trying to take in the room without inadvertently soliciting a come-on. I was having a hard time finding alternate exits, mostly due to the lighting, but also in part to the crowd. In addition to the night butterflies, as they were called in Russia, there were easily another fifty or sixty men, most of them appearing my age or older. Most wore the wearied, desperate energy of business travelers, and these comprised as international a group as the women. Unlike with the women, however, I was seeing a Middle Eastern clientele, as well, though how many were local, I had no idea.
“Are they all like this?” I asked Kekela, shouting in Georgian.
“You mean the clubs? The bars?”
I nodded.
“There was this place, Cyclone, the government had to shut it down a couple years back, just after I'd come here. The mongers called it the United Nations of Whores.”
“Mongers?”
“Whoremongers,” Kekela said. “Punters, the British call them.”
“What are we doing here?”
Her smile was sly. “Buy me a drink, vodka and tonic. I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.”
The last sounded as much like a warning as a request. She detached from my side, waded into the darkness. The black light made her glow like a ghost, the cigarette smoke as if she was disappearing into a mist. I got the attention of the nearest bartender, bought a drink for Kekela and a club soda for myself. Before they came, the space she had vacated on my right was filled by a blonde. At my left appeared a companion brunette.
“Have you been in Dubai long?” The blonde used English, and her accent was German.
“A couple of days.”
She watched as the bartender delivered my drinks. “Those both for you?”
“I'm waiting for my friend to get back.”
“We are very friendly,” the brunette told me. Her accent was closer to Russian, but it was hard to make out over the music. “Or very nasty. Six hundred, you can have us both for two hours.”
“No, thanks. I've already made arrangements for the night.”
The blonde looked in the direction Kekela had disappeared. “She's not coming back.”
“Did you pay her already?” the brunette asked. “How much did you pay her?”
“We're still negotiating,” I lied.
The brunette laughed. “You never pay in advance,” she advised. “Half, at most.”
“We can beat her price.” The blonde returned her attention to me. “Two-for-one offer. Where are you staying?”
I picked up my drinks and stepped away from the bar. “Nice talking to you.”
They let it go, or at least I didn't hear it if either of them offered a comment as I left. The band fell silent, breaking between sets, and the noise level dropped appreciably, enough that I could make out voices. Most were in English, all were loud. I saw
a youngish-looking Chinese woman dancing in the middle of a wolf pack, all of them ogling her, passed a tall African woman negotiating with an Indian, telling him that seven hundred would cover the night. He asked if she meant dirham or euros.
I found a table, set down my drinks, and felt myself being sized up by almost every set of female eyes that fell upon me. The appraisals felt clinical and made me feel like a piece of meat. The way people lurked and lunged in the black light made us all look like zombies.
Kekela emerged from the smoke. She picked up her drink and drained it in two gulps, then reached for my hand, to pull me to my feet.
“I want you to meet someone,” she said.
“Who?”
“An old friend. Come on.”
She dragged me after her, along the floor. A club mix had begun playing on the sound system, and more people were dancing to that than had done for the band. We skirted their edge, pushed through a clump of laughing men and women, reaching another table wedged near the back wall, by one of the stacks of speakers. Two women sat at the table, speaking to a Caucasian man. The women were both Chinese, one of them perhaps in her thirties, the other one younger, but it was hard to tell by how much. The man I put in his forties.
“She's new,” the older one was telling the man. “She needs someone who can teach her.”
“You're asking me to do you a favor,” the man said. His English was American, the sound of it jarring. I hadn't heard an American accent outside of my own, it seemed, for a long time.
“Six hundred.”
“For the night?” He shook his head. “Xia, you're asking me for a favor. Four hundred.”
“Five hundred.”
“Dirham?”
The older woman, Xia, nodded. Seated beside her, the younger one didn't move, didn't speak. The smile on her face looked like it had been injection-molded in a factory, and about as sincere.
“All right, done,” the man decided.
Xia turned to the woman beside her, speaking quickly in Mandarin, or Cantonese, I couldn't tell. The younger woman perked up immediately at whatever was said, however, and the plastic smile turned to something approaching genuine. She rose, moving around the table, and the man got to his feet, and they headed off together.
“This is your friend?” Xia asked Kekela.
“Danil,” Kekela said. “He's from Georgia, too.”
Xia turned the palm of her right hand, sweeping it at the empty seats.
“Xia was the first girl I met when I got here,” Kekela told me. “She's been here for ten years. She knows everything.”
“She's being generous.”
Kekela shook her head. “No, no. If it wasn't for you, I'd have been in a lot of trouble.”
“You're very sweet, Kekela.”
Kekela smiled at the other woman fondly. Now that we were closer, I could see the beginnings of lines on Xia's face, found myself revising my estimate of her age upward, into the mid-forties. Unlike the other women I'd been seeing, even Kekela, Xia's outfit was more subdued, speaking less of sex than experience.
“Kekela is my friend,” Xia said to me. “And if you are hers, then I would be happy to help you.”
I glanced at Kekela, and she nodded. From inside my jacket, I took the photo of Tiasa I'd printed from the security system
back in Kobuleti. I unfolded it, then handed it to Xia, checking to see if anyone was watching. Nobody was paying us the slightest attention.
Xia studied the picture for several seconds. “Who is she?”
“The daughter of someone I know,” I answered. “She'd have arrived a week, maybe five days ago, from Turkey.”
“She looks young.”
“She's fourteen.”
Carefully, she folded the paper closed and set it on the table, between us. “You say ‘arrived.’”
“‘Shipped’ might be better.”
“I understand.”
“Can you help me?”
Xia lifted her gaze from where she'd been watching the paper, looking first to Kekela, then to me. “I don't know.”
“Xia,” Kekela said, “please, he's a friend.”
“I didn't say I wouldn't. I don't know if I can.”
“I don't understand,” I said.
“If she came here like you say, she could have been sold as a domestic anywhere in the Emirates. She could be in someone's house in Abu Dhabi, working as their servant.”
“Working as their slave,” I corrected. “Servants get paid.”
Xia stared at me for a moment. Then she nodded. “It would make her impossible to find.”
What Alena had said when I'd called her from the airport in Istanbul came back to me, the questions. It might take never, she'd said. And Xia was telling me the same thing, but this time without the qualification.
“There's another possibility,” Xia said. “She could have been sold to a brothel. There are many here in Dubai, places that service the skilled laborers and other clients.”
“How many specialty places?”
“Very many.”
“You know who to ask,” Kekela said. “You could help us.”
Xia frowned, then reached out for the paper, unfolding it once more. She studied the face, small crow's-feet visible at her eyes. Then, with a sigh, she looked up at me. “May I keep this?”
I nodded. As it was, I had a second picture of Tiasa, taken off Vladek's BlackBerry. It wasn't my favorite, but I had it.
