Maggie gets it. Dubai is a playground for the rich and their most hedonistic urges. It’s Disney World for grown-ups who don’t want to be grown-ups. It wants to be salacious and gritty, but it is hard to blend that with the baser need to be safe and comfortable. There is nothing wrong with having fun, as Charles Lockwood and Trace Packer had pointed out, as long as it’s victimless. Is this? Victimless, that is. Maggie doesn’t know. The other issue for Maggie is based on something very simple she’s observed over the years — no one looks happy the day after. It all feels a tad desperate and sad. These people are rich and successful and powerful and have everything, but it isn’t enough. That’s the problem. It is never enough. Human nature sees to that. We get used to every luxury. Even the richest men in the world, we’ve seen over the past few years, can’t be satiated, no matter how much money or power or yachts or women or offspring or hero worship or attention or whatever they have. Maggie’s parents had introduced her and Sharon to the music of Bruce Springsteen, constantly playing his vinyls on their old record player, and there was a line in the song “Badlands” that the poor man wants to be rich, the rich man wants to be king, and the king ain’t satisfied until he rules everything.
That.
At the bar — yes, it’s still a bar; dress it up, use premium liquors and crystal decanters and upscale glassware, it’s still a bar — Maggie is surprised to see more women than men. Very few of the women appear to be building residents, though perhaps that’s sexism or ageism on her part. She doesn’t know the deal, but what seems to be happening at first glance is that the young women sit at the bar. Alone. There is at least one stool empty next to them. A man approaches, chats them up for a few minutes, and then they move into a darkened booth.
Hmm, Maggie thinks. Change of plans.
She’d hoped to find a man seated alone and make her approach that way, but perhaps this is better. As she heads to the bar, she notices three men against the walls in a triangular formation, all with, yep, the black suits and sunglasses, even in this low lighting. Security. Even in here. Maggie takes a seat next to a too-young, coltish woman with a heavy foundation of makeup. The young woman — okay, can we be honest and call her a girl? — stares at her in surprise. Her fake eyelashes are oversize, like two tarantulas lying on their backs in the hot desert sun.
Maggie gives her a big smile and sticks out her hand. “Hi, I’m Maggie.”
The young woman looks suspicious but returns the shake. “Alena.”
“I need a favor, Alena.”
Alena waits, still giving off the wary.
“Can I borrow your phone?” Maggie asks.
Alena looks puzzled. Maggie wonders how fluent her English is. Then Alena says, “I don’t have one.”
“You don’t?”
“I mean, I have one, but... Are you a resident?”
“No. I’m visiting someone.”
“Oh, that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
Alena leans in closer. “They take away our phones.”
“Who does?”
“Downstairs. When we come in. You go through a screening. They take your name. They take your photograph. They do a background check. And they lock your phone in a vault.”
Odd, Maggie thinks at first, but then she realizes that it makes perfect sense. Big-time security at places like this. People pay big bucks for privacy and anonymity. Heck, Maggie doesn’t even know the names of her hosts. Naturally, they wouldn’t want any woman coming into their exclusive lair and snapping pics or uploading videos to social media.
Damn. She’d counted on finding a phone down here.
Alena puts her hand on Maggie’s arm. “Are you okay?”
The young girl’s voice is suddenly older, more mature.
“I’m fine, Alena.”
“Why do you need a phone?”
Maggie wonders how to answer that and goes for the truth. “I need to call someone at home.”
“You’re American?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t own a phone?”
“I do. It’s complicated.”
Alena moves a little closer and whispers, “Do you need help?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
Her concern is so authentic, so touching.
“I am, Alena. How about you?”
“Oh, I’m fine.”
“Where are you from?”
“Ukraine. But I’ve been here two years now.” Then: “You really need a phone, don’t you?”
Maggie isn’t sure what to say.
“Are you in danger?”
“No.”
“But you need to make this call?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Alena nods. “Order a drink. Watch me. When I go to the ladies’ room, wait a minute and then follow me in.”
“Wait, what?”
But Alena is already up and moving toward a dark booth. The modelesque bartender saunters over and asks Maggie what she’d like to drink. Maggie asks if there’s a bourbon she’d recommend. The bartender says they have a Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year Old. Maggie is about to nod, but she has a distant memory of seeing one on display at a museum or something.
“Do you have, I don’t know, Maker’s Mark or something?”
A hand reaches over her shoulder, holding a very fancy-looking credit card. She looks to see who it is.
Viking Bob.
“Get her the Pappy Van Winkle,” he says, handing the bartender the card. “In fact, make it two.”
Maggie says, “You don’t have to—”
“Your host insists,” Bob interrupts.
“How much is it?”
“If you have to ask, you don’t belong here.”
“But I don’t belong here,” Maggie says.
“Fair point. Just be glad they ran out of the Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year Old.”
“Why?”
“In stores it sells for fifty K a bottle.”
“Fifty thousand dollars?”
“Yep.”
“For a bottle of bourbon?”
Bob shrugs.
“Does it come with a sex act?”
He laughs. “I guess it should at that price.”
She laughs back, making the quasi-bawdy joke to keep the mood relaxed and casual so he doesn’t interfere with whatever Alena is planning. Bob has clearly been sent down from ahigh to keep an eye on her.
“On the rocks or straight up?” the bartender asks.
“Oh, you can’t put Pappy Van Winkle over ice,” Bob says.
The bartender nods, pours the drinks. They clink glasses. Maggie brings the glass to her lips. The smell is ambrosia. She tilts a sip into her mouth, leaves it on her tongue for a moment, and even with everything that’s going on, she lets the bourbon warm the back of her throat.
Oh man.
Bob smiles. “Good, right?”
“Nectar of the gods.”
Alena reappears from a dark corner.
She heads down the side of the bar, not so much as glancing toward Maggie. Maggie carefully takes another sip. She smiles at Bob while, behind him, she sees Alena stroll past one of the guards and disappear into the bathroom.
Maggie waits. She doesn’t want to rush this or do anything that might be clocked as suspicious.
Count to sixty, she tells herself. Count to sixty and then excuse yourself.
She makes it to twenty-five. That seems like enough. She takes another sip and slowly rises from her stool.
“You okay?” Bob asks.
“Yeah, fine. I’m just going to go—”
Bob suddenly clasps her forearm with a firm grip. She can feel the power in his fingers as they close talon-like around her skin.