In the Kingdom of Men (16 page)

“I’ll ride the bus with you as far as Dhahran,” I said. “I’ve got another article to drop off.” I rolled “Fun Fabrics for Fiestas!” from the typewriter and folded it into an envelope. Yash stood as though perplexed.

“What?” I asked.

“I cannot ride your bus,” he said. “Only you are allowed.”

“Women?” I asked.

“White women,” he said, “and their children, of course.”

I stared at him. “But that’s segregation,” I said, remembering Rosa Parks and the Freedom Riders. “It’s illegal.”

“Perhaps in America,” he said, “but not here.”

I pointed to the ground. “But this
is
America,” I said.

Yash lifted his shoulders. “I would have to have
sahib
’s express instruction. You would have to be”—his eyes darted around the room as though searching for an answer—“you would have to be ill.”

“Come on,” I said. “I’m feeling kind of sick.”

“But, Mrs. Gin …”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m tired of all these ridiculous rules.”

I waited at the door until he took a hesitant step forward and followed me to the sidewalk. No matter how much I slowed, he remained three paces behind. I stopped, which brought him to a sudden halt.

“I’m not walking in front of you,” I said. “We can stand here in this heat, or we can get on the bus.”

He took a deep breath, brought himself abreast, and marched with his eyes straight ahead. We turned the corner, and I saw several women already waiting, including Maddy Cane, her hair secured by a scarf knotted tight beneath her chin, fanning herself with a copy of
Sun and Flare
.

“Hi, Maddy,” I said.

She dropped her arm and looked at Yash and then at me. “What is he doing here?” she asked.

“I’ve been having dizzy spells,” I said. “Too much sun, I guess. Mason asked him to ride with me.”

She acknowledged the bow of Yash’s head with a slight nod of her own, then turned back to me.

“The Beachcomber’s Ball sounds like it was quite the party.” She dabbed her throat with an embroidered handkerchief. “Burt told me that you two danced the polka.”

“Burt is very kind,” I said. “I’m a terrible dancer.”

“That’s not what I heard.” Maddy flapped her paper. “He’s got a bad heart, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” But I was remembering Burt’s jumping rhythm, his enthusiastic sweep around the dance floor, how he seemed less winded than I did.

Maddy looked sideways at Yash, who turned his attention to a nearby shrub. She craned her neck a little closer. “Your friend Ruthie seems to have enjoyed herself. Doesn’t she know how people are talking about her?”

I gave Maddy a weak smile, which seemed only to encourage her.

“She’s a married woman, and everyone knows that Linda Dalton consorts with colored boys. That Lance Powers.” Maddy fanned faster. “If Ruthie Doucet doesn’t care about her reputation any more than that, well.” She sniffed and drew her lips into a pucker. “You seem like a nice Christian girl. I’m surprised that you keep such company. Water finds its own level, you know.”

I felt my face tighten, the last ounce of goodwill leave my heart, my mouth open before I could stop it. “I’d rather be friends with Ruthie and Linda than some bitter old woman like you.”

Maddy drew back as though I had slapped her. I felt bad but not bad enough to apologize. I heard the chug of the bus and turned quickly, leaving Maddy where she stood. I stepped aboard
and found a row with two empty seats, but Yash passed on by, headed for the back. I looked up to see Maddy zeroed in on me.

“Yash!” I snapped. He turned, startled, and I pointed to the seat beside me. He sat down, eyes averted, as though he might be called to task. I sighed with relief when Maddy reluctantly took a seat near the front next to a young mother with two energetic toddlers in tow.

“Thank you,” I said. “You saved me.”

He peered from beneath his brows to where Maddy sat and whispered, “From the very bowels of hell.”

I looked at him, surprised, and then felt it coming just as I had in church, a hand-covered giggle that expanded and grew into a hysterical cackle. Yash lowered his head and twisted his mouth to keep the air from escaping his lungs, but his merriment fed mine and soon we were in tears, weak with laughter, even the bus driver smiling into the rearview. Maddy glared straight ahead, and the other wives watched us from the corners of their eyes, except for the two toddlers who jumped up and down with glee even when their mother shushed them.

By the time we stopped in Dhahran, other than a few tittering aftershocks, Yash and I had regained our composure. I walked past Maddy without a glance and stepped off, left Yash to bear the remaining miles to al-Khobar alone.

I visored my eyes with the envelope, took in the hills, the flash of white houses, nicer than any in Abqaiq. Maybe we’ll live here someday, I thought to myself, and let the possibility find its gravity. Was that what I wanted? A house on the hill? I looked to the flat desert beyond, the unbroken sky, the shadow of the sea, and felt an undeniable yearning to be out in that open space.

A note on Nestor’s door read, “Back in five,” so I waited, studying the photographs framed on his walls—a caravan of camels shadowed by cirrus clouds that unfolded like wings, the refinery at Ras Tanura, its black cylindrical stacks and squat steel tanks
wreathed in vaporous light, the desert transformed into an ethereal kingdom. Prints of high-masted sailing ships along the coast, a stern-faced emir looking out from his palace in Hofuf, boyish princes already weighted with the trappings of wealth, their bare feet buried in sand—even in black-and-white, there was a softness to the scenes, a connection I could almost feel, as though the camera itself were possessed of emotion.

What was it about those images that opened my eyes, made me see in a way I had never seen before? I can look back now and know it was at that moment when I felt something settle, the possibility of who I might yet be fall into place. I wanted to know how it happened, how you could take a hulking storage tank and turn it into a thing of beauty. I tilted my head, made out the photographer’s scrawl—Carlo Leoni—and felt something I hadn’t expected: envy. I wanted to know what he knew, how to do what he did.

When Nestor returned with a steaming cup of coffee and a sandwich, the stink of egg salad fouling the air, I slid the envelope in front of him.

“It’s about fun with fabrics,” I said.

He eked out a smile. “I’ll take a look this afternoon,” he said, pushing a pencil across the lines of a legal pad.

I nodded to the photos on the walls. “They’re beautiful,” I said.

Nestor raised his eyes, settled back in his chair. “Leoni is one of the best. He loves whatever he sees, and whatever he sees loves him.”

“Maybe I could take some pictures,” I said.

He tapped the pencil against his lips, shrugged, opened a drawer, and pulled out a brand-new Nikon. “It’s yours,” he said. I tucked the camera close. I wasn’t about to tell him that I had no idea how to work it, but maybe he could have guessed. “Do you know how to run a darkroom?” he asked.

“I can learn,” I said.

“Just drop your film. We’ll get to it,” he said, and went back to his notes.

I caught the return bus to Abqaiq, took in the shaded faces of the wives, the muted stream of traffic blurring by, focused, then lowered the lens, dissatisfied. What Carlo Leoni had that I didn’t was out
there
, where I couldn’t go—the open desert, that endless sea. How could I even begin to capture the people and landscape when I was closed up in a house inside a closed compound inside a society and a country that were closed to me in so many ways because I was a woman?

I thought about Carlo’s photos, how it was that he could take in so much and all at once, as though his appetite were enormous, his eyes bigger than his head. I put the camera in my purse, looked out the sand-scoured window, and wondered what it would feel like to walk through the world with such ease and affection, if I must first be a man to know.

The next evening, Mason due home from his tour, I remembered what Ruthie had said: food, sex, and sleep. I let Yash go early, put on a shorter skirt, styled my hair, dabbed a little lipstick, and cued up Ed Ames on the hi-fi. When the Land Cruiser pulled up out front, I met Mason at the door with the martini I had left to chill in the freezer. He took it with a smile, tipped a long swallow, and I tucked my face into his neck. He smelled like something I could almost taste—wet salt, a bitter green, like wind off the sea. When I looked over his shoulder, I saw Abdullah watching us. He met my eyes for a moment before letting out the clutch and driving away.

Mason handed me his glass. “Why don’t you get me a refill while I take a shower,” he said.

I came back with more booze and waited in the doorway of the bathroom until he turned off the water and stepped out, rubbing his head with a towel. He’d never been shy about his body, but it still seemed new to me. I sometimes studied him when he
was sleeping: the notch of bone at this throat, the rise of each rib, the strange dark nipples, the swirl of hair like an arrow, the tender muscle that nested in the vee of his legs. He wrapped the towel at his waist, moved to the mirror, and raked a comb through his hair.

“Gray,” he said, plucking at his temple. “I’m getting old.” He rested his hands on the vanity. “You know what I miss? Playing basketball, I mean really burning up the court.”

I tucked my arms. “It’s my fault,” I said.

“No,” he said, and peered at me in the mirror. “I knew what I was doing, and I’ve never been sorry.”

I scrunched my shoulders, made self-conscious by his gaze. “What happened with Swede?” I asked.

He hesitated. “How do you know about that?”

“Ruthie told me,” I lied. “She hears everything.”

Mason grunted, picked up the shaving cream. “Swede took a dislike to me from the get-go. Thinks the Arabs are good for one thing and one thing only, and that’s getting the oil out of the ground.” He lathered his face, wiped one finger across his lips. “They’re doing all the work, making ten cents an hour to my dollar, have no sense how much that oil is bringing in.” He stretched his neck, ran the razor along his jaw. “When Ross Fullerton called to get my side of the story, he told me that the day a man takes the helm is the day he no longer knows what’s going on with his own crew. He said that’s why he needs men like me.”

“I saw Burt Cane,” I said, and leaned into his back, circled my arms at his waist. “He said to tell you that you did the right thing.”

Mason patted his face with a towel, rinsed the sink, and turned to me. “Lucky wants to take us boating tomorrow. You can wear that new swimsuit. Sexy as hell.” He pulled me close, and I pointed my elbow at the bidet.

“Do you know what that is for?”

He laughed through his nose. “Yeah,” he said, “I do.” He ran his lips across my shoulder, then turned me to face the mirror, moved behind me.

“Watch,” he said. I pressed back against him and lifted my gaze as he murmured his pleasure into my ear, but I couldn’t keep my eyes from that woman whose hair fringed her shoulders, her lips stained with color, and the man behind her, his head thrown back, his neck exposed, his body arching upward as though he were the one being taken.

The sun was beating down like a pile driver by the time we made Half Moon Bay the next morning. The Bayliner, a Confederate flag pegged to its bow, shouldered in against the wind slap, its outboard churning due east. It was the same red speedboat I had seen in the photo of the Bodeens—the
Arabesque
—maybe inherited, like Ruthie said, one more thing left behind. “Twin Mercs,” Lucky had boasted as we loaded in. “Fastest boat on the bay. One of these weekends, we’ll take her across the gulf to Bahrain, get the Brits to sell us some rum.”

The wind’s direction shifted, the depleting gales blowing off the cool water toward land.

“Executive weather,” Lucky hollered, meaning the kind you wanted when the company hotshots from California decided to pay their visits, but it made for rough seas. He stood bare-chested at the helm with the open stance of a linebacker, hair bristling from his scalp. I clutched my scarf and raised my face to the cottoned sky, the air like a poultice.

“Right about here,” Lucky said, and brought the boat to anchor. “Break out the Kool-Aid, girls.”

Ruthie poured the liquor while I unwrapped the picnic Yash had made for us: chapati, rice, cold chicken, chutney. When Ruthie stretched and stepped out of her capris, exposing her racy black bikini, brass rings at her hips and between her breasts, I saw Lucky watching her like she was the sweetest thing he had ever seen. He caught my eye, winked, and I blushed, too shy to strip down in front of him.

Mason helped rig the lines, and I watched the happiness with which he worked, his shirt undone, a red kerchief tied at his neck, the lean muscles of his legs bracing against the cast. Ever since we had launched the boat, he had been questioning Lucky about company politics, who answered to whom.

“You got this triangle,” Lucky said, and touched his thumbs and two fingers together. “The House of Saud is up here at the top. Smart as hell and mean as sin. When old Ibn Saud decided he was going to rule the peninsula, first thing he did was get the
Ikhwan
fundamentalists on board, then sent them out to slaughter enough Bedu that the sheikhs finally surrendered.” He wrinkled his upper lip, and his voice dipped. “Then the
Ikhwan
decide the king’s being too soft, start making a fuss, so he has to turn around and beat the snot out of them too. Names them his very own militia to keep the peace, gives the real crazies of the group special duties, and that’s the
mutaween
.”

“The Virtue Police,” I said, and looked at Ruthie, who held a finger to her lips and shook her head, but I had no intention of saying a word about our adventure in al-Khobar.

“Now Ibn Saud’s got the desert Bedouins and the town Arabs and the religious nuts all where he wants them, and that’s the second point of the triangle. Only problem is, he’s got no way to develop his new kingdom. Million square miles of worthless real estate but no money in the coffers. He had nothing,” Lucky said, “until we came along.”