nidus: "Dishdash" by Lara Tupper

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No. 7

Fall 2004

United Arab Emirates, 1999

Mo perches neatly on a barstool in Dubai and barely listens to the Emirati man sitting beside her. (He's speaking, endlessly, about a song he likes, an Arabic song. Mo isn't sure why.) Mo is jet-lagged and spacey and a little drunk, already. She's had an entire glass of white wine in the space of thirty minutes and the edges of things are becoming pleasantly blurred.

Mo is waiting for her brother Mickey, the Bar Manager, to finish his shift. He took an Exacto knife 'out back' and she imagines that he's now slicing cardboard boxes and taking stock. Until he'd appeared at the Dubai International Airport that afternoon, Mo hadn't seen her brother in two years.

The Emirati man next to Mo wears a long white robe and a white headscarf folded in complicated ways. A snaked, black coil balances perfectly on the narrow crown of his head. "It is the most beautiful song," the Emirati man is saying. "Really, you must believe me." He cracks a pistachio nut from a tiny brass bowl and chews slowly. "I will bring the song for you tomorrow." He signals to the Filipino barman with a pointed finger and another round is instantly poured.

Mo has to pee. She wishes her brother would hurry up and be done. "I won't be here tomorrow," she says. She came for sun and distraction, not for men in robes. She came for Mickey.

"Anyway, the song means your name, in Arabic," the Emirati continues. "Lora." He clicks the 'L' into place and makes a little 'o' of his mouth, room enough for a nut. "Lo-ra," he says again.

"My name?" Mo asks.

He'll try to find a recording in the CitiCenter shopping mall, he says, perhaps in the Music Master shop. The song is by a famous Saudi Arabian singer, he says. "Very famous."

There's something Mo should tell the man: My name isn't Laura. It's Maura, actually. Maureen, but she doesn't have the energy to correct him. And she somewhat likes the confusion. She likes the thought of having her own song.

Encouraged by Mo's silence, the man begins to write the first verse of the song on a napkin, in Arabic. To Mo it looks like squiggles either way, from right to left or left to right. The song is long and very slow, says the man. About half an hour.

"Half an hour?" Mo asks. "Wow." She sips her white wine like a bird, her ankles crossed. She steals a glance at his pen -- it's shiny, maybe even real gold. He presses the point to the napkin and the ink bleeds.

The man peers over the top of his eyeglasses to translate what he has written but he can't seem to make it out. He's too tipsy now, he says, laughing, enjoying this strange word, tipsy, then refills his glass from the bottle of Beck's. "I will write it better tomorrow," he promises.

"Time to cut you off," says Mickey, appearing. He's speaking to Mo.

"We should go home," Mo says. She tries to remember the name of the Emirati man, to thank him for the drink, but she can't.

***

After work Mo and Mickey sit close together on the pullout sofa in Mickey's apartment. They drink warm Heineken from the bottles he stole from work as the TV screen shows a page from the Koran.

"Prayer time," Mickey explains, and a singer wails in the background, as if in pain. He presses a button on the remote and the wailing stops. "You were bored tonight," he says.

Mo blinks back with effort, forcing her eyes to focus. She's too tired to disagree. She thinks of the Emirati, clearly a regular. "You'll be a real hit with the regulars," Mickey had promised.

Mo pulls at a thread on her blouse. It doesn't snap off, just gets longer and longer but she can't stop pulling.

Mickey considers the label on his bottle and picks at a corner with a trimmed nail. He sips again.

The details can wait, Mo thinks. They've got all week and she'll get the whole story out of him eventually: why he came, exactly, why he decided to stay, when he's coming back. She's doesn't necessarily want to make sense of these things immediately. She isn't sure she's able.

"There weren't any women in the bar," Mo remembers.

"There are sometimes," says Mickey, careful not to use the word.

When she'd called to give him her flight details, she'd mentioned "the women down the hall" and she felt him bristle a little. Oh, you're among women now, are you? She liked the thought of him bristling. Usually it was the other way around.

She studies his profile as he tips back the bottle -- the rigid jaw, the black hair. He's stocky, his chest compact, his arms solid. She sees him at age six, clutching a red plastic wrench on Christmas morning and yelling, "I'll unscrew your bellybutton!" She'd slept with her hands tight on her belly for a week.

Mickey says she looks different, older. Has she done something new?

"Not really."

She's all angles, he says, like she's lost weight. Has she?

"Just exam stress," she says. "You remember."

He frowns a little. College wasn't a high-point for him.

It bothers him, she knows, how fundamentally different their bodies are -- her height, her boniness. He thinks it's an illusion, thinks that underneath she's tough, sturdy, and that it's his duty to shake the sturdiness out of her. She lets him think this. She's not in the mood to fight right now, nor to defend biology.

Instead she describes the flight attendants, how they wore little caps with veils.

"I know," says Mickey.

Some of the passengers went to the bathroom wearing jeans and came out wearing their national dress, she continues, the men in white dishdashes and the women in black abayas. (This Mo had read in her Lonely Planet. The 'United Arab Emirates' guide was the thinnest of all Lonely Planets on the bookstore shelf.) In person, on the plane, the men looked so serious, so severe. It was hard not to stare, hard not to think of what they might be hiding underneath their robes. The women showed only the slits of their eyes and Mo felt a little whorish in her tee shirt.

"Whorish," Mickey repeats.

She nods.

During the descent the sand looked liked it was creeping in, taking over roads. (This Mo keeps to herself.) She thought, They must have to work very hard to sweep it all back. She'd remembered a faded yellow cover and her mother reading aloud.

   If seven maids with seven mops
   Should try for half a year,
   Do you suppose, the Walrus said,
   That they could get it clear?

Mickey had hated Alice. He liked the Star Wars books. For Halloween he'd been Chewbacca three years in a row.

***

Mickey had come out to Dubai straight after sophomore year, just for a laugh, he told his family and friends. His roommate at U. Maine knew someone who knew someone who'd made it big in the oil game and was now part owner of The Club. "The job's yours if you want it," the roommate said. "They'll love your accent over there."

"The oil game?" Mickey's father asked.

It was supposed to be for the summer, but Mickey stayed through the fall and the spring. He deferred for one year and then another, but he didn't mention school on the phone. He said, "Dubai is it, Mo. Good money, no taxes, warm weather." He would apply for permanent residency if The Club agreed to sponsor him.

And now Mo was the one in school, wanting a break. "If you come, I'll take you out," he promised. "The clubs are fab."

Fab, Mo thinks to herself now. What a funny little word. She leans her head back on the sofa and Mickey eases the bottle from her slack hand.

***

Mo had met someone named Kyle this semester, and she was anxious to describe him to Mickey in more detail. Kyle had bushy brown curls and a wicked grin, amazing teeth. He had this jittery, energetic way about him, like a force jerking through his blood. He played the saxophone.

Kyle invited Mo to a Gamalon concert the weekend before Valentine's Day. Mo had never heard of the Gamalon, and it turned out to be an Indonesian instrument, or many instruments acting as one, all percussive -- bells and gongs and cymbals -- all metallic and cheerful-sounding. The musicians either stood or sat cross-legged on the floor, mallets poised. There were dozens of them.

"It's cyclical," Kyle explained. "Each player is assigned a place in the sequence." One hit a gong every fourth beat, one every eighth, and so on and so on.

Mo liked the idea of it, the interlocking rhythms. She watched the one with the biggest gong, large as a table-top, shiny as tin foil. He had to wait sixty-four beats -- she counted -- and when he did it the noise he made was a beautiful shimmering ripple of sound.

"Yeah," Kyle said. He closed his eyes and she watched them flicker underneath the lids. His lashes were long and pretty and Mo had an urge to lick them.

He had needles in his dorm room, stacked in neat plastic packages on the bookshelf. Mo tried not to look at them but he told her anyway: diabetes. She thought this might explain the jerkiness. You might die young, she thought. Was that a relief? Did it make him braver with the small stuff, like sex, like music? She hated needles. She would have to learn to live with them, she thought. She'd have to watch him stick himself daily.

But she didn't have to. He invited her back to his room only once more. He'd put up a giant poster of John Coltrane, his sax collar dangling, his eyes huge and sad against a dark blue background.

"Is he your idol?" she asked, teasing.

He shrugged.

Could they just be friends? He didn't say this in the room, but on the phone the next day, his voice a little sour, a little tired. In need of sugar.

A week later she called Mickey in Dubai. She'd been to a party, she'd had too much beer -- she wanted to hear a dumb joke about sax players.

Instead he said, "You're too intense, Mo. It scares guys off. You need to chill out a little." That's when he said she should come to Dubai. He described a bar he'd take her to, called TGIT, Thank God It's Thursday.

"Friday," she corrected.

"No, Thursday. Friday's the Holy Day, the big day off. The point is, it's a bar."

"I'll come," she said, quickly. "How much are flights?"

Mo's roommate said, "You're lucky. There's no way I could spend Spring Break with my brother. We'd kill each other."

"We're pretty close," Mo explained. She hoped this was still true.

***

Mickey had called when he was drunk once, when he was a freshman and Mo was still living at home. He was sobbing. He'd failed his exams. "Listen to me," he said, "crying like a girl."

She'd felt relieved. It had been difficult to keep the smugness out of her voice, not because he'd failed, but because he was crying.

***

Mo wakes up late on Mickey's sofa bed, her neck stiff, her head sore. She makes coffee and snoops through drawers, finding little of interest. It's a boy's apartment, sparse, smelling faintly of feet. There are nine back issues of For Him Magazine stacked carefully under his bed.

Mickey is on a day shift today, so she won't have to sit in the bar tonight, waiting for him. "Go to the pool," he suggested, and left the keys.

The pool is on the roof of a hotel down the street and all the tenants in Mickey's building are allowed to use it. "They won't ask," he said, but he left his pass anyway.

Outside the heat is startling, immediate. Mo's sunglasses fog up and her air-conditioned bones are warmed instantly. Within one block she's baking, straight through. The sand gets in her new leather sandals. The sand is everywhere, it seems, blowing onto sidewalks and sweeping over the vacant lots between apartment blocks. It's not gritty like sand at home, but fine and feather-white, like dust.

She slows her pace, like everyone else, to a lazy shuffle, a trudge, and it feels wrong, unsafe. She's used to walking briskly, eyes ahead -- her city walk. "The trick is not to fight the heat," said Mickey, "just accept it." The local men, all in white, seem to glide through it. Biblical-looking, Mo thinks, with black coils for crowns.

There are no women on the street, just Mo, and so the men in white notice her. A black Jeep Cherokee slows, big as a bus, and the driver's mouth under the head scarf says something she doesn't understand. She stares back from behind her sunglasses and he grins even harder. She turns her head and he drives away.

She remembers the Emirati in the bar, how polite he seemed. Educated at Cambridge, he told her. He would've been robe-less in England. He would've worn jeans for the first time, and sweaters.

She passes a Holiday Inn and the Al Madina 24-Hour Store, the neon lights flashing even at noon. A crane roars and Indian workers swarm on ladders and in concrete pits. They yell (in Hindi? In Urdu?) -- not at her, but to each other. She can smell the sweat as she passes. "Slavery," Mickey said. In the summer they hire twice as many, he told her, so when one faints from the heat another can take his place. From a taxi the day before she saw them shoved into an open-back truck, slouching, dozing, saying nothing.

"It can't be legal," Mo had said to her brother.

"It's Dubai," Mickey had said.

The receptionist in the pool hotel checks her pass and waves her toward the elevator. In the lobby cafe there are two canaries in a cage, one yellow, one blue. Mo watches them twitter and peep until the elevator dings, and feels strangely comforted by the sweet animal noises.

She has the pool to herself, a great relief. She peels away her tee shirt and shorts and adjusts her bikini top. The sign says, "Appropriate Swim-Wear Required," and she wonders if her bikini is appropriate. "I've seen girls in tee shirts and sweatpants in the sea," Mickey said.

The water is icy-cold, clean. The chlorine smell is strong. From the shallow end she can see the street she has just passed, sees that it's crowded with pastel buildings further along, and high-rises with shiny reflective glass, and that these are interspersed with sandy vacant patches, spaces not yet covered with tar. The sand seems harmless from this height, not pretty exactly, but natural. Proof of some sort, of a Bedouin past.

She doesn't stay long. Within minutes her skin feels tight and burned and she can't concentrate on her book. It's creepy up there alone, looking down at the cranes. On her way back some of the workmen are asleep on the sidewalk on strips of cardboard, arms slung over their eyes, feet splayed. Dead-looking. There are little silver lunch-box tins at their sides, with handles.

In the apartment Mo rubs the white sand from her shoes and it leaves brown streaks on the towel, like ordinary dirt. She drinks an entire can of Pepsi and reads, in Lonely Planet, that Dubai is "the Miami of the Middle East." She falls asleep on the couch, waiting for Mickey to come back home.

***

In junior high Mo and Mickey's parents took them on family trips to Florida, to see Nana. It was Easter break and the beach was packed. There was a boardwalk along the street and Mo wanted to walk a portion of it, the part within view. Dad said fine, have fun. He smiled more in Florida. He said yes to things easily.

It was late afternoon and the beach was slowly clearing out. There were occasional speed walkers and joggers along the boardwalk, and a few older women strolling with visors, animated and loud. Mo didn't have sneakers with her, just flip-flops, but she walked briskly, with purpose, as the exercisers did. Her skin tingled with sunburn. It was nice to be alone.

She didn't immediately see the man on the bench. He was petting something in his lap, a puppy or a kitten, cooing at it, grunting a little. She looked, and saw instead his pants at his ankles, gray pubic hair, his penis gripped in his hand.

She felt something like panic then, a controlled panic, a rush of fear and adrenaline and a voice in her head saying, Run. She ran, back to the cluster of towels and coolers she knew was her family.

How strange, she thought much later. The instinct of flight. The complete lack of indecision.

She told Mickey about it that night in Nana's guest room. There were two twin beds set up in a space meant for one. She could just make out the outline of his body opposite her, under a sleeping bag. The ceiling fan whirred above them in the dark.

"I would have kicked his ass," Mickey whispered, "if I'd been there. Sicko."

He was quiet for a long time. Mo thought he was asleep but then he giggled.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"What?" She'd kill him for laughing at her.

"I can't believe you thought it was a puppy."

She laughed too, a burst of relieved giggles. Then she eased into sleep, slowly, listening to him breathe beside her.

***

Mickey has another late shift and Mo resumes her perch at the bar.

"I have looked it up in English for you," says the Emirati man.

What? Mo thinks.

"You must recall. This Persian song, called Lo-ra."

She nods, remembering. She also remembers the pen.

"In English this means yogurt." Mo scrunches her brow in an expression of interest. "Or not yogurt, exactly. Something between yogurt and milk."

"Cream?" says Mo. The wine arrives and she grabs the glass like a child.

"Not cream. Something thicker than milk, but not cream." He lifts the edge of his head scarf away from his face, a practiced gesture, and it stays there, balanced on the black coil. "Anyway, I will find the audio tape for you."

***

When he gives her the tape, the next night, the singer on the cover looks funny -- he's wearing the same thing as every other Emirati she's met so far, except the singer's head scarf is red and white checked, like a tablecloth, instead of plain white.

"Mohammed Abdo," says the man. "He is very famous."

"Mohammed Abdul," she repeats.

"Not Abdul. Ab-doo."

The tape is from the CitiCenter Mall, he says. "Have you been there? You must go. Every shop you can imagine. Tell your brother to take you there."

Mo imagines this man taking the escalator, in the mall. He would have to lift his robe a little, like a woman lifting a long skirt over a puddle.

She looks around for Mickey, but he isn't in the bar-he's unpacking bottles again or sneaking a cigarette. Through the glass doors she sees the front patio with the empty wicker tables and chairs, abandoned in the heat, and the fountain which she knows is stuffed with fat, orange fish, so many fish they slide against one another constantly, a slick mass of bodies trying to find air and space of their own.

"Disgusting," Mo announced, during daylight, during Mickey's grand tour the first afternoon.

"They fuck a lot. They replicate."

"They don't do that. They have eggs."

"The eggs need to be fertilized. What do you think, they just appear, like pimples?"

"Nice," said Mo. "Nice imagery."

He was feeding the fish at the time, thick flakes of something that looked like cereal.

Maybe he fell in, she thinks now. Maybe the fish are eating him alive.

***

The regular introduces Mo to his friends in the bar. They are called Hamaid, Hamad, Abdullah and Fahim.

"Hello," says Mo. She remembers to show her teeth when she smiles.

The friends speak to her in English and to him in Arabic, but she knows they are talking about her by the way their eyes flick across her body, the way they turn away from her when they laugh. "Little sister!" they say and they think this is funny because she is taller than Mickey.

They ask questions and she answers. She's on vacation, she says, from college. In Boston. She grew up in Maine. Maine. Near Canada. That's right, Stephen King.

Someone mentions the Salem Witch Trials and then someone else says that maybe she's a witch and then someone else says, no, she can't be a witch because she's much too beautiful, and besides, she has blonde hair. She doesn't tell them it's dyed a little.

The friends mingle and disperse. Another glass of Chardonnay appears.

"You know, I am here every night," the Arab man tells her. "Every night but Friday."

His eyes, Mo decides, are kind-looking.

He has a wife, he says, and Mo wonders if the wife is at home now, waiting. She imagines the wife knocking on the door of the pool boy or the driver, in the servants' quarters, her black abaya falling to the floor like an empty cape.

He's just being friendly, Mo tells herself. This is just bar talk. She puts the tape in her purse and sips her wine. She wants Mickey to come back, to fill in the gaps, to explain

***

After work, Mickey takes her to a place called Stayin' Alive, which turns out to be a seventies-themed club, with a band. The guitarist wears a pink shirt with a John Travolta collar and the lead singer wears a tight silver jumpsuit. The doorman doesn't bother checking their ID's because their skin is white -- this is Mickey's explanation. Inside she notices that there are no Indians or Pakistanis or Filipinos. It's one of the most popular clubs in Dubai, Mickey says.

It's Ladies' Night, and so the dance floor is packed with slim, tan British and Australian girls in miniskirts and spaghetti-strap tank tops. All drinks are half-price for ladies, all night.

"It's not fair," Mickey shouts above the music. "They should have a Men's Night too!"

He buys two bottles of beer and pockets the change. Someone on the dance floor has noticed him already.

"Go on, dance if you want," Mo shouts to him.

"You sure?" he says, but he's already set his bottle down on the bar. "I know her," he explains. "She's a stewardess for Emirates Air."

"Flight Attendant," Mo says, once he's gone. Mo's long-sleeved shirt is all wrong. She isn't showing enough skin. But she drinks quickly, and by the time Mickey comes back she feels better.

"Let's do shots!" he says. His shirt collar is damp, his face flushed.

Mo likes tequila, so they order four shots, two shots each. She likes the little ceremony of salt and lime, the oily sting in the back of her throat as the glass is emptied. "You're on vacation, girl!" says Mickey, taking her hand, and she follows him onto the dance floor.

"I'm so glad I came!" she screams, but he can't hear her.

***

In Maine, in the summers, Mo bought six-packs for Mickey and his friends because she looked older. Mo worked at a jewelry store called Silver Lining and Mickey was a waiter at Lobsterman's Wharf. He made a lot in tips and had earned enough to buy a small second-hand motorboat.

On the Fourth of July they took the boat out -- Mo and Mickey and a few of his friends from the restaurant. Mo bought beer for them and peach wine coolers for herself. She'd never had wine coolers before but they were lovely and sweet, like soda. The smell of peaches would always remind her of that Fourth of July.

"Mo," said Mickey. He wasn't looking at her, but up at the blue smoke where the fireworks had been. "What's up with tourists?" Mickey had just been dumped by a summer girl named Kate whose father had a Boston Whaler moored in the harbor. Her name was painted on the bow in gold cursive: "The Katherine Anne." They couldn't see the Whaler in the dark, but they knew it was there.

"Heartbreaker tourists," Mo said. Her bottle was empty and she held it to her belly. Kate wore tiny silver hoops in each of her four ear piercings, purchased from Mo's store.

Mickey flinched a little at the mention of her name. "You," he said. His voice was sad, drunk. "You're going to be one of them."

She knew what he meant but she wanted to hear him say it. "A tourist? I live here, idiot."

"No. Heartbreaker. You're going to be a heartbreaker too."

He snorted, and his friends laughed too.

"Get your own beer, then," she said.

He smiled for her, secretly, a smile the friends couldn't see. It meant, I mean it.

***

"My friend Abdullah has two wives," the Emirati tells Mo, nodding to the small gray-haired man across the bar. "And ten children."

"Ten." says Mo. "Wow." She hasn't had enough wine for this to seem funny.

"The first wife, she had babies, and then she had problems," he says, tapping his stomach. "And so he gets another wife." He shakes his head. He yells something across the bar and Abdullah holds up two hands with pride, fingers wiggling. "Yes, ten children, he says."

He sees Mo's expression and tries to explain.

"The husband must ask her. If she doesn't want him to take the second wife, she can have a divorce. So she has the choice."

Mo empties her glass. "And you have just one wife?"

"Yes, just one." He reaches for the pistachio bowl. "But I sometimes have a girlfriend." He smiles a little.

"And if your wife finds out?"

The smile disappears. "She must never know, because she will want a divorce. I have four children, and this would be no good for them. No, she must never find out."

When Mo mentions this later to Mickey -- the wives, the girlfriends, the divorce procedure -- he laughs. "It isn't real," he says.

"Still, how can you laugh?"

They're at an Irish bar Mickey likes -- he's on his second pint of Guinness and he looks tired. He's gazing over her head at a soccer match on TV.

She already knows what his answer will be: How can you not laugh, Mo? Why do you have to be so fucking serious all the time?

She decides to speak first. "You know what Kyle said to me?" she begins.

"Who's Kyle?"

"Kyle. I told you about him. Diabetic. He dumped me."

"Oh. Yeah." He lets his eyes stray from the screen.

"He said I was a 'great girl.' I have no idea what that means."

"It means he feels bad about dumping you."

"He used the 'can we be friends' line."

"Maybe he meant it."

"He said that we weren't meant to bond physically."

"He's a monk or something?"

"No, I think it was just me."

Mickey returns to the game, not wanting to discuss this further. Someone from Manchester United kicks someone from Newcastle United hard in the shin, on purpose. The bar groans, in unison.

"Is that it?" Mo intervenes. "You have no more boy wisdom to offer?"

"I'm thinking," Mickey says, sipping his pint. "It's a tough one."

The bartender cheers for something onscreen Mo has missed and then the quarter ends with a tie. Someone yells, "Lazy frigging Geordies!"

"You just need to be more open to things. Open to people," Mickey says, scooping popcorn from a paper-lined basket.

"That's all you can come up with? What does that mean, exactly, being 'open'?"

"It means being…friendlier. Less judgmental."

She takes this in.

"You're just too picky," he offers. "Or scared."

"Of men?" She considers this. "I haven't been tortured by you or Dad."

Christmas, she thinks. The wrench.

"Not much," says Mickey. "You just haven't had a serious boyfriend yet. I wouldn't worry about it."

"Maybe I'll meet someone here."

"That would be practical."

"Why not?"

"A drunk ex-pat. Now there's a catch."

"You're an ex-pat," she said, leaving out the drunk part.

"Not really. I'm here for a business venture." He raises his eyebrows mysteriously.

You manage a bar, she thinks. "Maybe I could find a nice local guy."

"Yeah, go for it. Become wife number three."

"You said that didn't really happen."

"Of course it happens. I said it wasn't real. None of this is. The fucking fountains and the malls in the middle of the desert. The guys in their holy robes getting hammered every night. It's all made up."

"A mirage," says Mo. "The Miami of the Gulf."

"Miami? I wouldn't push it."

"So why do you stay, if it's all so fake?"

He thought for awhile. "Because you can mess around and sleep late and do your own thing and still make decent money."

"You can do that in Maine too."

"Only in the summers," he says. "And then it gets cold as shit."

She doesn't argue.

His eyes are back on the screen and they watch together as Newcastle United loses.

"You've gone quiet," Mickey observes.

"Thinking," she says. Come home, she wants to say.

"You have to stop that. It isn't allowed here."

She smiles for him. It's easier this way, easier than trying to figure out the right answers.

***

"Did you listen to the song?" the Emirati man asks.

"Yes," Mo lies. "It's beautiful, just as you said."

"I know exactly what it means now. I looked it up again. It means breast milk, for the child, the first time the mother nurses the baby." He taps his chest where a breast would be and smiles a little. "This is lo-ra. This is thick milk, the first milk, to protect the baby for life from the diseases. To make it healthy and strong."

"So the song is about babies?"

"No!" He shakes his head at her. "The song is about a woman. Lora tilke Lora. Means, 'Where is my Lora?' It is beautiful, no?"

"Beautiful." She drains her wine. This is probably not the time to tell him her real name. She is tired tonight, tired of this strange man and his song and tired of waiting for Mickey to finish work. She takes a Marlboro Light from the man's gold case without asking and strikes a match, even though he's holding out his lighter for her. It seems like she's known him for a very long time.

"Same again?" says Mickey. He winks at Mo. He's trying to get her another free drink.

"Yes, same please, Michael. Your sister, she is…" The fingers search for the right words.

Bored, thinks Mo.

" -- good company," says the man. He nods, satisfied to have filled the gap.

"You should try living with her," Mickey says, cracking his smile in perfect time.

But Mo is only half-listening. She's thinking of Kyle, clearing the sheet music from his bed. I do yoga, he'd told her. I can go for hours. Which had turned out not to be true at all.

"Excuse me," she says to the man, needing to move. She dismounts the stool as gracefully as possible.

***

In the Ladies Room, a Filipina cocktail waitress is applying deodorant. "Who's the dishdash you sit with?" she asks. She must be new -- Mo hasn't seen her before. Her smile is outlined in bright red lipstick. "Your boyfriend?" She thinks this is funny. "He must be rich."

"I don't even know him," Mo starts to explain. "I'm just on vacation."

"From Russia?" It sounds like an accusation.

"From the States. I'm American."

"Ah! American! I think you are from Russia, working here. You look Russian! So pale."

Mo holds her palms under the hand-dryer and the waitress's voice gets lost in the noise.

When Mo returns to her stool, the man is speaking to Mickey in a quiet way, leaning in.

"Must be something serious," says Mo, in her best feather-light tone. She hates secrets.

Mickey laughs in a false way. "Business," he says.

***

Mickey wants to take her out again on Thursday night, the weekend. He, like all Dubai barkeep, has Fridays off. On the day of rest, he can sleep in.

Thank God It's Thursday is too crowded and so they go to the Rock Bottom Café, a spin-off of the Hard Rock Café, and the band there is very hard rock, all in leather. By the time they arrive everyone is very drunk, reeling a little. Mo and Mickey drink quickly to catch up.

Later, when Mo comes back from the bathroom, her brother is kissing a short woman with a nose ring, his hands groping at her waist. But before she can reach them someone knocks into her, spilling beer on her sheer, blue blouse. When she looks up again, Mickey's hand is creeping along the girl's ass.

Mo gets in a cab. She has a key and Mickey won't care -- he won't even remember. The driver opens his window as soon as she gets in. Does she smell? Like beer or sweat or both? On the way home, which seems to take hours, Mo watches the meter and invents a sister, pretends she's visiting her now. The sister is taller and older and very smart, a genius practically. She offers very good advice. She isn't a bully, but she pushes Mo in a healthy way, tickles her to the point of tears on her birthday, makes her run to catch up with her on the beach.

The Nose Ring girl, Mo considers, is open. And with sudden clarity she understands what Mickey means by the word.

***

"Did you bring the lyrics?" Mo slides onto the stool, her feet dangling. The man has promised to translate her song.

The bar is busy and Mo is glad -- it's her last night before flying back to Boston. There are more women than usual, beautiful women in expensive clothes with accents Mo can't quite place. They're perched next to Abdullah and Hamad and Hamaid as if they've known them a very long time. The women drink champagne and fancy cocktails. They tip back their necks and laugh.

"I forget the song!" says the man.

How? Mo wonders. How could you? It's all you've talked about.

She's tipsy again, without meaning to be, but tonight she wants everything to be clear. She wants to uncover the shape of this man. Less mystery, more answers. It's the robe, it must be -- it's impossible to see his outline, and this makes her want to.

His hands are there -- clasped, resting on the bar. Exposed.

"You like the ring?" He sees her looking. His ring is large and shiny, like the pen.

"I like your hands," she says.

His eyes change, flicker, everything between them shifts a little. And she caused it, she made the shift happen.

I'm drunk, Mo reminds herself. I'm not myself.

But it feels nice.

Mickey is listening, pretending not to. "How 'bout a Coke, Mo." His eyes are asking: Want me to stop it?

No, she says back. I'm being open.

"Busy tonight," says Mo to the man. She's careful not to look at his body.

"Yes," he says. He's smoking quickly, sucking on the end of his Marlboro for air. He seems nervous. He crushes the butt in the black enamel ashtray.

Mo's legs are crossed and her knee is bare, just below the hem of her skirt. Then rests his fingers there, lightly.

"I'd like you to come with me please," he says quickly, leaning in.

Come where?

"I can pay you."

It takes her a second, but then she gets it.

She pulls away and looks for her brother, but he's not watching anymore. He's scrubbing glasses under the bar.

"I have to go," she says, and in the bathroom she stares at her features in the mirror until they are just that -- a nose, two eyes, a smudged mouth.

He'll pay her. Russians, working here.

She feels hollow, suddenly. Emptied out. She holds her palms under the hand-dryer and lets the warmth creeps up her fingers. She shuts her eyes.

Is this why she was invited? To bump up the bar sales?

The dryer whines to a halt and she waves her palms again, she wants noise --

Her brother -- what happened to him out here?

***

She finds Mickey in the storeroom, champagne bottles in his arms like bouquets.

"It was just a joke," he says, before she can speak.

She stares and he sets the bottles down on top of a cardboard box.

"He said he'd like to spend some time with you, and I said go ahead, ask her. But it was just a joke. Like you'd ever say yes." He smoothes the flaps of his navy blue jacket. "And I only let the girls in on Saturdays, before you ask."

"Except me," she says. She isn't slurring; her words are strong, all the consonants in place. "I'm here all week."

He laughs, a little meanly. "It's not like you haven't been flirting with him."

"You fucking pimp."

He stops laughing. His mouth is grim, mean, as if he's about to swear. Bitch, he used to say in high school, his eyes hard. But he says nothing. He picks up the bottles again, adjusts them in his arms as he leaves. They make sweet little clinking sounds like bells, like Christmas.

She waits until her heartbeat slows, until the smallest letters on the boxes become words: Alcohol content -- 6% by volume. Made in the USA.

Spring Break, she thinks. What a waste.

And then: He's not coming home.

She needs her purse. She needs to go.

***

Mickey is back behind the bar, stooping down, concentrating on bottles, stacking them in neat rows behind a glass refrigerated door. He won't look at her.

The man is gone and she feels a small tug of regret.

Outside the air is wet and sticky -- oppressive. There aren't any taxis.

She thinks ahead. In the morning Mickey will make coffee, like nothing has happened. He'll tell a joke and she'll laugh back, pretending to forgive him. She'll get on the plane and sleep and drink and wake up at home -- cold, blurry, wanting a sweater. She'll miss him. She'll call and ask about the bar, Mickey's Bar, as the regulars call it. The bar is his. It has nothing to do with her.

Headlights blind her as a Jeep slows -- red, enormous, new. The glass whirrs down.

"Miss Lora."

She can't see him well -- he's in shadow and she's still a little blinded. But the smell is his, something distinct and potent, something expensive.

"Please let me apologize," he says. "I am sorry." It sounds rehearsed. He's done this before. "I think you are a lovely American girl and I only want to spend time with you, that is all."

That is all. Time doing what? Scrabble? The thought of it makes Mo smile a little, and he mistakes this for yes. He clicks open the door and the bulb above his head flashes on, filling the car with light.

He looks ordinary. There are groceries on the seat beside him -- a loaf of bread, a newspaper. On the floor she sees an abandoned Barbie doll. Prayer beads dangle from the rear view mirror. He lights a cigarette and offers her one.

"Thanks," she says, as briskly as possible, and takes it. "I'm not -- like that." Her voice is louder than she'd intended. "I'm not like him."

"Of course not," says the man. "You are not living the fast life -- living in the fast lane."

An Eagles fan. "I'm not," she agrees. "We're nothing alike." It sounds harmless, revealing it this way to this man she'll never see again.

"But you care for him, of course. He's your brother."

"I love him like a brother," she repeats. She senses the cigarette heat close to her fingers and feels incapable of moving. The Jeep door is still propped open, just room enough for her to slip in.

"Good girl," he says, shutting the door softly, and drives away.

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.

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