Suite Dubai (Arriving) (7 page)

He continued. “He told me, ‘she has something. You will see. She will be good luck for you.’”
 

“I told him I don’t need luck. I need someone who can help me make this hotel a success. My investors, my family. They don’t care about luck. My father will laugh me out of the room. Dubai is a great city and it wants to be the greatest. It wants to be better than Paris or New York or London. When the man who commissioned the Burj al Khalifa was asked how tall it should be, he asked the architect how tall was the tallest building in the world. Then after the architect answered he simply told him to double it. We built a ski run in the middle of the desert. We had sand moved from the sea bed and built up a system of islands that looks from the sky like a palm tree. Two of them! I told Ahmed she has no experience at all. She is just getting out of college.”
 

Rachel felt strangely detached as she listened to him, as if he were talking to another girl, sitting in a chair who had the same name as she. There was a buzzing noise that tried to cancel out his words. She guessed it was a defense mechanism to keep his words from doing too much damage.
 
Yet he told her what she already knew, what everyone already knew.

He smiled again. “Ahmed said, ‘give it to her. She will learn. Trust me, she will bring you luck. And that is not something you can buy.’”
 

“So,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Here we are.”

She tasted blood and realized she had bitten her lip. She knew she looked fierce, but didn’t care anymore. There would be no more pretending. “Have you ever opened a hotel before?”

He opened his mouth to say something but stopped. He tapped the tip of his pen once on the desk. “I have not,” he said.
 

She just looked at him.

“But I have been to very many.”

She wanted to say that she’d been on many airplanes but that didn’t mean she could fly one, that the only difference between them was a few years and piles and piles of money. His dad was royalty and hers was a pediatrician. She swallowed this and said instead: “How did you find them?”

“The grand openings, you mean? All the same. Unless someone got drunk or something caught on fire. So still, all the same.” His tone was lighter now. Perhaps he was trying to make amends.

“I’ll write that down,” she said. “Catch something on fire.”

“Better than another ice sculpture.”

“I can try,” she told him.

“Please, give me updates on what your doing. I want to hear your ideas. I’d also like a link to the spreadsheet, so I can see the changes. Otherwise, everything dealing with money goes through Jensen.” He leaned forward, opened a small brass box sitting on his desk, and retrieved a card.
 

“It’s going to be a busy month until the event. You need to meet people, know who to invite, know who can help with the press. We need a cultivated guest list. This Thursday night there is a party at Jorg Oberheim’s villa. I am going. Samantha is going. You need to be there.”

“Thursday? Sure.”

“I’ll have Sahar give you the details.”
 

He stood up, came around the desk. She stood up too. He took a few steps closer, holding the card, running his finger along the edge of it. He was so close she could see a freckle just above the edge of his jaw. She let her gaze move up to his eyes and noticed he was looking right at her. “Here,” he said holding the card out for her. She took it and when she did the top of her index finger brushed the tip of his thumb. The room felt diagonal and she took a step to right herself.
 

"Rachel," he said, "
Rachel?"
 

* * *
 

“I do.”
 

“Good. He can show you how to share the spreadsheet, using my email address. Also share with me any ideas you have. This will be seen as my event, so I want to know what’s happening. No problem?” He looked down a little trying to catch her eyes again.

“No problem,” she said.
 

She gathered her papers from the chair and began t

“Do you have a dress? A party dress?”
 

“Of course.” It was a lie but she would have one. Somehow.
 

“In case you don’t have anything appropriate, tell Claire, the personal shopper on staff and she’ll help you find something. This, I consider a business expense. So it goes on the hotel’s tab. Okay?”

“Yes,” she said. She waited until she got out the door to look at the card.

Prince Khalid Al Zari, was printed in a simple black font. Under his name was his phone number and his email address. On the back, it was written in Arabic.
 

Cut here?

She took the card back to her suite. Set it on the console. She took her shoes off. She took her suit off and put on a summer dress put on a pair of flip flops and walked across the street along a strip of sand between a condominium and another hotel and walked down to the water. She let the waves wash over her feet and pull the sand from under them she watched it wash away. The warm air felt good on her skin, the sun on her face, tightened her skin. She sat there looking at her finger the very tip of her index finger where he had touched her.
 

Or here?

Yes, he said. I understand. He spoke so softly it made her feel like whispering might be okay after all.
 

When I was in school in London, it was something I had to get used to. That, he said and so many other things. It can be a bit overwhelming.
 

Samantha started to say something but Rachel cut her off.
 

How long were you there? In London.

A few years he said. He looked at Samantha, Shall we get started. He gestured to the chairs and went around to sit behind his desk.
 

You have a date? A budget?

I do, she said. It’s very preliminary. You’ve got to start somewhere right?
 

Samantha cleared her throat. We were thinking late May. That would give us 6 weeks.

She gets back to her room and sees her mom has gotten a call that her student loan is past due. Why didn’t you tell us?
 

Shwo the affect of the scene at the party first then tell how it happened. Or pose a dramatic question at the beginning of a scene and let the scene play out the answer. This works best with something bad. Here’s how she ended up standing int he middle of the party charged with speaking German to a glass man.
 

Sahar. The Prince.
 

she says ya’ll . samantha smirks.
 

clever. proper job. proper computer.
 

Don’t call her sam. She thinks Rachel is too pretty to be taken seriously. The more Hamid flirts, the more Sam smirks at Rachel.
 

No dating. Sam’s rule.
 

Swiss. accountant. Jorg Oberheim. HR. Food and Beverage. Entertainment.
 

Pink haze at sunset. reflective glass. Jasmine-scented. Sheikh Zayed Road. crowded. G6 song. He is not like his brother who likes the flash. You look into a place trying to see Dubai and all you see is yourself. Elusive.
 

Fitness center.
 

White shirt with a black and brocade vest. Mezzanine. Personal shopper. Yacht charter. kids club. 30 floors.
 

Perhaps Syed brings her home from the beach when she has drunk too much and been taken advantage of some Australian fitness guy. Or she gets sick and he sits in a chair in her room. She thinks she sees him in a chair in her room. The next time she opens her eyes the chair is empty.
 

Names something after his late finace. Nada. I don’t know if I loved her. I didn’t know her very well. But once she died she became like a myth. A girl who got into a car and never came back. She had lied to me about where she was going. Perhaps she had a lover.
 

They have two or three bad experiences and then a decent one. She thinks he hates her. Really he is conflicted. Also he knows him family will arrange another marriage, once they realize he is no longer grieving.
 

How the weight of her job caused her to throw off her duvet in the middle of the night, take off her ring, out her earrings. stripped off her t-shirt and shorts. she kept a sheet over one leg. on a good night she might sleep until 4 am.
 

Part two ideas.

More about hotel structure and operations within action.
 

She gets sick

She thinks ill of him after she finds out about ill treatment of guest workers, women Even though she finds herslef thinking about him she knows a guy like him, an arab cannot make her happy.
 

Is something illicit going on in the hotel?

Prince will be asked to marry another girl, layla, the daughter of a sheik when he seems to no longer be mourning.
 

She gains ner respect for her mother. How does she run her organization. She finds herslef asking for advice.
 

Positioning herslef at the base of a tree with her leatherboud journal.
 

laryngitis,
 

She does the opposite of what she is thinking or feeling.
 

She gets jealous of another girl who turns out to be his cousin. Don’t you marry your cousins here?

Guy digging a butt out of an ashetray to smoke?

Rachel Lewis, an unemployed college grad, ends a year-long unsuccessful job hunt by landing a job at a new 5 star hotel in faraway Dubai. Hired as a Public Relations specialist Rachel finds herself living in a luxurious hotel suite working for a woman who clearly feels she doesn’t deserve the job and a Prince, the young, handsome owner of the hotel, who seems at best indifferent to her and might possibly hate her. Thousands of miles away from home and in a culture she doesn’t understand she tries to convince her coworkers and herself that she does deserve a chance, that she can throw a grand opening fit for a king. Suite Dubai is a love story, true, but it is also a story about finding out who you are and how you make a place for yourself in the world.