The Sand Men (26 page)

A neon arcade suddenly came to life, twinkling with phosphorescent geometries. Signs in Arabic and mangled English sought attention from passing cars. The Desert Bloom. The Whirlwind. Sexy Sexy. Arabian Nites. Fluorescent tubing crackled with errant electricity. Doorways were illuminated with faded photographs of Chinese girls in the kind of old-fashioned nightclub gowns she associated with drag queens. There were no direct calls to action, but the images were unmistakably clear; girls were available here.

The sidewalk was deserted; vehicles circled and slipped furtively into rear parking lots. Lea took a left turn and followed the route to the car park of a bar called Glamour Cocktails. At the back doors of the clubs, the inferences were more explicit. One sign said
Girls At Your Table – Private Rooms
. Another read
Oriental Or American – She Always Say Yes
.

Lea applied the handbrake and waited, watching. Two Korean girls in low-cut shiny red bikini tops, thongs and high heels came out to the back step to smoke. A young Indian man parked his truck and headed over to talk to them, but an older Korean woman appeared and ordered him around to the front of the club, determined to receive her commission.

Lea wondered what these places were like after midnight. She remembered what Rachel had said about Nepalese and Chinese girls working the strip.
I have to take a look inside
, she decided, getting out of the car.

She chose the emptiest-looking bar, whose neon Pink Pussy logo featured a cartoon cat with disturbingly human breasts lounging in a martini glass. Inside was a single rectangular room, painted purple, hung with incongruous Christmas lights, smelling of disinfectant and incense. An old Elton John song was playing on the bar’s tinny sound system. Along the left-hand side was an American-style drinks counter with unoccupied swivel stools. In the centre of the room stood a square stage with a steel pole at each corner and a selection of mirror-balls hanging at different heights from the ceiling. An LED board displayed more cats with breasts, advanced technology conjuring the most juvenile fantasies.

She felt as if she had wandered onto a porno set before they had begun shooting. A line of gold-painted kitchen chairs were occupied by a few bored girls in red nylon gowns. Each one had a number on her wrist like a beauty contestant. Clearly the rush-hour had yet to start.

She was about to investigate further when a fat little Chinese woman started wheeling across the room in her direction.

‘You husband not here, missus,’ she shouted, flapping her hands as if batting away an annoying insect. ‘Nothing for you here. You go home now!’

Mortified, Lea lost her nerve. Was the purpose of her visit that obvious? How many other wives had followed their husbands to the strip? Flustered, she turned and left, pacing past the gaudy venues lit purple and pink, the colour of bruised flesh.

Peering through the doors, she saw crimson interiors, straw lamps, metallic stages. In some, girls in one-piece swimsuits were penned into corners like mannequin displays awaiting removal from long-derelict department stores.

The last bar, Pussy Ranch, was themed like a spit-and-sawdust Wild West saloon. Above its counter fake ham-hocks hung in string bags, each with a garter attached so that they looked like severed thighs. It was early; the night’s main activities had not yet begun, but men were already arriving to get the best tables.

She felt suddenly sick, and had to get away. Nothing Roy could say would dissuade her that these clubs were anything but brothels. She felt betrayed and disgusted, but there would be no way of resolving the issue without an argument that would paint her as the enemy.

Roy arrived home at ten as usual, but Lea could not bring herself to respond. He went to the refrigerator and rummaged for the ingredients of a sandwich before noticing the silence.

‘Come on then, out with it,’ he said finally, ‘what’s wrong now?’

It was important that she kept her temper. She tried to sound casual. ‘I was talking to Colette and she mentioned you’re allowed to finish early on Fridays. How long has this been going on?’

If Roy was surprised, he did not show it. ‘Not long. It’s a PR exercise. We don’t really take advantage of it.’

‘You mean you just stay at work?’

‘We do for a while. Then we go for a few drinks.’

‘To the bars on King’s Highway.’

‘We’ve only been there a couple of times.’

‘They’re whorehouses, Roy.’

‘Some are. Some are strip-joints and some are just bars. The city’s three-quarters male, honey. We put in long hours. There has to be some level of tolerance. You know how guys can get.’

‘Is that how you get?’

‘Jesus, Lea! We go there for a drink, that’s all.’

‘Which bars?’

‘I don’t know—a country and western-type place, a couple of others, one with a Mexican theme, I can’t remember.’

‘You could go to any number of hotel bars but you go out there.’

‘The men don’t want to pay the prices at hotel bars. They’re not tourists, they’re saving their earnings.’

‘Aren’t you meant to set some kind of moral example?’

‘Morality only covers our work conduct, it doesn’t control what goes on inside our heads.’

‘If you’re going there for any reason other than to have a drink with the boys, you really need to tell me right now.’

‘Or you’ll do what, Lea?’ Roy’s patience had run dry. ‘What are you going to do? History is not going to repeat itself. I have a tough job. We all have to cut loose sometimes. You just have to trust me.’

‘I want to believe you. I was prepared to fight for you before, but right now I don’t know if I’d do it again. I love you, Roy, and I love Cara. But things feel different between the three of us now.’

‘You’re making too big a deal of this.’

She wanted a drink, a cigarette, anything but the conversation they were having. ‘You know, when I was a girl I used to think that love was this fragile thing, but it’s not. It’s tough and strong, and it can survive almost anything. I just need a word from you to tell me we’re okay.’

‘Well, I thought we were. I don’t tell you every little thing because I know how you get. Cara keeps her distance from you because you smother her. In the back of your head there’s always the knowledge that you can’t have another kid. Maybe you should explain that to her one day.’

‘You know I want the time to be right—’

Roy suddenly rounded on her. ‘You know why I don’t tell you where I go? Because the bars are pretty seedy. We know what goes on here, a blind man could see they’re hookers, we look and the conversation gets rough but that’s all, nothing else. We’re not stupid. We know what’s important. Our wives. Our homes. Our families. Okay? Is that good enough for you?’

He popped a beer and headed out of the kitchen, into the pale moonlit garden. He was still standing there, looking up into the inky star-filled sky, when she went to bed.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The Stories

L
EA AWOKE IN
a sweat and looked at the bedside clock. 1:45am. She shook her head and tried to banish a tangle of dream-images: sunset neon, thin-armed girls in cheap satin gowns, Rachel wandering lost in the unforgiving glare of the desert. The blackened shell of the smouldering Busabi house. Somebody smiling in the dark. Somebody lying.

Roy was buried in pillows, snoring lightly, one brown arm trailing on the floor. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep. She got up and went to her desk to think. Andre Pignot had posted her new article on the
Gulf Coast
website, softening her prose. She logged onto Skype, just to see if anyone else was awake.

To her surprise, Betty Graham was online. She suddenly appeared in a ridiculously English pink quilted dressing gown, looking confused, as if she had only just discovered how to operate the application. There was an empty wine bottle and glass next to her.

‘You’re up late,’ said Lea.

‘I think the clock in the lounge is wrong,’ said Betty. ‘I’m always forgetting to wind it. I should get an electric one. What are you doing up? Hang on, you’re upside down. Don’t worry if I lose you, it just means I’ve pressed something.’

‘I’m having trouble sleeping,’ Lea admitted.

‘I called you this afternoon but you were out. Did you hear, they sentenced Elena and Ramiro?’

‘Your Ramiro?’

‘Oh, please, don’t call him that.’ Betty shook the idea from her fingertips, anxious to forget the flirtation. ‘A 2,000 dirham fine and one month in jail. But the worst part is, they’re going to be deported upon release.’

‘Sounds like they’re sending us a message.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, the police—about infidelity.’

‘Oh. Gosh. I hadn’t thought of that. Quite a few of the other women around here would miss Ramiro, I can tell you. I wasn’t the only one who fell for his line. Are you okay? You don’t look too good. Or perhaps it’s my screen. I really need to clean it.’

‘No, you’re right, I feel unsettled.’

‘I know that feeling, like a cat when it knows something bad is about to happen. I can’t make sense of anything right now.’

‘What’s all that?’ Lea pointed to the brightly coloured translucent objects lined along the table at the base of the screen.

‘Oh—I’m making fruit jellies. I’m not a great cook but even I can make a jelly. These ones on the right have got gin in. I needed something to do while I was waiting for Dean. He still hasn’t come home yet. He’s meant to call me but he’s not answering his mobile.’

‘Have you two had another fight?’

‘We don’t fight exactly, we just sort of—disagree on everything. He’s missing his father. He stays out late on school nights and never thinks to call. Harry knew how to control him.’

‘Sounds like he’s testing the boundaries, pushing back a bit. When’s your husband due home?’

‘In just under three months. Harry’s allowed to take a weekend off once a month to come back and visit, but he’s not using the time. He knows that when he returns we’ll have to have a proper talk, and I honestly don’t know what the outcome will be, whether we’ll give it another go for Dean’s sake or if we’ll actually separate.’

‘God, do you really think you might break up?’

‘To be honest, it feels like we already have. I hardly ever see him. Dean knows what’s going on. Kids always do. But I can’t sort anything out until he gets here. I just feel as if I’m in limbo.’ Betty looked around the room. ‘Don’t you hate this time of night? It’s even quieter out there than usual. It sounds silly but I miss hearing sirens.’

‘Yeah, me too. I’m keeping a diary, so sometimes when I wake up in the night I make a couple of entries, just until I’m tired. There’s something here I didn’t note down and was meaning to ask you. You said there was a Muslim family living on one side of you.’

‘That’s right, and Tom Chalmers and his poor wife were on the other.’ Betty thought for a moment. ‘It couldn’t have been long before you arrived that Tom had his accident. He took his daughter’s disappearance very badly—well, who wouldn’t?’

‘What was she like?’

‘Oh, a pretty little thing. Very mature for her age, and far too smart.’

‘Did the police ever say what they thought happened to her?’

‘Well of course there were theories. There was talk of a sex attacker. They deported several construction workers. It was Milo who found Tom.’

‘So I heard.’

‘He was convinced Tom had been murdered. At least, that’s what he used to say when he was drunk. Something about a voltage limiter. He said Tom couldn’t have electrocuted himself, and there was blood on the pavement. He said he saw someone running off, but of course nobody believed him.’

‘Why would he have been murdered?’

‘Because he knew what really happened to his daughter. But you know what?’ Betty leaned forward, sharing a confidence. ‘There are always stories in places like this. They count for nothing.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because nobody ever gets to know the truth, not the
real
truth. We sit around and speculate but we’re on the outside. We’re not important enough to be given answers. You just have to accept what happens and move on. Milo and Tom were both deeply unhappy men. Harry’s the opposite, he thrives on the life out here. He never liked London, commuting by tube, the dirt, the noise, the overcrowding.’

Lea wondered if Betty’s husband was one of the men who visited the brothels when his wife was not around.

‘Lea, do you think everything’s all right?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s just—everyone’s so jumpy. Poor Rachel. And the Busabis’ house. You look out in that street and it seems like everything is just the same as it always was. No matter how many bad things happen, none of them show. I try not to worry, but you can’t help wondering—’ She saw Betty look up, hearing something offscreen. ‘Listen, Lea, I think Dean just came in. I have to go and read him the riot act. You’d better try and get some sleep.’

‘Okay. Goodnight.’

Lea logged out and went to make herself a fruit smoothie. She stood before the picture window in the lounge, looking out into the dark, dead street.
The men love it and the women hate it,
she thought.
Of course we hate it. The men prosper and we vanish.

All she could see was a reflection of herself in the window, framed in the bright empty square of the room behind. Her shadow stretched across the street, a negative space where a woman had once been.

T
HE WIVES’ ACTION
committee had finally decided on a name: the Dream World Grand Opening Gala Weekend Dinner. A meeting was hosted, somewhat reluctantly, by Betty Graham, whose maid provided the Patisserie Valerie cupcakes and a selection of fancy teas. Lea sat listening to the various arguments for and against a marquee, balloon and banners, an English menu versus an American menu, and found it hard to concentrate. Certain members were noticeable by their absence; no Mrs Busabi, no Colette, a couple of other women had dropped out and several fresh faces had taken their place, interchangeable wives in pastel tops, one of whom seemed to have inherited Mrs Busabi’s fixation on improperly rinsed salads.