Once inside my room, Kekela went straight to the couch, kicking off her high heels on the way. The shoes were black and shiny, part of her nightclub ensemble. I fixed the locks on the door, and when I turned around again she was already lounging, one long leg extended on the cushions, the other curled beneath it. The pose made her skirt ride up, revealing the top of one stocking and the elastic from the garter belt that held it secure. The stocking was black and sheer, the garter belt black and lace. With her right hand she pulled the clips from her hair, tossing each onto the coffee table, while her left worked the buttons on her blouse, unfastening them one after the other. As I watched, she teased her top open. Her bra matched the garter belt.
"I'd like something to drink, Danil." She spoke in Georgian, using the same husky register that had made me strain to hear her in the club. "What do you have to drink?"
"Vodka?" I asked.
Her smile, like everything else she did, sold me even more promise.
I opened the minibar and got out the two tiny bottles of Grey Goose, cracked them and poured them together into a glass, seeing her watch me in the reflection off the dead television screen. The act stopped when I wasn't looking at her, the eagerness and accommodation turning dull, but she was very quick, and it was right back as before when I returned to her and put the glass in her hand.
"You're not drinking with me?"
"I don't drink much."
I took the chair nearest where she had been resting her head on the armrest of the couch. She pulled from the glass, half of the alcohol vanishing, then lowered it and ran a finger around its rim, meeting my eyes as she did it. As innuendo, it should have been absurd and ineffective, but she gave it as much commitment as Bacall had ever done for Bogie, and I was surprised at its effectiveness.
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Twenty-two."
It was a lie, but it was to be expected. Every prostitute I'd spoken to had claimed to be twenty-two, even the ones who'd looked forty, the same way every bribe in Georgia and Turkey had been fifty euros. In Kekela's case, though, it didn't appear to be a big one, and I couldn't imagine her much older than twenty-six.
"Where're you from?"
"Mtskheta."
"Where's that?"
An eyebrow rose slightly. "The mountains. North of Tbilisi, on the river."
"Right," I said. "That's right."
"You work in the capital?"
"Used to. Since the war I've been in Batumi most of the time."
She nodded slightly, slowly, then finished the rest of her drink and set it on the coffee table. The glass met the glass without a sound. She straightened up on the couch, ran her hands through her hair, stretching to give me the show as she brought up her arms. The movement caused her blouse to open wide, and her breasts strained against her bra. Even at two in the morning it was still almost 35 Celsius outside, and humid, and the air conditioner was running, keeping the room cool, and it was that rather than arousal that had turned her nipples hard.
Kekela held the pose for a beat longer than she needed to if she had been merely stretching, once more boldly meeting my eyes. Her mouth opened slightly, the start of a naughty smile.
Then she froze, and her arms came down, palms planting on either side of her on the cushions, as if preparing to spring. The performance mask disappeared, too, and her jaw set. The warmth in her eyes died.
"All right," she said, and the husky tone had gone the same way of the warmth, her voice turning hard and climbing half an octave higher. "What is this?"
"What do you mean?"
"What the fuck is this?"
"I don't know what you mean, Kekela," I said.
"I mean you keep looking in my fucking eyes. You don't look at my legs. You don't look at my tits. You don't look at my ass. You look me in the goddamn eyes."
"Well," I said, "you've got very pretty eyes."
She snorted. "Are you going to fuck me or not?"
"I'd rather talk."
"I don't do talk." Kekela pushed off the couch and onto her feet. She began buttoning her blouse. "I do oral. For extra, I let you cum in my mouth. I do anal, I do threesome, I do ass-to-mouth and I do ass-to-cunt, I do just about anything you can think of."
Her blouse was closed. I hadn't moved. She scooped her two hair clips from the coffee table with one hand, then fixed a glare on me.
"But I don't. Do. Talk."
I stayed exactly as before, not moving, presenting no threat, unless she took the slight smile I had on my face as one. She turned from the hips, locating her shoes, then snapped her attention back to me, as if expecting that I'd have tried something in the second she'd looked away.
When she saw that I hadn't, she added, as if I was an idiot, "And you're not from Tbilisi."
"No, I'm not. If you want to leave, you should. I won't keep you here against your will."
"I am going to leave."
"It's just that you're from Georgia," I said. "And I was hoping that would give us a connection, no matter how small. Hoping that the language would give us a foundation of trust."
Suspicion danced on her face. "Why?"
"I need help."
"You need help?" She snorted at me again, much the same way Alena did when she felt I was being unreasonably dim-witted. "Fucking obvious, you need help."
I shrugged.
"You're paying me nine hundred dirham because you need help?"
"I can pay more."
I expected greed, but what I saw on her face then was curiosity, instead. She looked me over, this time much more thoroughly than she had at the nightclub, then gave the room another survey. It was a very nice room. Considering how much I was being charged for it, it damn well better have been.
"What kind of help?" Kekela asked.
I indicated the couch. Her mouth drew tight, nearing a scowl, and she snorted yet again. Then she sat back down, this time at the opposite end. Her feet stayed on the floor.
"What kind of help?" she asked again.
"I'm trying to find a girl," I said, and I told her the story of Tiasa Lagidze. "The ratio of men to women in Dubai, right now, at this moment, is three to one," Kekela told me over a late breakfast at the pool bar. "That's a lot of men looking to get laid."
She was feasting on a plate of fresh fruit and yogurt, washing down bites with her second mimosa. We were speaking in English and Georgian alternately. Her English was very good and barely accented, and when I'd asked her about it, she'd explained that it was the lingua franca of Dubai. It was almost eleven in the morning, and hot, already nearing 40 degrees Celsius. June marked the beginning of the off-season, the weather cruel enough to send even the most die-hard hedonists running for milder climes. Only a dozen guests moved around in the pool, and beyond it I could see perhaps half that number playing along the shore. The water of the Gulf and the water in the pool were almost the exact same shade of impossible blue. Almost everyone I saw was Caucasian-European or CIS-though two were Chinese. The service staff at the hotel, on the other hand, was almost universally Southeast Asian or Filipino. Of the few guests I was seeing, the majority were female, uniformly young and beautiful. There were no kids.
Kekela followed my gaze, then forked another piece of mango. "You're wondering if the women are all prostitutes."
"Are they?"
"The Marina isn't so good for that, at least, not during the daytime. Other hotels are better. But maybe all of them, they are whores of one kind or another."
"What does that mean?"
"They're here the same reason I'm here, Danil. They're looking for money."
I moved my attention back to her. She was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit she'd picked out and that I'd bought for her from one of the multiple hotel shops this morning, after she'd finally awoken. I'd slept on the couch, despite her offer to share the bed, a freebie bonus to the "consulting service" deal we'd negotiated the night before. Bathing suits and breakfast, it seemed, were part of the package, as well. Compared to what the other women were wearing, her suit was practically modest. Outside of the hotel, it would get her fined; on the road to Abu Dhabi, it could get her killed.