"That's why you're here?" I asked. "For the money?"
"Not at first." She finished chewing, swallowed, smiling ruefully. "No, you wouldn't believe me."
"Try me."
"Maybe I'm looking for Mr. Right."
"Your search has taken you far from home."
"I sure as hell wasn't finding him in Tbilisi."
"And how's it going?"
She sipped again at her mimosa. "I've been here for three years, and I'm still single. The money is good, but it's not enough, not for what I want."
"Nine hundred dirham a night, that's-"
"About a hundred and fifty euro," Kekela said. "Most of the time it's not for the night with me. Three hundred for two hours. If it's a good night, I can make six hundred euro. At home that's good money; here, it's enough to get by. I have to pay the government, I have to pay rent, buy clothes, food, medical, everything. Then there are bribes-you have to pay the places you work out of, the clubs and the bars. I try to send money back home, too, you know. And because everyone here has so much money, everything costs so much money."
"You pay the government?"
"For my work visa, as an entertainer. Sixteen hundred dirham, every couple of months. Prostitution isn't legal, but it isn't so illegal they want to stop it. Three to one, like I said, and of those three, many are like you, traveling alone on business of one sort or another. Dubai wants their money, so they make it easy for them to spend it on the things they like."
"Maybe you should raise your rates."
"I'd price myself out of the market," she said, without a hint of irony. "I already charge the most I can get away with for what I am. The Chinese and Asian girls, they're the cheapest. Then you get the Africans, then girls like me, the CIS girls they call us, all the Confederation of Independent States that used to be the Soviet Union. Russians, Uzbeks, Georgians, Ukrainians, Kazaks, you know. We're mid-range. The really high-end, expensive ones, those are the regional girls. Except for the Iraqis, they used to be more expensive, but there are so many now, the price for them has dropped."
I drank some orange juice, thinking that Kekela talked about her work with the same disconnect that Alena and I talked about ours.
"Still doesn't tell me how you got here."
Kekela brushed stray hair out of her face. "A friend from my village, she had been abroad. She came home, said that there was a lot of work for girls in Dubai, that I could get a job in a restaurant, or maybe even singing in a club."
"You believed her?"
"I didn't have a reason not to. And rich Arabs had to be better than where I was." She turned her champagne flute in her fingers, looking at her reflection in the glass. "It's not like with your Tiasa, Danil. I came on my own, I paid my own way, I had my own papers, so I was in a better position, I could make a choice."
"Is that what this is for you? A choice?"
"You are asking me a lot of questions."
"That's the arrangement, isn't it? I ask questions, you answer them."
"The deal didn't cover questions about me."
"I'm curious."
She put the glass down, removing her sunglasses. I'd bought them for her at the same time I'd bought the bathing suit. At her request, of course.
"Worry about saving one girl at a time," Kekela told me. "I'm going swimming. Would you like to join me?"
I shook my head.
"Then I'll see you back in your room. Say, three hours."
She headed into the water, diving from the edge of the pool, breaking the rippling sheet of blue. I watched as she swam the length, reached the opposite end. She took hold of the ledge, looking back toward me, and there was enough distance between us that I couldn't make out her expression. She was probably laughing.
I charged the meal to my room, then went to find the health club, hoping for an outlet for my impatience and my doubt. Two hours managed most of the impatience, but the doubt still lingered as I made my way back to the room and into the shower. Kekela's game was obvious, and we both understood it. She would take me for everything she could, but in the end, she would have to balance that with a result, something to square the account. The money didn't matter to me. What mattered was the time.
But until the sun went down and the expats flooded the clubs, there wasn't much either of us could do but wait. I was out of the shower and going through Bakhar's address book for the eleventh time when there was a knock on my door. When I checked the spyhole, I saw Kekela, in her swimsuit, towel wrapped around her hips and another around her hair. Beside her, with a hand on her upper arm, stood a grim-looking Filipino man, short and burly, in the plainclothes uniform of hotel security.
"He needs my passport," Kekela told me when I opened the door. She spoke in Georgian, her tone flat as a board.
"Mr. Joshi," the man said, using English. "This woman says she's your guest?"
"I hope that's not a problem," I said.
He released her, and I could see the color on Kekela's skin from where he'd held her arm tighter than he'd needed to. I moved out of her way, letting her into the room.
"We need to make a photocopy of her passport," the man said. "It's hotel policy."
"Sure," I said. "Just a second."
I left him holding the door open, stepped around into the bedroom, where Kekela had left her clothes from the night before. She'd already opened her purse, had her passport in hand. I took it from her.
"It's not a problem," Kekela said, in Georgian. "It happens, it's happened to me before."
"Did he hurt you?" I asked.
She looked surprised, needed half a moment to recover. Then she shook her head. "No. No, I'm fine."
From my wallet, I took out three five-hundred-dirham bills, folding them together once and then once again. I tucked the money inside the front flap of her passport. The document looked legit, dog-eared and well thumbed, and according to the vitals, Kekela's name was Kekela Alkhazovi, and she was twenty-seven years old.
"Get dressed," I told Kekela, then went back to the door, where the man from hotel security was waiting patiently, just as I'd left him. I handed him her passport.
"I trust you'll bring it back promptly," I said.
The man ran a stubby thumb along the edge of the document, feeling the bulge made by my bribe. "Right away."
"And I trust this won't happen again."
He frowned slightly. "Will you be bringing any other female guests to the hotel, Mr. Joshi?"
"Not planning on it."
"Then this will certainly be the last of the matter. You have my apologies for any inconvenience."
I thought about saying that I wasn't the one he should be apologizing to, then thought it would be an absurd thing to say. Prostitution was clearly such an open secret the hotel felt obliged to keep their own records of the transactions, the same way they kept records of their guests. Everyone, it seemed, knew the part they were to play, except for me.
He departed, and I shut and locked the door. The shower had started in the bathroom. I returned to the desk where I'd been working, pulling out Bakhar's little black book once more, again checking it against the files I'd pulled off the BlackBerry. Neither had any numbers for Dubai, and I wasn't finding anything new.
Eight minutes after hotel security departed, there was another knock on the door, this time a bellboy returning the passport. He'd brought a complimentary bottle of champagne up, as well. I sent him away with a tip, thinking that it bordered on farce, that I was giving money in return for a gift that had come from a bribe as a result of the prostitute in my room.