{"id":187,"date":"2013-11-17T16:58:10","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T00:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/?p=187"},"modified":"2013-12-05T11:50:37","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T19:50:37","slug":"peter-c-baker-dynamic-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cronymag.com\/c\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"Peter C. Baker<\/strong>: “Dynamic Tower”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before Abu Dhabi I never had money for travel. And so whenever I left the city for vacation\u2013\u2013whenever my plane touched off the runway\u2013\u2013I felt lifted up into a state of surprise and pleasure so sharp it brought tears to my eyes. My flight to Rome was no exception. It was a Friday afternoon, but the plane was half-empty, and I had three seats to myself. It had been just two weeks since I turned thirty, but I felt fifteen. Looking out the window at the vanishing city and sparkling Gulf below I cried softly, then fell asleep.<\/p>\n

\u200bSomewhere over the Mediterranean I was woken by a conversation from across the aisle. Two people were talking, a man and a woman. I hadn\u2019t noticed them before. They were both trim and tan, and looked similar enough to be brother and sister, but since the man was twirling a strand of the woman\u2019s long bleached-blonde hair I guessed they were lovers.<\/p>\n

\u200bAt first, half-asleep, I couldn\u2019t make out what they were saying, only that they were talking excitedly, and had Australian accents. Then:<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cWho will live there, do you think?\u201d said the man.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe woman let out an envious moan. \u201cMe<\/em>, I wish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bThe man snorted. \u201cYeah.\u201d Snorted again. \u201cUp on the eightieth floor, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bI closed my eyes and tried to will myself back to sleep. They were talking, I was sure, about a new skyscraper planned for downtown Dubai. The design had been unveiled at a press conference on Monday. Every day since, the government-owned newspaper where I worked had run at least one story on it. To my displeasure, I\u2019d been assigned to edit three.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe building was called the Dynamic Tower, and according to its architect, a Florence-based Israeli named David Fisher, it was to be the world\u2019s first rotating skyscraper: eighty floors high, each floor a single luxury apartment, and each apartment outfitted with a control panel its owners could use to rotate their entire residence as they saw fit.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cThey say that if you want the bedroom to face the sunrise,\u201d the man said, \u201cyou just rotate until it\u2019s facing east.\u201d He stuck his left pointer finger straight in the air and used it to trace a slow counterclockwise circle.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cSo cool,\u201d said the woman.<\/p>\n

\u200bHe nodded energetically, then switched his finger to circling clockwise. \u201cAnd if you want the living room to look out on Sheikh Zayed road\u2013\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bThe woman cut in: \u201cJust rotate!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bHe nodded. \u201cSo awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cDefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bThey went silent, and stayed silent long enough that I began to hope they might be done. I wanted to fall asleep and continue to Rome without hearing any more inane real estate chatter of the sort I was subjected to almost every day in the newsroom, where I sometimes felt we did little but advertise half-baked visions of the super-rich, not least our government backers. I wanted to be leaving, on vacation, gone.<\/p>\n

\u200bI thought of my friend Tom, an Irish man in his early thirties who\u2019d moved to Abu Dhabi in 2007 to be the paper\u2019s first real-estate reporter. Just recently, a few nights after my birthday, he\u2019d taken me out to a bar in the city\u2019s run-down old marina. After our third beer, he told me that when he first arrived he\u2019d started a spreadsheet tracking Abu Dhabi and Dubai construction projects, recording the dates on which they were announced, the dates on which ground was supposed to be broken, on which ground was in fact broken, and so on. We were sitting at a corner table, and he took out his laptop. The spreadsheet was color-coded. Yellow highlighting meant missed deadlines. Orange highlighting meant twice-missed deadlines. Red meant thrice-missed. A solid black rectangle meant a project had been cancelled; a gray rectangle meant it had been abandoned with no formal cancellation announcement; and dark red exclamation points were for cancelled or abandoned projects whose frustrated investors were trying to get their money back. I was tired, and Tom\u2019s computer screen was small, but I could easily see all the black, gray, red, and orange spread across it like a colorful cancer\u2013\u2013or, as Tom put it, swaying drunkenly: like a cloud, the ghost cloud of a massive unbuilt city, a shiny future hovering, stillborn, just above us, just above the real Abu Dhabi and Dubai where we lived and worked, and where every week people read articles in our newspaper about this or that just-unveiled megaproject. During his first year on the job, Tom said, he\u2019d tried several times to write about the epidemic of unbuilt buildings. But every time he pitched the idea he was told the timing wasn\u2019t right, that he had to be patient. Eventually he was moved off the real estate beat altogether. But no matter what else they had him working on, he told me, he still spent half an hour each afternoon updating that spreadsheet.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe Australians fell asleep, or at least closed their eyes and didn\u2019t talk. They probably lived in Dubai, I decided, and had caught a taxi to Abu Dhabi for the cheaper flight. They were consultants, or maybe bankers, living in one of the new all-expat towers on the city\u2019s south side, and they had read about the Dynamic Tower in the paper\u2013\u2013or, more likely, seen it on the news. Every television station in the region, and several others around the world, had been supplied with a clip in which a computer rendering of the building twisted against a computer rendering of the Dubai skyline, looking like a giant double helix forged from shimmering glass and steel. It was a movement the building would never actually make, an appearance it would never actually take on, even if it was ever built\u2013\u2013not unless all its occupants somehow coordinated their apartments, staggered them exactly so, and set them all rotating in the same direction at the exact same time. When I first saw the clip, on a television in the newsroom, I laughed. It was absurd. But at home that night, idling around the Internet in my living room, I found the clip online and watched it at least a dozen times. It was still absurd, of course\u2013\u2013there was cheesy epic action movie music in the background\u2013\u2013but something about it hypnotized me. I probably just liked imagining what it would be like to live there, high above the ground in a house that moved when I told it to.<\/p>\n

 
\n***
\n <\/p>\n

\u200bI\u2019d booked a room on the second floor of a guesthouse on Rome\u2019s eastern outskirts, east of the Tiber, and I\u2019d written its address, plus directions from the airport, on a sheet of paper I stuck in my wallet. It looked like all the other buildings on the street, and didn\u2019t even have a sign, just a placard by the doorbell. My room was small\u2013\u2013when I opened the door it hit the bed\u2013\u2013but it was clean and quiet, and the window looked down on a shady courtyard where four old men in tweed suits were playing\u00a0boules<\/em>. I opened the window and lay down, enjoying the dry, sand-free breeze and listening to the happy, arhythmic clonkings of\u00a0boule<\/em>\u00a0against ground and\u00a0boule<\/em>\u00a0against\u00a0boule<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u200bI would have fallen asleep, but my stomach started growling, and I decided to find some food. Outside I walked west, toward the setting sun, smiling at the occasional fellow pedestrian, and also at my growling stomach. In Abu Dhabi it was was one of the hottest Mays on record. Every day the temperature topped 105 degrees, and the air got thick with sand from the desert and swollen with water sucked up from the Gulf. For weeks the extremes of outdoor heat and indoor, over-air-conditioned cold had made it hard for me to enjoy food. So I listened to my growling stomach and smiled. I was off work, I was in Rome, the air was warm\u2013\u2013not hot\u2013\u2013and crisp, I had money in my pocket, and I was, for the first time in weeks, truly looking forward to eating.<\/p>\n

\u200bWhat I wanted to do, I realized, was eat myself into a stupor, eat with no goal in mind but pleasure until all I could do was stumble back to my clean quiet little room and collapse into sleep, my mind wiped free of worry.<\/p>\n

\u200bI started with pizza, pizza with pepperoni from the first pizzeria I came to. One of the few things I\u2019d managed to learn about Rome before my arrival was that at pizza places you picked the size of your slice and they charged you by weight. I had the boy behind the counter, who looked to be about twelve, cut me a big rectangular slice from a massive rectangular pie. I took it to go and ate it while walking. Grease dripped onto my shirt, one of my favorites, a gray cotton button-down, but I found I didn\u2019t mind. When I\u2019d finished I went into the next pizzeria I saw and ordered another bit slice, this one topped with eggplant. When I\u2019d finished that one I went into another pizzeria and got a third slice, a smaller one, but with circles of rich ricotta cheese on top. I was just taking my last bite when I spotted, in a bakery\u2019s display window, a row of miniature cannoli that I knew right away would be much better than any cannoli I\u2019d ever had. I went inside and bought three.<\/p>\n

\u200bSoon I came to a bustling piazza. In one corner a flock of small children was, under the loose supervision of some adults, running around in a semi-circle of fountains, shrieking with play horror as they passed through the streams of water. In the opposite corner, four old men in tweed suits played a game of\u00a0boules<\/em>. I sat on a bench in the middle and ate all three cannoli, one after another without pause, and let my gaze alternate between the children and the\u00a0boules<\/em>. The light had taken on a softness I never saw in Abu Dhabi, and was wrapping everything\u2013\u2013the fountains, the water, the children, the adults, the storefronts, the cobblestones, the passersby, some dogs, some pigeons, the old men, the\u00a0boules<\/em>,\u00a0the box the cannoli came in, me\u2013\u2013in a delicate nimbus of orange-yellow that suggested all of it would continue exactly this way forever, or at least for a very long time. I thought: no one in the world knows where I am.<\/p>\n

\u200bI hadn\u2019t even told Mom. Usually I emailed her in advance of my travels, letting her know where I was going, how I could be reached, when she could expect me to check in. We\u2019d been emailing regularly for two years, ever since my first day in Abu Dhabi\u2013\u2013long, detailed emails, many of them more involved and more personal than any face-to-face conversation we\u2019d had in years. I wrote about the dilemmas I faced at the newspaper, the compromises involved in government-sponsored journalism, and my recurring fear that I was only sticking with it for the money, money I had to admit I enjoyed very much. She responded with stories from her own life, stories I didn\u2019t remember having heard before. Many had to do with how, the year before I was born, she quit her job at the cash-strapped public school where she\u2019d begun her teaching career. She did this, she reminded me, to take a better-paying, less stressful position at a ritzy private school, a decision that brought her weeks of sleepless nights, and triggered the end of two friendships\u2013\u2013with fellow teachers\u2013\u2013that were, at the time, the most valuable in her life. The point of the stories wasn\u2019t to convey a particular lesson, just to share in kind.<\/p>\n

\u200bI wrote about my bouts of loneliness, about my long walks around Abu Dhabi, about possible travel plans. I wrote that I loved her emails, and loved her, too; she said the same. We hadn\u2019t ever talked that way before; halfway around the world, I felt closer to her than ever.<\/p>\n

\u200bBut in February she\u2019d retired. Beforehand, I\u2019d assumed that her emails would become more frequent, or longer, at least until she got used to all the new time on her hands. Instead they got shorter, and started coming less often. I tried to draw her out, asked about the shape of her new days, and whether she missed her students or school routines. Sometimes she just didn\u2019t answer; other times her answers were vague, as if she didn\u2019t quite understand the questions\u2013\u2013or did, but didn\u2019t understand how they applied to her, or found them uninteresting. On my birthday, she didn\u2019t write. More and more, when I tried to imagine her life, I didn\u2019t know what to imagine. In my mind\u2019s eye, I saw her sitting in the kitchen, just sitting there, eyes straight ahead, hands in front of her on the table. The image came to me unbidden\u2013\u2013at my work computer, in the cafeteria, in the shower, in bed\u2013\u2013and it made me miss her, not in the half-pleasant way I\u2019d grown used to, but instead with a ragged, irrational intensity that felt dangerously close to panic: panic that Mom, all alone, was in danger of fading into some diminished version of herself, one I wouldn\u2019t recognize when I saw her again.<\/p>\n

\u200bMy stomach started rumbling again, louder and more regularly than before. Foolishly, I chose to read this not as a cry of protest, a visceral\u00a0no more<\/em>, but instead as a sign I was still hungry, a call to get up, keep going. In a bar with big windows thrown open to the street I ordered a beer and a tomato and mozzarella panini and, a little while later, a plate piled high with prosciutto and marinated vegetables: peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggplant . . . In another pizzeria I bought two of the fried balls of rice, breadcrumbs, and cheese I now know are called\u00a0arancini<\/em>, and a can of blood orange soda made, according to some writing on the can, with real blood oranges. I don\u2019t remember how long this took, this second stage of walking and eating. Thirty minutes, an hour, two . . . But at some point the sun was gone, and at some other point it became obvious that all the food\u2013\u2013or certainly all the food since the piazza\u2013\u2013had been a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u200bI remember walking very slowly. I remember thinking about stomachs\u2013\u2013about how I\u2019d heard somewhere that the human stomach is no bigger than a fist. I remember making a weak fist with my right hand and imagining all I\u2019d eaten that day\u2013\u2013all the pizza crust, mozzarella, pepperoni, eggplant, ricotta, cannoli crust, cannoli filling, the sandwich, the prosciutto, the oil-soaked vegetables, the fried rice, the soda with real blood orange\u2013\u2013smooshed into a soggy fist-sized lump and set to stew in a hot pool of stomach acids.<\/p>\n

\u200bI felt faint. I wanted Pepto Bismol, which I hadn\u2019t used since childhood. If only I had some Pepto Bismol, I thought, I could drink it down and let its weird chalky pinkness coat my fist-sized stomach, at which point things would surely begin to improve. I would feel better, find the guesthouse, fall asleep, and wake up resolved to never be so foolish again. I would email Mom and tell here where I was, everything I was thinking, in language as emotionally direct as I could manage, language that would remind her of our new trans-continental closeness, and so move her to write back as she\u2019d written back before.<\/p>\n

\u200bI burped; it tasted like my stomach, and brought on a wave of nauseous dizziness. I remember entertaining a fantasy, if that\u2019s the right word, in which I fainted on the street and two friendly young Italian men rushed over to help me. Out of concern for my health they refused to leave me alone. Instead they took me back to the apartment they shared\u2013\u2013they were cousins, something like that\u2013\u2013and gently set me down to sleep on the couch. In the morning we piled into a ratty but stylish old convertible and drove to their grandparents\u2019 farm in the countryside, where I met their boisterous extended family, ate the best meal of my life, and danced late into the night to scratchy gypsy jazz records. And this, in my fantasy, was only the opening chapter of some larger adventure I now see I was always hoping for on these solitary vacations, and perhaps from the whole project of living abroad: the sort of adventures where the strangeness of a foreign land bled together with the close warmth of friends and family, the larger the better.<\/p>\n

\u200bBut I\u2019d wandered into what looked like a quiet residential neighborhood. I was alone. If I\u2019d collapsed\u2013\u2013fell to the ground, split my head on the cobblestones\u2013\u2013no one would have noticed.<\/p>\n

 
\n***
\n <\/p>\n

\u200bI spotted the cross from several blocks away, jutting out from above the doorway to a building of yellow brick. It was the squat kind of cross, with both lines of equal length, and lit by thin bands of green neon. I assumed\u2013\u2013for no good reason\u2013\u2013that this was the sign for a pharmacy, and that this particular pharmacy was open. Just walking toward it made me feel better. \u201cPepto Bismol!\u201d I said to the empty street.<\/p>\n

\u200bWhen I reached the cross there was no storefront, no display window full of medicines, and not even a sign. Just the cross and, below it, a wooden door, slightly ajar.<\/p>\n

\u200bI stood there for a minute listening to the tiny hum of the cross\u2019s green neon bands. Then I walked inside.<\/p>\n

\u200bIt appeared to be an empty waiting room, with chairs arranged in a familiar waiting-room pattern on a floor of faded linoleum tiles, and fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Across from the door I\u2019d come through was a reception window with no one behind it, and to the left of the window was another door, open, through which I heard female laughter, two distinct strains, and the major chords of what sounded like an ABBA song playing through tinny speakers.<\/p>\n

\u200bI walked to the open door and looked into the next room. I suppose I must have already realized I wasn\u2019t in a pharmacy, but now it became undeniable. There was a hospital-style bed against one wall, medical supply cabinets against another, and a syringe dispenser on the counter. The two women, who had stopped laughing and were staring at me, wore blue nursing scrubs. They were both about five-and-a-half-feet tall. One had blonde hair, the other brown. They looked young\u2013\u2013not yet twenty, I guessed\u2013\u2013and wore what seemed to me a lot of makeup for nurses at work, though it could be such standards differ from country to country. My stomach gurgled again, and I remembered what I\u2019d come for.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe two women were staring.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cI was looking for a pharmacy,\u201d I said. I didn\u2019t know the Italian word, so I guessed: \u201cFarmacia<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bThe blonde shook her head and said some frustrated-sounding Italian that included the word\u00a0farmacia<\/em>, but also\u00a0no<\/em>, or\u00a0non<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cPepto Bismol?\u201d I pointed at my stomach. \u201cStomach.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bThe blonde said some more Italian\u2013\u2013it sounded like a question\u2013\u2013and then pantomimed swallowing pills.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cNo,\u201d I said, shaking my head.<\/p>\n

\u200bShe mimed injecting herself in the arm.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cNo, no. No drugs, no. It\u2019s just . . . It\u2019s not . . . No, it\u2019s not like that.\u201d But the sight of all that medical paraphernalia was making me feel even more weak, more faint\u2013\u2013making me feel that I belonged not at a\u00a0farmacia<\/em>\u00a0but exactly where I was, with nurses to watch over me. No amount of Pepto Bismol could undo what I\u2019d done to myself; I\u2019d been a fool, a child, and in fact I was about to vomit.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe nurses must have seen it on my face, or in my posture. They sprang into motion, the blonde grabbing me hard by the arm and yanking me toward the trashcan, and so preventing me from spewing green vomit all over the floor, mucus-green stuff, gushing out of me with what felt like garden-house intensity. I tried not to look, but I saw it spattering up the interior walls of the trashcan, smelled the tang of ricotta gone bad.<\/p>\n

\u200bWhen I\u2019d finished, the song I suspected was an ABBA song had finished and been replaced a song I knew for sure was a BeeGees song.<\/p>\n

\u200bI stumbled to the bed. \u201cOh thank you,\u201d I said. \u201cThank you, thank you. I\u2019m sorry.\u00a0Grazie,\u00a0grazie<\/em>, thank you, I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m sorry.\u201d The mattress was thin, but its sheet was cool and inviting against my cheek. I couldn\u2019t help it. The blonde looked upset; she didn\u2019t want me complicating her night. But when I tried to sit up nothing happened. Again she asked me, with help from gestures, whether I\u2019d been doing drugs or drinking. Again I told her I hadn\u2019t. She stuck a thermometer in my mouth, felt my neck, put a gloved finger in my mouth and wormed it around.<\/p>\n

\u200bShe said some Italian. I heard the word\u00a0acqua\u00a0and assumed she was offering me water. \u201cYes, please, yes. Si.\u00a0Grazie<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe shook her head. \u201cYou\u2013\u2013\u201dshe pointed at me\u2013\u2013\u201cacqua<\/em>\u201d\u2013\u2013she pantomimed drinking from a cup\u2013\u2013\u201cto-day?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bI thought for a moment. \u201cNo,\u201d I said, sheepish. \u201cNo\u00a0acqua<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cZero?\u201d She made her hand into an\u00a0O.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cZero. Stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe nodded. \u201cStupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bHere, I think, my memory is fuzziest. The blonde nurse asked no more questions, none that I can remember. I looked over and saw her preparing a syringe. The brunette was gone\u2013\u2013maybe dealing with the vomit-filled trashcan.<\/p>\n

\u200bA syringe. I tried, through the language barrier and the thickening fog of fatigue, to voice some concern. What was it? What if I was allergic? What I think the blonde said was: \u201cNo, no allergy, no. Is good, no.\u201d I dwelt unproductively on the question of what these two young women would do if, having stuck me with whatever they were going to stick me with\u2013\u2013for despite my alarm I knew I wouldn\u2019t stop them\u2013\u2013I broke out in hives, or began to convulse or froth at the mouth? Or if somehow I died, leaving Mom to wonder for the rest of her life why I\u2019d gone to Rome without telling her.<\/p>\n

\u200bWho was it who undid my belt and pulled down my pants? How did I end up lying face-down on the bed? And when, exactly, did I realize the syringe was destined for my right ass cheek? I felt my underwear being moved down, the softness of a cotton swab, the needle. I probably tensed in exactly the way you\u2019re not supposed to. Then my underwear was back in place, and the blonde nurse was walking away.<\/p>\n

 
\n***
\n <\/p>\n

\u200bThe next thing I remember is the brunette sitting on a chair by the bed, looking through my wallet. I was on my back. The stereo was off. I tried to pull my pants up but my arms were heavy, and I wondered if the blonde, who was nowhere to be seen, had given me a sedative.<\/p>\n

\u200bWhen she saw I was awake, the brunette put down my wallet and picked up a clipboard. \u201cAmericano<\/em>?” She said, with none of the blonde\u2019s impatience.<\/p>\n

\u200bI nodded.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cNew York?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bI shook my head.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cLA?\u201d For her it was two words: el, ay.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cTiny town.\u201d She made a note on the clipboard, I can\u2019t imagine what.\u200b\u201cCarlisle,\u201d I said. \u201cCar-lie-el. Penn-sill-vain-ya.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bThe pine-scented cleaning fluid reminded me of Mom\u2019s backyard in summer, which was among my favorite places in the world. It still is, I suppose, though I haven\u2019t been there in years.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe brunette nodded, smiled, wrote something down.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cBut not now. Not\u2013\u2013I don\u2019t live there now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe nodded. I cursed myself for not having made the effort to learn even a few basic phrases of Italian. I guessed: \u201cNon habito?\u00a0Non habito in America<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe said some Italian that had the inflection of, \u201cWell where, then?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cAbu Dhabi?\u201d I don\u2019t know why I felt such a need to set the record straight, when the record in question would almost definitely never be consulted by anyone, would surely be stuck in a filing cabinet until, on some inevitable day, someone tossed it out. But I persisted. \u201cAbu Dhabi. Two years, Abu Dhabi.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cBoodabee?\u201d She looked curious.<\/p>\n

\u200bI could feel frustration sapping what little energy I had left, and I wondered if I was in danger of fainting. I took a deep breath, and the pine-scented cleaning fluid raced up my nose. Had I fainted already, after the shot? Or just fallen asleep? What, technically, was the difference?<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cYou know Dubai?\u201d I asked. On my visits back home, I\u2019d found that more people in Carlisle had heard of Dubai than Abu Dhabi, at least among Mom\u2019s friends and my old classmates and coworkers. (It was different in Asia, especially South Asia, where both cities were known quite well, and many people I met knew someone who was working in one or both.)<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cDubai!\u201d The brunette had already been smiling; now she beamed.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cYes, Dubai. Same country. As Abu Dhabi. But\u2013\u2013\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cDubai!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe stood up, set her clipboard on the chair, and walked to the center of the room. After a deep breath, she struck a pose: legs slightly bent, arms raised above her head. The blonde came in\u2013\u2013from where I didn\u2019t see\u2013\u2013scowling and smelling of cigarettes. When the brunette saw her, she let loose a string of enthusiastic Italian that included the words Americano<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Dubai<\/em>. The blonde said nothing and kept scowling. The brunette kicked one of her legs out and began to twirl, round and round with such fluidity that I wondered whether she\u2019d taken ballet lessons as a child, or was perhaps even taking them now, during the days she kept free by working at night. She twirled round and round, propelled by nothing but her right leg, all the while keeping her arms above her head.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cDubai!\u201d she said, twirling. Then a bunch of Italian. \u201cDubai!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe twirled, she was impossibly graceful, she appeared\u2013\u2013to my tired, potentially drug-addled self\u2013\u2013to be defying some law of physics, twirling and twirling without pause, without slowing. Even the blonde, I saw, had let go of her scowl.<\/p>\n

\u200bHow many times can she possibly have twirled like that? When she stopped, her face was flushed from the exertion, and also with bashfulness, the special kind that comes only from having done something very well.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cDubai?\u201d she said. \u201cDubai,\u00a0si<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe looked so happy that whatever she was asking I wanted to say yes. \u201cYes,\u201d I said, laughing. \u201cYes, Dubai, Dubai!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe laughed along with me, and kept laughing as she took up the clipboard and wrote on it. For all I know she wrote that I lived in Dubai. But I was tired, as if\u00a0I\u00a0had been the one twirling round and round, I was falling asleep, I still couldn\u2019t think of any reason it could matter whether the form was filled out correctly. Tracking: in case I was somehow caught up in the early stages of a global outbreak of some terrible contagious disease . . . It was only after the brunette had set some water by my bed, after the room had gone gauzy and began to float up away\u2013\u2013it was only then that I realized the brunette might have been trying, with her dance, to refer to the Dynamic Tower, brainchild of the architect David Fisher, who though born in Tel Aviv was based in Florence, and whose newest design would have been on the news in Rome, too, twirling round and round and murmuring through the screen to anyone in sight:\u00a0Dubai,\u00a0Dubai,\u00a0Dubai<\/em>\u00a0. . .<\/p>\n

 
\n***
\n <\/p>\n

\u200bWhen I woke, my right leg was sore, but otherwise I felt fine. My nurses had been replaced by two short men, one with a shaved head, one with a mohawk. Once they saw I was awake, they hurried me out. They weren\u2019t rude, but they obviously wanted me gone.<\/p>\n

Outside the sun was starting to rise. It must have been the middle of the night in Carlisle; I wondered if Mom was awake.<\/p>\n

\u200bI hadn\u2019t taken ten steps when someone called my name from across the street. It was the brunette nurse, sitting on a stoop with the blonde, and waving me over. Both were still in their scrubs, both had black purses hanging from their right shoulders, and both were smoking cigarettes. Their shifts must have just ended.<\/p>\n

\u200bCrossing the street, I caught a glimpse of myself in some storefront glass. My shirt was wrinkled and spotted with pizza grease. My hair and face were greasy, too. But I looked basically healthy, and I couldn\u2019t help but grin.<\/p>\n

\u200bThe brunette stubbed out her cigarette on the ground and pointed at herself. \u201cConcetta.\u201d Then she pointed to the blonde, who was looking me up and down with the same undisguised skepticism she\u2019d shown me the night before. \u201cGiussepina.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bI repeated both names as best I could.<\/p>\n

\u200bConcetta asked me something, but of course I couldn\u2019t understand. Then she asked Giussepina something, but all she did was sigh and shake her head in resignation, then set off walking, fast. Concetta gestured for me to follow. We trailed her for three blocks before she stopped, fished some keys from her purse, got into a red car, and got it started. The engine made a terrible rattling noise. Concetta sat in the front, I sat in the back. If there were seatbelts, I didn\u2019t find them. The streets were empty, and Giussepina drove fast; no matter how narrow the street or sharp the curve, she wouldn\u2019t slow down. Her car smelled of marijuana and lavender perfume. At one point, I thought we were going to hit a produce truck pulling out of an alley, but Concetta shrieked and Giussepina slammed on the brakes, throwing me against the back of her seat. She muttered something; I thought I heard the word\u00a0Dubai<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cDubai,\u201d I said. \u201cYou know Dubai? The tower?\u201d I tried to put my hands above my head in an approximation of Concetta\u2019s dance. \u201cThe skyscraper? That moves?\u201d But neither of them responded. We kept careening down narrow streets. I recognized nothing from the previous day, and each time I spotted the sun through a gap between buildings it was higher in the sky. Concetta kept looking back, checking on me. I tried to wink at her, but instead a blink came out. I tried again; again, just a blink. She laughed, and I felt the pleasure of an adventure revealing itself to me, teaching me its language.<\/p>\n

\u200bTo be home again with Mom, sharing life with her, day by day . . . It sounded great. The only thing that sounded more great was\u00a0not to be there<\/em>\u2013\u2013to instead be exactly where I was, in this moment or another like it.<\/p>\n

\u200bWhy wouldn\u2019t Mom write like she used to?<\/p>\n

\u200bAnd why was I so sure, at that very second, she was sitting in the kitchen, in the dark?<\/p>\n

\u200bThe car stopped. Giussepina and Concetta looked back at me as if awaiting instructions\u2013\u2013as if something had to be decided, and I was the one who had to decide it.<\/p>\n

Concetta pointed out the window. I looked; it was a street, just a street like all the others.<\/p>\n

She pointed again. All I could do was shrug. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bShe got out of the car and gestured for me to follow. Concetta walked up the nearest door and pointed to a tiny placard by the doorbell.<\/p>\n

\u200bIt was my guesthouse. Or maybe (I thought for a moment) a different guesthouse with the same name. The street felt so unfamiliar I didn\u2019t quite believe I\u2019d been there less than 24 hours ago, napping and listening to\u00a0boules<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u200bI took out my wallet to check the address on the piece of paper in my wallet. And remembered: Concetta had gone through my wallet. There it was, number and street, and behind the Euros was a laminated card I\u2019d made with Mom\u2019s phone number and, in several languages, the words EMERGENCY CONTACT. Every time I traveled to a new country, I reprinted the card to include whatever language or languages they spoke there. Mom\u2019s idea. A good idea. Concetta was looking at me expectantly; I smiled and nodded with what I hoped looked like conviction, even though I still had no memory of having been here before. I wonder if maybe she\u2019d seen the card and called the number, or thought about calling her. If the phone had rung at home. She put a hand on my shoulder, and I felt we might embrace, but then Giussepina honked her horn. Concetta hesitated for just a second, then kissed me fast on the cheek and hurried into the car. I like to think I saw her reaching for the window crank, maybe to roll it down and tell me her phone number, or invite me to a party that night at one of her ballerina friend\u2019s houses. But Giussepina took off, tearing down the street, robbing me of further adventure, or at least whatever particular adventure this might have become, her car\u2019s engine rattling loud enough to drown out my cries, loud enough to wake any of the street\u2019s residents who were still asleep. Anyone who walked to his or her window or balcony to see what the racket was might have seen a disheveled young man running down the street in pursuit of a rattling red car pockmarked with rust, the gap between man and car growing larger and larger until the car was gone and he threw up his hands\u2013\u2013less, it seemed, out of genuine frustration and more in simple recognition that he had been outrun.<\/p>\n

 
\n 
\nPeter C. Baker lives in Chicago.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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