Djibouti

CHAPTER THREE

YOU WENT TO A fashion show in Paris to look for a girlfriend," Dara said. "Is that right?"

"I remember what one it was, Chanel. The guy who runs the house wears the stiff collar and shades? He was there, came out at the end."

Billy the Kid started to grin.

"I was there to look over the girls. See if I might pick one out. They tend to be skinny, but that's okay, they all in pretty good shape."

"Ask her if she wants to go sailing?"

"Not right away. I see a girl for forty-eight hours. In two days you find out all you need to know. She acts intelligent, but she's busting her ass to pick the right words, uses I when she means me, and reads the wrong books, if she reads. I don't want to sound heartless, but we'll be doing a lot of reading aboard, talking about books. I ask if she's ever shared a tiny flat with another girl and thrown things at her. Nine out of ten say, 'No, but I sure wanted to.'"

"She fails the test?"

"Becomes a forty-eighter. I start with looks, get that out of the way. Then brains and personality. I'll be with this girl a good four months in fairly tight quarters. Now if she's funny and smart, that's a combination made in heaven."

"Helene's funny?"

"Helene's the goods." DARA TOLD XAVIER SHE wanted to have dinner out of the hotel. She'd looked up the Blue Nile on rue d'Ethiopie, a five-star restaurant and it sounded just right.

Xavier said, "Who gave it the five stars, the owner? You want to have a girl wash your right hand? Pours water over your fingers and catches it in a bowl? Then you take a towel off her arm? What if you left-handed?"

"We're going," Dara said.

"You want the girl shovin some kind of stew on your Ethiopian flatbread? They call it injera, so you know what the girl's tellin you. Or maybe you go for the sega wat, the diced lamb all cut up. These fine women make a show of servin us. Say no to the Queen of Sheba salad. We don't eat salad in Djibouti. Or get out of the Blue Nile in less than three hours. We be finishin off three different wines at one-fifty a bottle, and that's house wine."

"We're not going," Dara said.

They went out for the evening with no plan other than meet Billy and Helene later at a club, Dara planning to shoot Djibouti nightlife. Prowl around with her hand on the camera in her bag. Billy had asked them to dinner, but Dara said they'd be working most of the evening. See you later on. He'd told Xavier the name of the club. She would love to find out what he was up to, the generous rich guy interested in her work; once in a while with a hint of East Texas country boy looking for Saudi crude. After a few glasses of wine she might ask him, "Billy, what are you up to out here in your sailboat? What's your game?" He'd laugh at her and she wouldn't have time to get him to talk. This evening she was sneak-shooting Djibouti. She wouldn't mind using it as the title of her documentary. Djibouti. She loved saying it. XAVIER TOOK HER TO the Chez Chalumeau restaurant on the rue de Paris. They sat down at the table and Dara put on her sunglasses wondering why it was so bright in here. Xavier said, "So you can see what they put in front of you. They cook French mostly. The side dishes could be Arab, but good here. Go with the lamb, you won't get in trouble."

Dara said to her menu, "Which one's fish?"

"Their tuna they call a Somali name. They got shark, the fin, octopus they fix in its ink, oysters. The crabs are good if they fresh. Or they can fry up some squid's tasty." Xavier said, "Remember, we gonna be eatin fish all the next month."

They ordered lamb, no salad, and a bottle of red. Xavier ordered another bottle as the floor show came on: four Somali girls shaking their bums to a drum and a guy singing or making sounds, the four dressed in long pink pongee gowns with panels, scarves they swished around their hips as they kept their bums rolling, spinning, bumping…Dara said, "The Blue Nile doesn't have cooch dancers, does it?"

"I don't believe they have."

"I want to know how they do it."

"Practice," Xavier said. "We get out on the boat, I'll beat on something and you try and get your ass up to Somali speed." THEY FOLLOWED THE RUE de Paris to the Place Menelik to sit at a street cafe. "Have a cup of coffee and watch Djibouti nightlife," Xavier said. "Cup of coffee and sip some cognac. Watch the tourists cuttin up. Off a cruise ship come down through the Suez. They sayin, 'Ain't Africa fun?' They could be in Marseilles doin the same thing." Dara busy working her camcorder over Menelik Square. "You gettin the Foreign Legionnaires. French boys never seen anything like these slim black chicks givin 'em eyes. Got epaulets on their shoulders, with fringe, and a sash around their waist. Man, this is where to get stationed, if you can stand the heat. Go in the clubs, see the girls rubbin against the boys. You notice they don't wear that flap off the back of their kepis no more, like Beau Geste? You gettin the action?" Dara was shooting with the camera in plain sight. "What you don't see, too many American military hangin out. They been warned about the girls. You see some sailors, some Shore Patrol. Look over there. Keep 'em from bringin home any kind of African dose," Xavier said. "Cafe Las Vegas, run by a Corsican. That's where we meetin Billy and the model." BILLY SAID, "I CAN'T believe we're in a French joint on the rue de Paris and they don't have Perrier-Jouet, Blanc de Blanc '99?"

Xavier said, "I can't either. Let's go talk to the man, see if he has something like it. I never had a beverage cost nine hundred dollars a bottle."

They left Dara and Helene alone at the table, Dara's blond hair washed and fluffed out, Helene's red hair-no stylist in sight-tied back. She said to Dara, "I can feel my face shining."

Dara said, "You look good." She hadn't spoken more than a few words to Helene with Billy Wynn at the table. Now she said, "I can't imagine sailing all the way around the world," and waited.

Helene said, "You mean on a boat or with Billy?"

The girls by themselves now, Billy and Xavier checking the wine list at the bar.

Helene said, "I'm actually going to powder my nose," and got up from the table. After a moment Dara got up and followed her into the restroom.

"I'll see what I can fix," Dara said.

Helene was at a mirror brushing something on her cheeks. Dara moved in to look at herself in part of the mirror and Helene edged over a few inches. Dara took out her lipstick.

"I don't use any unless it's some kind of occasion." She looked at Helene in the mirror. "You have a wonderful tan. It brings out your freckles. Makes you look like a kid."

"I'm thirty-four. Billy thinks I'm in my twenties and I let him."

Now Helene was staring at Dara's reflection.

"You know what I keep thinking about, constantly? Going out on that fucking boat again."

"For four months," Dara said.

"Or longer. 'Take in the mains'l. Lay down to the galley and put on some chow.' 'Aye, aye, Skipper.' I sound like an idiot."

"You don't get seasick?"

"I get bored."

"You don't have to go."

Helene said, "You don't know what's at stake. Billy's almost twenty years older than I am. We marry and he ever passes away? I'd be something like the thirtieth-richest woman in America."

"He told you that?"

"An inducement, giving me a goal."

"It could be a long wait," Dara said. "He seems in good health. He doesn't smoke."

"Cigars," Helene said. "You think I'm out of my mind?"

"You must like him-"

"I do. He's kind…he's thoughtful…He's funny sometimes. He calls Obama 'that spear-chucker we got in the White House,' but Billy likes him, I can tell." She looked at Dara's reflection again.

"You married?"

"I've been too busy," Dara said, "to think about it."

"But you're not, are you, a lesbian? Some of the girls I work with are. They're nice, not especially bitchy. Sometimes I'll tell a guy I'm one to shut him down."

Dara said, "I like guys. But I like whatever I'm doing right now, whatever I want, more. I lived with a lawyer once-he didn't want to get married either. He'd tell me why we were better off single living together and go through a, b, c, once in a while, d. He'd thought of another reason."

"What's c, having sex anytime he wants?"

"He talked constantly. He'd say things he thought were funny. He'd start telling me a fact, anything, about world populations and go on and on. One time I asked him a question about the Supreme Court he could've almost answered yes or no. He started talking and I wanted to shoot myself."

"You were fucked, and you did it to yourself," Helene said. "Billy tells long stories about investigations-I guess for the government-and makes it sound like he's in it. Billy goes, 'Me? No.' Takes a swig of champagne. 'But I know things.' He's either a lovable jerkoff or, I don't know, maybe some kind of CIA guy. But you know what's weird? Wherever we are, I know somehow he's going to hand me a glass of champagne."

"He turns you down, you're still a runway star with the hair and the body."

"If I ever get in shape again. You're the first person I've felt I can talk to. You know why I'd marry him, all the bullshit aside, because he's a fucking honest-to-God billionaire. I knew you'd smile. He doesn't have to be funny. He can talk all he wants. But why is he always handing me a glass of champagne?"

"I wouldn't think to get you drunk and seduce you."

"I'm practically bare-ass on the boat. No top, ever, out of sight of land. He doesn't want some sneak with binoculars seeing what he's got."

Dara said, "What's the problem?"

"I don't know how long I can last."

"If you want to quit, go out in the boat tomorrow and throw up."

"I don't get seasick."

"Put your finger down your throat. Or, stay with it and write a book. Tell what happens going around the world with a billionaire. And maybe around and around. You could get an advance, I think at least a million, and a pro to write it for you. What's the difference?"

"If he turns me down, I write the book in my own words. And if I marry him I don't have to write the book."

Dara said, "I'm gonna stop worrying about you."

They got back to the table as Xavier and Billy Wynn were coming with a Somali in a white suit, the shirt open, a yellow scarf looped about his shoulders. Xavier calling, "Dara, we got us a pirate." FIVE OF THEM SAT around the table with bottles of Blanc de Blanc Billy brought from the bar he said for openers, Xavier anxious to introduce his pirate.

"Dara, like you to meet Idris Mohammed."

Idris rose to his feet and bowed.

"Commander of a gang of swashbucklers run out in the gulf and hijack whatever ships look good. Idris say he's never lost a man or killed any crew on the ships."

"I can't tell you," Dara said, "how happy I am to meet you. May I call you Idris?" It got a look from Xavier.

Her pirate had those Somali cheekbones in a thin face, a good-looking guy with a neat beard and white teeth smiling at her. He said, "Yes, Idris, of course," with an African accent.

Dara asked him, not wasting a moment, if he thought of himself as a pirate, or had a more acceptable name for what he did. Idris smiled.

"I think of us as the Coast Guard giving fines to ships that contaminate our seas, thousands of them leaving their waste in the waters we once fished."

"You were a fisherman?"

"My family."

"You speak English so well-did you ever live in America?"

"You detect that, uh? Yes, Miami University in the state of Ohio for part of several years."

"Wow," Dara said. "What did you study?"

"It was my understanding you don't study too much there."

Dara smiled and then Idris smiled.

"You're my first pirate," Dara said. "Did Xavier tell you what we're doing?"

"Making a movie, yes, about pirates. If I can help you I will. My home is in Eyl, in Somalia, but I'm here at least a week each month. I have a residence in the French Quarter and a car to get me around, a Mercedes-Benz drophead. It's black, completely black, with dark windows to keep out the sun."

Sounding proud of it.

"You drive to Eyl?"

"Once in a while. Or I travel with a friend who has a Bentley and a driver."

"That wouldn't be Ari the Sheikh Bakar, would it? Known to his chums in England as Harry?"

"Ah, you are the one he met on the plane from Paris. Of course, Dara Barr, the filmmaker. I saw him briefly this afternoon. Yes, he said he met you, but you haven't called him."

"I did, but there was no answer."

"Harry keeps busy. He runs around being the good guy."

"He said his job is to talk to pirates."

"Yes, he does that, tries to convince us there is no future in piracy. I tell him, who needs the future? We can make enough now to improve our lives. There is nothing dishonorable in what we do. The sea is our life."

"Ask him," Billy Wynn said, "how much he thinks he'll get for that Saudi tanker?"

Idris said, "It's taking months, isn't it?" a pleasant sound to his voice. "That one isn't mine, so I don't know if progress is being made in negotiating a payment."

"They started out wanting twenty-five million," Billy said, "the ship and its load of crude worth ten times that."

"Well," Idris said, "they could settle for only two or three million, it would still be profitable."

"You know," Dara said, "there are warships hunting you. The American navy, the French, German, Greek, even the Chinese."

"Yes, I think I saw one or two warships," Idris said. "I believe they're painted gray?"

Having fun with her.

"You and Harry," Dara said, "are sworn enemies, but it sounds like you're friends."

"Dear, we met in this club two years ago, and had a good laugh we find out I'm the bad guy and he's the good guy. I tried to get him to quit acting respectable and become a pirate. You know what he said, 'I don't need to make money that way. Mother sends me an allowance. Whatever I need.'"

"He sounds like a cool guy," Billy said. "I should talk to him."

Then Idris asked Dara if she'd like to go for a drive. Dara hesitated a few seconds before she asked him to swear in the name of Allah he was a pirate and not putting her on. He swore he was a man of honor from Miami University in Ohio.

Xavier said, "Girl, we leavin town oh-six-hundred. That's A.M."

Too late. Dara was walking out with Idris.

Xavier settled back, thinking, Now you worried about her goin out with an African pirate, after puttin up with Bosnian thugs and white supremacy assholes makin her pictures? She's gonna shoot him in his Mercedes and fit it in someplace.