Accompanied by roof-shaking applause, the Hyatt prostitutes, nearly twenty in number, were running up to a makeshift stage where microphones had been set up for them. For this occasion, the nocturnal butterflies weren’t dressed in their usually slinky odes to the midriff and the hanging underarm. Some were wearing men’s suits and cowboy hats, others U.S. Army camouflage and Oakley sunglasses, and still others appeared in blackface, holding cardboard spears, the word “Somalians” written across their tarred naked breasts. “It’s like that Japanese theater,” Mr. Nanabragov said. “Where the women play both genders.”
The prostitutes were timidly smiling at us from the stage, brushing the hair from their full dimpled faces, and throwing kisses to their customers, who were recognizable by the loudest applause and by calls of “Fatima, over here!” and “Hey, Natasha, who’s your daddy?”
Nana was laughing at the display of her fallen countrywomen, and I was wanting to join in the fun when I noticed a man at a nearby table solemnly staring into his bowl of chili, his hands rigid in his lap. I recognized that tanned peach head immediately. “It’s Colonel Svyokla!” I shouted over to Mr. Nanabragov. “It’s Sakha’s murderer! Who invited him? Why is he here?”
“Shhh, sonny,” Mr. Nanabragov said with a finger pressed to his lips. “It’s a Halliburton party. We’ve got to be respectful. Let’s deal with it later.”
“I like it when you get all riled up,” Nana said, circling one of my ears with her finger. “You’re sexy when you stand for something, Misha.”
One of the Hyatt prostitutes, a slim pretty one with naturally blond locks and eyes the color of pewter, was trying to get our attention. “Excuse me, gentlemen and lady!” she shouted. “Excuse me, please!” She waited for the noise to die down, then looked at a notecard and blushed terribly. “On behalf of the KBR Ladies’ Auxiliary”—she pointed to her fellow sex workers—“and the various ethnic people of the Republika Absurdsvani, I would like to say to Golly Burton, thank you for coming to our country!”
Wild applause from every table. Mr. Nanabragov got up to twitch. Nana’s brother, Bubi, stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. I motioned for a passing waiter to bring me a crawfish.
“Golly Burton is famous company,” the prostitute continued. “Everybody knows such company. And KBR is proud subsidiary of Golly Burton. We in Absurdsvani are sometimes not deserving of KBR services. We fight among ourselves. We make violence. So stupid! Now we got Figa-6 oil field coming online, thanks be to Golly Burton. Now our children have many oils to make their future…” She looked at the notecard and tried to mouth the word. “Prosperous…”
“Preposterous!” someone corrected her.
“Take it all off, baby!” another shouted.
The prostitute instinctively tugged down on her gown to show off her perfect young shoulders. “And now,” she said, “without further make do, I give you the Ladies’ Auxiliary historical tribute to KBR!”
The girls told the story of Kellogg, Brown & Root through several clever musical numbers. The first, “We’ve Got Friends in High Places (Look at All ’Em Smiling Faces),” paid homage to Brown & Root’s notorious influence peddling, from the first prime rib bought for a Texas roads commissioner to the decades-long wooing of Lyndon B. Johnson. Later, the girls celebrated Brown & Root’s many military-service contracts overseas, from Vietnam (“Oh, me so horny!”) to Somalia (“Oh, it’s so thorny!”) to Bosnia, where they broke into a note-perfect rendition of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” (“I see a little silhouetto of a Serb / Golly Burt! Golly Burt! Will you do the fandango?”).
But the most moving number of the evening was “Gonna Be Your Baby Daddy,” a slow rhythm-and-blues duet between a “KBR worker” obsessed with his productivity at the Figa-6 oil fields and his long-suffering girlfriend, an Absurdi prostitute.
Finally the alleged KBR worker (an older hooker wearing a fake mustache) turned away from her beloved to address the audience in a thick baritone: “Houston, we’ve got a problem…”
An offstage American voice: “Roger that, KBR employee. What’s your problem?”
“I… I think I’m in love.”
Our hero broke down and promised to marry the prostitute, make her “honorable,” and pay for her to get Microsoft-certified at a Houston community college.
The finale loosened some tears from the older Absurdi ladies, deep into their dessert of cheesecake and baklava, and even Nana turned to me and said, “Aw, that’s kinda sweet.”
The lead prostitute thanked everyone for the thunderous applause and invited the KBR men to pile into a special suite on the fortieth floor, where they could “drill us good.” With the roar of a Boeing breaking free of gravity, a hundred Texans and Scotsmen rushed the stage.
Nana and I headed for the goody bags.
32
I woke up early the next day and started squeezing myself into a Hyatt robe. It was difficult going at first (the robe was much too small), but eventually at least half of my body was covered in its downy softness. I felt whole and powerful, like the Reichstag must have felt when it was being draped by Christo. I ordered in large plates of fruit and pastry and steaming jugs of coffee and tea.
It was time for my sit-down with Mr. Nanabragov and Parka Mook.
At the appointed hour (plus another hour), they marched into the living room and took their places on opposite sofas, the playwright huddled next to me, glancing uncomfortably at his clutched hands, Mr. Nanabragov spread out, twitching brightly in the morning sun.
“We are here with excellent news,” Mr. Nanabragov said. He stuck his hand down his shirt and jerked lively. “We just returned from a plenary council of the State Committee for the Restoration of Order and Democracy. We were all so impressed by you at dinner last week. You’re every bit as cosmopolitan as your father. In some ways,
