“Yeah. Resistance, in spite of overwhelming odds. We never see it, but it must be going on all around us. We don’t know who’s who or what’s what, but . . .” Kim looked at the lion again and at the disintegrating figure trapped beneath it, “. . . this is a reminder. They will prevail and then,” she turned, “hordes of tourists will come here, not one of whom will say, ‘A little underwhelming, isn’t it?’”
“I want to make sex with you.”
Same voice, same words. The next night.
Another state of alert gripped Thea, stayed with her, as she waited out the hours, listening fretfully to every sound in the corridor, but once again, in the light of day, when nighttime felt a long time ago and a long way ahead, her anxiety seemed overblown. “It’s ironic,” she said to Kim. “A few hundred miles from the front, I’m fretting about a randy waiter.”
There were no calls that night or the next. The test had run its course. Thea slept again and, as she walked through the lobby, she was able to smile at the fine man standing at his desk, but when the calls resumed the following week, Kim concluded that the caller had simply come back on night duty. They were both wary, now, of the waiters who brought room service, but only one made Thea uneasy. Younger than the others, and shifty, he had a flicker in his eyes that she didn’t much like, yet she could not risk his livelihood—and that of his family, wherever he came from—unless she was sure.
Still, enough was enough.
Reggie’s reaction, when she told him, was muted, but fierce. The hotel management, in turn, were alarmed, apologetic, and insisted that Thea should immediately be moved to another room. No one could know—only Sachiv, Reggie, Kim, and the general manager. That evening, two years’ worth of clothes and six weeks of living in one room had to be squashed into suitcases, and when it was done, Sachiv and Reggie came to move her. No porters were called. Laden, the four of them hurried along the corridor and scrambled into the lift with suitcases, bags, sunhat, tape recorder, a heavy portable typewriter in its ungainly box and a pile of books. Thea could feel Sachiv’s breath on the side of her neck.
He had found her a room on the same floor as Reggie. When the doors of the lift opened, he poked his head out, looked left and right, causing splutters of giggling behind him, and gave the nod. They scurried once more along a hushed corridor, sniggering, stumbling over their loads and peeking around corners. In his hurry, Sachiv had trouble with the key, but when the door opened, they crashed into the room, laughing.
Sachiv now had a legitimate reason to single out Thea. Special care was due to her, in view of the inconvenience she had suffered at the hands of hotel staff, and he addressed himself to the task with alacrity. He was not on duty the morning after she moved, but he phoned her room that afternoon.
“Have you had any more trouble, Miss Thea?”
“No, it’s been fine, thank you.”
“I’m very glad. . . . So everything is okay now?”
“Yes. Thanks so much for sorting it out. And this room is lovely.” It was much larger than the last, with a seated area and a double bed.
“No, no,” he said. “We are very sorry about this. Please call me if you are disturbed again.”
But it was he who called again the next day, and the day after that—to check that she had passed an undisturbed night. She liked the sound of his voice, hesitant, coming from his office, not Reception, and soon they no longer referred to the nocturnal incidents. They chatted. He asked what had brought her to Iraq and if she was missing her family; she asked about his work, the career that had taken him from Bombay to Baghdad, but neither ever mentioned his children or his wife. It was supportive and companionable, but when, a few weeks later, a shrill ring shook her from oblivion in the dead end of night and that loathsome voice breathed, “I want to make sex with you,” she was still alone.
Whoever he was, he had found her.
The circus repeated itself: Sachiv insisting again on subterfuge, to narrow down the suspects, since the only way the caller could know her room number was by bringing her room service. They didn’t laugh so much this time, as they squashed into lifts, reached yet another room, and dumped her stuff; dumped her, she felt. She hated sleeping in the hotel now, but even though Reggie and Geoffrey were soon moving to a bungalow in the suburbs, Reggie’s endless remonstrating with the company had yet to yield accommodation for the girls.
They were therefore relieved when, later that week, they were told an apartment had been found for them and set off to have a look with Reggie. It was after dark when they drove up to what looked like a vast shopping mall, a great hulk of cement looming out of a parking lot. There would soon be shops, Reggie had been told, businesses and tenants. Kim and Thea glanced at one another as he led them up a back staircase to the second floor, then followed him along an outdoor corridor and across a vast open concrete space. He unlocked a door and they all stepped in. Their apartment had a spacious kitchen, large rooms and a balcony, but it was all tiled, like a bathroom.
Kim said, “The only things missing here are a pathologist and a corpse.”
Reggie looked about. “It’ll be done up.”
“Yeah? Are they gonna relocate that shopping mall downstairs?”
“It isn’t safe,” said Thea. “It’s dark and deserted, and we’ll have no transport.”
“Hmm,” said Reggie. “It isn’t appropriate at all. I had no idea.”
“You guys get a lovely house in the
