LIAM
Dubai was good to men like me.
It didn't ask questions. It didn't know your history or your failures or the particular sequence of events that had brought you to a hotel bar on an evening with a woman whose name you had already decided not to remember.
It just offered itself — the lights, the warmth, the particular excess of a city built on the premise that enough money could make anything feel like it was bliss.
I had been here six weeks.
Mom had arranged it the same way she did to problems when she needed it managed quietly.
You need distance, she had said. Let things settle. Let the lawyers handle it. She had transferred money into my account the same day I landed. It was enough to be comfortable and to be distracted.
It had worked.
For six weeks it had worked well enough.
