4
The first day in Dubai, excitement and coffee had staved off jet lag, but that night sleep seemed like a foreign language, and he spent several hours at the window looking down at the liners that crawled, phosphorescent scarabs, through the straits. There was a moment, long after midnight, when he wished desperately that he hadn’t come; that he was still in foggy San Francisco and could call up Joey and ask him to meet at the Barrelhead for burgers and beer. He even craved bland blonde Pam and her endless chitchat about office politics. But then he remembered Leila, her gestures as she stirred the coffee beans on the brazier and poured the treacle-black stream into his cup, her smoky-spicy perfume, her dark eyes that always seemed to be veiling something, and once again he felt the surg
