6
“What did Mark say when he read this?” Carmen said as she felt the thick cotton-fiber of the paper on which the Royal Proclamation had been written.
“What do you think? Fuck this, fuck that, fuck everyone. Then he called his lawyer,” Lora replied, putting her sunglasses back on as the two women stepped out of the small café they’d found on one of the narrow side streets of the old part of Johaar.
Carmen laughed. “Luther the lawyer? You know, he used to have billboards up all along the highway outside Baton Rouge like ten years ago. Now I guess he’s too respectable for that. Hah!”
Lora took a deep breath and smiled. She felt strangely calm even though they’d just downed two cups of thick Arabian coffee at the quaint little café where everyone sat on cushions on the floor and all the men stared at them like they were alien lizard-queens. The aroma of freshly ground coffee followed them for a few paces, but then they were back on the cobblestone streets, strolling through one of the many crowded marketplaces.
“Luther the lawyer is the furthest thing from respectable I can imagine,” Lora said with a snort. “Though Mark loves him. They seriously spend maybe ten hours a week on the phone together. And that’s besides the regular meetings they have. I’d swear they were having an affair if I didn’t know better.”
“Honey, you wouldn’t know better. I was right about the pre-nup, wasn’t I?”
Lora blinked twice and reached for a blue-green silk scarf that a street-vendor held out for her to touch. It was the smoothest silk she’d ever felt, the colors shimmering in the overhead sun. She nodded at the vendor and asked how much. “Well, Mark said he’d just gotten the pre-nup faxed over,” she said hesitantly as she paid the vendor and smiled at the old man. He smiled back, showing shockingly well-aligned teeth. Good dental plans in Johaar, Lora thought absentmindedly as she wrapped the blue-green scarf around her bare neck and turned to Carmen.
“Even you aren’t naïve enough to believe that. Though it’s a new low for Mark to try and play on your guilt by implying you’re going to cheat on him because of what happened with the Sheikh. Speaking of which,” Carmen said, snatching the letter back from where it was sticking out of Lora’s bag. “What the hell is this? Is this even legal?”
Lora shrugged. That calmness was back. It was like she’d just blocked all of this out, told herself it was a dream, one of those teenage fantasies that belonged in a book and not in her life. It was so much easier to process that way, wasn’t it? “Apparently it’s an old law that’s still on the books in Johaar. Luther the lawyer checked it out, I guess. Amir really is the king of the land here. What he says goes.”
Lora took a breath when she realized it was the first time she’d said the Sheikh’s name like that, like she knew the name, knew the man, knew more than others did about him. Of course, she knew nothing about him except for what she’d read. Oh, and what he’d done. Did that really happen? It couldn’t have, could it?
“So the wedding’s off, I guess,” Carmen said casually, pointing at some almonds that a vendor was roasting on a slow flame. She paid for the almonds as Lora stared at her friend.
“Excuse me?” Lora said, hands on her hips, new scarf fluttering in the desert breeze.
“I mean the wedding, not the marriage,” Carmen said, popping an almond into her mouth and holding the bag out to Lora. “Nut?”
Lora smiled and shook her head. “There are enough nuts in my life right now. Thank you.”
Carmen snorted. “I set you up for that joke. See, we make a great team. Unlike you and Mark.”
“Carmen! What the hell is wrong with you?! When will you stop saying shit like that?!”
“When you end this engagement before it’s too late. I hated this idea from the beginning, and I’ve always been honest about my opinion of Mark. You can call it jealousy or envy or sour grapes or whatever hell else you want. I call it being a friend.” She stopped chewing her damned almonds and turned to Lora, looking her dead in the eyes, with all the seriousness in her. “Even if it costs me your friendship.”
Lora closed her eyes and shook her head. “Oh, God, I can’t believe everything has gotten so out of control.”
Carmen raised an eyebrow. “You seem pretty calm to me, actually.”
“Because I’m in denial,” Lora retorted.
“You’ve been in denial of reality as long as I’ve known you, Miss Librarian, so that’s not it. This is different. Something’s different,” Carmen said, raising the other eyebrow and glancing at Lora up and down. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you. There’s a part of you that’s enjoying this.”
Lora looked away as the two of them walked in silence for a moment. Then Lora spoke, her voice trembling, her tone warped with the heaviness of guilt mixed with excitement. “Yes,” she said softly, stealing a glance at her closest friend, glad they both still had sunglasses on. “I’m horrible, aren’t I?”
Carmen smiled and locked her arm with Lora’s. “Nope. You’re just a woman, Lora. You were kissed by a handsome king, who’s now demanded that you present your sweet ass in his chambers or else heads will roll. Every woman, whether she admits it or not, would be secretly excited.”
“Though of course she can never admit it,” Lora whispered. “So if anyone asks, I have to say I’m appalled, disgusted, and enraged. Which of course I am. How dare a sexy billionaire Sheikh lust after me to the point where he invokes an outdated law just so he can tap this fat ass.”
Carmen almost fell down as the two of them burst into laughter, and people stared as they stumbled through the streets, drunk on the madness of what was going on. Finally Carmen got a hold of herself long enough to ask the question again:
“So the wedding’s off, right? You'll just get married back in America? As weird and strangely exciting as all this is, there’s no way you’d even consider going through with that ridiculous law.”
Lora nodded and frowned at the same time. “Well, if the wedding’s called off, the law doesn’t apply. Problem is, when we spoke to the hotel, they told us that if we cancel the wedding, then the entire deal for the free rooms and meals is off and we’d be getting a fat bill for all of it.”
Carmen shrugged. “So what? Mark can afford it.”
Lora took a breath and blinked. She didn’t reply.
“Wait,” said Carmen. “Did Mark say he wasn’t going to pay for—”
“Oh, God, no!” Lora said hurriedly, walking a bit faster so Carmen wouldn’t see the expression on her face. “Of course he agreed. But . . .”
“But what?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Say it, Lora. You’re gonna say it sooner or later, so just say it.”
Lora stopped in her tracks and turned to face Carmen. “He hesitated. For just a moment, but it was there. He hesitated, Carmen! Which means for a moment Mark actually calculated whether it was worth sending me off to another man’s bedroom the night before our wedding!”
Carmen blinked and looked away. “It was probably just an unconscious reaction.”
“Well, that’s even worse, isn’t it?! It means it’s so deeply rooted in his personality that it’s just who he is! Everything has a price! Everything and everyone! Maybe you were right, Carmen. Maybe I’m making a mistake here.”
Carmen blinked again. “OK, listen, don’t jump to any conclusions here. Everyone’s a bit turned around by what happened yesterday with the Sheikh. Mark’s probably just . . . I don’t know . . . he’s probably just . . .”
Lora’s mouth hung open in feigned surprise. “Wait, are you defending Mark now?!”
Carmen shifted where she stood. “I don’t know. I mean, although I’ve made it clear how I feel about Mark, there’s still a part of me that doesn’t want to be responsible for breaking up your engagement! You have a right to be happy, and if Mark makes you happy, then, well . . .”
“I don’t know what makes me happy,” Lora said, clenching her fists and shaking her head as she felt that silk scarf billow in the warm air. Then for a moment she felt like it would choke her, and she loosened it and exhaled hard. She looked around, taking in the sight of the old sandstone bungalows with their weathered teakwood doors, old brass handles that were polished to a bright sheen, multicolored silk curtains and intricate paisley tapestries covering the large windows as the breeze whipped the thin cloth into a frenzy, mimicking what was going on inside Lora’s head.
But she still felt a strange underlying calmness, a lazy sense of inevitability, like she needed to let go of everything and just allow herself to be carried along with the current, let the sequence of events take her to her destination. Was this how destiny worked? The fantasies of that teenage girl with her nose buried in books, reading about kings and queens and magical lands where nothing was real but everything was still vivid and colorful?
This, she thought as that breeze whispered against her hair, curling around her neck, under the turns of that silk scarf. This makes me happy. Being here, on these crowded streets, feeling the warm air against my face, the sun’s heat on my arms, the cobblestones beneath my feet. There’s something about this place, like I was meant to be here, in this moment.
But then the moment passed, and she shook her head and smiled. She tried to push away a strange thought that appeared at the corner of her mind, but it persisted until she faced it. The thought grew stronger as they walked on, and then she absentmindedly strolled past a newsstand and glanced at the headline on an English-language edition of the local newspaper. The headline was about the old Sheikh, Amir's father, passing away, and Lora frowned, thought for a moment, and then nodded.
“I think I know what I’m going to do,” she said slowly. “What I have to do.”