Chapter Eight
The next few days Laine spent on her own or with Hadiya, developing a plan for the palace. Laine would’ve run her ideas by Aziz, but with each day of his absence, she grew more annoyed and less apologetic about moving forward with her plans. She was, after all, on a deadline. One that she’d made a huge deal about, and one that promised either great rewards or a spectacular firing.
Laine elected to make only light changes to rooms that Hadiya suggested would be used for business reasons. Even though Bahrain was more progressive than its neighboring countries, Laine suspected that many of Aziz’s business associates and government officials would appreciate a more traditional approach. Laine could highlight the cultural history more in those rooms, while keeping her editorial touches structural in nature. It would be a good compromise that Aziz could live with after she was gone. Although Hadiya had confirmed that Amin and the rest of the family lived in Manama most of the time, there were rooms they might use for business or simply for a visit. It would be awkward to have highly abstract or ‘provocative’ art of the kind that Aziz liked in rooms that potentially conservative CEOs or state officials would frequent.
Laine slipped into one of her comfortable painting outfits to test glue and paint against a wall. Half of her wallpaper samples had disintegrated in the heat before she could even open the boxes, and she needed to see how the surviving supplies would perform. She would certainly need to be flexible with both her concepts and materials.
With her hair pulled back messily, Laine brushed a wide swath of paint against the wall to see how evenly it would spread in the heat. It globbed and then dribbled down the surface.
“Damn it,” she muttered.
“I’m not sure what I think of this style,” Aziz said from behind her.
Laine spun around, then pursed her lips and tilted her head to the side. “This isn’t a style. I’m trying to figure out what I can actually use in this godawful heat!”
“I don’t think God has much to do with it. Weather is different the world over.” Aziz strolled over to her notebooks and started to flip through them. Laine noted that he was back in a suit and admired the fine view.
“That’s it? No warning or greeting? You just come and go as you please?”
“I do have much business handle...There are many, many notes here,” Aziz said.
“There are many, many rooms.” Laine sucked in her cheeks. “I’ve been trying to get an overall plan together, but am stalled by the aforementioned absences and weather. It’s cooked my glues and paints!”
“We can order more supplies. That is not a problem.”
“I know what we need. I just was packing things so fast, and I didn’t have time to oversee what samples got put in, and the assistants don’t know what they’re doing. They didn’t pack the right stuff.”
Aziz strolled past her and ran his fingertips over the runny paint. “This is disgusting.”
“Yes, it is.” Laine smoothed her hands over her hair. A weight settled on her chest. She wasn’t sure how she could finish this job in two weeks. She had even less time, now that she’d spent so much time trying to work out what to do.
Laine’s mental deliberations were cut short as Aziz turned and smeared the paint across her cheek.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“It still spreads well enough!” he teased.
Laine put her hands on her hips. “But it won’t go on evenly!”
“I suppose we’ll have to see about that! Let me try another color…”
Laine stared him down and then reached for a different brush. Aziz didn’t back away as she painted glue over his chest.
“This isn’t paint,” he said.
She picked up her notebook, scribbled on it, and then tore out the page and stuck it to his chest. It read, “Big Fancy Accountant.”
“Big— Laine!” Aziz gasped. “I am not an accountant!”
“Mm-hm.”
“I manage the vast, vast holdings of our family’s estate—”
Laine just smiled.
“Which are both local to the Middle East and international!” Aziz turned as Laine stepped away to look at her notes. “And I consult on economic policy for our nation…”
After a moment of silence, Laine looked back just in time to see a can of cerulean blue being tipped over her head.
“Ah!”
“It is a good color on you!”
Laine huffed and grabbed a brush to swat his expensive suit with an emerald green.
Cans tipped, paint flew, glue splattered, as the two of them weaponized Laine’s now useless inventory of decorating samples. Aziz laughed heartily, and Laine wheezed, and a few minutes later, both collapsed against the wall.
Laine shook her head. “That’s one way to liquidate unusable stock.”
“The wall looks better now!” Aziz said.
Laine tilted her head back to see the splatters. “Absolutely not. That looks like a five-year-old did it.”
Aziz chuckled. “You should keep it. I will show it to Amin, and I will tell him we will do the whole palace in this style.”
“So you don’t like your brother much,” Laine joked.
“He had no interest in continuing the renovations. It is up to me, unfortunately, and he has not approved so far.”
“No one likes a backseat decorator. Take a picture of it and send it to him. People who don’t know much about art probably think it all looks like this now anyway.” Laine wiped paint from her forehead. The two of them looked like walking collages.
“Ah. This is true. I should take you to our modern art museum. People don’t think about Bahrain for art, but we are growing in that area quickly.” Aziz took her hand and let the paint smear together until purple oozed between their fingers.
“I admit that I don’t. But I honestly haven’t been in the art buying game for a while. I’m too busy with designing.”
“You selected those lovely pieces in your apartment,” Aziz argued. “You have an eye for it, even if you don’t spend every day discovering what others think.”
Laine pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. There was no reason not to explain to him where the paintings had come from, really. In some small way, though, she didn’t want him to know about her abandoned hobby.
“What is it?” Aziz asked.
“Well, to be honest, I didn’t select those paintings.”
Aziz’s face fell. “I see. So…you have another do that for you? Should I fly this person out as well, so you can do your job more efficiently?”
Laine made a noise. “I’m perfectly capable doing my job.”
“I did not mean to offend, but I would like some of that sense of art in the redesign.”
Laine stared at him hard. “I didn’t pick them out because I painted them, Aziz. I painted them years ago. You don’t need to hire someone else. You just need to get me paint I can actually work with. I’ll arrange for everything else.”
Aziz’s eyes widened and he straightened up, taking her in as though he’d seen her for the first time.
“You created those beautiful works of art?”
“Indeed, it was I,” she said sarcastically.
“You are angry with me, and I am not certain why. They are truly amazing. You are an artist as well as a business woman.” Aziz shrugged. “I am a businessman, but no artist. It is natural to admire what you cannot do.”
“I’m not…” Laine shook her head. “I’m just a designer. I’ve never worked as an artist.”
“You create art. This is all that is needed to be an artist.”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t pay, and it’s not practical. Emma has her acting career, and dad had a hard time making ends meet for a while. Right out of school, I had to be the practical one.”
Aziz pursed his lips and nodded. “A practical artist.”
Laine crooked her mouth to the side.
“I say we get cleaned up and take our artist out to get inspired.” He touched her hair gently.
“What, you suddenly have time to take me out?”
“Yes. I came home early because a meeting was canceled. It is that way sometimes. My time is not always my own.” Aziz pressed a kiss to a paint-free spot on Laine’s forehead. “But when it is, I am all yours.”
“We’ll see about that.”
***
It was uncanny walking through the malls in Bahrain. They were a bit like the ones Laine had grown accustomed to back home. There were shops located closely together, but the structure of the mall was different, somehow. The look and feel of it was different. It felt like they’d taken a bazaar and stuck it inside. More natural light lit the spaces. More open space allowed easier movement. Laine couldn’t quite put her finger on the biggest difference, though, and she mused on it as she and Aziz strolled through the broad common area.
“The ads!” she exclaimed suddenly.
Aziz tilted his dark sunglasses down and looked at her. “Pardon?”
“The advertisements. They aren’t littered everywhere.” She looked up and around the space. Men and women streamed past them on either side, chattering on about their own business.
“This is not a bad thing.” He brushed a hand over the front of another bicolored shirt. Even without the suit, he looked as though he expected to see the king any moment.
“No, it isn’t. I’m just noticing…In America, we’re bombarded with advertisements practically from birth. They’re everywhere. Malls, airports, schools. They even slip them into television shows. You’re watching some teen drama and suddenly people all have superpowers based on the chewing gum they’re trying to sell.” Laine raised one hand holding an invisible drink. “Enjoy a cool, refreshing Cherry Snork.”
“That cannot be effective. You must stop noticing them after a while.”
“Oh, we do. So they get more aggressive. But the thing you have to know about selling to people these days is that it’s less about the product and more about everything else you’re selling them.”
“As in other products?”
“No. As in the experience. As in the lifestyle. Clothing stores name their lines after the type of woman their customers want to be seen as. It seems weird outside of Western culture, but people’s tastes are shaped by the idea that they can select who they are through their purchases.”
Aziz nodded and frowned seriously as they passed a clothing store. “So what lifestyle is being sold when the ad has a scantily clad woman eating a burger while washing a car?”
Laine opened her mouth and tilted her head to the side. “Um, hedonism, I suppose.”
“The burger would get soap in it. You would get sick,” Aziz said with an earnest smile.
Laine laughed. “I wouldn’t take any lessons in dining from burger commercials.”
They spent a little more time looking around, but as nice as it was and as much as Laine liked the graceful architecture of the shopping center, it wasn’t showing her quite what she needed. Aziz signaled to Faruq, and their car came around to meet them at the exit. Twenty minutes later, they strolled together through the city’s souk.
The outer wall of the market was almost impeccably white, but when they stepped inside, colors inundated Laine. Flags were strung above their heads between each side of the street. Each shop was crammed up against the next, spilling over with clothes, jewelry, pots, rugs, and other goods.
Very quickly, Laine noticed the difference in how Aziz held himself. He was much less relaxed, and he moved in close to her. She raked her eyes over the crowd. The people didn’t seem so different from those at the mall, but Faruq made himself visible as he followed them. It was an interesting shift, definitely.
Aziz remained by her side as they looked through local wares. Laine positioned herself so that Aziz towered behind her, and she pulled out her notepad to scribble down a few ideas and make some sketches.
“Ah, this inspires the artist!” Aziz said
“I could have used the internet or something,” Laine muttered.
“I can’t imagine that would be enough.”
“No. Not even close.”
Laine took in the ambiance of the market. A musky, human smell mingled with the scent of spices and meat cooking and heavy perfume. The dress code here was much like the mall: very little skin shown, but everyone dressed very well. In fact, the market-goers may have been dressed even better than the people at the mall. The men passed in Western-style suits or in locally popular dishdashas. The long robes hung to the ankles and though mostly white, also came in other light, cool colors. Most, but not all, of the women covered their hair with lovely, ornate scarves in the way Hadiya did. Either way, being well-groomed seemed to be a point of pride. Laine was glad that Hadiya had given her a selection of garments that were appropriate to wear in public.
The people went about their business, barely noticing the two of them, although one or two seemed to notice Aziz and his bodyguard. She supposed most of them didn’t necessarily recognize Aziz, just as most Americans didn’t recognize the top one percent of American businessmen, unless they made huge clowns of themselves in the media. Now that she thought about it, the few glances they got might have had more to do with Aziz’s recent outing to New York and the subsequent videos than anything else.
“Oh, these are nice.” Laine walked over to a wall of hanging lamps. They sparkled in the sunlight and from a light glowing within. Likely, they caught the eye more easily at night, but the patterns, the way the little tile fragments of mosaic came together to reflect the light, that caught Laine’s attention.
“You like these?” the shop owner asked Laine as she looked over the dozens of hanging lamps, each one a little different. “I can give you an excellent price.”
“They are eye-catching.” Laine looked back at Aziz. “You have so much direct light with the lamps on the walls and the natural light coming in. There are rooms where it would be better to have some recessed or even covered lighting.”
“These are very common to have around,” he said.
“Hm. That’s one of the reasons we would put them in a room that your business associates might see. Go modern with the furnishing, but keep these touches that would make them feel at home.”
“Note what you like. I doubt they even have enough here to cover one room,” Aziz said, slipping his hands in his pockets.
He turned away for a moment. Art appealed to him, but it seemed like general domestic decorating was probably beyond his capacity for personal investment.
“I’m not exactly interested in hanging a lamp or two around the study.” Laine took a step back and took in the lamps, with all their colors.
“We have a good amount of stock, miss,” the shopkeeper said.
“Could your manufacturer do something custom? Like this?” Laine showed him a sketch. “I like the idea of a chandelier, but not hanging symmetrically like that. Instead, have them descend downward, in a curve?”
The man scowled at the picture. “I would have to speak to the artisan himself.”
“Well, I suppose we could buy the lamps individually and hire someone to put the piece together,” Laine said after a moment. She looked to Aziz.
He shrugged. “Cost is no object.”
“Ah, these magnificent lamps here, seventy-five dinar,” the shopkeeper said.
Laine raised a brow skeptically. At last check, the Bahraini dinar was worth about two dollars and sixty-five cents. “What, each? No way. Maybe for seven of them. I can get one of these on eBay for forty bucks, American. There’s no way these are worth two-hundred dollars!”
Okay, she was lowballing the price she’d seen online just a bit. But haggling was supposed to be a common activity in these markets, and locals tended to gouge Westerners if they could. And Aziz’s comment hadn’t helped.
“The craftsmanship, miss, you have to know what you are looking at!” The man took down one of the lamps for her to see.
“I promise you that when I have put Turkish lamps in the homes of upper class New Yorkers, I never charged them that much, and the craftsmanship was just as good as this.” Laine pointed up to one of the lamps. “That one is even missing a tile!”
It wasn’t, but he looked up in astonishment anyway.
“Will these even hold together?” she asked.
“How dare you!” the man exploded. Laine jumped back as he began a tirade about the quality and worth of his stock.
Aziz stepped between them. “You do not speak to her in this way!”
“I stand by the quality of my stock! We do not sell cheap goods here, sir!” the man protested.
Laine regathered herself. “We’re not paying that much for these! I would maybe give you eighteen dinars a piece!”
The man’s reaction was practically apoplectic, but he didn’t step any closer to her with Aziz looming over him.
But as she started to turn away, he called out, “Fine! Fine! Take the food from my children’s mouths! Thirty dinars.”
Laine sucked in her cheeks. “Twenty-five.”
The man stared at her. She stared back and swiveled her head. Aziz was just starting to reach for her, when the man nodded and told her to pick out which lamps she wanted.
Laine smiled like a Cheshire cat.
“I don’t know that was worth the effort,” Aziz told her as they walked away from the booth. He had ordered someone to collect their purchase for them and take it to their car.
“Oh, I could have gotten them somewhere else. We got a little bit of a discount in cost, mostly on what we would pay for shipping, but I really need to get used to haggling here.” Laine pressed her hand to her chest. “My heart is racing, though.”
“You offended his honor, by pointing out the flaw in his work.”
“I was lying. There was no missing tile.”
Aziz looked at her with admiration. “You lied.”
“Distributors and manufacturers are always trying to gouge you. They don’t usually get quite so…explosive. I think in the end, you’ll like the effect of those lamps. They’re a little different in style than the ones I usually see, and once we have them mounted, it’ll have a good effect.”
“I should take you to the capital with me,” Aziz said in a teasing tone. “You have a more cut-throat attitude toward business than many of my CEOs.”
“I’m not entirely sure what a CEO does, or how it’s different from a CFO, COO, COW…”
Aziz chuckled.
“Fly me in to argue with people,” Laine said. “I can get a deal, but I’m not that interested in running a business and all the tedious nonsense that goes with that end of it.”
He looked terribly pleased with her. “My tiger likes to fight!”
Laine nodded. It was true, though sometimes she found herself getting into arguments before she’d considered the consequences of her temper. She reached for Aziz’s hand, intending to thank him for stepping in for her. When he pulled away from her and put a few steps distance in between them, she looked up at him startled.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“We are in public,” Aziz admonished. He sped up and walked in front of her now.
Laine hesitated for a moment, wondering what the difference was between holding hands here and the things they had done together in New York.