Jason strode over to the window and pulled the drapes shut, but not before he checked out the sand parking lot that bordered one side of their hotel. It looked like a typical day out there. Sun blazing in its dusty, cloudless sky, while Indians, Filipinos, and Arabs were going about their afternoon business. There were a few fairer heads too, but in this part of town, where it was all 3 star hotels and late nights souks, the former-USSR ‘business ladies’ didn’t come out until much later on.
“I don’t know how you could even tell a narc in this place.” He said to Alex.
She was sprawled diagonally across the bed on her stomach, feet crossed at the ankles behind her. She looked up from the magazine and propped her chin on her hand. “Don’t they look the same everywhere? Like an ugly scum who is trying too hard to look bored?” The bit of fringe that had fallen across her eye was flicked away and she went back to the magazine.
“Alex, don’t you get it? What you did last night was amateur. Why won’t you ever bloody learn to
keep your mouth shut?”
“I kept my mouth shut for two whole shitty years in that hell hole in Delhi. And what? You think now I don’t know who is kosher and who is not? I talked to her all night. We cried together. She knows the score—and she’s connected.”
He rubbed his eyes and took a long pull on the joint. “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t have said anything. How do you know—no—how do I know that they’re not still watching her? Or that she’s not working for them? She told you she got out in record time—it just stinks of rat if you ask me.” As he said that he slammed his fist down into the sofa cushion beside him. “Damn Alex!”
Alex got up now and stood in front of the dressing table, her barely covered bum cheeks brown and round in front of him. She talked to his reflection in the mirror while she added more eyeliner to the fading smudges around her eyes. “You’re paranoid. And that doesn’t help,” she said, nodding at the stash on the table.
Two years of fighting for her freedom had taken its toll on Jason; they had to be more careful than ever now. He watched as she pulled an envelope of tissue paper out of the Christian Dior shopping bag and unwrapped the delicate black lace bra. She looked like a child. And acted like one most of the time. He had bought her the bra so they could get out of the shopping centre, and because he knew she would parade around the room in it and little else.
“Ok,” he said, call her.
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