CHAPTER 2

Rule Number One

After our fifth or sixth consecutive wade through the buffet at Arabesque, enjoyable but increasingly monotonous, Tony and I decided to make a run for it. Brian lent us his Mitsubishi Lancer and we ventured out in search of booze. With Ramadan and the school year fast approaching, and with the prices at the Horse& Jockey Club burning holes in our wallets, we neededrelief.

Tony took the wheel. Moraig had mentioned two options: Spinney’s, across town, and an anonymous store behind the Hilton. Further intel revealed the second was near the dormitories for the hotel’s foreign staff. A gaggle of South Asians hanging out near what looked like dormitories suggested we’d navigated unerringly. The Mitsubishi deftly slotted into a space between a Land Cruiser and Range Rover, both with opaque tinted windows; we peered out at the single-story cinderblock building. It was, indeed, anonymous. No sign betrayed the establishment’s name or purpose. The two metal doors were marked simply “Entrance” and “Exit” in English. Another promising indication—anyone selling alcohol here would engage customers in the expats’linguafranca.

“Exit” swung open. Caught in the fluorescent light flooding through, we probably looked like a couple perps sizing up a prospect for armed robbery. Or cops on stakeout. I preferred the outlaw feeling. It fit Tony,too.

Over our first week in the country, I’d learned this much about my accomplice. Originally a “Bugle boy” from Bugle, Cornwall, he immigrated to Australia after a stint in the Merchant Marine. At 17, he left Cornwall and had circumnavigated the world several times, with a stopover in Vietnam in the 1960s, ending up in Brisbane. He was a professional rally driver and enjoyed a profitable career in energy, chiefly oil, but chucked it all to get a PhD and teach, at half his former pay. “I’m glad I did it. Starting a doctorate in your forties is insane, but I don’t miss therest.”

Tony was a professor of something called “management information technology,” who at 60 had been “made redundant.” After seven years at Queensland U. of Technology, winning several teaching awards, he was one of the casualties when QUT gutted its faculty. With Australia’s university system in a state of general upheaval, Tony saw his best option in signing on at UAEU’s Business School. It was, he said with a determined tone of neutrality, ajob.

Though my son’s exploits were a favorite topic, Tony never mentioned children. He’d been married, too, less than a year, and following the divorce he and his ex-wife had lived together for twodecades.

For years I’d told myself, and more recently found myself telling Max, struggling to find his niche at college: “All you need in life is one other person to share your foxhole. Sometimes you share it for life, other times for a year, a day, an hour—however long it takes to get through a moment of truth.” Tony was living up to the sense of him I’d gotten the moment he strode into the Jebel Hafeet Room. Here’s a guy who’d make a good foxhole buddy. He’d had practice at what I needed to get started on—seeing a future where none wasapparent.

Clambering out of the Mitsubishi, we stood aside to allow two shop workers, South Asian, to lug four cases of liquor down the concrete steps. They proceeded to the Land Cruiser, raised the liftback and stowed the goods. The SUV’s window dropped a few inches and I caught a glimpse of a whitegut