Free Brilliant by Denise Roig Page B

for ten seconds before deciding they’d be friends for life, or at least for the afternoon. Even Manda and Jesse caught each other’s eye before turning away shyly.
    And so it was decided: dinner that night at “The Cassel,” a line Gomez must have used before. “We have a table, three folding chairs and an air mattress. Party central.”
    Gomez’s accent was hard to identify. Spanish perhaps, but with a British inflection. Carla sounded British too, until she hit some vowels that sounded like some of the Kiwis he worked with. Both spoke colloquial, idiomatic American. They could be from anywhere, thought Talbot. Or nowhere, his mother would say.
    The Cassels’ furniture, Gomez explained that evening, had been stuck in Jebel Ali port for the past week. “Welcome to the UAE ,” said Talbot.
    â€œWelcome to most of the world, really,” said Gomez. “Getting our stuff to Singapore was a complete disaster. Right, Car?”
    Carla, sitting across the table, breaking up chicken biryani with a plastic fork for Jesse — they’d called in a massive order to India Palace — shuddered. “We finally had to buy all new stuff. Well, Ikea; so we didn’t go completely broke. When our furniture arrived eight months later, we had to put it in storage. That’s what’s sitting at the port right now. We haven’t seen the stuff in four years. Maybe we won’t even like it any more. Maybe we’ll go, ‘God, who bought this crap?’” She laughed, taking Molly with her. It was nice to see his wife laughing. She’d grown quiet in the past few months. As things had turned to dust at work, she’d retreated.
    â€œHey, somebody help me out with these
dosas
. Talbot, you’re eating like a bird.” Gomez was coming around with two takeaway containers and a ladle Molly had lent them. The two older girls had long left the table, having eaten like birds themselves. What was food compared to watching
High School Musical
on the portable DVD player with someone who also thought Troy Bolton was the coolest boy in the world?
    The Cassels, it seemed, had always lived next door.
    Â 
    Talbot arrived at work the following Sunday — a bit hung over; they’d been up late watching
Lawrence of Arabia
with Gomez and Carla — to the news that his boss and his boss’s boss had been let go. “Bloodletting,” said Bruce, who came into Talbot’s corner office and closed the door behind him. Bruce looked scarily calm. Maybe it was the effect of the excellent South African wine — they’d blithely made their way through two bottles of red the night before — but Talbot’s left leg began shaking, something that happened only after a long bike ride. “Better not look like we’re plotting,” said Talbot, getting up to reopen the door. “Heads down.”
    â€œWe wish Mr Don Beaton and Mr Chuck Gardner the best in new indevors and there trial and eror,” read the official memo. Did they make mistakes like this in Arabic? Talbot wondered. Without Don to proofread every word that went out of Amaal Special Projects, they were going to sound like illiterates.
    All week they waited for their bosses’ boss to show up, or at least send a memo. Najib Mubarak was an Emirati who made few personal appearances. If you spotted him in the hall, you knew to duck into your office or the washroom. He shouted, he stomped, he carried on. “Sounds like a hoedown,” Chuck, who came from Oklahoma, would say. Mubarak was thirty-five, a short, fit man in the starchiest
khandoura
Talbot had ever seen parade through the office. Stanford, London School of Economics, Harvard Law. BS , MBA , LLD , brilliant son of a bitch.
    So far Talbot had managed to stay out of the line of fire, but this couldn’t last long with his superiors now gone. Talbot, Bruce and the three other team members kept their eyes glued to their