Free The Dog by Joseph O'Neill

of these gentlemen, and yet every time they see me they very loudly and gladly shout, “Good day, Mr. Pardew!” They have not gone mad. Mr. G. Pardew is how, in a panic, I once identified myself to the front desk when presenting myself as a visitor of one of the female hotel guests.
    I pulled into the hotel entranceway at the same time as a Maserati GranTurismo. I recognized the car. Its driver and his beautiful blond female consort were paid to go from hotel to hotel in order to make an impression on tourists. I knew what would happen next: the Nubians would give their full attention to the performance of opening the doors of the Maserati GranTurismo. So it proved. I took the opportunity to sneak by unseen.
    “Good day, Mr. Pardew!” the Nubians called out.
    I stormed past the front desk with a highly preoccupied air. “Good morning, Mr. Godfrey,” a receptionist said. I gave her an austere little bow of the head. This gesture was borrowed from and, I’d like to think, was a homage to the actual Godfrey Pardew, the octogenarian wills and trusts specialist who is my former mentor and remains the most senior partner at my old law firm and is the most correct, respectable, discreet, and altogether old-school person I have ever met. In my assessment, he would rather disembowel himself than show his face at the Unique Luxury Resort and Hotel. I hasten to add that I would never try to pass myself off as Godfrey Pardew, Esq., of New York, New York, or any other actual G. Pardew. That would be wrong. G. Pardew is merely my Unique name.
    I once tried to tell Ollie about this, but he raised a hand and said, “I know nothing about Pardew. Nothing.” He knew, all right, but of course he didn’t know, because what G. Pardew gets up to at the Unique is formally illegal. Of course, everybody knows that the Dubai authorities give sexual contractors a nod and a nose-tap and a say-no-more.
    I walked past the Fountain of Ishtar and into the HangingGardens. The Unique has a Babylonian theme. What this imports, I do not know. My familiarity with Babylonian matters pretty much begins and ends with the words “Ishtar,” “Hanging Gardens,” and “Nebuchadnezzar,” this last item coming to me thanks to the (indoor swimming) Pool of Nebuchadnezzar, which one passes on the way down to the Unique Spa & Hammam. Here the Mesopotamian fantasia relents somewhat, although it may well be that high-net-worth Babylonians had light-flooded soaking pools and twelve-foot-long towels and whispering attendants dressed in white nursing uniforms.
    I walked in—and there, in conversation with a technician, was Ollie! Hooray! “Well, well, well,” Ollie said. “Need a foot up?” This question is his catchphrase, and I will never tire of hearing it. It invariably prefaces a half hour or more during which I’ll sit back and receive ministrations, and Ollie will tell me about his globetrotting adventures and fill me in on local excitements. He is extremely well informed, being the confidant of scores of Dubaian ladies. I am a little sick of tittle-tattle, and almost as sick of only-in-Dubai stories—the lion cub somebody spotted in a neighbor’s garden, the guy deported for flipping somebody the finger in traffic, the tipsy girl at the Oil Barons’ Golf Tournament who couldn’t get a taxi home and drove down Sheikh Zayed Road in a golf cart. But what else are we to talk about? Dubai is where we are.
    I don’t feel too bad about imposing on Ollie. This is completely to his credit. He always makes me feel that my turning up and putting a large male foot on his lap is the greatest thing that could happen to him. He won’t accept a single dirham from me, which makes me uneasy until I remember that a sine qua non of real friendship is a happy freedom from cost-benefit considerations. That said, I don’t think I should completely banish from my mind the fact that I played a role in Ollie’s success, namely bringing him the corns and chronically