Free Suite Dubai (Arriving) by Callista Fox Page A

store. At a busy intersection she saw a guy dressed as a mattress, dancing on the side of the road, flashing a 15 PERCENT OFF sign at oncoming traffic. While she waited at the light a gust of wind came and caught the inflatable costume like a sail and blew him back a few feet. He stumbled, almost fell, before he regained his footing. His sign though, had blown along the strip of grass and he had to turn and chase after it, the wind blowing against the back side of his costume now. His legs, outfitted in grey tights, struggled this time to slow himself down lest he become airborne and delivered to the brick wall of the nearby Chick-Fil-A. She was scared for him and she was even more scared she might recognize him from one of her writing classes.    

    That day she drove home and rewrote her resume.  

    She added that she had done some public relations work for a local nonprofit (omitting that it was her mother’s nonprofit). She promoted an art auction that raised over 120 K for at-risk teens (omitting that she’d really paraded, like a woman on a game show, paintings around a banquet hall encouraging people to bid). She had been more of an art sherpa than an event planner. Yes, she embellished. That’s what writers do. She wrote a kick-ass cover letter about the lost art of storytelling in the business world and clicked send .  

    Two weeks went by without a reply. Then one night she remembered the business card in her nightstand. The one she’d had for over a year. The one she almost tossed in the garbage. When she put it in the drawer she wondered why she was keeping it, but she knew she’d never get another business card with the word “sheik” on it. After failing to find it by digging around in the receipts, gum wrappers, hair ties and scraps of poetry she’d written late at night when she couldn’t sleep, she dumped the contents of the drawer on her bed. It was still there, a simple white card embossed with the name Sheik Ahmed Al Baz. Maybe he could help her.  

    She'd met him, of all places, at the Kentucky Derby. She and her mom had gone as guests of man named Wilder Dent, the newest member of her mother’s board of directors. He invited them to stay at his horse farm. “We have plenty of room and I know, I know Miss Patti would love to have you all.” He instructed them to wear hats. “The bigger the better, he told them, “ And fancy as you can find. Hell, I had to get a bigger car just so Patricia Dent could get her hat in without knocking off a flower or a piece of fruit.” He told them the race would be “the most exciting two minutes of their lives, I can promise you that.”

    It took two days for them to shop for the most exciting two minutes of their lives. “You look precious,” her mom said when she tried on a white linen and eyelet dress. Rachel rolled her eyes and took it off. “Now I know which one I’m not getting.” The wide brim of the simple hat she’d chosen made her feel claustrophobic. The shade it cast would protect her shoulders from the sun but she was worried about tripping or running into a wall. When her mom found an identical one, she forbid her from getting it. “At least get a different color.”

    The farm was better than she imagined it. The morning of the race she woke early and sat in a wicker chair on the porch, wrapped in a quilt, watching the horses graze. She wrote it down in her notebook, how they were vague and then vivid in the fog that settled on the pasture. The smell was thick and sweet and, for days back home, hung in the air near her duffle bag.  

    At night Wilder poured them bourbon in short, heavy glasses and told them he’d never live anywhere else. Smokey Hills, he told them, had produced three derby winners in the last thirty years. “That may not seem like a lot, but the feeling of watching one a your horses cross that line can last a lifetime.” He swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “Not a bad record,” he told them. “Not a