I look around me again. The men are not homogeneous, as I first thought. Over by the fountain there’s a group of Japanese, in lightish-grey suits, and in the far corner there’s a splash of white: Arabs, in those long bathrobes they wear, the headgear, the striped sweatbands.
“It’s a club?” I say.
“Well, that’s what we call it, among ourselves. The club.”
“I thought this sort of thing was strictly forbidden,” I say.
“Well, officially,” he says. “But everyone’s human, after all.”
I wait for him to elaborate on this, but he doesn’t, so I say, “What does that mean?”
“It means you can’t cheat Nature,” he says. “Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason, it’s part of the procreational strategy. It’s Nature’s plan.” I don’t say anything, so he goes on. “Women know that instinctively. Why did they buy so many different clothes, in the old days? To trick the men into thinking they were several different women. A new one each day.”
He says this as if he believes it, but he says many things that way. Maybe he believes it, maybe he doesn’t, or maybe he does both at the same time. Impossible to tell what he believes.
“So now that we don’t have different clothes,” I say, “you merely have different women.” This is irony, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.
“It solves a lot of problems,” he says, without a twitch.
I don’t reply to this. I am getting fed up with him. I feel like freezing on him, passing the rest of the evening in sulky wordlessness. But I can’t afford that and I know it. Whatever this is, it’s still an evening out.
What I’d really like to do is talk with the women, but I see scant chance of that.
“Who are these people?” I ask him.
“It’s only for officers,” he says. “From all branches; and senior officials. And trade delegations, of course. It stimulates trade. It’s a good place to meet people. You can hardly do business without it. We try to provide at least as good as they can get elsewhere. You can overhear things too; information. A man will sometimes tell a woman things he wouldn’t tell another man.”
“No,” I say, “I mean the women.”
“Oh,” he says. “Well, some of them are real pros. Working girls” – he laughs – “from the time before. They couldn’t be assimilated; anyway, most of them prefer it here.”
“And the others?”
“The others?” he says. “Well, we have quite a collection. That one there, the one in green, she’s a sociologist. Or was. That one was a lawyer, that one was in business, an executive position; some sort of fast-food chain or maybe it was hotels. I’m told you can have quite a good conversation with her if all you feel like is talking. They prefer it here, too.”
“Prefer it to what?” I say.
“To the alternatives,” he says. “You might even prefer it yourself, to what you’ve got.” He says this coyly, he’s fishing, he wants to be complimented, and I know that the serious part of the conversation has come to an end.
“I don’t know,” I say, as if considering it. “It might be hard work.”
“You’d have to watch your weight, that’s for sure,” he says. “They’re strict about that. Gain ten pounds and they put you in Solitary.” Is he joking? Most likely, but I don’t want to know.
“Now,” he says, “to get you into the spirit of the place, how about a little drink?”
“I’m not supposed to,” I say. “As you know.”
“Once won’t hurt,” he says. “Anyway, it wouldn’t look right if you didn’t. No nicotine-and-alcohol taboos here! You see, they do have some advantages here.”
“All right,” I say. Secretly I like the idea, I haven’t had a drink for years.
“What’ll it be, then?” he says. “They’ve got everything here. Imported.”
“A gin and tonic,” I say. “But weak, please. I wouldn’t want to disgrace you.”
“You won’t do that,” he says, grinning. He stands up; then, surprisingly, takes my hand and kisses it, on the palm. Then he moves off, heading for the bar. He could have called over a waitress, there are some of these, in identical black miniskirts with pompons on their breasts, but they seem busy and hard to flag down.
Then I see her. Moira. She’s standing with two other women, over near the fountain. I have to look hard, again, to make sure it’s her; I do this in pulses, quick flickers of the eyes, so no one will notice.