Elmore Leonard: Djibouti

Dara listened, sipping her champagne and smoking her cigarette.

"They catch some of the pirates," Billy said, "what do they do with them? Kenya will take some, throw 'em in prison. But whose laws have they broken? Who tries them?"

"I don't know," Dara said.

He turned on his grin.

"But you can sure get people to talk in your movies. I admire that."

"You like documentaries?"

"I do. Good ones always reveal the truth," Billy said. "I can't wait to hear what the pirates tell you."

YOU WENT TO A fashion show in Paris to look for a girlfriend," Dara said. "Is that right?"

"I remember what one it was, Chanel. The guy who runs the house wears the stiff collar and shades? He was there, came out at the end."

Billy the Kid started to grin.

"I was there to look over the girls. See if I might pick one out. They tend to be skinny, but that's okay, they all in pretty good shape."

"Ask her if she wants to go sailing?"

"Not right away. I see a girl for forty-eight hours. In two days you find out all you need to know. She acts intelligent, but she's busting her ass to pick the right words, uses I when she means me, and reads the wrong books, if she reads. I don't want to sound heartless, but we'll be doing a lot of reading aboard, talking about books. I ask if she's ever shared a tiny flat with another girl and thrown things at her. Nine out of ten say, 'No, but I sure wanted to.'"

"She fails the test?"

"Becomes a forty-eighter. I start with looks, get that out of the way. Then brains and personality. I'll be with this girl a good four months in fairly tight quarters. Now if she's funny and smart, that's a combination made in heaven."

"Helene's funny?"

"Helene's the goods." DARA TOLD XAVIER SHE wanted to have dinner out of the hotel. She'd looked up the Blue Nile on rue d'Ethiopie, a five-star restaurant and it sounded just right.

Xavier said, "Who gave it the five stars, the owner? You want to have a girl wash your right hand? Pours water over your fingers and catches it in a bowl? Then you take a towel off her arm? What if you left-handed?"

"We're going," Dara said.

"You want the girl shovin some kind of stew on your Ethiopian flatbread? They call it injera, so you know what the girl's tellin you. Or maybe you go for the sega wat, the diced lamb all cut up. These fine women make a show of servin us. Say no to the Queen of Sheba salad. We don't eat salad in Djibouti. Or get out of the Blue Nile in less than three hours. We be finishin off three different wines at one-fifty a bottle, and that's house wine."

"We're not going," Dara said.

They went out for the evening with no plan other than meet Billy and Helene later at a club, Dara planning to shoot Djibouti nightlife. Prowl around with her hand on the camera in her bag. Billy had asked them to dinner, but Dara said they'd be working most of the evening. See you later on. He'd told Xavier the name of the club. She would love to find out what he was up to, the generous rich guy interested in her work; once in a while with a hint of East Texas country boy looking for Saudi crude. After a few glasses of wine she might ask him, "Billy, what are you up to out here in your sailboat? What's your game?" He'd laugh at her and she wouldn't have time to get him to talk. This evening she was sneak-shooting Djibouti. She wouldn't mind using it as the title of her documentary. Djibouti. She loved saying it. XAVIER TOOK HER TO the Chez Chalumeau restaurant on the rue de Paris. They sat down at the table and Dara put on her sunglasses wondering why it was so bright in here. Xavier said, "So you can see what they put in front of you. They cook French mostly. The side dishes could be Arab, but good here. Go with the lamb, you won't get in trouble."

Dara said to her menu, "Which one's fish?"

"Their tuna they call a Somali name. They got shark, the fin, octopus they fix in its ink, oysters. The crabs are good if they fresh. Or they can fry up some squid's tasty." Xavier said, "Remember, we gonna be eatin fish all the next month."

They ordered lamb, no salad, and a bottle of red. Xavier ordered another bottle as the floor show came on: four Somali girls shaking their bums to a drum and a guy singing or making sounds, the four dressed in long pink pongee gowns with panels, scarves they swished around their hips as they kept their bums rolling, spinning, bumping…Dara said, "The Blue Nile doesn't have cooch dancers, does it?"

"I don't believe they have."

"I want to know how they do it."

"Practice," Xavier said. "We get out on the boat, I'll beat on something and you try and get your ass up to Somali speed." THEY FOLLOWED THE RUE de Paris to the Place Menelik to sit at a street cafe. "Have a cup of coffee and watch Djibouti nightlife," Xavier said. "Cup of coffee and sip some cognac. Watch the tourists cuttin up. Off a cruise ship come down through the Suez. They sayin, 'Ain't Africa fun?' They could be in Marseilles doin the same thing." Dara busy working her camcorder over Menelik Square. "You gettin the Foreign Legionnaires. French boys never seen anything like these slim black chicks givin 'em eyes. Got epaulets on their shoulders, with fringe, and a sash around their waist. Man, this is where to get stationed, if you can stand the heat. Go in the clubs, see the girls rubbin against the boys. You notice they don't wear that flap off the back of their kepis no more, like Beau Geste? You gettin the action?" Dara was shooting with the camera in plain sight. "What you don't see, too many American military hangin out. They been warned about the girls. You see some sailors, some Shore Patrol. Look over there. Keep 'em from bringin home any kind of African dose," Xavier said. "Cafe Las Vegas, run by a Corsican. That's where we meetin Billy and the model." BILLY SAID, "I CAN'T believe we're in a French joint on the rue de Paris and they don't have Perrier-Jouet, Blanc de Blanc '99?"

Xavier said, "I can't either. Let's go talk to the man, see if he has something like it. I never had a beverage cost nine hundred dollars a bottle."

They left Dara and Helene alone at the table, Dara's blond hair washed and fluffed out, Helene's red hair-no stylist in sight-tied back. She said to Dara, "I can feel my face shining."

Dara said, "You look good." She hadn't spoken more than a few words to Helene with Billy Wynn at the table. Now she said, "I can't imagine sailing all the way around the world," and waited.

Helene said, "You mean on a boat or with Billy?"

The girls by themselves now, Billy and Xavier checking the wine list at the bar.

Helene said, "I'm actually going to powder my nose," and got up from the table. After a moment Dara got up and followed her into the restroom.

"I'll see what I can fix," Dara said.

Helene was at a mirror brushing something on her cheeks. Dara moved in to look at herself in part of the mirror and Helene edged over a few inches. Dara took out her lipstick.

"I don't use any unless it's some kind of occasion." She looked at Helene in the mirror. "You have a wonderful tan. It brings out your freckles. Makes you look like a kid."

"I'm thirty-four. Billy thinks I'm in my twenties and I let him."

Now Helene was staring at Dara's reflection.

"You know what I keep thinking about, constantly? Going out on that fucking boat again."

"For four months," Dara said.

"Or longer. 'Take in the mains'l. Lay down to the galley and put on some chow.' 'Aye, aye, Skipper.' I sound like an idiot."

"You don't get seasick?"

"I get bored."

"You don't have to go."

Helene said, "You don't know what's at stake. Billy's almost twenty years older than I am. We marry and he ever passes away? I'd be something like the thirtieth-richest woman in America."