Joseph O’Neill - The Dog

But here’s the thing: the fate of Mrs Ted Wilson II went undiscussed. It was beyond our pale. It became known, or said, that she had avoided deportation and continued to work as a singer at the Arabian Courtyard, in Bur Dubai. No more was offered, and I made no inquiries. There wasn’t anything I could single-handedly do about the general neglect of Mrs Ted Wilson II, if ‘neglect’ is even the right word. Yet I came to be bothered by the disparity in the attention paid to the Wilson wives, not least by me. I felt ashamed — specifically ashamed, that is, which is to say, filled with a shame additional to the general ignominy that is the corollary of insight, i.e., the ignominy of having thus far lived in error, of having failed, until the moment of so-called insight, to understand what could have been understood earlier, an ignominy only deepened by prospective shame, because the moment of insight serves as a reminder that more such moments lie ahead, and that one always goes forward in error.

Some months ago, I was startled by a phone call from the past. Don Sanchez, the vertical athlete, was in town, and staying at the Arabian Courtyard. I had no memory of giving Don my contact details and had no wish to see him again, decent man though he is, and I really, really didn’t want to paint the town red with the guy. It was only because I couldn’t resist the possibility of laying eyes on Mrs Ted Wilson II that I agreed to meet him at the Arabian Courtyard’s Sherlock Holmes English Pub. Don wanted to meet ‘somewhere more adventurous’, but I twisted his arm. That wasn’t very nice of me, I know, but those were my terms.

The Sherlock Holmes is like so many of the British-themed pubs that have spread all over the planet, a gloomy, friendly, wood-everywhere bar with dark Victorian-style wallpaper and a scattering of TV monitors showing ‘live’ broadcasts of defunct soccer matches. It’s a fine establishment, in other words. Don and I ate hamburgers and French fries and drank pints of Foster’s. Don explained that this was his ‘one drinking night’: the inaugural Burj Khalifa tower race, which was the reason he’d flown over, was four days away, and his ‘hydration schedule’ allowed for the consumption of his ‘four last pre-race units’ of alcohol that evening. Don needed no prompting to tell me about the physical preparations he’d made for the race, which he said was the ‘most severe challenge’ he’d ever ‘accepted’. He told me he had left the Lincoln Tunnel luxury rental (‘I felt I’d gone as far as I could with the set-up there’) and moved into a fortieth-floor abode on the Upper East Side (‘which was lucky timing, because I had no way of knowing that I’d be running the Burj, and frankly the forty-floor track is a superb amenity’). I was hearing all about his nutrition goals and training routine and run plan when the entertainers — two female singers and a male keyboardist — appeared, to the loud clapping of a bunch of Indian dudes who occupied the table next to the little stage.

I was excited myself. While Don shared his recent performance stats and detailed the changes he was making to his stride pattern, I studied the two singers. I’m not an ethnicities expert, but they looked like Filipinas to me — small, brown-skinned, dark-eyed young women with glossy black hair that fell straight to their shoulders. Which one, then, was Mrs TW2? Reproductive logic suggested that it had to be the older of the two — I assessed her to be in her early thirties — who wore a tight-fitting but entirely respectable very short black dress and high heels, and not the younger one, who looked to be in her early twenties and wore a short, sexy red dress and even higher heels and was the prettier of the two ladies, I guess most people would say, though personally I’m not one to start pitting women against each other in a competition of beauty.

The keyboardist hit the keys, and, before an audience of nine men and a woman, Mrs TW2 began to sing ‘Jolene’. What a sweet voice! The nightingale of Dubai! She sang the song exactly and effortlessly in Dolly Parton’s voice, which is saying something, in my opinion. I further tuned out poor old Don, who was so to speak verbally ascending a tower of data of concern only to himself, ordered another drink, and fell into an ecstatic, inebriated appreciation of Mrs TW2’s artistic abilities. The young singer may have been the object of the Indian dudes’ admiration, but I was rooting for the single mother and maritally wronged lead vocalist, who sang with great spirit at a venue whose league she was way out of. When Don suggested we go elsewhere, I bought him another drink and stayed right where I was. When Mrs TW2 sang ‘Islands in the Stream’, my cup overflowed.

Except that I’d developed a dislike of the keyboardist, a — what, fifty-five-year-old? — white guy in a black shirt and a pair of John Lennon shades. His very long grey hair occasionally fell in front of his gaunt face, and as he played he would pull the hair back into place with a cruel-looking little finger. From time to time, Mrs TW2 gave him a frightened glance and received in return an indecipherable signal. The more I studied the on-stage dynamic, the stronger grew my conviction that this repellent individual was a Svengali under whose invisible rule these two women, Mrs TW2 especially, found themselves. You could be sure that he controlled the ensemble’s finances and kept for himself the vast bulk of its earnings, a regime he certainly enforced by the malign use of his physical and/or mental powers. What a douche. I felt like going over there and pushing him off his little stool.

There was a break in the music. The Indians confidently called over the younger singer, and she went to join them as if she knew them well — which may have been the case. Acting under the inspiration of their example, and ignoring another request by Don to ‘make tracks’, I waved an inviting hand at Mrs TW2. She beamed at me but didn’t move, ostensibly preferring to drink a glass of Coke with Svengali.

I got to my feet and went to her.

‘Hi,’ I said to her. ‘Me and my friend’ — I gestured towards Don, who appeared to be taking his own pulse — ‘we were wondering if we could buy you a drink. You’re a wonderful singer.’

Mrs TW2 beamed again. ‘I’m glad you’re enjoying the show.’

I smiled right back, making sure to blank Svengali, who was right there next to her, in order to demonstrate to Mrs TW2 that he wasn’t all-powerful. Very amiable and harmless, I said, ‘Where are you from? The Philippines?’

She beamed.

‘I’m from the USA,’ I said. I said something about ‘my buddy over there’ being in town for the Burj race. ‘Is that a Coke?’ I said.

Now Svengali leaned over to her, and they exchanged words. ‘I have to sing now,’ Mrs TW2 said very happily.

‘OK, great,’ I said, I think. That’s when I gave her my card and said something innocuous, along the lines of, ‘If you ever want to get in touch.’

Svengali spoke up. ‘My friend,’ he said. ‘This is my wife. Please be respecting.’

That got under my skin — the ironic ‘my friend’. I was going to say something about it, when the ‘wife’ assertion registered. Mrs Ted Wilson II was now Mrs Svengali.

‘Hey, sorry, man, whatever,’ I said.

Don Sanchez said, ‘Well, I’m hitting the hay. It’s past my bedtime.’

‘Me too,’ I said. A week or two later, Don e-mailed me a picture of himself in running apparel, arms raised skyward. He’d made it to the top.

Naturally, the incident in the Sherlock Holmes is mortifying to recall. I had too much to drink. I misread the situation. I embarrassed everyone concerned.

Ollie was of the opinion that my blundering was even greater than I thought. When I told him about meeting Mrs TW2, he said, ‘How do you even know it was her?’