Djibouti Read Online Free Page A

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. “Café Las Vegas, run by a Corsican. That’s where we meetin Billy and the model.”
    Â 
    B ILLY SAID , “I CAN’T believe we’re in a French joint on the rue de Paris and they don’t have Perrier-Jouët, 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 blondhair 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.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œI’m thirty-four. Billy thinks I’m in my twenties and I let him.”
    Now Helene was staring at Dara’s reflection.
    â€œYou know what I keep thinking about, constantly? Going out on that fucking boat again.”
    â€œFor four months,” Dara said.
    â€œOr longer. ‘Take in the mains’l. Lay down to the galley and put on some chow.’ ‘Aye, aye, Skipper.’ I sound like an idiot.”
    â€œYou don’t get seasick?”
    â€œI get bored.”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œHe told you that?”
    â€œAn inducement, giving me a goal.”
    â€œIt could be a long wait,” Dara said. “He seems in good health. He doesn’t smoke.”
    â€œCigars,” Helene said. “You think I’m out of my mind?”
    â€œYou must like him—”
    â€œI do . He’s kind…he’s thoughtful…He’s funny sometimes. He calls Obama ‘that spear-chucker we got in the White House,’ but Billy likes him, I can tell.” She looked at Dara’s reflection again.
    â€œYou married?”
    â€œI’ve been too busy,” Dara said, “to think about it.”
    â€œBut you’re not, are you, a lesbian? Some of the girls I work with are. They’re nice, not especially bitchy. Sometimes I’ll tell a guy I’m one to shut him down.”
    Dara said, “I like guys. But I like whatever I’m doing right now, whatever I want, more. I lived with a lawyer once—he didn’t want to get married either. He’d tell me why we were better off single living together and go through a, b, c, once