Brilliant by Denise Roig Page B

the degree, marry and never, ever work here or out there.
    Fatima’s back with a pot of coffee, a platter of sliced
halloumi
and cut-up cucumbers and tomatoes.
    â€œWhere’s the bread?” I ask.
    But Mother shoos her off and Fatima goes back to her station near the kitchen door, where she will wait if we need her. Her face is usually a smooth blank, but this morning her eyebrows are tensed, like something hurts.
    â€œYou need to eat a lot less bread, Asma. I mean it.” And Mother fixes me with the look that used to intimidate me. I look away, out the window where the gardening staff is trimming a date palm. Our head gardener stands below one of the ladders, waving his arms and shaking his head. Eiman gets up, her magazine sliding to the floor. She doesn’t pick it up. “I told Salman I’d call him between classes. You know how he gets if I don’t call,” and she rolls her eyes at Mother.
    I will go to university. I will work. I will eat what I want.
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    After coffee with the girls at La Brioche, I take a cab to Marina Mall, drift into a couple of shops, buy another purse, a birthday card for Russ (fifty-six next week), then wait outside in the usual line-up for a cab. The sun feels dangerous. A small plane with a long streamer makes obscenely loud loops over the Corniche, plunging and climbing. Just watching makes me queasy.
    Two local women and their Indonesian maid, her arms full of shopping bags, nab the next cab, my cab. “Well, that was rude!” I say and they glare at me. The Indian couple behind eye me uneasily and gesture elaborately when the next cab pulls up. “Yours! Please!” I can still hear the plane as we pull away. Practice for an air show probably. Either that or we’re being attacked by the Iranians. “Crystal Tower,” I tell the driver. “Now.” He keeps a nervous eye on me in the rear-view mirror.
    But home, I can’t settle. Russ is in Oman on business until Thursday. It’s too late in the morning for golf, too hot even for me who’s learned to play a reasonable game in 100-degree heat. I think about Skyping Chris in New York, but even my workaholic-hedge-fund-analyst son won’t be up at this hour. And I can’t call Annie or Cherry and say, “Hey, let’s meet at Dome for lunch.” We’ve just had coffee.
    I download shots of our last trip — Russ surprised me for our thirtieth with a long weekend in Casablanca. I go online to see what my darling Tea Party’s up to this week, then log twenty minutes on the treadmill. Dora’s left her signature rice and chicken dish on the counter as she always does on Sundays. But all I want is bread and cheese, a nectarine. I eat standing up. And then, nothing. There is nothing to do. No one is waiting for me anywhere.
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    This no place for free-loaders. When I hear that word, I laugh. English has good words. People free of loads sound like my employers. Not royals like family of Carmela, thank you, my God. But people with so much money they could pay all Philippines’ debt. Whole country, serious! But not enough to pay me.
    My old boss, she never nice one minute. Agency think good match because we same age, thirty-one. She very beautiful, very rich, very bad. Hard to believe someone be like this.
    One morning I am up at five like every day, washing cars. Mercedes, two. Land Rover, two. Plus Sir’s Maserati. Hot already, sun beating headache into me. Employer, she come out, inspect. She find tiny wrapper, maybe from driver, on back seat of Land Rover. March over, stick paper in my face, then slap two sides. When I cry, she call me name. She call me hundred name in two years, but worse is Stupid. I am many things, not all good. But not stupid. One piece paper! This happens!
    Carmela much more worse. She happy now. Okay, more happy. None of us happy. (I lie little bit to Ronni.) Carmela work in Crown Prince palace. He not bad man,