Dogstar Rising by Parker Bilal Page A

with low lighting.
    Talal had managed to exchange his customary T-shirt for something with a collar, and he was even wearing a jacket that looked as if it had been through a grain thresher and was at least two sizes too small for him. The sleeves came up to his forearms. They were sitting at a table on the riverside. Through the window the city lights swam like luminous fish in the black water. The woman of his dreams had a high bust and creamy skin. She wore a tight blue dress covered in ribbons and bows that emphasised her full figure. She looked as though she would eat Talal alive.
    ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said. ‘Bunny, this is the man you’ve heard so much about.’
    ‘He really doesn’t stop talking about you,’ she said, holding out a limpid hand. There was a playful lilt to her voice and her eyes lingered for a moment on Makana.
    ‘Please sit,’ Talal urged, as jumpy as a scalded cat.
    ‘Thank you,’ Makana said.
    ‘Actually,’ she giggled, ‘I hear your name all the time now that you are helping my father.’
    ‘Yes, how is that coming along?’ Talal chimed in.
    ‘It’s too early to say.’
    The place was almost empty and they seemed to be surrounded by a swarm of beefy waiters, snapping their fingers, holding out chairs, lifting up and setting down cutlery, handing out menus. Makana reached for his cigarettes.
    Bunny prompted, ‘Talal.’
    ‘Oh,’ Talal said, looking up from his menu, which was big enough to hide a family of four. ‘If you don’t mind. Bunny doesn’t like smoke.’
    ‘No problem.’ Makana replaced the cigarette in the packet, put the packet back in his pocket and instead took the menu that was thrust under his nose. After staring at it for a time he realised it made no sense to him. The dishes all had foreign names. He took another look around. Low lighting was generally a bad sign in any restaurant. It implied you were not meant to be able to see what you were eating. The empty tables seemed to encourage this line of thinking. Eating was a serious pastime in this country. Not that such trivia affected the happy couple. As Bunny chattered on, Makana realised this was Talal’s idea of trying to impress her. He tried to put his doubts aside. By the sound of it they were planning to taste every available dish. Bunny was running down the menu ticking off one after another as a distracted waiter tried to take note. Makana had a feeling this was going to be a long evening.
    ‘What about you?’ Talal asked.
    ‘Oh, why don’t you order for me?’
    It was the right thing to say, and allowed Bunny to spend some time playfully measuring him up with her eye to decide what he might like. She clearly liked attention, particularly the male kind. While the young couple chattered between themselves, discussing the merits of one dish over another, the waiter stood tapping his pen against his pad impatiently as if he had a hundred customers waiting for him elsewhere. Makana was about to excuse himself to go outside and have a cigarette, when a shadow crossed before him and another man pulled up the chair opposite.
    ‘So there you are, we were beginning to get worried.’
    The newcomer was around the same age as Makana, in his forties. He wore a colourful African shirt and a broad smile. As he sat down he placed not one but two large mobile telephones on the table and reached into the air to snap his fingers for the waiter. If a moment ago Makana had had good reasons for wanting to leave, they had just multiplied.
    Once upon a time Mohammed Damazeen was an artist, a painter with a sideline in the import-export business to keep him in fancy shirts. Makana observed the look of complicity that passed between Damazeen and Talal, whose face was a picture of carefree innocence. A senior waiter in a black jacket appeared, cheerless and balding, and with a look of disdain on his face that had been perfected by years of waiting on tables.
    ‘You two know each other, of course,’ said