194

I walked past the waiting lines of limos and wondered if this was what Academy Awards night looked like. It was crazy.

I made my way past the valets, whose heads kept swiveling so hard I thought they might get whiplash. I wasn’t sure whether it was because of my makeover or because they might have recognized me from the news. Either way they were all polite, and I entered the lobby undisturbed.

The Dubai’s lobby was just as luxurious as the first night I’d seen it. Even more so, since the opulent surroundings were filled with men in tuxes and women in evening gowns – most of them gorgeous, others daring, a few ill-advised, but all of them worth more than I used to make in a year as a secretary. There were famous faces everywhere, too: movie stars, television stars, rock stars, all of them mixed in amongst dozens of older men and women I’d never seen before, whom I figured were instantly recognizable to anybody who read Forbes Magazine.

Except for one quartet in the middle of the lobby