Part 21 (2/2)
”Tom's a hero,” said Riel, smiling goofily.
”Apparently so.” Lucy picked up her drink and saluted me with an ironic toast. ”A hero to villains, at any rate. Could there be something you haven't told us?”
With a groan, Sean heaved up from the floor and flopped into the chair-he was one unhappy nose guard. ”That guy like to bust my f.u.c.king skull.”
”Have a drink,” said Mike.
The volume of the music was cut in half. I asked Riel to close the door, and, reaching out languidly, she pushed it shut, putting an end to Madonna. I b.u.t.ted my cigarette, yet it had tasted good, and I lit another. The smoke was. .h.i.tting me like opium fumes, making my head swim. ”Maybe we should go.”
”Oh, do you think so?” asked Lucy nastily. ”We might as well stay now. What more could happen?”
”I'd like to have my drink,” said Riel. ”Where's . . . you know, your friend?”
”Dan,” said Mike. ”Yeah, where the f.u.c.k is he?” The taxi girls went to hover beside their men. Lucy's eyes pried at me, trying to see whatever it was she had overlooked in me. She knew something wasn't kosher. I was on my third cigarette when Dan reentered, carrying a tray of drinks.
”You missed out, man,” said Mike. ”Tom saved our f.u.c.king a.s.s.”
He delivered an exaggerated play by play of the a.s.sault and my ”heroics,” and Sean, pressing an iced drink to his head, provided color commentary. ”That was one cold dude, man” and ”I didn't know what the f.u.c.k he was talking about” were exemplary of his contribution. In response to this last, I asked Lucy what had been the young Khmer's problem.
”He accused Nary . . .” She indicated Sean's girl. ”Of giving the third girl-the one who left-drugs.”
”Why? Because she freaked out about the room?”
Lucy spoke to the girls and then said, ”The girl has a fondness for Ecstasy. Dith, the young guy, had forbidden her to use any more. They have a relations.h.i.+p, though I can't quite gather what it is, and he believed that these two slipped her some in a drink. They claim she just started behaving oddly. She said a mirror vanished off the wall.”
”Crazy b.i.t.c.h,” said Dan.
”Let's go.” I stood, followed in short order by Lucy. ”You coming, Riel?”
She held up a forefinger, addressed herself to her drink, and chugged it in two swallows.
Dan put on a woebegone look. ”Hey, come on! You guys don't have to go.”
But Riel was already at the door. She paused to flutter a ditsy wave. ” 'Bye, Danny,” she said.
The Undine Undine was moored at the port facility on the Tonle Sap, a short distance from where it joined the Mekong and close by a huge multistory barge, its paint weathered to the grayish white of old bone. In years past this had housed a dance hall, a brothel by any other name, and now the top floor was home to the offices of the Cambodian s.e.x Workers Union and other such organizations. Womyn's Agenda For Change, the sign above one door spelled out in English. The following morning, sitting in the stern of the was moored at the port facility on the Tonle Sap, a short distance from where it joined the Mekong and close by a huge multistory barge, its paint weathered to the grayish white of old bone. In years past this had housed a dance hall, a brothel by any other name, and now the top floor was home to the offices of the Cambodian s.e.x Workers Union and other such organizations. Womyn's Agenda For Change, the sign above one door spelled out in English. The following morning, sitting in the stern of the Undine Undine, I watched streams of taxi girls trundling along the balconies, pa.s.sing in and out of rooms where their sisters had once slaved, busy being empowered, fighting the good fight against the corporate giants that sought to use them as guinea pigs to test experimental AIDS vaccines. I supposed their sisterhood boosted morale and saved lives, and I knew it was dangerous work. Lucy compared them to the Wobblies back in the 1920s and said many girls had been murdered for their efforts. Yet to my eyes they might as well have been streams of ants plucking a few last shreds of tissue off a carca.s.s-they had no conception of the forces mounted against them, no clue how absurd and redundant a name was Womyn's Agenda For Change.
Since my arrival in Phnom Penh, the changes (flickerings in the sky, subtle alterations in urban geography, etc.) had grown more frequent or, due to an increased sensitivity on my part, more observable. The episode with the taxi girl and the vanis.h.i.+ng mirror was the first evidence I'd had that anyone else noticed them, though the evidence was impugned by the possible use of drugs. If the changes were observable by others, if this were other than a localized effect, and if it occurred in a place less disorderly than Phnom Penh, it would be the lead story on the news. I expected that when I reached Dong Thap the changes might be even more drastic. The prospect unnerved me, yet it held a potent allure. Like the narrator of The Tea Forest The Tea Forest, I was being drawn to complete the journey and I wanted to complete it. The previous night's incident had convinced me that I was undergoing a transformation like the one doc.u.mented by Cradle Two in the novel. I had taken undue pleasure in the exercise of control over the young Khmer in the Heart of Darkness, and I wondered if the person for whom he had mistaken me could have been the alpha-Cradle, that secretive, powerful figure, the Platonic ideal of Cradles everywhere. The notion that I was evolving into such a ruthless and decisive figure was exhilarating. I had never possessed either quality in great measure, and the proportions of the man, the fear he inspired, were impressive. Yet I was being pulled in another direction as well, and that was why I had returned to the Undine Undine and sat in the stern, the satellite phone in my lap, ignoring the faint, sweetish reek of sewage, gazing at the barge and at eddies in the brown water. and sat in the stern, the satellite phone in my lap, ignoring the faint, sweetish reek of sewage, gazing at the barge and at eddies in the brown water.
When I called Kim, she answered on the third ring and told me this wasn't a good time. I asked if she had company. She was noncommittal, a sure sign that one of my colleagues, or one of hers, was lying in bed beside her. I said it was important, and she said, ”Hang on.”
I pictured her slipping into a robe, soothing the ruffled sensibilities of her lover, and carrying the phone into the living room. When she spoke again, her tone was exasperated.
”You don't call for three weeks, and now you just have to speak to me?” she said. ”I got so worried I called Andy [my agent], and of course you'd called him. This is so typical of you.”
I apologized.
”Are you in trouble?” she asked. ”Do you want to run off to Bali with some teenage nymph and jeopardize everything we've built together?”
”It's not that.”
”Because if that's the case, I'm sick and tired of having to coax you back. I'm ready to give you my blessing.”
”It's not that! Okay? I want you to do me a favor. Andy was going to make copies of The Tea Forest The Tea Forest. Did he send one to me?”
”I don't know. You have a package from him. I put it with the rest of your mail.”
”That's probably it. Could you take a look?”
While she checked, my eyes returned to the barge. A number of women were kneeling on the foredeck, painting signs for a protest, and others had gathered in the bow, listening to a speaker who was talking into a hand-held megaphone, doing a bit of consciousness-raising. Now and then her high-pitched voice blatted out and there was a squeal of feedback.
”It's here,” Kim said. ”Do you want me to express it?”
”I want you to read it.”
”Thomas, I don't have the time.”
”Please. Read it . . . as soon as possible. I can't talk to you about what's happening until you've read it.”
There was a silence, and then she said, ”Andy told me you were developing some worrisome obsessions about the book.”
”You know I'm a . . .”
”Just a second.”
A man said something in the background; after that I heard nothing. When Kim came back on, she said with anger in her voice, ”You have my undivided attention.”
”Sorry.”
”It's not important. You were saying?”
I'd lost the thread, and it took me a second to pick it up.
”I'm not the kind of guy who's likely to lose it,” I said. ”You know that.”
”Are you doing a lot of drugs?”
”Did Andy say he thought I was?”
”Not in so many words, but . . . yeah.”
”Well, I'm not. There are some strange correspondences, very strange, between the book and what's going on here. I need another point of view.”
”All right. I'll read it Wednesday night. I can't until then. Tomorrow's a nightmare.”
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