Other Earths Part 21

Lucy's head twitched-it might have been a nod-and she compressed her lips. The college boys stared at me in wonderment. They had, I thought, taken me for a relative or some kind of neutered loser. The taxi girls were transfixed, hanging on Riel's every word.

"It's because I'm beautiful, I feel that way, I think. Mitch always told me I was beautiful. Lately he wasn't being honest, but he believed it once upon a time. Now, with you guys . . ." She smiled at Lucy and me. "I'm this exotic country you've traveled to. Like Cambodia. I'm a lot like Cambodia. The land of beautiful women." She waved at the taxi girls. "You're absolutely perfect. You are. You've got these perfect t.i.tties. So firm, I don't have to touch them to know."

Sean's girl blushed; he gaped at Riel.

"Mine are too soft." She glanced at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Don't you think?"

Lucy and I answered at the same time, her saying, "No," and me saying, "They're fine."

This, the implication that the three of us were in a relationship, provoked Mike to say delightedly, "f.u.c.k!"

"Could I have another drink?" asked Riel, and, turning to Dan: "Maybe you could bring me a drink?"

He hesitated, but Mike said, "Yeah, get us all one, man," and he went off with our drink order; the door opening allowed a gust of music inside.

Lucy started to speak, but Riel cut in line and said to me, "Mitch wanted to sell me to other men, but I wouldn't let him. I wonder if that's why he left."

"Beats me," I said.

"You wouldn't sell me, would you, Tom?"

I had a pretty fair buzz going, but nevertheless I noted that this was another disturbing resonance between my life and The Tea Forest The Tea Forest. "There's no need," I said. "I'm rich."

With a finger, Riel broke the circle of moisture her gla.s.s had made on the table. "I don't guess it matters. Someone's always using you."

"Oh, for heaven's sake! I am fed up with your dreary p.r.o.nouncements!" Lucy put the back of one hand against her brow, a move suitable to an actress in a silent film, and imitated Riel's fey voice: "It's all so morbidly ba.n.a.l!" She dropped the impersonation and said angrily, "If you reduced your drug intake, you might have a sunnier outlook."

Unruffled, Riel said, "You're not where I am yet. You'll have to increase your drug intake to catch up."

Sean and Mike glanced at each other. I could almost see a word balloon with two downward spikes above their heads, saying in thought italics: This is way cool! This is way cool! The taxi girls lost interest and idly fondled their new best friends; but their interest was restored when Riel asked Mike if he planned to have s.e.x with his girl there in the room. The taxi girls lost interest and idly fondled their new best friends; but their interest was restored when Riel asked Mike if he planned to have s.e.x with his girl there in the room.

"If you'll have s.e.x with Tom and Lucy," he said.

"No," I said.

"Why not, man? We're all friends."

"Little orgy action. Yeah," said Sean, and had a toke off a joint that his taxi girl held to his lips.

"You haven't even introduced us to your dates," I said to Mike. "That's not very friendly."

"Hey, f.u.c.k yourself, dude," said Sean, suddenly gone surly, no doubt due to some critical level of THC having been surpa.s.sed.

Mike said, "Oh-oh! You don't want to be getting Sean upset. My man's third team All American. He's a beast."

Sean glared at him. "f.u.c.k you, too."

"Really?" I leaned back and crossed my legs. "What position do you play? No, let me guess. You're an offensive offensive lineman, right?" lineman, right?"

Lucy put a cautioning hand on my knee.

"Nose guard," said Sean, unmindful of the emphasis I'd placed on the word offensive. offensive.

Riel started singing, a breathy, wordless tune that drew everyone's notice, and then broke it off to say, "Your friend's been gone a long time."

"It's nuts out there," said Mike. "He's probably still trying to get served."

"Or hooking up with another wh.o.r.e." Sean extended a hand to Mike, who slapped him five but did so listlessly, as though out of obligation.

The door flew inward, and a diminutive Cambodian, one of the gold watch/silk shirt crowd, with a high polish to his hair and an inconsequential mustache, burst into the room, along with the pumping beat of a Madonna song. He shouted at the taxi girls. Behind him was an older man whose eyes ranged the room. Lucy caught at my hand. The taxi girls, too, shouted; their shrill voices mixed incoherently with that of the younger man. Sean dumped his taxi girl onto the floor and stood, his face a beefy caricature of disdain. The older man produced an automatic pistol from behind his back, aimed it at Sean, and spoke to him sharply in Khmer.

"Get down!" Lucy said. "He's telling you to get on your knees!"

Looking dumfounded, Sean obeyed. The taxi girl scrambled up, confronting the young man. They both began to yell, and then he punched her flush in the face, knocking her to the floor. Sean said something, I wasn't sure what. The older man b.u.t.t-ended him, and he slumped across the taxi girl's legs. She sat against the wall, dazed and bleeding from the mouth. The other taxi girl was still shouting, but the shouts seemed remote, as did the sight of Mike frozen in his chair. The shock I had felt when the incident began had evolved into the kind of fright that grips you when your car spins out of control on an icy road; everything slowed to a crawl. Lucy sheltering against my arm, Riel gazing with mild interest at the gun, Sean moaning and clutching his head-all that was in focus, remarkably clear, yet it was like a child's puzzle with a very few pieces that I couldn't solve. I had the knowledge that whatever was going to happen would happen, and I would die in that little icy black room with Madonna woodling about love and a hooting, arm-waving, hip-shaking crowd attempting to cover up the unappetizing facts of their existence with celebration.

The young man (he couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen) strode to the center of the room. I was half-hidden behind Lucy, pressed back into the cushions, and until then I don't think he had been able to see me unimpeded. He did not look my way at first-he plainly wanted to strut, to bask in his dominance; but when his eyes fell on me, his prideful expression dissolved. He put his hands together, fingers and palms touching as if in prayer, and inclined his head and jabbered in Khmer.

Bewildered, Lucy said, "He's apologizing to you. He's begging you not to tell his father and asking your forgiveness."

I gawked at her.

"Say something," she said sotto voce. "Act in control."

It had been years since I smoked, but I needed a cigarette to marshal my wits. I reached for the pack on the table and lit one. "How can I forgive him when this animal is holding a gun on us? Ask him that."

Lucy spoke to the young man, and he snapped at the bodyguard, who lowered the gun and withdrew. The young man then rea.s.sumed his prayerful posture.

"Tell him he can go," I said. "If he leaves immediately, I won't tell his father."

She relayed the message, and the young man backed toward the door, bowing all the while.

"Wait!" I said, and Lucy echoed me in Khmer.

The young man stopped, holding his pose. I let him stew in his own juices, and his hands began to tremble-his fright increased my spirits more than was natural.

"Tell him to take care of our bill before he goes," I said. "And have them turn the music down."

"Jesus f.u.c.k!" Mike said once he had gone. "I thought we were dead! What the f.u.c.k just happened?"

Sean struggled up into a sitting position. His taxi girl tried to minister to him, but he brushed her away.

"s.h.i.t!" said Mike, and then repeated the word.

The other taxi girl kneeled beside her friend and mopped blood from her mouth and chin.

Lucy, regaining her poise and said to me, "He must have mistaken you for someone else."

"Who the f.u.c.k are you, guy?" Mike asked. "Some kind of f.u.c.king . . . ?" His imagination failed him and he said again, "s.h.i.t!"

"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 relationship, 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 vanishing 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."