Rules of the Game (52 page)

Finally, I caught sight of Tripti, who seemed either oblivious to her protective barrier or pretending to be in order to preserve her honor. I whisked her into the theater, but the phalanx of Bangladeshi men followed, tripping to get ahead of us, between us, alongside us.

When we sat down, they arranged themselves everywhere around us. Fanny Pack motioned for Tripti to move over, took her seat, and spread his legs until his knees touched mine. It all felt malevolent. As if, instead of fighting, they just got real friendly here.

“So you like Tripti? Maybe you meet her mother and father?”

Just then, I felt a sharp kick in my abdomen. I doubled over with pain.

The spicy rice had done its damage.

That night, I returned to the hotel in defeat. I spent the next hour on the toilet letting go of my need to get laid in Bangladesh. In the morning, I popped an Imodium so I could visit the miracle village with Harary later that day.

In the lobby, I saw Tripti in her usual spot at the ticket table, looking radiant in a heavily beaded all-black sari.

“Ali Raj say no leave table,” she said fearfully.

I was dumbfounded by the degree of effort these men were making to keep us apart. It was as if we'd been swept up in some epic romance: two lovers from different cultures separated by family—and an evil magician.

These obstacles only served to intensify my desire for her. So, like a fish compelled by hunger toward the worm of its own doom, I made a desperate
move and did one of the most clichéd things I can lay claim to in a long tradition of clichéd behavior in pursuit of women: I handed her the key card for my hotel room.

“Tonight, no magic,” I told her. “Come here. I wait.”

“But Ali Raj,” she protested. I was sick of hearing those two words.

“No Ali Raj,” I said. “You. Me. Tonight. Last chance.”

I sounded less like I was seducing her and more like I was having a going-out-of-business sale.

After a moment of reflection, she responded slowly, gravely, “Okay, I come.”

To give her a plausible excuse to visit me, I purposely left my sunglasses lying on the ticket table. It seemed romantic in a sleazy sort of way.

Then I walked out of the hotel to join Harary in the van scheduled to take us to the miracle village. The only problem was that the trip had been arranged by Ali Raj. Everything was arranged by Ali Raj. So the van was full of my new friends. The only one I felt I could trust was a sweet older magician wearing a polyester suit two sizes too large for him. His name was Iqbal.

Fanny Pack took a seat next to me, threw his bullying arm around me, and asked, with a slow smile and wink, ‘You sleep well, my friend?”

“Fine,” I muttered. I wanted to get away from him. This friend shit was clearly the Bengali equivalent of Chinese water torture.

“What is this?” Fanny Pack asked, reaching across with his other arm to touch the zipper on my jeans.

“Dude, what is your problem?” I leapt up and took a seat next to Iqbal. Cockblocking I understood, but cocktouching was completely new to me.

“If we were in America, I'd smash his face in,” I told Iqbal. Their head games were clearly getting to me.

“The men here like to control the women,” he said patiently. “There are more acid attacks in Bangladesh than any other country.”

Acid attacks?

“Yes, when men throw acid in the faces of women who reject them. It is better now because of strict laws.”

Bangladesh had successfully beat me. Scared me away from its women. It wasn't worth risking Tripti's disfigurement just so I could have a local girlfriend I'd never see again. I was in no shape for sex anyway: My stomach felt like it was trying to digest a sea urchin shell. I needed to find her when we returned and call off tonight's escapade.

After another hour and a half of bumpy, bowel-jiggling roads, we arrived at the village, a collection of crudely painted shacks in a barren field of dirt. No one had digital satellite TV or a subscription to
InStyle
, so we were the entertainment—especially since Harary had brought a film crew to capture him fraternizing with the locals.

The women were beautifully made up and covered head to toe in jewelry. As we walked around, I noticed a group of teenage girls following me and staring. Eventually, a few worked up the courage to approach and began gesturing to my earrings, bracelets, rings, and shaved head.

I asked Iqbal to talk to the women and find out what they were up to. “All the women, they like you,” he came back and told me. Then he pointed out a pair of barefoot, bejeweled beauty queens and said, “Those girls want to marry you.”

“Why don't they want to marry Harary? He's the one all the cameras are following.”

Iqbal talked to them a moment, then turned and smiled. “They like you.”

In that moment, I learned that the game is universal. Peacocking—the rule of standing out rather than fitting in, of embodying a more exciting lifestyle instead of the one people are used to—seems to work in every culture. I was now officially doomed to dress ridiculously for the rest of my single life.

When we met the miracle-working village elder, I discovered something else that was universal: the principles of magic. Her miracles were just sleight-of-hand tricks, originally and masterfully executed using chicken bones. We then watched a snake charmer antagonizing a snake that had been devenomed, and a man performing an old fakir trick in which he swallowed a string and then appeared to pull it out of his stomach.

So what we discovered was not people with powers we couldn't explain, but a village of magicians who've passed down tricks from generation to generation—and who travel door to door in other villages, performing these tricks for money. In other words, we found a village full of beggar Franz Hararys.

When we returned to the hotel, the ticket table was abandoned and Tripti was gone. I had no way to get in touch with her and cancel our illicit rendezvous.

So here I am, at 8:25 p.m. in Dhaka, sitting in my hotel room, waiting for Tripti to arrive, killing time by crapping out my intestines and researching acid attacks
on Google. There are as many as 341 attacks in Bangladesh a year, most of which involve women. The weapon of choice is sulfuric acid, usually poured from a car battery into a cup and then thrown on the woman's face. The disfigurement that results is more hideous than anything I've seen in a horror film. And these women are the lucky ones. The unlucky ones are forced to drink the acid.

Of course, I could be horribly wrong about Ali Raj and his men. Perhaps they're actually on my side and protecting me from Tripti. Maybe they want to save me from a marriage trap she is laying.

Or maybe they're not actually cockblocking but hitting on me. According to one Website, five percent of Bangladesh's population is homosexual.

I wish she'd get here already. The Internet is a dangerous tool in the hands of a paranoid man with time to kill.

Five Google searches later, I hear footsteps in the hall. Getting closer. A knock. Why doesn't she just use the key I gave her?

I hear her voice. There's a man's voice, too. She's with someone. This is not a good sign.

“Be right there!”

I'm going to e-mail this to myself. Hopefully, someone will check my account and find it if anything happens to me. Maybe I should copy Bernard just in case.

Wish me luck. Or don't. I probably deserve whatever's coming to me.

... AND THEN ...

Maggie climbed, dripping, out of the backyard swimming pool, perfumed in gardenia and chlorine. The water pooled in small bulbs on the ridges of bone in her neck, the shelves of young muscle in her abdomen, the disappearing baby fat of her thighs.

She strode toward me, as fast as happiness, and I led her upstairs, my steps heavy on the white plush carpet. I was envious of the way she existed so completely and freely in each moment, and fought to clear the maelstrom of anxieties that circled my mind like wolves hunting a deer.

I flipped her onto the bed and, as she hit the mattress, a giggle dislodged, filling my bare white room with the sound of female. She lay there and waited for what she knew would come next. If I could just press my body tightly enough against hers, thrust myself deeply enough into her, slow my heartbeat enough to match hers, then I, too, could feel young and free and happy.

I'm not sure what she wanted from me, a man twelve years older, out of shape, and consumed by worry over another deadline in an endless series of deadlines. Perhaps she wanted acceptance, unaware that the need for it is not only insatiable but the cause of most mistakes made in life. Perhaps she wanted maturity, unaware that it's just a cage adults make children race toward so that
they may one day be as miserable as them. Or perhaps she was so carefree that she didn't want anything except to give.

Linda wiped away a snail track of sweat running down her temple, biting her lower lip for my benefit. She straddled me cautiously, her legs and arms tense against the bed to prevent full surrender. Her body was long and agile, like a ballerina's but with a woman's hips, and thick brown hair flowed over her flat curves, hiding a nakedness that still felt dirty to her. Her lips were swollen with kisses, her cheeks flushed with the hours of passion it took to get her to this point. Every particle of air in the sparse bedroom—the one she'd grown up in, cleared of childish reminders of who she'd been—was filled with her energy, her intensity, her nervous excitement. This was it.