The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (29 page)

The plane sped through the morning, its shadow wafting over cooled patches of trees and rectangles of various greens and grays, all shining wet. Then they arrived in Cambodia,
which seemed a no-nonsense country. There was a line of soldiers on the runway, each soldier directing the photographer and the journalist on to the next.

He went into the hotel lobby and took a few stacks of riels out of the paper bag. Help yourself to some money, he said to the concierge. He was hot, weak, and dizzy. Thanks to
the caffeine injection, he hadn’t slept for two nights. In the wide listless courtyard and porticoes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which seemed almost empty like the rest of Phnom Penh
(how many people had been killed off?), he and the photographer sat playing with their press passes, waiting for their fate to be decided.
In our country, at the moment, the militia plays more
of a role than the army
, an official explained, and the journalist wrote it down carefully while the photographer yawned. They took a cyclo back to the hotel, and the photographer went outside
to snap some land-mine beggars while the journalist lay down on the bed to rest.

The morning sky was a delicate gray. The journalist lay in bed, clutching his distended balls. It was warming up nicely. His underpants steamed against his ass. The hotel maid
came in and cleaned. She made seven thousand riels a month. The Khmer Rouge had killed her father, grandfather, sister, and two brothers. She’d worked hard for the Khmer Rouge in the fields .
. .

The English teacher wrote
sixteen
in standard and phonetic orthography on the blackboard while the children wrote
sixteen
in their notebooks, and the English
teacher got ready to write
seventeen
but then the power went out and they sat in the darkness.

Your English is very good, said the journalist.

Yes, the teacher said.

Where did you learn it?

Yes.

What is your name?

Yes. No. Twenty-two.

Well, that’s
real
good, said the photographer brightly. That’s
real
nice. Do you know what the word
pussy
means?

How happy he was when on the third day of the antibiotics something popped like popcorn in his balls and he started feeling better! The tenderness was now in his lymph nodes,
but it would surely go away from there too.

To celebrate, he showed all the hotel maids his press pass. You very handsome, they said.

They had an appointment with the English teacher who couldn’t speak English. The small children were silhouetted in the dark, singing
A, B, C, D, E, F, G
. . . On
the blackboard it said
The English alphabet
. The teacher pointed at this, and the children said:
Da iii-eee aa-phabet
.

Why does the alphabet only go up to
S
? asked the journalist.

Yes, the teacher replied.

The journalist pointed to a photograph that concentrated darkness like an icon. My father is die by Pol Pot regime, said the teacher simply. He go to Angkor Wat to hide Buddha. They die him by
slow pain . . .

For a moment the journalist wanted to embrace him. Instead he stared down at the floor, and the sweat dripped from his nose and forehead. As soon as he wiped his face it was wet again.

In the hotel there were paintings of bare-breasted girls in butterfly-winged skirts standing waist-deep in the mist before science-fiction palaces. The night was so hot that
the journalist’s face felt as if it had peered into a steaming kettle. He went into the room, turned the air conditioning on (he and the photographer, being boys of high morals, always
traveled first-class), and took a shower. He was standing naked in the cool water when the photographer came in with two whores.

The photographer found them in a disco. He always gushed when he made a novel score.

I was gonna take the tall one, he said, because I kept thinking how it would be, you know, with her legs around me, but as soon as we got into the street the short one took my hand, so
that’s that.

The girls went through all the pills and medicines first, sniffing the packets, going
nnnihh!
, giggling at the condoms, whispering and pointing like schoolgirls. The photographer’s
girl was already in the shower and out, halfway demure in her towel. The journalist’s girl stayed dressed. She did not seem to like him very much, but then that didn’t seem unusual to
him because girls never liked him; was it his fat legs or his flabby soul? Look at ’em! shouted the photographer. They’re as curious as fucking
monkeys
, man! With great effort
they mouthed the Khmer words in the dictionary section of his guidebook; they opened the box of sugar cubes, which were swarming with ants, and ate one apiece. The journalist’s girl had a
beauty spot over one eye. When she opened and closed everything, her eyebrows slanted in elegant surprise. She wore a dark striped dress. There was something very lady-like about her. She
intimidated him slightly. He lay sweatily on the bed watching them; when they’d completed their inspection they neatened everything up like good housewives, so that it took the journalist and
the photographer days to find their possessions.

The photographer’s girl got ready right away. But after half an hour the journalist’s girl was still silent in the bathroom with the door closed. She stood staring
at the back of her little mirror, which had a decal of a man and woman together.

He communicated with her mainly by signs. She liked to smell his cheeks and forehead in little snorts of breath, but not to kiss him; whenever he tried, she’d whirl her
head away into the pillow, so he started Buddha-ing her in just the same way that Oy had steepled her hands very quickly together for good luck when he’d bought her out, she probably hoping
he wouldn’t see, probably praying that he’d give her a lot of money; so he did this to the Cambodian girl; he’d seen the beggars do it; he’d do it to say please, then
he’d touch his forefinger from his lips to hers, and she’d Buddha him back to say please no. Sometimes he did it anyway, and she’d jerk her head away, or let him do it only on her
closed lips. Then sometimes he’d steeple his hands please and point from his lips to her cunt, and she’d wave her hand no, so he wouldn’t do that; he’d pray to kiss her
again, and she’d pray him no; so he’d pray and point from his crotch to hers, and she’d nod yes.

He smiled at her as affectionately as he could. He wanted her to like him. It just made things easier when the whore you were on top of liked you. No, that’s how the
photographer would have put it, but the journalist had a deeper thrust (if you know what I mean). The truth was, he really did like her. He traced a heart on her breast with his finger and smiled,
but she looked back at him very seriously. Then suddenly she ran her fingernail lightly round his wrist and pointed to herself. What did she mean? So many prostitutes seemed to wear religious
strings for bracelets; was that what she meant? Somehow he didn’t think so . . .

Give ’em more Benadryl; come on, give ’em more Benadryl, the journalist whined as the photographer’s girl turned on the light, giggling for the fourth or
fifth time that night; he didn’t know exactly what the hour was, since his watch had been stolen in Thailand, possibly by Oy. The photographer’s girl loved to watch the journalist
making love. Even when the photographer was screwing her she’d always be looking avidly into the other bed, hoping to see the journalist’s buttocks pumping under the sheet; whenever she
could she’d sneak up and pull the sheet away to see the journalist naked with a naked girl; then she’d shriek with glee. It was very funny but it got a little less funny each time.
Fortunately they obediently swallowed whatever pills the journalist gave them; the photographer told them that the journalist was a doctor, and the journalist neither confirmed nor denied this
report, which most likely they didn’t understand anyway. So he gave them Benadryl – one for his girl, three for the other, who was hyperkinetic. Even so they both kept turning the
lights on to see what time it was; they wanted to leave by the end of curfew.

Once they’d left, he told the photographer he didn’t want to see her again. Why, she hadn’t wanted to do
anything
! And she’d seemed so sorrowful
he’d felt like a rapist. What did she expect anyway? But as soon as he’d conveyed these well-reasoned sentiments, his heart started to ache. He didn’t tell the photographer, of
course. They rarely talked about those things. Why her? he wondered. But he remembered how she’d hung his trousers neatly over the chair, how she’d ordered his money in neat piles
without stealing any, how before leaving she’d taken each of his fingers and pulled it until it made a cracking noise, then bent it back; this was her way of pleasing him, taking care of
him.

At the disco that night he didn’t see her. He sat and waited while the crowd stridulated. Finally her friend, the photographer’s girl, came to the table. She was
slick with sweat; she must have been dancing. He asked the English teacher who didn’t speak English to ask her where his girl was. They saw him frequently in the disco, and he would try to
translate for them. The man said: She don’t come here today. Already they were bringing him another girl. He said not right now, thank you. He tried to find out more, and then there was
another girl sitting down by him and he figured he had to buy her a drink so she wouldn’t be hurt, and the photographer’s girl was biting her lip and stamping her foot, and then his
girl came and stood looking on at him and the other girl silently.

He pointed to his girl and traced the usual imaginary bracelet around his wrist. (He didn’t even know his girl’s name. He’d asked the photographer’s
girl and she said something that sounded like
Pala
. He’d tried calling her Pala and she looked at him without recognition.) Finally the other girl got up, carrying her drink, and began
to trudge away. He patted her shoulder to let her know that he was sorry, but that seemed to be the wrong thing to do, too. His girl sat down in her place, and he could feel her anger, steady and
flame-white in the darkness, almost impersonal.

But that night when he put his closed lips gently on her closed lips, not trying to do anything more because he knew how much Thai and Cambodian women hated kissing, her mouth
slowly opened and the tip of her tongue came out.

You got her to french you? laughed the photographer, as the two chauvinists lay at ease, discussing their conquests. Oh,
good!
She must have been
really
repulsed.

She almost never smiled. Once again that night she traced an invisible bracelet around her wrist, then his. He watched her sleeping. In the middle of the night he pulled her on
top of him just to hug her more tightly, and she seemed no heavier than the blanket.

In the morning she cracked his finger joints and toe joints for him; she stretched and twisted his arms and legs; she slapped him gently all over. Then she made her rendezvous
with the mirror, where she stood painting her eyebrows in slow silence. When she was finished he sat her down with his guidebook, which contained a few dictionary pages. He pointed to all the
different words for food, pointed to her and then to him. She just sat there. He made motions to indicate the two of them going off together. She followed soundlessly. He locked the door. She
headed downstairs with him, toward the lobby’s ocean of staring faces, which surely judged him; he could not smile as usual, and the faces watched him in silence. She was behind him on the
stairs, creeping slowly down. They hadn’t even traversed the lobby yet. The faces watched and waited. He dropped the key onto the front desk and she was far behind him. He let her catch up to
him a little, not too much because she might not want that, and went out, into the street that was filled with even more eyes that watched, and she was farther behind than before. He looked back to
make sure that she was there. It must be difficult for her to be seen next to him. So he went half a block to an outdoor restaurant and sat down. They brought him tea and bread. He drank a few sips
of the tea and paid. She had not come; she was gone.

He felt miserable all day. He didn’t want to have sex with her any more, only to straighten things out. He’d find someone in the city who could translate for
him.

Night having smothered the wasted day at last, he set out for the disco while his dear friend the photographer lurked kindly in the rat-infested shadow of the garbage heap, not
wishing to show himself to
his
girl, who’d already latched onto him. As soon as he’d been sucked into the sweaty inner darkness, the photographer’s girl came running up,
seizing him by the hand, weeping, pleading in a rush of alien singsong. He shook his head, patted her shoulder (this was becoming his stereotyped Pontius Pilate act), and she stamped away in a
rage. Then she was back again, snarling and groveling monstrously (did she need to eat so badly as that? what didn’t he understand?), and he wondered whether she only wanted him to buy her
out so that she could rush to the hotel in pursuit of the photographer or whether she wanted
him
now; anyhow it was clear that she wasn’t Pala’s friend (that night she finally
took the trouble to tell him that the woman he was falling in love with was not named Pala but Vanna). Did he love the idea of loving Vanna? Or did he love Vanna?

I want Vanna, he said. Excuse me, sir, said a low-level pimp or waiter or enforcer, presenting him with two other girls, each of whom slid pleading hands up his knee. I want Vanna, the
journalist repeated. The photographer’s girl said something, and the others laughed scornfully. There was no possibility of finding her if she didn’t want to be found. She was a taxi
girl; it was her profession to find him. If she wanted him she’d come.