Other Earths Read online

  As we strolled along Street 51 one night, after a late supper at a grand old colonial hotel on the riverfront near Wat Phnom hill, we happened upon a blue wall bearing the painted silhouette of a girl flying a kite, a Beardsley-like illustration; beside it were the words

  HEART OF DARKNESS BAR. In addition, there was a painting on the door very much like the mural on the market stall in Stung Treng. I wanted to check the place out, intrigued by the mural, by the name of the bar and the juxtaposed irony of the sign, but Lucy said it was dangerous, that the Coconut Gang hung out there, and someone had recently been murdered on the premises.

  “What’s a Coconut Gang?” I asked.

  “Rich assholes. Khmer punks and their bodyguards. Please! Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “All I want is to have a quick look.”

  “This is no place to play tourist.”

  “I’m not playing at anything. I’m a writer. I can use shit like this.”

  “Yes, I imagine being shot could prove an invaluable resource. Silly me.”

  “Nothing like that’s going to happen.”

  “Do you have the slightest idea of where you are? Haven’t you noticed this is a hostile environment? They don’t care if you’re a bloody writer. They don’t discriminate to that degree. To them, you’re simply an idiot American poking his nose in where it’s not wanted.”

  A smattering of Cambodians had paused in their promenade to kibbitz, amused by our argument. Feeling exposed, I said, “All right. Fine . . . whatever. Let’s just go, okay?”

  Lucy looked around. “Where’s Riel?”

  We found her in the entryway of the club, staring at a stuffed green adder in a bottle and being stared at by two security men. Mounted on walls throughout the main room were dozens of bottles, some containing snakes, other objects less readily identifiable, and bizarre floral arrangements, someone’s flawed conception of the Japanese form. Riel evaded Lucy’s attempt to corral her and went deeper into the club, which was also a misconception, an Asian version of a western bar with a big dance floor and booths but with the details, the accents, all wrong. The dance floor was packed with Cambodian men and taxi girls and young expats working out to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” As we proceeded through the club, every couple of feet we crossed into a zone dominated by a new perfume or cologne.

  We located a niche in the crowd at the bar, and when the harried bartender deigned to notice us, we ordered drinks. The clamor and the loud music oppressed me, and the young Khmer men in body-hugging silk shirts and gold watches and Italian shoes who eyed Riel made me uneasy. I wasn’t disturbed by the possibility of her straying—my attitude toward her was devoid of possessiveness—but I presumed she might be a source of trouble; though the place did not seem dangerous, just another drunken revel in postmillennial Southeast Asia, expressing the relief Asians felt on having survived the worst life had to offer, or so they believed . . . or so I thought they believed. I realize now that it was the same party, more or less, that has been going on for as long as there have been party people.

  One drink, I estimated, would be the limit of my tolerance for the Heart of Darkness; but a college-age American kid pushing through the press, Dan Something, muscular and patchily bearded, a frat type on holiday, was brought up short by the sight of Riel. He struck up a shouted conversation with her, bought her a second drink, and invited us to join him and his friends in one of the many private rooms that opened off the main space; there we could talk more comfortably. Riel turned him down, but Marilyn Manson’s “Tainted Love” started to play, a song that made me want to break things, particularly Marilyn Manson, and I accepted.

  Inside the private room (black walls; furnished with a grouping of easy chairs and a sofa; centered by a coffee table upon which lay a pack of cigarettes, cigarette papers, and a heap of marijuana), Dan introduced us to Sean, a hulking, three-hundred pound, shaven-headed version of himself, his lap occupied by a teenage taxi girl in T-shirt and knock-off designer jeans, tiny as a pet monkey by comparison, and Mike, also accessorized by a taxi girl, a lean, saturnine guy with evil-Elvis sideburns, multiple facial piercings, and tats, the most prominent being a full sleeve on his right arm, a gaudy jungle scene that was home to tigers, temples, and fantastic lizards. Dan, Riel, Lucy, and I squeezed onto the sofa; I was all but pushed out of the conversation, and had to lean forward to see what was happening at the opposite end, where Dan had isolated Riel, sitting between her and Lucy. Air conditioning iced the room, and the din of the dance floor was reduced to a thumping rumor.

  Dan and Sean (Sean was a little man’s name—in a perfect world, he would have been named Lothar) had recently arrived from Thailand and spoke rapturously of Khao San Road, the backpacker street in Bangkok. This identified them, if they had not already been so identified, as a familiar species of idiot. Khao San was a strip of guesthouses, internet caf’s, bars, tattoo joints, travel agents, etc., where each night, indulging in the distillation of the backpacker experience, hundreds of drunken expats assembled to gobble deep fried scorpions and buy sarongs and wooden bracelets at the stalls lining the street, and—their faces growing solemn—to swap stories about the spiritual insights they had received while whizzing past some temple or another in a VIP bus. They had hooked up with Mike, a college bud, in Phnom Penh. He had been in-country for less than three weeks yet talked about Cambodia with the jaded air of a long-term resident. I guessed him to be the brains of the outfit.

  Dan held forth at some length about his hour-and-a-half tour of the Killing Fields, explaining to the ever-so-blitzed Riel (she had added three drinks and the better part of two joints to her chemical constituency) how it had been majorly depressing, yet life affirming and life changing. The Cambodian people were awe-some, and his respect for them was so heartfelt, I mean like totally, that he managed to work up a tear, a trick that foretold a future in show biz and may have achieved the desired response among the inebriated breeding stock back in Champaign-Urbana, where he attended school, inducing them to roll over and spread, overborne by the sensitive depths of his soul; but it zipped right past Riel. Listening to him gave me a feeling of superiority, and I could have kept on listening for quite some time; but Lucy was unhappy, pinched between me and Dan, and I thought it appropriate to drop a roach into the conversational soup.

  Leaning forward, I asked, “Why don’t you have a taxi girl like your pals here?”

  Dimly, Dan seemed to perceive this as a threat to his ambitions toward Riel. A notch appeared in his brow, and he squinted at me meanly. Then inspiration struck, perhaps an illumination akin to his moral awakening at the Killing Fields. He acquired an expression of noble forbearance and said, “I don’t do whores.”

  Sean loosed a doltish chuckle; the faces of the taxi girls went blank.

  “Seriously,” Dan said, addressing first me, then Riel. “I revere women too much to want to just use their bodies.”

  “Shit, man,” Mike said, and he burst out laughing. This set everyone to laughing, with the exception of Riel. Our laughter drowned out Dan’s earnest protests, and once it had subsided, Mike confided to us that Dan’s girl had fled the room. “She was one psycho bitch,” he said. “One second she’s grabbing his junk, the next she’s talking a fucking mile a minute, pointing at shit.”

  “What was she pointing to?” Lucy asked.

  “Fuck if I know. I was too wasted, and she was talking Cambodian, anyway.”

  Lucy inquired of the taxi girls in Khmer and, following a back-and-forth, gave her report. “She said the room was different.”

  “Huh?” said Sean.

  “That’s what they told me.”

  “I like being used,” Riel said out of the blue.

  This alerted even Dan, who had been sulking.

  “It makes me feel, you know . . .” Riel spaced on the thought.

  “How does it make you feel?” asked Mike.

  Riel deliberated and said at last, “When Tom comes inside me, it’s like I’m being venerat
ed.” She turned her calm face to me. “I wish you’d come in me without a rubber, so when I walk around I could feel it running down my thigh. It’d be like a reminder of what you felt. Of what I felt.” She looked to Lucy. “You know what I mean? Isn’t it that way for you?”

  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 titties. 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 breasts. “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, “Fuck!”

  “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. “There’s no need,” I said. “I’m rich.”

  With a finger, Riel broke the circle of moisture her glass 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 pronouncements!” 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 banal!” 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! 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 sex with his girl there in the room.

  “If you’ll have sex 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, fuck yourself, dude,” said Sean, suddenly gone surly, no doubt due to some critical level of THC having been surpassed.

  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. “Fuck you, too.”

  “Really?” I leaned back and crossed my legs. “What position do you play? No, let me guess. You’re an offensive 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.

  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 whore.” 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 butt-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 reassumed 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 fuck!” Mike said once he had gone. “I thought we were dead! What the fuck just happened?”

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

  “Shit!” 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 fuck are you, guy?” Mike asked. “Some kind of fucking . . . ?” His imagination failed him and he said again, “Shit!”