by Nick Seeley
Bats outside the windows, rattling out of the eaves of the museum. Nearly night.
Scan the wreckage, trying to remember. Yesterday was a million years ago. I left Two sleeping, came home, still puzzling over Barry’s story. Then the journals. Sitting at the desk as the sky went gray, then blue, poring over the pages trying to listen for her voice. There was something important, violent—I can’t remember.
Look again around the ruined bedroom.
I know what happened.
There are rules. Things I don’t think, names I never say. I have to guard my thoughts: it takes so little for the past to drag me back. But last night, somehow, I let my guard down—
Enough.
There are rules.
I go to the kitchen, make coffee. I know from the state of the place there won’t be any booze—I’ll be lucky to find a fucking aspirin.
To the shower. I step into the lukewarm water, let it chill me. Bandages for my hands. I’ve got to hurry, it’s getting dark already.
I’m so close to June, but for tonight she’ll have to wait. I have a job to do, and hell to pay if it goes wrong.
* * *
When I come downstairs, Gus is waiting. “Nice look. What’s that about?”
I’m dressed in new khaki cargo pants and a brown T-shirt, sunglasses slung at the neck. Lightly scuffed knockoff Skechers. Camera stuffed in a big gray camping backpack. Hopefully the outfit says tourist. I’ve bought cover-up at the grocery store and put a ton on my face. Far from perfect, but the bruises don’t stand out so much. I’d like to not be noticed.
“Work to do.” I reach into the backpack, pull out a carry bag: June’s journals, her photographs, the sheaf of her photocopied news stories. I’ve been carrying them around with me, but I don’t want them on this job.
“Can you put these somewhere safe? Preferably not in your apartment—always a chance someone might come looking.”
“Brilliant,” he mutters, but he takes the bag, slouching back to set it on his coffee table. “I thought we were getting out of the missing-girl business. Did you learn anything from the sister?”
“Not much.” I can’t even begin to think how to summarize that meeting for Gus. “Got any Dexedrine?”
He sighs as he fishes a prescription bottle out from between the sofa cushions. Holds it without giving it to me. “You remember last night?”
“Course I do.”
“What do you remember?”
“Do you know anything about a Khmer guy June was hanging out wi—”
“Fuck that shit, and fuck her. You know what I mean.” His eyes flash. “I saw your room.”
“Bad dreams.”
“Mrs. Mun will shit when she sees that, I’ll have to iron things out—”
“Do what you gotta do.”
I turn to go and he shoves his way out onto the landing, putting himself between me and the stairs. “That is not the point! You’re off the deep end here—”
“You threw me in.”
“And mano de dios I am sorry now, but—”
“But what?”
We stand inches apart, hands trembling.
“Do what you’re good at,” he says. “Walk away.”
* * *
I walk west all the way to Monivong, then south—don’t want to risk getting a driver who knows me. Grab a moto out of the crowd, head for the Russian Market.
Narrow halls, jammed with tourists in every shade of the rainbow. I slip inside, let my body take their rhythm: someone drawn and distracted by the million things on display, traditional clothes and scarves and souvenirs and jewelry. I look and fondle and wander.
I let myself disappear.
Stroll through the stalls until I spot the guy Senn has picked out for me: youngish, blond—a backpacker type with bleached-out hair and the too-skinny look that suggests both exercise and chemical assistance. The gay mafia never lets you down. He’s standing at one of the long counters, browsing through stacks of ripped-off American DVDs. I let myself drift down the hall until I’m standing next to him. Hands shuffle nameless films, not looking at the covers.
“What’ja see today?” I ask.
“Went to some temples, mate, pissed about.” Aussie, then.
“Anything you like?”
“There was this one place, it had an elephant. That was cool.”
Everyone loves the elephant: damn thing is on more drugs than me. I lean in to pick up a stack of CDs and set my ancient Rough Guide on the counter. “Take that when you go. It’s your front end.” Twenty crisp $100 bills, carefully stuck between the pages.
“Okay.” He sets a hotel-room key next to it. I pick it up.
“Get yourself a plane ticket. For tomorrow: noon at the latest, early morning is better. Don’t go back to the hotel until after the party. Once it’s over, get out quick as you can. The rest of your money will be under the door of my room; grab it and go. If you gotta sleep, do it in a different neighborhood—or better, just get the hell out of here.”
He nods. “Bali’s brilliant now.”
“Good. You leave the lights on?”
“Like the man said.”
I turn to go.
“Seeya, mate,” he says.
“If you do, we’re in trouble.”
* * *
The Crane Hotel is across town, a bit away from the usual tourist hangouts. A big 1950s building, now run-down and scummy, it’s favored by the discreet. The lobby is cupboard-sized, done in white glossy tiles and pale blue paint. Looks like a bathroom. Smells a bit like one, too. The proprietor, a squat Cambodian dressed in various shades of nylon, is chewing some mix of betel and tobacco. He doesn’t look up from his paper when I come in.
“You wan’ room?” He chomps down on the wad in his cheek. “Ve’y quiet.”
“Yeah. Two nights. I’ll pay now.”
He spares me a sideways glance as I hand him some bills. “You wan’ company?” he murmurs, looking at his fingernails like they might be fakes. “I know nice girls.”
“I’m all set, thanks.”
“Wan’ boy? Ve’y young, ve’y clean.”
“Just me and Mary Jane.”
“End of hall, turn left, all the way to end, left again.”
I nod and walk down the hall. I don’t go to the room I’ve just bought, but to the one the Aussie gave me the key for.
It’s tiny, just big enough for a double bed and a little table in a corner. Another near the bed with a lamp on it; fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. That’s the main reason for choosing this place: the ceilings are high, and the pasteboard walls they’ve thrown in between the rooms don’t go all the way up. At the top are bracketed air conditioners, surrounded by a patchwork of boards and drywall, occasionally broken by tin ventilation grills. Standing on the table, I can hold my camera up for a view down into the neighboring room.
I take a few test shots, checking the light. The fluorescents next door are off, the lamp on—it’s almost too dark. But we don’t need A-1 material, just recognizable faces. I check the shots, then take a few more. I can’t see what I’m shooting, so I have to figure out how to angle the camera to get the bed and as much of the room as possible—then figure it out again for the doorway. I shoot and erase until I’m sure I can get it right later, in the dark. Here’s hoping Charlie can last a couple minutes. When I’m satisfied, I get out the muzzle and put it on the camera. It’s totally quiet, but bulky, and I won’t be able to see the screen or use the controls when I’m shooting. I take a few more shots, unmuzzle the camera to check them, then put it back. I do it again, and again—until I’m sure.
When I’m ready, I kill the light and sit on the bed. Take my shoes off, then pull a couple Dexedrine from my pocket and swallow them dry. Wouldn’t do to fall asleep now. I could have a long wait.
* * *
In the dark, time moves slow. I can’t risk a light. Alone with my thoughts—not where I want to be. I keep going back to June. There was something else in the journals, s
omething important. I’m trying to remember—but it’s lost in the fog
in Kabul
and there are bad dreams there, shapeless figures waiting for me to say their names and let them in. To chase them off, I think about the beer I’ll have when I’m done. About the river, the lights of the river, glittering off the water in the night
dark shapes moving beneath
Channi’s smile as she hands me a frosted mug; her frown as she talks about her past.
She’s a puzzle. Good Cambodian girls don’t work in bars. Not at night, not with foreigners. They don’t read your palms. But she’s not dancing in a bikini, either—won’t be what everything here wants her to be. Playing all sides: a Mormon and a waitress and, maybe, a girlfriend. Not good, not bad, but a little of both. I try to picture her face, and her eyes ask me how I got here. I don’t have an answer.
I get edgier as the night goes on. Two or three times I hear footsteps in the hall and climb up on the table—but they always die away. Then, a little past two thirty, someone reaches the door next to mine and stops. I’m ready. Start taking quick bursts as soon as I hear the key in the lock. I try to hit the shutter just as their voices get clearer—my best chance for a face shot. Sound of giggling. I shoot again and again until I hear the door close, then change the angle to catch more of the room. I’m breathing deep and quiet. There’s a clink, like glasses—hopefully the Aussie’s sober enough to spike Charlie’s drink. The less he remembers, the better we all are. I aim the camera through the lattice and shoot again, maybe another face shot. The drinking doesn’t last long, quickly replaced by the sounds of lips, buttons, zippers.
There’s a thud, and a voice I don’t know says, “I turn light off.”
I catch my breath.
“Leave it on,” the Aussie says. “I want to look at you.” There’s a moan. I guess he’s being persuasive.
I angle the camera on the voices: standing by the door, then back as they settle on the bed. They’re taking their time. Good. I shoot a couple more bursts, checking the glowing dial on my watch.
To time myself, I imagine what they’re doing, a selection of positions and actions. Now on all fours, now leaning on the wall. I imagine the sound of the shutter inside the casing: snap snap snap. Reaching for each other—
Snap snap.
After maybe five minutes of this, I think I have enough to risk checking the camera, so I step down and carefully pull off the muzzle, shielding the light of the screen with a thin blanket.
Lots of motion blur, it’s inevitable. I got a recognizable angle on Charlie in the door, and another when he’s got the Aussie’s face in his crotch, but you can’t quite see what’s happening. Most of the shots of actual sex are muddy: reaching arms, the burled shape of a spine; dark spaces between, where hands and mouths and cocks touch just beyond the reach of light and lens. The Aussie biting Charlie’s nipple. A couple that are almost the money shot, the boy on the bed with Charlie riding cowgirl—face turned away, but he’d be hard to mistake if you knew him.
Not enough to quit yet. There’s a better picture somewhere.
The sounds from the next room are getting louder, more frantic. Not much time left. I double-check the settings and muffle again. As I get up on the stool, I hear more footsteps in the hall.
A moan from next door.
Snap snap snap.
The footsteps pause, just outside. Why—
Snap snap.
A key clicks in a lock. Their room.
I freeze, not even breathing. The boys don’t notice, absorbed in their two-man ballet. My finger twitches.
Snap snap snap.
I hear a door opening and a shout—low, breathless, choked with fear and surprise. It ends in a wet-sounding thud. A splash, like water. Snap snap snap, even as another cry begins and ends in the sound of flesh on flesh. A sob, a gasp, a crash of glass. Something patters against the wall I’m standing behind, and I bite my lip so I don’t start screaming. I can smell it, like a butcher’s shop but a hundred times stronger.
Another thud.
It’s happened in a second. I need to move but my body won’t respond. I’m frozen, imagining what’s on the other side of the wall. It’s worse than seeing, and my stomach rises. Don’t throw up.
Move!
Legs won’t move.
Only thing I can do:
Snap snap snap.
My head is pounding, my mind screaming at me: run.
They’ll see you.
Will they come here? Should go to the door, get behind it—shit, there’s a hammer in my bag, maybe I can sandbag one of them and get out. And then? Away? How?
Thunk thunk thunk.
Snap snap snap.
Metal clatters to the ground, then silence.
Whoever they are, they don’t bother closing the door, and I hold my breath as they step into the hall. They’re walking fast, not running. No hurry. Their footsteps go down the hall and around the corner.
My body is mine again. I pivot the camera around the room, trying to catch every possible angle. Then I get down.
Got to get out of here. Right now. I stuff the camera in the bag. Shoes. What have I touched? I wipe everything I can think of with the corner of a sheet, still in the dark. Silence outside—I might only have seconds. No hesitation. Open the door and step out into the hall like nothing’s wrong. Wipe the knob with my shirt, drop the key on the floor. The other room is lit up, the door hanging open. The glimpse I get as I pass makes my stomach boil.
Don’t throw up—
I hear a voice around the corner: a question, loud and frantic. A door opens. I keep going, trying to match the fast, relaxed pace of those retreating footsteps. More steps now, down that other hall: Running. I don’t look back.
I’m not going for the exit: the building could be watched. Instead, I head around the corner to my own room. As I put my key in the lock, I hear a man’s shout from the hall I was just in, then a woman’s scream that goes on and on and on. The key won’t fit. It’s not working. My heart’s beating faster and faster.
Key’s upside down. I curse, turn it, and slip into the room just as doors around me start opening.
There will be panic now. Guests will be rushing to grab their bags and get out before the police come. If I stay calm, I can slip out with them, unnoticed.
Then what?
I had a joint tucked in my pocket for afterward, and now I fumble it out and light up. Takes about fifteen tries. A few quick pulls to steady the speed raging in my blood.
Only then do I take the muzzle off the camera and glance at what I’ve done.
Christ, I need a fix.
DIARY
July 20
Midnight.
I’m invisible, on an invisible street, the kind you walk past a hundred times before you realize it is your destination: that up ahead, where the road appears to peter out, is a hidden path to a place you’ll never have a name for.
I am not sure how I got here. What draws me, night after night, down these pitch-black alleys . . . around the knots of men gambling on the pavement by candlelight . . . past the cramped kitchens visible through glowing windows, where women in pajamas still sweat over camp stoves?
I am a collector—like Benjamin’s backwards-facing angel, who from such discarded fabrics wove the whole of the twentieth century. I hoard these nights, store them away in the drawers of memory. I will make from them something astonishing. . . .
I am a liar: I do it because this is when she comes to me.
Stand me anywhere in the pitch black, and I can feel it, tugging under my ribs: a golden wire, strung across the night, connecting me to her. She draws, I follow. And sometimes, walking midnight streets and gazing in through lighted windows, I think I see her: This is the life we almost had, together. When it was just her and me it was hideaways, boltholes, tiny rooms like these, where our breath burned in each other’s nostrils, where we cooked off rings plugged into the wall and the smell soaked into our clothes and n
ever left. We smothered each other.
I remember waking to the feeling of her nails on my back, gently tracing hieroglyphs of dream, and she talked to me for hours and hours—though there is little left that I can recall.
I say this as though it happened often . . . as though I had many memories of her. Perhaps it was once, twice? I don’t know. The rest of the time it was Father’s house: far-off views, mist on treetops. Mother used to joke about those huge windows: she said it was so he’d see them coming.
His world, not ours. She became distant and cold, a figure down a lonely hall in a glittering dress. All that space seemed to make her afraid.
Of the things from my childhood I know are true, there is little more than this.
WILL
OCTOBER 9
On a bike, city sliding by. I look back: Am I being followed? In dark streets, there’s no way to tell. One arm around the driver, I fumble the phone out of my pocket, break it open, and toss the pieces into the night. Pop another of Gus’s Dexedrine. Try to keep breathing.
I came out of the hotel with the crowd; grabbed the first moto I could find. The drivers saw what was happening: five times the fee to get me to Martini’s. Not too many places crowded at this hour of the morning, but the taxi-girl clubs are still going. I hand him his money before we’ve even stopped.
Martini’s isn’t packed, but there are still bodies at the tables: middle-aged men, the ones who can’t quite commit, nursing drinks as they try to find something to talk about with girls in cutoff shorts and bra tops, pretending they’re here for more than a commercial exchange.
I make a beeline for the bar, wary of my incongruous backpack and roadkill eyes. I stand out. Get a drink and down it, always watching the door. No one suspicious comes in, so I head for the bathroom and change my shirt and pants for the spares in my bag. Slip out the back, down an alley, listening for footsteps, or bike engines gunning.
Nothing.
I walk a long way to another big street, flag a moto, and stumble over what to tell him. I can’t go home. Can’t go to the river, or the Heart: places someone looking for me would go. But I need people around: another nightclub. Can’t think of a name, not sure where I am, what time it is—late or early, who can tell?