Salty: A Novel

by Mark Haskell Smith

  At her thirty-second birthday party, Sheila realized she needed to change. This insight crystallized for her when she found herself stoned on the same mushrooms, having sex with the same Brazilian DJ, in the same hotel and in the same position as she had the year before. Sheila realized that if it was always going to be the same, she might as well be married to some rich guy, grab a little slice of security before gravity took hold of her body and her breasts and butt headed south like a bad junk bond.

  While it used to be fun to drink champagne and do coke all night, to club and carouse until dawn, now she found herself exhausted, her body paralyzed with a profound weariness. At first she thought she might have chronic fatigue syndrome or perhaps a newer, trendier virus that had yet to be named, but after a detoxifying vacation at an ayurvedic clinic in Mexico she realized that she was just tired.

  She met Turk at the rehab center. She was there for cocaine; he was there for some kind of sex addiction. They bonded right away; somehow they had an innate understanding of each other’s addictions, and ended up dating for a year—as Turk struggled with his addiction—before the doctors finally declared he was cured, and he proposed. They were married a year ago.

  Being married to a rock star, being Mrs. Metal Assassin, hadn’t turned out to be as much fun as she’d hoped.

  …

  A sunburnt American woman sitting next to Sheila tapped her shoulder.

  “Do you mind? I’m trying to get a picture.”

  Sheila leaned back, out of the way, as the woman stretched herself over her and tried to focus her camera on the dense jungle whipping by. The woman’s shirt was soaked through and Sheila felt her skin crawling slightly as her shirt absorbed the woman’s sweat. It felt clammy, foreign, and unclean.

  Sheila was relieved to hear the digital click and whir of the computer chip as the woman finally took a picture. She could only imagine the image. A blur of deep green.

  “Just one more.”

  The woman persisted, leaning a little more on Sheila, pressing her dampness into her. Again the excruciatingly deliberate focusing of the camera, the waiting for the exact moment; and then, finally, she pushed the button.

  “Thanks so much.”

  “No problem.”

  Sheila looked down and saw that the woman had left a large, moist splotch on her. She shuddered.

  There were six of them crammed into the car: two couples—one British, from London; the other, the sweaty ones, from Seattle—herself, and the disinterested Thai driver who handled the car with the nonchalance and fearlessness of someone playing a video game. Sheila realized that the car was meant to accommodate three couples, but she was glad Turk wasn’t with her; she could hear him complaining about the uncomfortable jump seats already.

  The couple from Seattle began to brag about their shopping expertise. Southeast Asia, according to them, was a bargain hunter’s paradise. Anything could be had for a price—from rare antiques to souvenir tchotchkes—and any price could be haggled down. It was, according to them, your duty as a representative of the industrial world to pay as little as possible to the citizens of this developing nation. The Seattleites looked at the locals as if they were cunning used car salesmen, rip-off artists gouging the wealthy Westerners with their inflated claims that the meticulously hand-carved Buddha statue was actually worth the suggested price.

  “Never pay what they ask. Never.”

  They were especially proud of the fact that they had negotiated some local craftsman down to half the asking price for a beautiful cabinet that they planned to ship back to the States. According to them, you were really doing the locals a favor by securing the lowest possible price. As if getting less money secretly made the Thais happier. Sheila wondered about that. How is it that people with lots of money get poor people to lower their prices so they’re poorer? How is it that a rich man who makes his money selling “branding strategies” and “marketing concepts” can hardball someone who actually makes something real? What kind of world do we live in?

  The woman from Seattle turned to Sheila.

  “Just today, we had lunch at this little restaurant.”

  Her husband chimed in.

  “A little place. Way off the beaten path.”

  “You could order fresh seafood. Really fresh. And they charged you by how much it weighed. But the best part is, you got a bowl of rice and this great coconut curry sauce with the meal.”

  “And a mango salad.”

  She turned and corrected her husband.

  “Green papaya. With the peanuts. You know?”

  Sheila nodded. She was familiar with the green papaya salad called som tum; in fact it was everywhere, served at every meal. It was like chips and salsa in Mexico, ubiquitous.

  The woman smiled at Sheila, rubbing her hands together in glee.

  “You know what I did?”

  Sheila shook her head.

  “What?”

  The woman leaned in, looking like she was about to divulge some lucrative insider-trading tip.

  “I ordered one shrimp.”

  Sheila blinked.

  “One?”

  The husband came to his wife’s defense.

  “They were real big. Prawns. Really. Bigger than shrimp.”

  The wife smiled.

  “I had one shrimp. Prawn. The curry, rice, and salad came with it. You know how much it cost me?”

  Sheila shrugged.

  “Remember, they charged you by weight. How much does a shrimp weigh?”

  “Not much.”

  The woman nodded.

  “I had lunch for less than a dollar.”

  The husband beamed at his wife.

  “I did the math. All that food for seventy-nine cents.”

  The wife nodded, sharing her husband’s excitement.

  “We love Thailand.”

  Sheila smiled at them, tuning them out, as the Seattle couple continued their story. They also drew a hard line when it came to tipping. It seemed that giving gratuities to waiters, porters, cabdrivers, or various other helpful people actually perverted the local economy. It made the locals reliant on tourists and could destroy their self-sustainability. The husband, a man who was comfortable talking about anything with great confidence, began to lecture about this at length.

  Sheila never haggled or bargained with the locals. She always overtipped. It was, she felt, the least she could do.

  …

  Sheila rolled down the window—the air conditioner in the Land Rover was hardly working—and tried to let the breeze dry off her shirt. She looked out into the forest as they flew down the road. Although it was morning and the hot sun was blazing above the canopy, there were sections of the forest that were pitch black, places sunlight had never visited, primordially dark, like something out of a science fiction story, gateways to another dimension. It gave her the creeps.

  Eventually they pulled into a clearing, the dirt crunching under the tires as the Land Rover skidded to a stop, and the tourists began climbing out. Sheila immediately began stretching her legs as the couple from Seattle bickered about who packed the trail mix and the couple from London took turns applying heavy doses of sunscreen to each other’s faces. She walked toward some kind of structure made from small tree trunks and topped with palm fronds, like a primitive carport. There were two picnic tables placed under the roof. The driver was already there, sitting in the shade, gazing out at the trees, whose lower branches had been mysteriously stripped of leaves and bark.

  Sheila stood and flexed her legs, grabbing her foot and pulling it up behind her until it touched her ass, stretching the quadriceps. The driver gave her a look that made her want to button her shirt up, and lit a cigarette.

  “You like elephant?”

  Sheila nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “You ride elephant before?”

  “No. This is my first time.”

  The driver laughed and shook his head. He turned and blew a plume of tobacco smoke into the thick
humid air.

  “Always first time.”

  …

  She felt it first—the thump, the vibration under her feet. It felt like the floor in their house when Turk was in his studio playing the bass. She turned as she heard the sounds of heavy chains rattling and chiming to see four large elephants being led toward the clearing. A group of mahouts, scrawny Thai men wearing vibrant blue cotton shirts with matching pants cut off at the calves—looking like some bizarre surgical team—were leading the elephants along. Sheila saw the beautiful animals—when you were up close to them, they really were bigger and more amazing than you could ever imagine—and immediately felt conflicted. Large metal shackles kept the elephants hooked together as they shuffled forward like a prison chain gang. The driver sensed her distress, or maybe he was just used to animal lovers from the West pitching a fit when they saw the elephants chained together like that.

  “No problems, miss. They take the chains off.”

  “Why do they have them on?”

  The driver looked at her like she was an idiot.

  “So they don’t run away.”

  It never occurred to her that an elephant might do something like that. Where would an elephant run?

  The mahouts began whistling and shouting, tapping the elephant’s legs with sticks, bringing the coffle to a halt. Sheila was relieved to see them take the chains off as several of the mahouts, using the ears for leverage, pulled themselves up to the top of the animals. They straddled the elephants’ heads, their legs dangling just behind the giant flapping ears, and expertly guided them into a line, steering by rubbing their legs against the elephants’ necks and pulling on their massive ears with sticks.

  Sheila had been so awed by the size of the animals and so distracted by the chains around their ankles that she hadn’t noticed what was tied to the elephants’ backs. They looked like seats from an old school bus, cushioned by some blankets and stabilized by a couple of planks, roped tightly around the animals. She turned to the driver.

  “We ride up there?”

  He grinned.

  “Don’t fall. Long way down.”

  There was more whistling and shouts from the mahouts as Sheila and the other tourists were led up a wooden walkway and past a kiosk selling film, drinking water, booklets about the animals, and dozens of pachyderm-themed T-shirts that the couple from Seattle deemed a “ripoff.” A well-worn rope stretched out to keep the paying customers from stepping off the edge and dropping ten or twelve feet into piles of elephant dung below. It was here, raised off the ground, that they boarded the bench on the elephant’s back. There was no climbing up the trunk, no holding on to the ears; it was all about comfort and safety. Like a ride at Disneyland.

  …

  Sheila had been on the elephant only a minute or two when she realized that, as far as transportation goes, this was easily the most uncomfortable ride she’d ever taken. Perched on a hard bench a good fifteen feet off the ground, she was thrown from one side to the other, left, right, forward, and back, as the animal strolled down the jungle trail. She had to hold on tight and shift her weight as counterbalance to the peculiar force whipping her around. At one point, as her bench pitched violently forward, she thought she might fall, and let out a startled squeak. The mahout turned to check on her. She waved him off.

  “I’m okay. I’m fine. Just getting used to it.”

  The mahout smiled to reveal teeth stained a vibrant red. He used the back of his hand to wipe crimson drops of spittle off the side of his mouth. Sheila was taken aback. It looked like he’d been smacked in the mouth and was bleeding, but then she saw him dip his hand in his pocket and pull out a betel nut. He grinned as he popped it into his mouth. He chewed vigorously for a few minutes and then let a long stream of bright red saliva fly off into the forest like some kind of wayward arterial spurt.

  A sweet breeze, heavy with the scent of rain, came off the ocean and rattled the palms. It felt good, cooling her skin as the sun continued to beat down. Despite the constant lurching, or maybe because of it, she began to feel sleepy. Like she was being rocked to sleep by the heat and the slow-motion rhythm of the elephant’s gait. Every now and then she’d hear one of the other elephants trumpet or honk and she’d look behind at the other couples. They seemed to be enjoying the gut-churning ride as much as she was.

  They meandered like this for about an hour—the mahout spewing cherry-colored drool into the woods, Sheila clinging to the seat with white knuckles, and the elephant stopping to grab morning glory vines with her trunk, rip them out of the ground, and stuff them into her mouth with a big wet crunch.

  Sheila thought she might be dreaming, might’ve dozed off for a second, but all of a sudden she was awake and there were men shouting. Men pointing serious-looking guns, like the rebels and insurgents you see on the news. They were shouting in Thai at the mahouts.

  They wanted her to get off the elephant.

  Three

  I want to rape you.”

  At first Turk wasn’t sure what she’d said. He was taken aback, startled by her aggressiveness. The door to his cabin wasn’t even closed when she grabbed him, pressed him against the wall, and whispered those words in her breathy Swiss-German accent.

  “What?”

  “I want to rape you. Right now.”

  She pressed her lips against his and reached down for his crotch. It was then that he understood that English was not her first language.

  “‘Fuck.’”

  She stopped and looked up at him, batting her blue eyes like she’d done something wrong.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You want to fuck me. That’s the word you should use. ‘Rape’ is not the word for what you want to do.”

  “Yes. Okay. Thank you. I want to fuck you. Right now.”

  Turk pushed her away, gently.

  “Honestly, I’d love to. But I can’t. I’m married.”

  She didn’t look like she believed him.

  “But you are famous for screwing with girls.”

  Turk shrugged. It was true. He was famous for screwing girls.

  “That was before.”

  He walked over to the mini-fridge and pulled out a can of beer. He offered it to her, but she shook her head.

  “You don’t like me?”

  Turk looked at her—the lean young body, the Swiss Miss pigtails, the pale and perky breasts, the big blue eyes—and popped open the beer. Of course he liked her; what’s not to like? He knew the drill. She wasn’t going to go away until she got something from him. A story, a stain, an experience, some kind of souvenir.

  “I don’t want to cheat on my wife.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  Turk flashed on the years of counseling, session after session where he slowly came to realize that his addiction sprang from a deep feeling of inadequacy that had haunted him from childhood. Having sex with her, giving in to his promiscuous nature, would only open up those feelings again. He had worked hard, he had struggled, but he eventually overcame the urge to fuck every moving thing in his vicinity. He wasn’t going to backslide now. He looked at her and shook his head.

  “That’s not it. I promised myself I wouldn’t. And I’m not going to.”

  He wasn’t going to go into all the gory details of his newfound sexual sobriety. She put her lips in a pout and walked toward him, unwrapping her sarong to reveal a thong bikini bottom. She stroked her bare nipples for a moment and then turned her attention to his crotch.

  “Can I see it?”

  “What?”

  “I read in a magazine that you have a very big cock.”

  Turk shook his head.

  “I’m not going to show you my cock.”

  He knew that once it was out, she would need to touch it, and once she touched it his willpower would crumble. She must’ve sensed that, too, or maybe it’s just common knowledge. Once that thing sees the light of day … well, we all know that the rest is inevitable.

  “Please?”

&nbs
p; “Sorry.”

  She gave him her sexiest look.

  “I will be very, very nice to it.”

  “No.”

  “Just a look? I won’t touch it. I promise.”

  Turk shook his head, he was about to say something to make her feel better, but then he saw her expression change.

  “Schiesse!”

  And with that she turned and stomped out of the cabin.

  Turk heaved a sigh of relief and flopped down on the sofa. He’d been tense. They didn’t understand, did they? They didn’t know how hard it was to say no. When something was so ripe and ready, so juicy and sweet, it took superhuman rock star strength to say no. For Turk it was hell. Being monogamous was the hardest thing he’d ever tried to do in his life. It’d have been easier to do a triathlon, or climb Mount Everest while figuring out his income taxes. For him, monogamy was a slow and brutal torture, a battle to the death between good and evil for control of his soul. The only good thing about it was that now he could look at himself in the mirror and not think that he was a bad person, a pig, a drunk, a waste, a loser, a fucking asshole. Now he felt good about himself. He might still drink too much, he might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but at least he didn’t cheat on his wife. It was something.

  …

  Turk turned and caught his reflection in the mirror. He raised the beer in a little salute to himself and his all-around monogamous goodness. He was proud, and rightly so. He’d been tempted by a very sexy half-naked Swiss-German teenager who wanted to rape him, and survived. Turk considered jacking off as a kind of reward for his display of willpower—while the image of her standing naked and pleading was still fresh in his mind—but the beer and the heat got to him and he slowly faded into a nap.

  Four

  The hood smelled like dried shrimp. Briny, fishy, and hot. It was loose at the bottom—otherwise she might’ve suffocated—but it was tight at the top and she could feel the equatorial sun beating on her forehead through the coarse, rank fabric. As Sheila struggled to breathe through the thick cloth, she felt her arms and legs attacked by a ravenous swarm of bloodsucking insects. Her hands were bound behind her and she was powerless to stop the mosquitoes’ feeding frenzy. She had tried flapping her arms and kicking her legs to shake the hungry bugs off her flesh, but every time she did she received a sharp poke in the ribs from the barrel of a gun. It was safer, she realized, to let the bugs eat.