The Story of Junk

by Linda Yablonsky

  The trip north takes less than an hour. A man holding a sign with the name of our hotel takes us to a van, where a perky young woman is waiting, all smiles. I notice her skin—not a line, not a wrinkle—her cheeks are naturally rosy. She wears her hair short, cut in a subtle flip. Her dark eyes dance into mine. I haven’t seen anyone like her since high school.

  She says her name is Taffy. This makes me laugh and she takes me for a jolly person. I laugh again. She’s a student at a nearby college and she’s very congenial. How long will we be staying in Chiang Mai? she asks, very cheerful, never losing the smile. Where are we from? Would we like to take a tour of the temples?

  Sure, I say. Temples? Sure. She hands me a four-color brochure. It describes several different excursions, some whole-day, some half-day, some two-day. I pick the first one scheduled for the morning, a half-day. Taffy seems happy at this. Her cheeriness is contagious. Could she be stoned? No, I don’t think she’s ever smelled dope in her life.

  I thumb through the rest of the brochure. There are thirty-six temples within the walls of Chiang Mai, eighty more in the country around it. Taffy says if we stay another day, we can take in a few mountain villages, too. In one all they make is umbrellas. In another, silks. Which, I wonder to myself, is the one where they make the heroin?

  At the hotel we drop our bags and go outside to get the lay. Mario says it’s too early to check in with the connection. I didn’t know we had an appointment. They have hours, he tells me. I give out an involuntary sigh. It’s the same all over, isn’t it?

  The streets of Chiang Mai are deserted. Though it’s late afternoon, there’s hardly a shadow. The sky’s blue-on-blue, not a cloud, the air so hot and pink and quiet it feels like a dream. I keep thinking the road’s unpaved but it isn’t—some kind of dusty illusion. The whole town seems built on straw. A high fence of loosely tied wooden poles runs down one side of the street, shielding the jumble of rickety houses behind it. On the other is a low line of stuccoed shops, most of them shuttered against the sun. A skinny Caucasian fellow lurches toward us with that telltale junkie buckle to his knees. His hair is long and stringy, his black jeans torn at the seat and dusty as the street. He hasn’t had a bath or a meal in a while. His skin is just this side of human, his eyes have rolled back in his head. Mary makes a sound. “Well,” she smirks. “We’ve come to the right place.”

  We’re going to carry the dope in our intestines, packed tight in knotted condoms. We need to find a drugstore right away. The hotel concierge has told us there’s one just down the road. There is. Poking through the crowded shelves, we look for laxatives and lubricants, condoms, and tuberculin spikes. Behind the counter, a middle-aged Thai man and woman, husband and wife, serve us without comment or question. No Taffy here. No “Where are you from? Do you like our town? Will you stay long?” None of that. They don’t ask if we’re related or what brought us. They know.

  I stay many minutes at the shelves, as absorbed in the colorful boxes and shapely bottles as I was as a kid in the old courthouse that was my hometown library. George Washington had slept there; it had atmosphere. Intoxicated by the smell of polished wood and library paste, lulled by the metronomic ticks of a grandfather clock in the reading room, I lost myself then, as now, in a world of the senses, ruled by a habit of mind. But here products come from China, Egypt, Vietnam, and Germany—George Washington never saw anything like this.

  My hand reaches for a small Chinese box with blue lettering. I feel a shallow breath behind my ear. “You don’t want that,” says a voice. The Thai man is standing at my shoulder, gesturing at the box. “That’s not for you,” he says.

  Really? I want to know what it is. The man is loath to say. I have to be careful. I don’t want to make a scene. I replace the box and pick up a tube of toothpaste. The man smiles then, trades glances with his wife; we’re all very friendly. Mary Motion and I buy a tube of K-Y jelly each, several boxes of condoms, some strong laxative tabs, a couple of clean gimmicks. I pretend this is business-as-usual. In Chiang Mai, maybe it is.

  Back on the street it’s like a sauna, hot but dry, better than the muggy air of Bangkok, anyway. In the heat even the distant hills look pooped. In the hotel parking lot, pedicab drivers in native costume nap in the passenger seats. We stop in the hotel bar, take a table. The tourists are all out with Taffy or one of the other guides; we’re the only customers, one waiter, one barmaid. Mary wonders if they know why we’re here. She’s too paranoid. “We’re tourists,” I say. “We’re seeing the world.”

  Mario checks his watch, downs his drink. “Time to go,” he says in his thin, reedy voice, forever jovial. Everything to him is a yuk. I don’t trust him but he’s the one with the directions, which he doesn’t share with us. Orders from Angelo, he smiles. I don’t.

  “Don’t forget to bring back a sample,” I growl. He gives me a high-sign and a gap-toothed grin. When he’s gone I tell Mary we should follow him.

  “Not me,” she says, looking around uncomfortably. “I’ll wait here.” We’re sitting near a large picture window, just out of the sun. I watch Mario climb into a pedicab and go off. We order another round.

  I can’t get drunk enough. I ate my last meth biscuit hours ago, it’s wearing off. After the long journey, the stultifying heat and sleepless nights, after the vodka I’ve consumed, I’m in a state of semi-withdrawal. Forty hours ago I was buckling my seat-belt at JFK. Now I’m staring into a glass, wishing it didn’t have a bottom.

  Mary and I wait for Mario and drink. We talk about New York, about the free time we’ll have for shopping in Singapore, whether or not we should “lose” our passports there. Singapore is our vacation cover. The Thailand stamps dated only days apart might look funny at customs. Well, we can always get new ones. Mary says you just drop the passport in a mailbox somewhere and tell the consul it’s been stolen. People steal American passports all the time.

  “I wouldn’t mind spending an extra day in Singapore,” she giggles. “Maybe we could have some suits made.” I wonder how she has the strength to laugh. I want to have cocktails on the veranda at Raffles, the hotel where Somerset Maugham used to stay. Nothing but tourists we are, after all. Taffy will never know the difference, anyway.

  Other people are in the bar now, the sun’s beginning to drop. We order another round. Suddenly Mario’s standing by the table, again with the silly grin. Without a word we troop through the lobby to the elevators. I’m very drunk and a little stooped but at least I’m not noticeably sick. On the wall behind the check-in desk a line of clocks shows the time in every major city in the world. In New York it’s about the same time as it is here, but not the same day. We’ve lost one or gained one, I can’t remember.

  In my room upstairs Mario explains that the deal is done but we’ve arrived too late to make the pickup. Tomorrow, he says. Two p.m.

  Shit. I was hoping we’d be gone by then. Now we’ll have to take Taffy’s eight a.m. tour. She’s going to call the room at seven.

  I ask about the sample. Mario hands me a red condom balloon, its bottom heavy with perfect white powder. I dive into my bag for the pieces of aluminum foil I took from the hotel breakfast bar in Bangkok. I roll up a straw, untie the balloon, smooth out another piece of the foil. I lay down a clump of powder, light it easily. Smoke it. In a second it’s gone. In a minute I can feel my eyes sparkle, my back straighten up. “I can walk!” I cry. “I can walk!” I’m suddenly in a party mood, but the other two are busy.

  Mario’s got a hit in his cooker, a bottlecap from a beer. He’s tying off, looking anxious. Mary snorts a line off her compact mirror.

  The Golden Triangle, I think, eyeing the mirror, the foil, the cooker. The Golden Triangle. We made it.

  Mario boots. Couldn’t I have guessed? He’s down on the floor with the needle in his arm.

  “Oh shit,” says Mary.

  Mario’s going out.

  “Let’s get him on his feet,” I say with a sigh, thinking, Here we go again. Damn.

  She doe
sn’t move. I give her a look. She’s fucking stoned. Mary’s no junkie, just a mule, and now she’s stoned. Fucking A.

  Finally she reaches over and we pull Mario to his feet. He’s heavy. I curse him, take the needle from his arm. He wobbles, down he goes again, but the dope’s made us powerful and we pull him up. Mario giggles. His face is scarlet. He’s enjoying this! I’m yelling at Mary to wash out the spike, go down to the restaurant, steal some salt. I’m screaming at Mario; “You dumb asshole! Talk to me! Say something!” But all he can do is smile. That lazy, soporific honeymoon smile. I want to wring his neck.

  Ten minutes later, Mary returns with the salt. “Forget that,” I say. “Help me walk him.”

  It’s another hour or so before we get him looking regular again. Those light eyes of his could give us away in a second. I’m so pissed I could spit. Hungry, too. I want to get some food, but while the others are taking showers I chase a little dragon instead. “I’m holding the sample from now on,” I tell them. “We can’t have anything like this happen again.” They don’t argue, I’ve put myself in charge. From now on, whatever I say goes.

  The dead streets of daytime Chiang Mai have become a teeming river of human bodies drifting through the night. Bright paper lanterns float on the breeze, lighting the portals to windowless storefronts. Their doorways are crowded with carved wooden fetishes, some five or six feet tall. All manner of brass orientalia shines from within. Bamboo and straw mats hang everywhere. Flimsy card tables sit edge to edge on the sidewalk, laden with knockoffs of every sort of Western fashion, bending under the weight of Siamese collectibles, ivory and black lead elephants, tiny Buddhas and princesses, scores of beads and lacquerware, some pottery. Hawkers stand before every shop, their eyes shifting over the crowds thronging the street like a mall. Kung-fu music blares from loudspeakers wired to overhanging roofs. Even with all the noise and color, something’s missing. It takes me a while to figure out what. It’s light. There aren’t any signs, no neon, no hanging shingles. None of the shops have names. Even movie houses are marked only by comic-book murals painted on the walls of corner buildings.

  According to Taffy, the big draw in Chiang Mai after dark is the Night Market. It’s set in a couple of large, two-story rough plank buildings, stall after stall of vegetables and dry goods of every description, fabrics, more elephants, T-shirts, shoes, statues. Each of us buys a few trinkets and a couple of cheap linen shirts.

  Someone’s watching us now—a sun-browned skinny Thai, a guy about thirty, unusually tall. We can call him “Joe,” he says. He speaks a slangy English I imagine he picked up from American soldiers during the Vietnam War, very Burger King with a hard-on. He must have done real well in the 1960s, a street-smart kid pandering to the GIs, showing them a good time in the brothels. We try several times to shake him, but every time we turn around, he’s there.

  He wants to sell us pot. “Thai stick,” he says. “You know Thai stick?” He puffs out his bony chest, full of pride and confidence. His teeth are chipped, his eyes hop. I think he wants to fuck me. I look at Mary. It’s obvious she thinks he does, too. Mario, his eyes still lit by the dope, seems to find this amusing. Joe lets a hand hover over his cock, which I can make out pretty well through his chinos. I’m feeling good now, but not that good. I don’t want him in my hotel room. I decline the pot, but Joe doesn’t let up. He looks me in the eye. “I know what you want,” he says.

  “What do I want?”

  “Powder,” he says, whispering. “You want white powder.”

  Mario slides an eyeball my way. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, looking at Joe.

  “No? Okay, I show you.”

  “Where?” Mario asks.

  “Not far, just outside town,” says Joe. “Ten miles. You married?” he asks, pointing at me and Mario, Mario and Mary.

  “Yeah,” we all say together. “No,” we say then. Joe makes a face. He asks which hotel we’re in, how long we’re staying, where we’re from. I can see his mind work; he’s a hustler. If he gets his hooks into us, we’ll be spending all our available cash paying for his silence.

  A lot of Thais, Mario has told us, will get real friendly, take your money, even turn you on to a major source, then turn you in to the border guards just as you’re leaving the country. We might have to bribe our way out. We’ve talked about what it takes to buy a general—anywhere from two to ten thousand dollars, maybe more, and then that might not be the end of it, not till we land in jail.

  Joe’s too cunning not to play every angle. He knows we’re no kind of tourists. Mario, stoned as he is, knows this too, but Joe knows a place where the girls are the most beautiful girls in the land and the heroin’s the best in the world. Cheap, too, he adds. “Very good price, okay?”

  “See you around,” I say.

  “No, wait!” he calls out, alarmed. “I’m Joe! Joe is A-OK. Ask anybody.” He gestures vaguely at the street. “Come on, we have a blast.”

  “What is this place, exactly?” I ask.

  A massage parlor. I might have guessed. They’re mentioned everywhere in the guidebook. Massage parlors seem to be this country’s main source of income, not including you-know-what. Mario says he really needs a massage. He rubs his ass. He bruised himself falling down earlier.

  “It’s a trap,” I tell him, out of Joe’s hearing. “This Joe-guy’s full of it.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “We can’t do this,” I say.

  “Maybe we should check it out,” Mario decides. “We don’t have to buy anything. We can just get a massage.”

  Mary Motion shrugs. “Maybe he’s harmless,” she says.

  “Aren’t these places just for men?” I ask Joe. Now I’m certain he means to turn us in, that he has to be an informer.

  “No, no,” he says, his thin hands parting the air. “Massage for women, too. You like this massage,” he insists. “You ever have Thai massage?” I shake my head slowly, no. “Ah! Thai massage very special, you like it. Make you feel good. Very relax. You have a good time,” he enthuses. “I show you. Okay?”

  “Joe’s gonna show us a good time,” I say to Mary.

  She laughs. “I’m done shopping,” she tells me. “Might as well see a little of the country.”

  “Beautiful scenery,” Joe agrees.

  “What can we see at night?” I ask.

  “Much more to see in the night than the day,” he tells me. “I show you.”

  I don’t want to go. I’m hungry again, and tired, edgy. Mary says she is, too, but now we’re afraid to eat. Our stomachs have to be empty when we pick up the dope. When you’re carrying fifty thousand dollars worth of heroin up your ass, you don’t want to have to stop and take a shit.

  Joe says we can eat at this place in the woods if we want to. It’s a private club. Generals go there. Politicians. “Food good, too,” he says, rubbing his belly. “Everything good at this place. Everything A-OK.”

  “I don’t like it,” I say.

  Joe looks at me in mock horror. “You still don’t trust me? But I am your friend, I am Joe. Practically American. Joe is A-O-Kay! Ask anyone, they tell you. Everything good with me, everything okay.”

  “He’s okay,” says Mario. “This is Okay Joe.” He gives the guy a brotherly pat on the back. Mario’s truly an innocent, I think. He comes from a little town in northern Italy where all he knows is pasta and sunshine—all he ever needs to know. “How long will it take to get there?” he says.

  I shake my head. It’s Angelo I’m running this trip for and I can’t let his only brother go off in the woods alone, not the way he is, stoned, a stupid child. Joe says again it’s okay, everything we do with him is okay. “Okay, lady?” he asks. “This is a happy place—check it out.”

  I don’t know what to say. All I can think is, Generals go there.

  “What’s your name?” Joe asks me.

  “Evelyn,” I tell him.

  He can’t pronounce it. “This is Judy,” I say, pointing to Mar
y. “She’s Judy and I’m Evelyn and this is Joe.”

  Mario looks at me and laughs. Joe laughs, too. “Ho, Joe! Everything okay, now. Everything way okay.” He says he’ll get the car.

  Okay Joe’s “car” turns out to be whatever passing tuk-tuk will stop to take us on. The only one that will is a little three-HP truck, hardly more than a glorified scooter with a cab over the tiny front wheels. A roofed-in pickup affair is attached to the rear with two hard benches along its sides. A piece of thin pink fabric hangs where a window might be between the cab and the back. It’s a Thai-sized version of the contraption Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Massina live in in La Strada.

  “I love that movie,” Mario tells me. He hops into the truck.

  Our driver motions the rest of us inside. His wife and two small children cram into the front seat, three more remain in back with us. The rear end is open to the street. Vehicles similar to ours stretch beyond as far as I can see, their headlights inching along in the traffic with pedicabs, scooters, public shuttle buses, and bicycles. People on foot are everywhere. “It’s the evacuation of Saigon,” I say.

  Joe looks at me quizzically. His hands are in his lap. “You can sit here,” he offers. I’m happy where I am. Not really.

  I’m sweating again. So is Mario, profusely. Mary can’t get comfortable, either. She tries talking to the children, but they don’t speak English. Joe talks to the driver, shouting over the noise of the traffic, the grinding of gears. In ten minutes, we move about a hundred yards.

  Another ten minutes pass and we don’t move at all. Horns are honking like crazy. Joe keeps up his rap—how great the Thai pot is, how fine the Thai massage, how private the club, how cool the woods, how expert the girls, how young and beautiful, how lucky we are to have met him. “I’ve gotta get some air,” I say and climb out of the truck. Mario and Mary leave with me. We don’t look back.

  When we reach the Night Market, Joe’s there waiting. “Hey, Ef-leen,” he says. “Why’d you go?” He tugs at my elbow and pulls me toward an alley between the buildings. He has something to show me. Still holding my arm, he reaches in a trash can and removes a rolled-up newspaper. A spray of flowers shows at the top. “You like?” he asks. He tells me to look inside the paper. Under the flower stems I see the marijuana. “I don’t think so,” I tell him. He’s exasperated. Mario gives a yawn.