Phnom Penh Express

by Johan Smits

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  AROUND THE SAME time that Colonel Peeters is getting himself wounded up, scrutinising Phirun’s picture, the subject himself is rummaging through the rattan-made basket that acts as his wardrobe.

  “Houston, this is ground control, we’ve got a situation here,” he intones in a nasal voice. What should he wear for lunch with Merrilee? He wants to dress to impress; if only he had the money.

  He sifts through the heap of fabric, staring at his modest collection of shirts — three items — and feels depressed. He can’t remember the last time he bought a new garment. Now that he’s finally earning some decent money, he should use next weekend to go shopping.

  Phirun finally settles for his favourite smart-looking shirt; a cotton number printed with thin stripes in brown, burgundy and silver. He then selects a pair of Martinique-branded black linen trousers and grey cotton socks. Phirun monitors the result in the mirror and is not displeased. His shirt could use an iron but at least its colours nicely offset his brown skin. The shoes are a problem, though — in that he hasn’t got any. No other choice but to wear his old trainers, bought in Brussels years ago.

  Moments later he closes the kitchen door behind him, double-locks it and puts the extra padlock on the door. After he quietly descends the outdoors stairs, he reaches the front gate and then gets stopped in his tracks. Something feels wrong but he can’t put his finger on what. He squats down to put his key in the gate’s padlock, only to realise that it’s gone. That’s strange, he thinks. On closer inspection, he then notices the hole in the gate has been welded closed. How the hell is he supposed to lock the gate now, he thinks? Suddenly, it occurs to him what’s causing his unease — it’s Chucky. Or rather the lack of him. The little pest was for the first time silent where he would usually bark his head off the moment Phirun approaches the gate. He looks aside through the neighbour’s fence but can see no trace of Chucky. Had the furry piece of trash barked himself to death? Phirun can only hope.

  “One dollar? For buy rice?”

  The sudden voice behind Phirun gives him the fright of his life, making him drop his keys. He spins round in shock to see the bored face of a young uniformed security guard.

  “What...? Are you a new guard here?”

  He realises that his question is rhetorical but doesn’t know what else to say while gradually regaining his composure. He must be the reason the lock has been removed, his landlord having decided to hire a private guard — there had been more burglaries than usual of late. It’s only now that Phirun notices the plastic chair with the guard’s hat on it and his black military-style boots underneath. The young guy that stands in front of him is wearing a pair of slippers instead. He notices Phirun’s gaze.

  “Hot...” he explains.

  “Yes,” Phirun agrees, and gives him a dollar to buy some rice but which, in reality, will be spent on beer as they both know full well.

  “The dog?” Phirun asks in Khmer while pointing to the neighbour’s house.

  “Inside,” the guard answers. “After five hours of barking, it got dehydrated.”

  “Five hours? And you didn’t shoot it?”

  The guard smiles. Phirun still cannot understand his people’s indifference towards excessive noise. They seem to be immune to it. Maybe it’s all that karaoke.

  Minutes later, Phirun is driving his rusty motorcycle onto Mao Tse Tung Boulevard. As has become customary by now, at the next intersection he nearly collides with three students driving beside one another while conducting a conversation. Each of them is steering a little white Chaly motorcycle, on Phirun’s side of the road, but coming from the opposite direction, three abreast and totally oblivious to everything outside their gang’s circumference.

  After negotiating the Chalys, Phirun nearly smashes into a cement truck but manages — just — to avoid it by sharply turning onto a gas station. From there, he slowly zigzags between the gasoline pumps and assorted parked cars, motorcycles, tuktuks and beggars, until he arrives at Sihanouk Boulevard. After driving onto the pedestrian crossing through red traffic lights, he continues his journey southbound. Just after passing Lucky Supermarket, he does as everybody else and reduces speed slightly before crawling through the red lights, occasionally avoiding sideways traffic by sweeping round it in a wide arch.

  Twelve minutes and eight near-collisions later, he steers his old bike into Street 136 and parks in front of the Pepper Lounge. The gay-friendly bar had been Merrilee’s choice for a pre-lunch drink.

  “So I don’t get too much harassment from men, apart from you,” she had said on the phone.

  Phirun hadn’t been quite sure how to respond and enters the bar not knowing what to expect. She hasn’t arrived yet — of course. He makes himself comfortable on the red sofa near the entrance. Michael Jackson’s The Girl is Mine is playing while the only three customers, all men, eye him up. I understand why she picked this bar, he thinks, striving to avoid eye contact with the customers — which was not as easy as it should have been. Before one of the waiters comes to take his order, Merrilee walks in, a grin adorning her pretty face.

  “Sok sabay,” she greets him mockingly in Khmer with a kiss on the cheek.

  “A bit more crowded and it would have been hard to spot you. You blend in surprisingly well. Seems like you dressed for the occasion.”

  She plonks herself down next to him on the sofa.

  “Yeah... thanks,” is all he can muster, wondering whether her remark is a backhanded compliment or that he’d chosen the wrong ensemble.

  Merrilee casually rests her hand on his knee while reaching for the drinks list.

  “What are you having? Drinks are on me this time,” she says, quickly scanning the menu. “This place mixes some of the best cocktails in town. Do you want a Cambodian Cocksucking Cowboy or a Screaming Orgasm? Creamy White Stuff is my favourite, I think I’ll go for that,” she declares. “You?”

  She looks Phirun in the eye, wetting her lips flirtatiously with the tip of her tongue. Phirun just about manages to get his composure back.

  “I’ll have a Salty Red Dick,” he says, returning her gaze with what he hopes is a cool, collected smile.

  “Old news, I already know that,” she quips with a wink. She orders with a young waiter dressed in extremely tight-fitting trousers and an extra small t-shirt that emphasises his physique.

  Excellent start, Phirun thinks. His mind is already drifting towards taking her home after lunch.

  “So what have you been up to lately?” she asks.

  “Oh... nothing special, really, I’ve been busy making chocolates, helping out Nina with some official stuff, the usual programme.”

  “Tell me more about that chocolate shop of yours; when is it opening again?”

  Phirun doesn’t want to bore her with chat about work and would rather change the subject.

  “The opening? Soon, I guess, we haven’t fixed a date yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I do, for sure. What about you? Been busy?”

  “I simply love chocolate,” she swerves his question. “You probably hear that from girls’ mouths all the time. Do you import it? Who are you working with?”

  But Phirun is not paying attention. The moment she mentioned the words ‘girls’ mouths’, he couldn’t help staring at her full lips, and how they undulated and peeled back to reveal her perfect white teeth when she spoke. He suddenly longs to kiss those sensual lips floating just a few inches from his, challenging him.

  “Phirun?”

  “Eh? Yes. I er... was thinking of something... shall we go for lunch then?”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later they are seated at a table for two in Pop’s Café, an Italian restaurant on the river front. It had been Merrilee’s choice again.

  “Without a doubt, this is the best Italian restaurant this side of the Pacific,” she assures Phirun. Had Merrilee brought him to Kentucky Fried Chicken, he’d still have believed her.

  But despite his infatuation, Phirun senses
a change in the atmosphere between them. He can’t quite put his finger on it, maybe some sort of attentiveness on her part that hadn’t been there before — he’s not sure. Perhaps he’s just become too sensitive to her words, her moves, her everything..., waiting for telltale clues that might hint that she sees something more in him than mere friendship. Yet, their conversation lacks the spontaneous flow of last time, despite half a bottle of excellent white wine. Whenever he tries to ask about her family, or her interests, she steers the conversation back towards his work. He wishes he had never gone into the chocolate game. He spoons another mouthful of seafood pasta.

  “You were right,” he tells her. “This is the best Italian I’ve come across so far.”

  “Hmm, yeah,” she mumbles with a mouthful of spaghetti dangling from her lips. “Tops your Salty Red Cock, doesn’t it?” she says, making several heads turn which she coolly ignores.

  Australian discretion, Phirun thinks, admiring her hair, ears, nose, eyes, cheeks, collar bone, neck and lips. He is trying to calculate the best moment to hand her his poem. He had reread his masterpiece forty-three times before finally convincing himself that it would help him charm her back to his place. And today’s the day — he will make his move.

  Phirun seizes the moment after ordering espresso. He reaches for his bag and takes out an envelope that he hands to Merrilee.

  “What is it?” she asks, curiously.

  “Something I wrote for you.”

  Merrilee smiles and opens the envelope. Phirun drinks his espresso in one swift gulp and devours the little chocolate accompanying it. While she’s reading his words her facial expression changes, to surprise and back to another smile.

  ... her straight hair shines black, like a perfect night without a moon,

  Phirun is reciting the verse in his head while Merrilee’s reading. His eyes fall upon the little birthmark on her right cheek. It looks like the petals of a lotus flower, he thinks. He’d like to kiss it.

  playful eyes so brown like a young forest before bloom...

  Phirun stops reciting in his mind and waits for Merrilee’s reaction. The more she goes on reading, the bigger her smile grows until, upon reaching the end of the poem, she bursts out laughing. Again, heads turn in their direction.

  “What a joke,” she looks up at Phirun. “Boy, your sense of humour is... what’s the word... eclectic? No doubt this is...”

  Phirun clenches his teeth.

  “... the crappiest poem this side of the Pacific!” she laughs. “Seriously, you didn’t spend any time on this, did you?”

  Phirun forces a smile, “Course not. I got it off the internet and chucked in your name here and there, you know, just for a joke,” he lies, trying to sound light-hearted while his ego deflates like a punctured balloon.

  “So crap that it’s funny,” she chuckles, crunching the poem into a paper ball. “You’re an unusual one,” she says, lifting her espresso. “Let’s get the check, shall we?”

  Phirun is so upset, he fails to notice that Merillee didn’t touch the little chocolate perched on the saucer of her espresso despite her self-proclaimed addiction to the stuff.

  ***

  Driving home, Phirun swears out loud. “I should never, never, never have written her that piece of shit,” he yells furiously. “When will I ever learn? When, when, when?”

  Everything had gone wrong after the poem. He had asked her if she’d like to have another drink at his place and she had muttered some lame excuse about having too much work. He had then asked when they’d meet again, and she promised him that she’d call, in a tone which had sounded evasive to his ears.

  In his distress he drives through the second set of red lights since leaving Pop’s Café and realises that it is safer than stopping. It seems that the surrounding traffic is anticipating just that anyway; stopping at the lights would be riskier in this town. Two things I learnt today, he thinks; never write an honest poem to a girl and never stop for traffic lights in Phnom Penh.

  When he turns onto Mao Tse Tung, three policemen are blocking the street; one motions him to the curb. Already in a filthy mood, Phirun curses, slows down and steers his motorcycle to the roadside, then abruptly hits the gas, speeding past the policemen. They don’t seem to be the least bit surprised. Only one of them tries to acknowledge Phirun’s disobedience, slowly waving his orange baton and unconvincingly shouting a lazy “Hey” while his colleagues ignore the incident. As a way of not losing too much face, they’re already looking for a next victim to stop and extort. It’s the main way of supplementing their meagre salary and has become a boring routine.

  A few moments later he arrives home. By force of habit he grabs his keys only to realise that there’s no longer any lock on the gate. It can only be opened from the inside. He bangs his fist on the gate and waits. After thirty seconds, he bangs again, louder. When nothing happens, he assumes the guard must be sleeping. He knows that there’s always a fifty per cent chance of that with guards, but he’s really not in the mood to deal with that now — the last dregs of his goodwill have long since evaporated. He peers through a crack in the gate and spots the young man slumped onto a plastic chair, seemingly fast asleep. He loudly rattles the gate while shouting at the guard.

  “Damn! I already start to miss that lousy mutt!” he yells, thinking of Chucky. “Who would have thought that a few days ago?”

  Finally he hears movement on the other side of the metal gate and it eventually slowly grinds open.

  “Sorry,” the guard smiles, looking not in the least sorry.

  “Why you’re sleeping?” Phirun asks, realising the stupidity of his question but wanting to convey his annoyance.

  “Because I’m tired,” the guard answers.

  “Then what do you do at night?” Phirun persists.

  “Work.”

  “Work? So you work twenty-four hours, or what?”

  “Yes, I work as a night guard at night and as a day guard during the day.”

  “When do you sleep then?”

  “At work of course,” the guard answers, flummoxed.

  When he enters his little apartment Phirun goes straight to the fridge, takes a couple of beers out and seats himself at his kitchen table. He and Merrilee should be making love right now, he laments. Instead he’s feeling utterly miserable. “The crappiest poem this side of the Pacific.” Nice one.

  He chugs the first can of beer in one long gulp and opens the second. She could at least have pretended that it was kind of cute that he went to the effort, he thinks. It’s the thought that counts.

  “Never again will I write a poem for a girl!”

  Phirun grabs a pen and paper, then sits back down, drains his second beer and opens a third. He starts writing.

  “Screw them,” he mumbles, still convinced of his poetic talent, “if they don’t like poems then I’ll write one for myself.”

  Twenty-six minutes and three beers later, he reads his outpouring. He didn’t have to amend anything — it had flown out of him in one fluent spurt. He stares a few seconds at his latest creation, then suddenly has an idea. He slowly rewrites it, centring every sentence in the middle of the page, making each line progressively bigger than its precedent, until he reaches the middle, when he begins to decrease the font size. At the end he adds a little extra. He looks at the result, satisfied:

  Phirun sniggers — that’s exactly what I am, a fucking clown. He scribbles ‘Inside my tree without Merrilee’ on the top as title and signs his name with a flourish at the bottom.

  “There,” he tells his empty kitchen. “I’m the new Rimbaud,” and finishes his last beer while a few drunken tears well up in his eyes.

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  TZAHALA HAS DONE her best to dress modestly. She’s wearing long, loose khaki-coloured travel pants and replaced her usual high-heeled shoes with flat, open Clarks sandals. Instead of a plunging neckline, a bland, round-collared t-shirt hanging a size too big is draped shapelessly over her shoulders. She wants to look
like a tourist and avoid drawing attention, but her efforts prove futile.

  When she enters The House, several heads turn in her direction. Half of them belong to excited men, the other half jealous women. There’s not much she can do about the attention, she seems to draw it no matter how badly she dresses. It usually only happens with foreign men, though, because she’s too dark-skinned for Cambodian tastes.

  As is usual for a Saturday morning, The House is doing a busy trade. She walks straight through to the back, into a little open patio where it’s quieter. Tzahala finds herself a table for two. From where she sits she can hardly hear the music playing inside the main area, and the light buzz of the large electric fan above her head helps her relax. A girl donning staff uniform — a green polo shirt and dark trousers — approaches with a bright smile and places a complimentary glass of cold water down.

  “What would you like to order, madam?” the girl enquires.

  Tzahala considers a tempting chocolate croissant and espresso but eventually opts for a healthy fruit salad with yoghurt.

  “And something to drink madam?”

  “A lychee and mint cooler, thanks.”

  The girl nods, smiles and disappears back inside. Tzahala takes a good look around, purposefully, trying to absorb every detail. Colonel Peeters has good taste, she thinks. The European style café is modern yet cosy, decorated with eye-catching local works of art. A fresh bunch of beautiful white frangipani flowers in a glass vase on top of the counter transmit their delicate perfume.

  Her order arrives and Tzahala digs in, suddenly hungry. At another table in the corner a huge middle-aged foreign woman and a good-looking young Khmer man are having drinks. The large woman sports an explosion of blond hair on her head and is gobbling a chocolate mousse, while the young Khmer muscle factory conservatively sips a fruit juice. The woman is doing all the talking, her hand almost wringing the guy’s forearm, and Tzahala notices how the woman’s leg is also pressed against his. Sex tourism turning the tables on stereotypes, Tzahala thinks, half-fascinated. How democratic. She finishes her breakfast and grabs one of the free magazines lying about. ‘Asia Life Guide’, the title reads.