by Zolbrod, Zoe
Me and Abu go to see Kobjitti. When I go alone to see him at Sweetie’s Basket, I wait outside. I tell the boy at the door to go get him. But with Abu, we go inside. It’s two o’clock in afternoon, but some farangs drink in there already. They look at Thai women. These ones dance, look sleepy, wear bikini. If they don’t dance, they sit with the farang man who buys them milk so he can touch them.
“Hello, hello,” Kobjitti says when he sees us. Before, I talk to him in Thai. The way he talks now, I can hear that he doesn’t speak good English. “Welcome. Welcome. Please. Sit. Drink. You drink.”
Abu asks for Johnnie Walker but for me, just one Coke.
Hurry up, get these drinks, make this man comfortable! Mr. Kobjitti says in Thai to one girl. He brings over one chair for himself, and he sits down.
When the girl comes back she stands behind us. She puts her hands on shoulders of Abu and starts massage. Western kind, not Thai-style. Her face doesn’t move. Her red paint nails are like small plastic jewelries on the yellow shoulders of his shirt.
“My man tells me you’ve taken good care. It’s appreciated,” Abu says to Kobjitti.
Kobjitti smiles. It takes too long, but then he understands. “Yes. Thank you. Thank you.”
“And now let’s see this round of cargo.” His drink is finished already. Kobjitti and me don’t finish our Cokes, but we all stand up and walk away. Bar girl is left to find someone else.
We go to one building in the alley off Soi 23. Abu’s like one giant. Very strong. Too big in that hallway, too big in that small room that’s smelling like animals. Room has two beds–one with toy bears and pigs on it–one small dresser, and one big cage made from wire. Cage is bigger than the bed. Inside there is where the turtles live. They look dusty, but some move around. I bend to count them. Twenty-four turtles should be inside there. Abu doesn’t wait for me to count. He opens wire door and reaches in their house. He picks one up. Mr Turtle yells–hhhheeee. His mouth opens wider than his whole head.
“Ah, they still have that fighting spirit,” Abu says. He holds the turtle out to me. “Feel the weight of this.” Whenever Abu says something, Kobjitti smiles and laughs. I don’t want to, but I take that turtle.
It’s heavy, wow. I use two hands to hold the shell. It feels like turtle tries to swim.
“Each shell is its own original, which is of course what attracts the collectors. I have a Japanese dealer coming this week. What do you guess he’ll pay? Once we exchange the yen, it will be a little under nine thousand U.S. for each one.”
At that moment, the door to the room opens. Very pale woman puts her head inside the door, and we can hear some ladies laughing too loud.
Get out of here! Kobjitti yells at them. The door slams shut. “Sorry,” Kobjitti says. “Sorry. Sorry.” He smiles.
Abu takes turtle from me and with some thick pencil puts one red dot on turtle’s back. Then that turtle goes inside the cage again. Abu’s hand goes, too. He picks another turtle and looks at him—his belly, his shell. Then another turtle, and again, again. On some turtles he puts red dot.
“Tell Kobjitti that we’ll stop by the bar tomorrow evening at nine o’clock. The marked cargo should be in a carrying case somewhere on the premises.”
Abu closes the cage and goes to wash his hands in these ladies’ bathroom. When he’s finished, I’m excited to wash my hands, too. The floor in the bathroom is cement, not tile. Only one small towel in there, and it’s already dirty, already wet; it smells like moldy bathroom. I don’t want to use it, but I do. It’s better to have clean hands, dry hands. When we go back out to the hallway, the pale-skin lady waits there with one friend. They still laugh, and they say something about how big is the Negro man. When we walk by, Kobjitti tells them to be quiet.
Abu takes me to some hotel near Soi Cowboy that I’ve never seen before. He says he wants to use their business center, and they will let him get and send fax for small price, and he wants to have one cocktail, and they have the relaxing lounge on the first floor. I wait for him in the lounge when he’s in the business center. I sit alone while his ice cubes melt in Johnnie Walker.
When he comes back, he holds some paper. “The world is shrinking, my friend. As a Kenyan man, I can sit here with you in Bangkok and get a call from Cologne. This customer wants a rare lizard found only in the Philippines, when it’s found at all. If all goes well, he and I will meet for coffee in Orlando, and that lizard will change hands, for a price that is more and more standardized. Look at this.” Abu hands me what he holds. Long line of numbers goes down the right side of both pages. Next to every number is some word in English, then in something like German, then in some letters like I never see before.
“What’s this?” I say.
“It’s a standardized price sheet.”
“No, this letter, this language. What’s this one?”
“That’s Russian.” Abu picks up his Johnnie Walker and says words over his glass before tasting. “The Americans and the Russians. With all the changes that have occurred since I was your age, they’re still both much too influential in countries like yours and like mine.” To make the toast, he lifts his eyebrows at me instead of lifts his glass.
I look at the paper again and read the English words. They can buy everything they want to. Dead things: tiger bone, parts of elephant, rhino, and many things I don’t know. Alive things: kinds of snake, kinds of lizard, tortoise, frog, kinds of bug. I ask Abu, “These numbers, what money are they for?”
“Dollars, of course.” Five thousand dollars for one dead bug. Wow. That’s too crazy. Who wants to do that? It’s because those ones are hard to find. If it’s easy to find, instead of paying then they smash that bug. I think so. “But it’s time to meet your Robin. I’ll be needing her services again soon; it won’t do to let her languish.”
I don’t like to hear this: your Robin. Abu throws some money down to pay for our drinks. I think I see two purple bills and one red-eleven hundred baht. When I was one student, I lived on this amount for one week, maybe two weeks, sure. To see it now makes me feel something very strong: I want to be away from this. I want to eat supper with Chitapon, sitting on his floor. After that I want to sit, relax, talk in Thai, listen to Chit play some songs on the guitar.
“Oh, I forget something. I’m too stupid,” I say to Abu. I hit my hand to my forehead. “I’m too stupid, now it’s not possible for me to go.”
But when I explain to Abu that I forgot I have one appointment, he says, sure, it’s still possible for me to go to meet my friend, and he gives me some money to spend when I do that. He tells me not to worry about NokRobin. He’ll take her to her meal. He’ll ask her for her service. He’ll even show her papers that will make her calm down about those animals. He tells me to go with my friend, and he’ll take care of it all.
Chitapon’s not at his home, so I buy khao moo daeng from the vendor in front of his building, and I sit down to eat that. Vendor feels sad for me because I eat alone. She brings some food for herself, and she sits down to talk to me. She tells me two more hours, then she’ll pack up her cart and go home. Not to her home near Udon Thani, no, to her home in Bangkok, just one tent where she lives with her husband and keeps her cart at night. They’ll go back to Udon Thani for harvest season. They have house there, she tells me, some land for farming, but money is not enough to always stay there.
I tell this vendor thank you for eating with me, for talking to me, that her khao moo daeng is very good, then I say good-bye. I take meter taxi to Trombone Club, but Chit’s not there. Another friend tells me why not. Tonight Fallow band plays at Sandwich Pub. Okay, no problem. I get in one tuk tuk and take another ride.
When Chitapon sees me there, he smiles. He leaves the people he’s talking to so he can come and talk to me. He asks me did I eat already. He asks me how’s my business.
I tell him business is good, that the man I work for takes me to see Buddy Guy. In my suit pocket I have half of this ticket, and I show Chit that.
&n
bsp; Buddy Guy! he says. He pretends to play guitar like him. Then Wanphen comes to see me. She asks me the same questions Chit already does: Did I eat? How I been? I look so business, how’s my business?
Business is good, I say again. Then I say something else: In two weeks I go to Florida, to United States.
Wanphen gets the Levi’s she sells from some Thai person who lives in the USA, but she’s never been there. “You go to USA? You get big E Levi’s!” She laughs because she sounds funny in English. Then she talks again in Thai: If you find me those, and they’re not my size, we’ll sell them and we’ll split the money, okay? She laughs again. She’s very exciting.
I tell her, Levi’s, sure. I’ll get you those. They’re very cheap over there. No problem.
No, she says. The ones I want are special. You can’t buy those new. You have to find them. Old ones. Old ones. Big E.
Sure, I tell her. I don’t understand, but I say, Okay, I’ll buy for you.
She jumps up and down, because she wants me to know something. She says: The tag, it has to say big E, not little e. Big E on the back pocket.
She turns around. She watches my face over her shoulder when she touches the pocket of her jeans. Her hair is almost down to her pocket. She’s very pretty, with her own kind of style, and I think Chit is lucky she wants to be with him.
She says: On here. You read English, right? You know the letter e? You understand?
Okay, I say. Sure, sure. But let me see.
I pretend to bend down to look at her pocket. Wanphen turns around and steps away from me. She laughs again.
I think you read English, but you can read it in the United States. You don’t have to read on me! Your girlfriend will get angry.
What girlfriend? I say. NokRobin’s face comes in my mind and hurts my head.
Your girlfriend. I see her over there.
I look in the corner where some farangs are, but NokRobin’s not with them. What girlfriend? I say to Wanphen again, but then I see Anchan. She sees me, too.
Is not! I say, but Anchan’s already coming.
She wears orange color jacket to match her orange color trousers. Fallow band starts to play and their guitar sounds mean and good. Anchan doesn’t look good like Wanphen, doesn’t look like rock and roll. I buy her one Coke, and then I say, Excuse me, I see someone I must talk to. Good-bye. I go to stand in front of the stage with Wanphen.
When Fallow band takes break, Kathy comes there, too. Because I can speak English to her, and because she used to be sweet with Chit, she thinks she’s my friend, but I don’t want to talk to her now. She’s always pushing something. Tonight she pushes about me and Anchan.
“She says you’re blowing her off, Piv. Did you really break up with her to go out with some farang?”
Anchan stands by the door when Kathy says this. I see her look at me. I think she’d be ashamed if she knows what Kathy says now—too pushy. Too farang.
“No. I didn’t break apart. How can I break apart when we don’t make something together?” I say.
“You didn’t take her out? You didn’t give her this?” Kathy shows me the blue hair decoration. Anchan still stands by door. Her hair hangs down now, too curly. She looks at me, looks sad, no smile. I never could guess that she would act this way. I thought she was shy, polite. “You’re her first real boyfriend. You really hurt her feelings.”
“Excuse me,” I say. “I was never her boyfriend. No. Why you think that?” I don’t want to touch that blue decoration. Fallow band goes onstage to play again. I wanted to talk more to Chit and Guy, but now it’s too late. Anchan watches me. I don’t smile. Her face gets more sad. Then she opens the door, and she leaves Sandwich Pub. Good.
“Oh, great, Piv,” Kathy says. “I’m finally getting her out to the clubs, and you make her cry within an hour.”
“I don’t make her!” I say. Kathy puts this blue thing in my hand and walks to the door to follow Anchan.
Wanphen laughs at me now. She doesn’t need to understand English. She knows what Kathy says to me, I think so.
I tell Wanphen: Those times you saw me with Anchan, those are the only times I meet her!
Wanphen thinks this is too funny. She likes to see Kathy get too hot and lose face. I hold blue decoration out for her. I make this joke: You want this decoration? To go with big E Levi’s?
She tells me I have to wear that until I find my girlfriend again. That because my hair is short now, I have to wear the decoration like one bracelet. She puts it on me. Wow. It’s ugly, but I keep it on to make this joke with Wanphen.
When I go in room 517, I feel surprise. It smells something like Sandwich Bar in there—air-con and Singha beer and Khrong Tip. And it’s dark. TV light is the only light, but no sound comes from that. I see one fire dot, the spark from cigarette.
“Hi,” NokRobin says. I can tell from the fire dot that she’s sitting at the table. I want to see her face. I turn on the light.
“I feel surprise,” I tell her. “I never see you smoke, so I think you’re one robber.” I laugh. I wish she’d laugh, too.
“Can you turn off the light?” she says. “It hurts my eyes.”
I turn this off. “I’m sorry that I have one appointment and cannot meet you.”
“I’m sure Abu already told you everything, anyway, right?”
“No. I don’t know. What he tell you?”
“He gave me some bullshit about these being free-range rhino horns, and he offered me five hundred dollars to take them to fucking Singapore.” Why she’s so angry? Does she see that hair decoration on my wrist when I turn on the light? If she thinks there’s another girl, will she feel jealous? Want to keep me? Or will that close the door forever? Better not to have the risk. I put my hands behind me so she cannot see.
“Supposedly there was some authorization by the Zimbabwe conservation department to dehorn the black rhinos that live on one of the reserves,” she says. “Then no one will have a reason to kill them. I guess the horns are meant to go to some government department, but phh—” She makes sound like she spits. “So much for that.”
No, she’s not jealous. I take the decoration off and put it in my back pocket. She’s mad about these animals, something about that. She only cares about them.
“And when I balked at doing more of this rhino stuff, he told me something even more interesting. That the next stop on his little world tour is Florida. Orlando. He’s offering me a ticket home.”
“Florida, USA? Wow.”
NokRobin stands up and turns on the light near the bed. Now my eyes hurt. I put my hand to my face.
“Like you didn’t already know!” NokRobin says. “Like you didn’t know he’s flying you over there, too!” She sounds so angry; her words hurt like that light, they hit my headache. “When were you going to tell me, Piv? Huh?”
“Shh. I tell you. I always tell you what I know. Why you angry?”
“I’m not angry! I’m hurt. I’m confused. You don’t tell me anything. Even less than before. Maybe you’re the one who’s angry at me—I’m not even sure. Are you? Why can’t we talk about what you asked me in Kanchanaburi? About what’s going on?”
“It’s no problem for you now. You get free ticket home.”
“But it’s a problem for me and you, Piv. We need to talk about this. What about our plan? Why don’t you believe me when I tell you I want to be with you?”
I take my hand away from my face, and I look at NokRobin. She wears white color underwear and one white singlet, that’s all, not very many clothes. But around her neck she wears that silver necklace that we made together and I picked up at the factory yesterday. It looks strong, shines nice. It makes me happy and sad to see it there.
“Shh, okay. I believe you. No problem.” I step to her and touch our necklace. Happy and sad both.
“I’m sorry about what I said at your mom’s house. When you brought up marriage, I just didn’t—”
“Shhhh,” I tell her. I don’t want to hear her say why s
he won’t be my wife. Words about that hurt me. I make her stand, and I kiss her lips so she won’t say them. Her lips taste good to me, and I kiss them again and again and again. I still want to make something with her. I shouldn’t want to, but I can’t help it. I hold her and I kiss her and I want to make our plans and our love grow together again.
But then her lips stop kissing. They stay by mine, but now they talk into my mouth: “Piv, please tell me the truth. What did Abu say? Are the rhinos really still alive somewhere or not?”
I tell her that Abu says nothing about that. That I don’t know. I want to kiss again, to stop her talking about the animals more, but even when our lips get busy, I can feel that she is gone from where we are. She’s with the animals, and she’s flying to Singapore.
Chapter 20
Everything looks the same, Robin thought as she checked her styled hair in one of the Star lobby’s mirrored columns. She and Piv were waiting inside the hotel while the manager’s nephew got the Mitsubishi, and she wanted the reassurance of what had become familiar: the hair-sprayed sheen of her dress-up-and-fly mode, the straight pink lines and reflective surfaces of the Star. She turned to smile and blink her eyes at Piv in a last-minute effort to retrieve him from the far-off reaches he had climbed to, but he seemed impervious, and her stomach looped in sets of figure eights. When she stepped outside to meet the car pulling up at the curb, beads of sweat rose from the skin in the hollows under her eyes, from the webbing between her fingers. It was almost April, the hottest month of the year in Bangkok, but as usual, Robin saw no visible signs of perspiration on Piv as he ushered her into the gray interior of the car. She smoothed the seat of her silk suit while he loaded the wheeled black bag packed by Abu.