by Zolbrod, Zoe
In Cebu City, I take taxi to Casa Magellan, one hotel where Abu already reserved the room for me. Next to the stairs I see one picture of Jesus, one of Mary, and there are some purple flowers around there-not orchids; these are flowers I’ve never seen. In room 26, I take off my clothes and step into the bathroom, into the warm shower, and the airplane smell leaves from my hair, from my skin, and floats into the air. The shower works good, warm and clean, and when I’m done I feel clean, too. I put one white towel around me, then I lie on the bed.
Abu tells me that this hotel has international phone, and he tells me calls to make: call the number he gives me to find out where to buy the gun, call the number to see where I go to pick up snakes, call the number to talk about Gray’s lizard, call him. I think I should pick up my arms so I can dial the phone, but I can’t move them from their place on the hard, green bed. Too tired. I’m in Cebu City, Philippines, all alone, and I wonder something: maybe the Philippine girl likes the man from Thailand. I don’t want to meet bar girl, prostitute, nothing like that, but maybe I can meet one girl that knows about the rock and roll club, the good restaurant, something special, sure. She speaks English and I speak English, too, and she lies with me on this bed, and she wants to make something. She wants to be with me. She’ll feel very sad when I have to leave. On that day, she’ll go with me to the airport, and I’ll give her money to take taxi back to her home. I give her money, but that’s not why she’s with me, no. She likes me. She has the dream that we can make some future.
I still feel tired, but now I can move my body again, and I roll on my side and put the clean white pillow in my arms. I want to pretend everything is calm now, and I have ten thousand dollars, and here in my hotel room I sleep with my wife.
Abu calls deep into the night. He doesn’t ask about the gun; he doesn’t ask about the lizard, who did I call, why did I not call him. He ask something else: “Your bird felt the need to sneak out of the hotel at midnight, my friend, and sneak is not too strong a word. Do you still feel so sentimental about her accompanying us to the U.S.?”
“Sorry, I sleepy. What’s it mean, sense it me too?” But even in my sleep I know this: reason why Abu likes me is because I’m good with the ladies. He tells that to me first time we ever speak. NokRobin’s dead eye gives me too many other problems to worry about-not just my heart and my body, also with Abu.
“It means I thought she was the one being led from between her legs, but perhaps it’s you.” Now he talks ugly like that fucking Vol.
“She goes to call her parents, sure. Middle of the day where they are. She always tell me that she want me to meet her mother and father like she meet mine, to show them this Thai guy she loves. She says when they see us, see her so happy, maybe they can find some amount of money to give us.” I laugh so he knows I have no worry.
“I think the reptiles are a better bet, man, although admittedly you’ll need more than your fine skin and quaint phrasing in my line.” I don’t understand all his words, but I hear that Abu believes again that the ladies like me, that NokRobin loves me. I need him to think this even when it’s not true.
Chapter 26
Robin had been in bed for fifteen hours when the phone woke her up at 4:00 PM. Abu, Volcheck, Piv’s girlfriend? She let it jangle. She didn’t want to know. But: “Are you really trying?” Robert had sneered at her last night when she’d made her check-in with nothing new to say. “Are you telling me they’re turning you away? Because you’re an attractive young woman, and I find that hard to believe.” Oh, God. She let the phone ring again, tried to hunker back down into unconsciousness. But Robert’s voice was still there: “You better get over your delicate stomach,” he’d threatened. “We’re not going to waste Singapore’s goodwill on someone who doesn’t give back in return.” She reached her arm to the phone. Too late. She answered to a dial tone.
She propped herself up, and the bedding shifted, releasing air that was heavy and stale. Piv’s backpack was gone. Piv’s suitcase was gone. His cologne and his wallet from atop the dresser, half the money he and Robin had earned together, half of their hundred and twenty necklaces-gone. She felt an echo in her chest. Piv.
Stop it, she told herself. Robert. Abu.
Her empty stomach clenched itself more tightly and grumbled. She hadn’t eaten yesterday, had thrown up the little she’d consumed the day before. Feeling ridiculous for not feeding herself, for half hoping that she could get out of this mess by perishing of starvation, she stood and let her spinning head settle before walking to the minibar by the door. In rooms with regular housekeeping service, a maid checked the inventory in the dorm-sized refrigerators each day and added the price of any missing items to the bill before restocking, but Piv and Robin didn’t receive this attention. They’d drank all the water, Singha, Kostner, Coke, and Orange Crush, eaten the Kit Kats and chili peanuts and Nestlé bars, and nothing had been billed, nothing replaced. Now there were only some packets of shrimp crackers and a small vial of lychee drink left. Robin ripped open the bag of crackers and tongued a white wafer. It turned gummy in her mouth, fishy and starchy. Sustenance. She ate another one, pulled off the plastic tab on the lychee juice. When the phone rang again, she took a deep breath and answered.
“So hey, lady!” It was a smoky woman’s voice. “Finally you answer. Yesterday it sounded like you were throwing the phone.”
Robin’s mouth went dry. Was this Piv’s girlfriend? Was Piv’s girlfriend American?
“Who is this?”
“Who is this? It’s Gazelle Ester Raboniwitz.” There was a pause. “You don’t remember? It’s Zella, that’s who.”
“Zella?” No, it couldn’t be. Zella couldn’t have found her here. Her heart gave a tentative, engine’s-on stutter.
“Your fairy godmother.” A fine layer of sarcasm dusted the words, but when she said she was in the lobby and wanted to come up right away, Robin agreed.
Her appearance still sucked in Robin’s eyeballs: her hair, her polished stones, her thin flitting wrists stacked with four inches of metal. She walked around the room, casing it, and drew light toward her. But her eyes weren’t reflecting anything. And the sunbursts of lines crowning her cheekbones were duplicated in the skin at the bend of her elbows. And was that a mottled tan there, or dirt? Was that a crusted scab? Was grease not pomade clotting the hair around her hairline?
Zella parted the plastic-lined curtains and looked out at Lan Luang Road. The chedi rising from the Golden Mount at Wat Sraket was just visible through the smog. “What’s it cost you here a night?” she asked.
Robin was embarrassed that she didn’t know. She made something up. “Twelve hundred baht.”
Zella let the curtains drop and continued her trip around the room. At the dresser she straightened one of the necklaces that Piv had left after he’d counted out exactly sixty. When she picked it up and hooked it on, Robin found herself holding her breath, anxious to hear the appraisal.
“I haven’t been seeing this. Where’d you find it?” Zella stood adjusting the links in the mirror, arranging her face to make it photo-ready. “But there’s not enough centered weight pulling down to make it hang right.” She tensed and released her shoulders and the links settled back asymmetrically against the skin of her throat. “Where’d you say you picked it up?”
“We had them made.”
Zella turned away from the mirror. She caught Robin’s eye and then rescanned the room’s surfaces. “Really? Who’s we?”
“I designed it. This Thai guy dealt with the factory.”
“They’re good at that, aren’t they? So then, where is he?”
“Where’s Guy?”
Zella laughed. “Touché.” Then the countenance she had smoothed a moment ago in the mirror pinched back toward a point between her brows. She studied Robin-studied her eyes, mouth, her ratio of fat to muscle to bone. “That’s why I’m here,” she said. “I need that money you owe me.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Actually, I th
ought you’d offer it when you came running over to see me last time, but I didn’t want to say anything. It’s just now I really need it. I think it was more like five hundred bucks, but we can call it four.”
“I paid you. Don’t you remember? My cards got sorted, and I got a cash advance, and I paid you the day before we split up. Fourteen thousand baht, and you’d only given me twelve.”
“No. You didn’t.”
Robin stood with her mouth open. Silence. Zella gave a tight smile. Their eyes remained locked, and Robin picked up the packet of crackers from the table and started eating them, crunching down twice on each puffed disk before putting the next in her mouth. Sustenance. Sustenance. She could make sense of this if she wasn’t so hungry.
“No, you didn’t.” Zella repeated, putting on another necklace. “You were up shit’s creek, and I bailed you out. Hey, I didn’t mind. You reminded me of myself when I was young, just trying to stay on that crazy highway.” She finished adjusting the second necklace and looked at Robin in the mirror. “Of course it’s not as crazy now, and here you are, shelling out twelve hundred a night while I’m in some dive on Khao San. It’s time for you to pay up. You owe me, and I need to get back up to Laos.”
“I don’t owe you. I did pay.”
“Hey, didn’t I buy you that Buddha?” Zella turned and pointed to the statue on the high dresser. A puang malai still hung around the Buddha’s neck where Piv had placed it, the jasmine blossoms shriveled and brown. Zella walked over and crushed one of the flowers between her fingers until the petals dissolved into oil. “What else did I buy you? I know you wanted some of everything I had.”
“You loaned me the money. I bought the Buddha. I paid you back.”
Zella took two swift steps toward the bed and bent sideways to reach between the mattress and box spring, searching efficiently, professionally, knowing that’s where backpackers often kept their money belts.
“Hey!” Robin cried, when Zella pulled out the gamy, ugly belt. A handful of receipts fluttered to the floor. Zella slid the passport out and sliced it toward Robin like a Frisbee, moved toward the door while counting some red and purple bills. “That’s mine!” Robin yelled. She jerked herself between Zella and the exit. The bones of their forearms crashed together. She breathed Zella’s hair into her mouth. She pushed the heel of her hand into the side of Zella’s head, felt the deep halo of frizz press up against hard scalp.
“You owe me four hundred bucks,” Zella hissed. A foot kicked her shin, a knee shoved her thigh aside. Robin grunted. She clawed for the necklaces around Zella’s neck. The door was half open now; the hotter air of the hall washed over her. Her force was pushing Zella out rather than pulling the money back in. Then her arm was caught by the door. She howled.
“I was your fucking fairy godmother, there when you needed me.” Zella said from the hallway. She pulled more tightly on the door handle, one eye and faded coral lipstick visible through the vise that trapped Robin’s arm. “You’re just too fucking spoiled to repay the favor.” She released her hold on the door slightly so that Robin could yank her purpling limb from it. Then Zella slammed the door shut. Robin chained it and bolted it and took the lychee drink, still slightly cold, and rolled it over the bruise on her arm. She was shaking, but she felt a coin of pride that Zella had made off with so little and was left with a bloody scratch on her throat.
Fuck Thailand. Fuck everyone. She had to do what she could to get herself home.
She found Abu easily, in the lounge. He was sitting alone, facing the door to the lobby, a bottle of Johnnie Walker and the ice service at his elbow, but nothing else, no papers or books, on the polished stone of the table.
“Ah Miss Miatta. When did you begin to feel better?”
“Just this afternoon.” She took a seat. “I think I might be ready to eat something. May I join you for supper?” She tried cocking her head and smiling, flirting. I need to be like Piv, she thought, swallowing down the lump. I need to employ charm to my ends.
“You’re ready for a night on the town with us, eh? But I was waiting for you today. I had hoped we could go to Jim Thompson’s house. Beautiful place, and Piv said it’s your favorite. I wanted to see it through your eyes. You do know Thompson was a CIA agent, don’t you? He made a show of adopting Thai culture, or at least the aesthetic, but he was part of the American campaign to win hearts and minds by any means possible.”
“No, I—I didn’t know that. But I do love his house.” She wanted a glass in her hand, something to cling to, and she sensed the bartender waiting for a signal to bring one, but Abu ignored him. “Um, what’s the plan for Wednesday, before the flight?” She tried batting her eyes. “Could we go then?”
“I must admit that I’m not certain how the level of involvement in Thailand compares to that in my own country or in Central America, but I should think it would have been even greater here, due to the proximity of what your country calls the era’s major conflict.”
Abu’s incisive gaze squashed her flat, reflected an ignorant and charmless American. “I didn’t know,” she muttered. But she needed to be like Zella, to exude a confidence that would allow her to appear to be what she was not. She inhaled, sat tall again, gestured to the bar for a glass. “I know more about his collections. There’s a great collection of ivory at his house. Will there be anything at the convention you think he would have liked?”
“Of course you didn’t know. You didn’t care to know. But when it comes to my business, you’re curious about all the little details.” The bartender approached, but Abu raised his hand to avert him. “You seem nervous. Pivlaierd mentioned that you were anxious on his behalf, worried about his safety as he enters your country. I want to put your mind at ease, with regard to that. Piv comports himself beautifully. Merely being a national of Thailand is not the black mark that it used to be.”
“I am worried about him. I want him to be careful, that’s all.”
“No, you’re the one I’m worried about. A young woman away from her country for much too long, coming in from a hot spot. Almost inevitably, you could be pulled aside.”
Robin stutter-blinked again—a reflex this time, not batting—a last-ditch backward paddle out of dangerous waters.
“What will you do if they open a case you’re carrying for me-the case with contents of such interest to you?”
“I, oh—” What did she say? What could she say? “But they won’t. But they ... I don’t look like a backpacker anymore.”
“What you look like is a perfect candidate for a controlled delivery.” He reached under the table to her thigh and grabbed a fistful of her flesh. “Even knowing that I’d hunt you down and find you—and that is precisely what I’m telling you: I’d hunt you down and find you—a white American like yourself, fat with false innocence, meeting your own again, you’d forget it. You’d do whatever they tell you. Maybe you’re already doing it now.”
“Abu, no. What?” She gasped the words, her breath gone from sucking up the pain of his grip.
“No. You’d betray me while looking me straight in the eye. And you’d betray your Thai lover just as quickly. Go to Jim Thompson’s house whenever you like, and study from your master. You won’t be flying for me.”
She struggled to breathe. “Abu, no, I—” Gulp. “Abu, no, I won’t. I wouldn’t. I believe you. I know. And I love Piv.” She believed herself passionately, choked up with the truth of it, but she saw Robert, too. What would she tell him? What would they do to her? Abu stood and left Robin sitting alone across from his smudged glass. His hands were reaching in his wallet, plucking bills for the bartender, but Robin’s quadriceps still stung from his clench when he walked out of the lounge.
Chapter 27
When I’m in Bangkok with Abu, he took me to Pastuer Institute Snake Farm, where they keep some snakes to make medicine. He took me to Siam Farm, the big animal dealer in my country, where they sell legal and illegal animals both. He made me pick up snakes and look at their color, feel th
eir bellies, feel their muscles, feel how they move, so I’ll know which ones are healthy. So I’ll know which ones are pregnant. Those are the best. He made me study pictures of Gray’s monitor lizard and of the kind of coral snake and pit viper that are only in Philippines, and so very special. He told me that when I meet the dealers, I must act like I have knowledge. I must show I know about these animals, so dealers don’t try to trick me. So they trust me. He told me the story of one American lady, newspaper reporter, who wanted to uncover some animal dealers in Jakarta. She tried to talk to these dealers like she’s one customer, collector, but they understood that to buy something was not her goal. At night they followed her until she walked in the darkness. Then they held her down on the dark road, and they drove the car over her legs many times and smashed them. True story. She went back to the United States with one wheelchair. She didn’t try to talk to those dealers again. Abu told me how to act, what to do, what to say, so no one will think I’m like this lady, sneak something around. And he told me where to buy gun, because the dealers will have gun, and the thieves will have gun, and if I get something too special, maybe someone will try to take it from me.
So first day I wake up in Philippines, I get the piece of paper out and dial the phone number. Someone answers with the word I don’t know. “Hello,” I say. I feel embarrassed. My words don’t come even though in my dream I practice for this moment. One good thing is this: no one can see me. After too long, I can speak. “My friend Abu tells me to call you. He says you can help me buy something.”
“Something? Sure, we can help you buy something.” Heh, heh, heh. I hear this rough laugh. Where does this voice come from? From what person? What place? They laugh at me there.
“Excuse me. Perhaps something like one small weapon.” First the gun, then the animal. First the gun, because after that, it’s over. I don’t have to think about it again.