Good Friends

by Leeanne Moriarty

  In different circumstances he would’ve been just Charlie’s cup of chai.

  Tua Hea barked something in Thai too rapid for Charlie’s ear.

  The scarred man drew an automatic and cocked it. He held out a tattooed arm, pointing the pistol at Charlie’s head.

  “Now,” Tua Hea said, “You play or he shoot.”

  With a keen appreciation of the odds, Charlie extended a shaking hand and his fingers curled around the butt of the revolver.

  39

  The makeshift casino was transformed into a bloodsport arena.

  Charlie stood with the revolver dangling at his side, encircled by the Thai gamblers—some so close that if his luck deserted him they would wear his brains home.

  Tua Hea, ever the opportunist, was taking bets, and fists full of money were being thrust at him and his underlings.

  A disconcerting number of wagers were on the revolver’s hammer finding the loaded chamber.

  The notion came to Charlie that he should lift the gun and squeeze the trigger until he sent the single bullet into a hapless onlooker and then escape in the ensuing chaos.

  But the Lizard’s scarred enforcer stood rigid as a statue, the automatic fixed on Charlie’s skull. There was no question of who would fire first.

  The bets were in and Tua Hea was clicking his fingers in front of Charlie’s face.

  “Come, farang, come.”

  The room was quiet again, the air ripe with the musky funk of testosterone.

  Charlie himself had reeked of it the night he’d watched the two women fight to the death.

  Karma’s creaking fucking wheel.

  “Lift the gun,” Tua Hea said.

  A command must’ve been sent from somewhere in Charlie’s brain because his right arm bent at the elbow and his hand rose and curled and he felt the cold steel of the gun barrel dock against his temple.

  His arm was shaking, and the gun tapped at his skull like a captive bird at a window pane.

  Tua Hea loomed large in his field of view, and the thought that this gurning sadist’s swollen yellow face could be the last thing he’d see forced Charlie’s eyes closed.

  “Play, farang! Play now!” the Lizard shouted.

  Charlie said, “Oh, bugger it,” and his finger tightened on the trigger and took an eternity to squeeze it.

  The click of the firing pin finding the empty chamber was the most beautiful thing Charlie Hepworth had ever heard.

  The gun fell from his hand and he opened his eyes onto a blur of crestfallen Asian faces.

  The Lizard stood glaring, his henchman still holding the automatic to Charlie’s head.

  Long seconds passed, then Tua Hea grunted something and the pistol was lowered.

  Charlie pushed his way through the crowd who retreated from him like sailors from a dead albatross, and found his way out the door into the mauve dawn.

  Charlie held onto the trunk of a tree and puked onto his shoes.

  When he was done he located the Vespa and used the last of his strength to kick start it.

  He made for the road as the sun rose above a limestone cliff and tickled the spiky heads of the baby pineapples.

  By Christ, he’d never be able to watch The Deer Hunter again.

  40

  Caroline’s mother, dressed in a tight crimson cocktail dress, sat on the living room sofa of the Cambridge house, legs tucked under her, reading Vogue and drinking a Drambuie. She appeared to be in her mid-forties. Sarah Dunne wore bright green mascara, false eyelashes that resembled tarantulas mating when she blinked, cool pink lipstick and a white base that made her look embalmed. She held a pastel colored Sobranie in the fork of her fingers.

  Her cheeks fell hollow as she sucked on the cigarette. She tilted her head back and exhaled twin trails of smoke through her fine nose, closed her eyes in a moment of rapture and said, “You know you’re playing this all wrong, baby?”

  “Am I?” Caroline said.

  “Uh huh. You’re being too much you.”

  “Then who must I be?” Caroline asked.

  “Slow down, sweet thing. Slow the hell down. Remember Michael’s just a man, honey. He’s not the first guy to trip over his dick. And he won’t be the last.”

  Her mother leaked smoke out the corner of her mouth, laughed a tinkly laugh and sipped her drink. There was waxy red lipstick on the rim of the thimble-sized liqueur glass.

  “He’s goddam loaded, so just pretend to forgive and forget and play him, baby,” she said, “Play him like a goddamn ban-jo.”

  Caroline woke, sweating, bewildered. For a moment she had no idea where she was.

  The bedroom was stifling, the aircon off, the zealous sun blazing through cracks in the heavy curtains. Her T-shirt and cotton leggings were soaked with sweat.

  She fumbled for the aircon remote and roused it, then left the bed and went into the bathroom and splashed her face with water that stayed warm no matter how long she ran the faucet.

  The dream disturbed her. The version of her mother that her subconscious had conjured was nothing like the real Sarah Dunne, who had been a genteel WASP, given to slightly dowdy coatdresses and the merest hint of make-up. An occasional gosh had been closest she’d come to profanity. Caroline had never seen her mother drink anything stronger than a glass of white wine and the image of her sucking on a cigarette had been frankly pornographic.

  Why had Caroline chosen to recast her mother in the distorted image of Liz Keller?

  She had no answer.

  Caroline went downstairs. Noey was cleaning the kitchen. She waid and Caroline reciprocated awkwardly, still feeling like an imposter.

  Grabbing a bottle of cold water from the fridge, she went out onto the deck. The heat was like a weight bearing down on her. She walked past the pool and down to the beach, hoping for a breeze.

  There was none and the sand was so hot she felt as if she were firewalking. She hurried to the ocean and stood up to her calves in the flat water the temperature of a bath.

  Images from the dream were still with her, buzzing around her head like bees.

  Caroline looked at the sun flaring off the glass of the neighboring house, and when she flashed back to Liz Keller drawing on a cigarette, laughing, blue smoke boiling around her head, she felt tainted, the tentacles of something unpleasant wrapping themselves around her.

  41

  Charlie sat huddled in the longtail boat, drenched, sick to his stomach. The wooden craft ramped a wave, briefly airborne, before thudding back into the ocean, sending a cascade of water over Charlie. He spluttered and his innards contracted and he would’ve puked if there were anything left in his gut after last night’s terrifying hijinks.

  His head had barely touched his pillow when he’d been woken by the warble of one of his phones. He would’ve left it, but the ringtone—“American Pie,” his little joke—warned him that it was the mobile reserved exclusively for his communication with Liz Keller, and he would ignore it at his peril.

  He fumbled for the phone, prodded at it, and croaked, “Yes?”

  “It’s on. You hearing me?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Right fucking now, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She was gone.

  He sat up gingerly, and the room rotated only a little. He’d voided most of the booze when he’d parked that little tiger outside the gambling den.

  Charlie stood and took himself gently to the bathroom. After he did his business at the squat toilet, he showered and brushed his teeth.

  As he was selecting suitable attire for the day ahead—shorts, flops and a cool viscose shirt in a shade of turquoise that brought out the blue in his eyes—he realized he was going to need money.

  His sphincter contracted.

  Sweet baby Jesus.

  He saw the Lizard’s thick yellow hand scooping up his winnings.

  Then Charlie flashed on something and, still naked, he dashed across to his front door. He opened it a crack, grimacing like Dracula at the
searing glare, and stuck out a hand and found his befouled espadrilles.

  He brought the right shoe inside and probed its interior. He wanted to say a prayer of thanks to any god that’d have him when his fingers touched two thousand baht bills, glued by his vomit to the inside of the shoe.

  He unfolded the notes and took them to the bathroom and gave them a wash, revealing the face of the Thai monarch.

  It was a little insurance policy of Charlie’s when he was on a winning streak, to always keep a little shoe money, as he called it.

  He dressed and went out to the Vespa, kicked it awake and took off through the congested morning streets.

  He avoided the tourist spots and rode west to a small Muslim village with wooden stilt-houses built right on the water. There was no beach here. An armada of longtail boats bobbed at anchor in a mangrove swamp,

  With their long proboscis-like prows and car engines mounted on poles, these craft were everywhere along Thailand’s coast. Many were used to ferry tourists. These were used for fishing.

  A group of men squatted in the shade of a rain tree, smoking roll-ups, watching his arrival.

  Charlie parked the Vespa and approached the fishermen. He did a quick read, and then addressed an older fellow who had a dirty cloth wound around his head. A man who would know his way about these waters, and wasn’t likely to spend his day in a haze of ya ba, the local meth.

  Charlie spoke in Thai, explaining what he needed.

  The man grunted and stood. He was a small as a child, and bandy, but strong limbed.

  They haggled and settled on a price that Charlie’s shoe money could accommodate, and Charlie kicked off his flops and followed the man to a boat, feeling the warm, unpleasant ooze of the mud between his toes.

  Charlie climbed up into the boat and sat on the bench that jutted from its curved frame, in the sparse shade of a torn canvas canopy.

  The boatman was at the tiller. He fired up the bawling engine, which got Charlie’s head throbbing again. The boat was engulfed in a noxious cloud of black smoke.

  The boatman revved the engine and the longtail surged and bucked like a bronco ready to burst from the gate.

  He’d shouted something to his cronies, then he’d gunned the engine and taken off, a spray of water drenching Charlie, who’d stared at the disappearing land and let the thought of all the lovely money coming his way ease his discomfort.

  Now, a miserable hour into the trip, the boatman was saying something, pointing a gnarled finger at the horizon.

  Charlie squinted through his Ray Bans and it took him a moment to see the single limestone cliff rising from the ocean.

  The locals called it the Devil’s Cock which seemed apt enough, all things considered.

  42

  Caroline left the beach and went back into the house. Noey was wielding the nozzle of a shrieking vacuum cleaner like a lance, sucking dust from the living room curtains.

  Escaping the noise, Caroline went upstairs to the bedroom

  She could hear the distant clatter of Michael’s fingers on his keyboard and had no wish to see him.

  Caroline found her phone and called for a car. She showered and washed her hair. After towel drying her bob she dressed in a white cotton shirt, tan slacks and sandals. She sat at the vanity and applied pale lip stick.

  The image of the garish whore’s face that she’d given to her poor dead mother in her dream floated before her again and she stood and crossed to the dresser.

  Without interrogating her motives she knelt and removed the vial of pills from the bottom drawer and put them in her pocket.

  The car was downstairs, her usual driver behind the wheel.

  She grabbed her bag from the counter and, on impulse, snagged a paperback copy of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love from the bookshelf near the door.

  Caroline went out to the car. She had no destination in mind.

  43

  Liz sat in the lotus position in the shade on the deck outside her bedroom doing the diaphragmatic breathing taught to her years ago by a now disgraced guru at an ashram in Goa.

  After her call to Charlie she had been seized by impatience, by the urge to get this fucking thing done.

  Not the way to approach this.

  An aura of anxiety would spook her prey, who needed to be reeled in slowly. Enticed into a trap so heady that he would be unable to resist her.

  So she’d sat and closed her eyes and taken control of her breathing. Slowing it down to a sibilant cycle through her nostrils. Stilling her mind, focusing only on the wash of her breath.

  She’d lost track of time.

  It was the grind of a car and the whine of its transmission that brought her back to the world.

  She rose from the mat on the tiles and crossed to her bedroom window, the one that allowed her a view of the neighboring house.

  Liz watched as Caroline, dressed in one of her little taupe outfits, settled herself in the back of a car and was driven away.

  Liz waited a minute and then found her phone and dialed.

  ***

  Michael sat at his computer working on a new resort using digital design software. He was expert at this and it was usually a process he enjoyed, creating a virtual representation of a structure years away from completion.

  But this morning he was distracted.

  He kept on seeing Liz Keller sliding the hooks of the earrings into her pierced lobes. Seeing her giving him that look through the smoke that swirled around her face.

  The nightmare of a year ago—Michael finding his wife close to death in the wrecked car, their child already dead in her womb while he still had the scent of another woman on his body—had scared him into a state of rigid fidelity.

  His guilt allowed him to accept that he’d have to wear a hairshirt for as long as Caroline chose. That she would decide when, and if, she’d forgive him.

  And the withdrawal of sex was one of her weapons.

  At first the extent of her injuries would have made intimacy impossible. But after months her body had mended itself and he’d expected that their lovemaking to resume.

  But it had not.

  Then there had been her opioid addiction and the time in rehab.

  She’d returned clean, but withdrawn. Impossible to reach.

  His suggestion that they come to Thailand had been a desperate attempt to draw them closer. The logic was sound: remove her from all that was familiar, and take her to a place at once exotic and slightly intimidating in its foreignness.

  Then along came Liz Keller.

  Michael saw Liz removing the fleck of tobacco from her tongue and he pushed himself away from his desk and went to the window and stared blindly out.

  When his cell rang and he saw her name he felt something occult at work and he knew should leave his phone to ring itself dead, but of course he didn’t.

  He lifted it and said, “Hi, Liz, and how are you this morning?”

  44

  Caroline sat in the back of the car staring out through her dark glasses at an unlovely stretch of road. Rows of squat breezeblock buildings with garish signs in Thai, black power lines sagging like strings of licorice over used car lots filled with cheap Asian compacts, cookie-cutter mini marts and sunblasted sidewalk eateries.

  The car, a new Honda, was clean and cool. The driver, Ban, was youngish, with a neat haircut and a crisply pressed shirt. He spoke just enough English to discuss destinations and rendezvous times, but not enough to encourage small talk.

  The traffic as always in Phuket was brutal. Caroline hadn’t yet mastered the layout of the island, but it seemed to be served by a few major roads, all of them overburdened, and under continual construction. A series of underpasses had been built in the last few years, and more were being dug. Meanwhile the traffic was as slow as a stream of slurry.

  When Ban had asked where she’d wanted to go she’d shrugged and said, “Central.”

  At least the aircon was Arctic and she could have a co
ffee. Maybe even slip into a cinema and doze while action heroes preened and cavorted.

  The traffic was now completely stalled. Three lanes of seething cars and trucks. Scooters were the only vehicles moving, their riders weaving between the stationary cars.

  Ban made a call on his cell. A few grunts and then he hung up.

  “Ahead accident, madame,” he said. “Not good.”

  Thai law seemed to require that the drivers involved in any type of collision not move their cars until the police arrived. Something to do with insurance. Which meant that even a fender bender left the road blocked.

  Caroline sighed and reached for the Raymond Carver. She read a story called The Calm.

  She finished the story and realized that she had absorbed almost nothing. There was a group of men in a barber shop. One of them told a hunting story.

  She looked out. They had barely moved.

  Caroline opened the book again and chose another story. But the words defiantly refused to make sense and she closed the paperback and stared out the window as the car inched forward.

  45

  For Michael Tate beauty was commonplace. His uber-privileged upbringing had left him more than a little jaded.

  Whatever his childhood had lacked in emotional stability, it hadn’t been short on the delights of luxury travel. By the time he was ten he’d skied in St. Moritz, holidayed on numerous occasions on the French Riviera and the Amalfi Coast, and grown bored with visiting the family’s private island off Bermuda.

  And the homes of his childhood had been filled with priceless artworks. At the age of six, on a visit to his paternal grandfather, Michael had been amused by a small, middle-period Miró, which had seemed like a garish child’s drawing to him. The next day it appeared on the wall of his bedroom in the apartment overlooking Central Park where it hung until he was twelve and he replaced it with a poster of Claudia Schiffer.