She remained still.
He sighed, stood up, took his wallet from his pants, removed the first bill he touched. It was 1,000 baht, or roughly $30 U.S., definitely more than he’d planned on tipping. He looked up at her, saw her eyes light, understood that anything less now would be a testament to her “performance,” so grudgingly handed it over. She placed it in her purse. “This is good,” he said. “I’d like, if you’re free, to see you again.”
“Spider,” she said. “Every day not Tuesday.”
“Oh, so I can just meet you there,” he said.
“If long day, cost more.”
“I am good with that.”
She smiled, turned to the door. “Bye-bye,” she said. “See you again.”
“Yes,” he said. “Most definitely.”
The next day, midmorning, he went to the Spider, found Boonsri sitting at the bar, bored, her head resting in her hand, her eyes half-open. He paid 5,000 baht for a full day.
They took a bus to Pattaya, then a taxi to Koh Larn Beach, where they sipped rum from a coconut and watched people navigate the waves. He continued his conversation from the previous night, regaling her with compliments about her country, her food, her looks, and then—buzzed and happy—he talked to her about his own life: Nebraska, hotel, Mary, the breakup. She nodded, sipped, stared out at the waves, smiled. Once in a while, she attempted to converse, but her syntax was jumbled, so he often misunderstood her, but still, he loved that she tried, and he loved that once in a while, when a child wandered too far out in the ocean, she grabbed at his wrist and squeezed.
“You want to swim?” he said. They sat in red-and-white reclining chairs. Above, the sky was a spectacular pane of blue, only a few cottony wisps interrupting its stride, and the sun struck the sand with soft insistence, allowing for momentary glints of sparkle.
“Oh no, no, no,” she said. “Not swim.”
“But you love the beach so much, I can tell,” he said. “I’d think you’d love to swim as well.”
She turned to the ocean. He put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re a bit warm,” he said. “Let me put some lotion on you.” He dug through his bag, found some sunblock, squeezed it into his hand, kneaded it in. “You know,” he said, “last night after you left, I got to thinking. I mean, it makes absolutely no sense that I never took a vacation. People need to recharge, right? And here we are, relaxing. How could anyone not want to do this?” He massaged the lotion into her arm. “And now I’m thinking of my life in Nebraska and all I can think of is how dreary it is. Why would anyone pick that life when this exists? John was right.”
“John?” she said.
“But then I also think that it’s America, that’s why. It’s the land of the free, you understand? It’s the best country in the world. People from everywhere want to be there. People from here want to be there. Imagine that. People from paradise want to be in a place that gets below zero and is flat and has a whole bunch of stuck-up people who think they’re better than everyone else just because of their job, or their house, or their looks. People in America aren’t friendly, Boonsri,” he said. “But I guess that doesn’t matter when you live in a superpower.”
She wiggled her shoulder, removed his hand.
“Too much?” he said.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“Anyway, what I’m saying is that maybe someday you’d want to come over there. You know, just to see it. To visit me. I have room. It would be nice. Fall is an especially good time. The trees are real pretty.”
He put the sunblock back in his bag, looked down at his belly—it humped slightly over his blue trunks.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t have much. But that doesn’t matter, ultimately, right? What matters is that people care for each other. That’s it.” He sipped his drink.
Boonsri touched his forearm, smiled, grabbed her coconut from the small table, took a sip. On the inside of her left thigh, a small bruise blossomed: oval, the center a dark purple, its outer rings yellow-green. On the top of her right knee was a crusting scab. Her arms, he noticed, were flecked with small cuts, what he’d first thought were mosquito bites. He touched one, rubbed it. It was crescent-shaped: a fingernail.
“Boonsri,” he said. She turned to him. “Are you hurt? Is someone hurting you?”
She stared out at the ocean. “Not hurt,” she said.
“You should stop this,” he said. “You understand? You can’t keep working at the Spider forever. You have to stop.”
“Not hurt,” she repeated, taking another sip.
“This isn’t a life for someone like you.”
“Mmm,” she said.
They had lunch, dinner, sex—frenzied this time, acrobatic—and when he dropped her back at the Spider, he said he wanted to spend the week with her if possible—he’d pay extra. She said, “Okay,” then waved goodbye.
The next day, and the next day, and the next day, and all the days until he left, he picked her up from the Spider and they did tourist things together—caves, trails, temples, massages. She showed him the landmarks of the city—Chinatown, Wat Arun, the Grand Palace—though to Leonard, everything looked similar—gold, red, spired, dense, foreign. When they visited MBK Center, the enormous mall in the middle of the city, he felt, finally, that he could breathe: the mega-commerce behind air-conditioned walls, the familiarity of it all, served as a welcome reprieve from everything he didn’t understand. They roamed, bought unnecessary things, stuck their feet in an aquarium full of flesh-eating fish, and though she didn’t speak much except to the Thai people around her, she laughed at his jokes and looked at him with bright, fawning eyes.
“You understand me,” he said. They sat in a mall café, sipping iced tea with condensed milk. The walls were a hazy yellow, punctuated with pictures of rural Thai landscapes. Somewhere nearby was the sound of gently running water. “I’ve had the best time of my life with you,” he said. “I mean it. It’s like all that shit with Mary’s just gone, poof.”
She ran a hand through her hair, grabbed her straw delicately with thumb and index finger, leaned over, sipped.
“I know we’ve only known each other a little while, but there’s a connection here, right? There’s a real connection.”
She didn’t respond but looked out at the people roaming the halls.
“I’m telling you—and I know you understand me, I see it all in your expressions—I’m telling you that you’re completely different from my ex. Not that you’re my girlfriend, I know. But you know. You just have more to offer. You’ve shown me around. You’re always upbeat. You smile so easily. You’re so, I don’t know, pleasant. I’m really learning things out here. I’m learning how unpleasant Mary was. It took that distance, you know? But man, she was a raging bitch. Anyway. I understand there’s a language barrier, I get that, but I’m telling you, even if you did speak English fluently, I’m positive we’d still have this connection.”
She blinked, said, “Leonard, you are good, good man.”
“You can see that, huh. I knew it. I knew you could see deeper into me. It’s a Thai thing, an Asian thing. They see souls and not all the meaningless surface bullshit. And you embody that. I swear.”
She breathed in deep, rummaged through her purse, brought out some lip gloss, applied it.
“And you’re so, so gorgeous. Did I tell you how gorgeous you are? God, everyone at the Spider, all those men, they can’t stop staring at you, and that makes me feel proud, because you picked me, well sort of.” He sipped his iced tea. “I’m sure you get asked out by guys all the time there, I mean, really asked out, because you’re not like the other girls there. You’re a totally different breed. You’re not some random slut. You just see this as a job, right?”
He thought again of Mary. If he’d ever said the words “random slut” around her, she would’ve pounced, telling him how degrading it was to label a woman that way, how derogatory. Why can’t a woman just enjoy sex? she’d ask. Why is it wrong for a woman to h
ave multiple partners? Why should men be seen as studs when they slept around? Why was sexism and misogyny so embedded in our language? Everything, he thought, had been so difficult with her. He hadn’t been able to share a meal with her without watching every damn word he’d said, and what had all that resulted in? It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to talk to her; it’s just that everything he’d said seemed so aggressively infused with wrongness.
“You’re like a person I want to know everything about,” he said. “And I’m telling you, Boonsri, I haven’t felt that way in a long, long time.”
And yet, given this declaration, he never asked her a single personal question. If he had, he would’ve discovered, through rickety but decipherable English, that she was from a village north of Chiang Mai, that her mother and father owned a small farm and some livestock, that one year, the monsoon season had left a hole on top of their cottage where rain and wind swirled and caused her father to cough. He’d discover that she’d left her village at sixteen to work at the Spider, that she sent most of her money home, that she’d been a virgin when she’d arrived, that the manager, a smoky, wrinkled woman named Intira Kurusattra, had taught her the art of pleasure through various pornographic videos, that the first time she’d had sex she’d felt her body crack in two. If he’d been particularly interested in her life—and if she’d eventually felt comfortable enough around him—she’d have told him of the New Yorker Andre Rule, a hairy, sweaty man who’d jumped on her stomach and batted her head and gouged her thigh with his teeth and who had, afterward, cried and cried while she lay helpless and bleeding and swollen, telling her he was sorry, that he couldn’t help these impulses, that it all stemmed from his childhood—his mother had abused him, see: he had all this rage.
But really: Leonard wasn’t interested in any of this. He was still hurt, and Boonsri, through her sex, her quiet, her paid-for agreeableness, calmed this hurt, made him think, momentarily, that happiness and contentment could exist, and that he didn’t have to be so alone.
In bed that evening, after sex, Leonard leaned over to her and whispered, “I can’t stop thinking about you.” He’d bought her for the entire night, had assured her a good tip. She lay on her side, away from him. He ran his hands through her hair. “This is what I’ve been missing out on my entire life. You.”
“Sleep now,” she said.
“Oh, I will.”
“Sleep now, yes,” she said.
“Yes. Yes, sleep well. In the morning, I’ll make you breakfast. Or I’ll take you to breakfast. No way to make it here, I guess.”
“I sleep now,” she said.
“Good night, Boonsri,” he said, circling her waist with his arms. “Sweet dreams.” He closed his eyes.
Before Mary, he hadn’t felt this particular feeling. He’d certainly had moments of joy, thrilling snippets of life that culminated in some endorphin-rich experience, but these moments were ephemeral, quickly replaced by despair, gloom, tedium, ennui. Even his childhood seemed defined by these small bursts, occasions when, for a quick second, he understood that a future existed, that what lay before him could, in fact, be awesome, that his suffocating cloud of dejection wouldn’t last. Then Mary had happened, and love had risen. But with that love had been an endless stream of doubt—Why me, why me, why me? And then everything had died. But this: This was perhaps less severe, but more whole; it coursed through him, pacified his stubborn ailments. Boonsri was satisfaction, comfort, safety. Lying with her, watching her breathe (small wheezes on the exhale, a slight snort on the inhale), he felt protective, strong, masculine; he felt in control, something he’d never experienced with Mary.
Boonsri stirred, turned on her back, opened her eyes. “No sleep?” she said.
“Shhh. I’m fine.”
“Sleep time,” she said, and closed her eyes again, her mouth, for a moment, twitching into a half smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s sleep time.”
On the final day of his visit, Leonard kissed Boonsri’s forehead at the train station. She was on her way back to her village to see her family.
He wrapped his arms around her. She bristled.
“Is this okay?” he said. “I know I didn’t buy today, but . . . do you need money? I just wanted to be here to say goodbye.” He stood back, looked at her. “I’m going to ask for more time off,” he said. “I’m going to come back in a couple months. I have a bunch of vacation they want me to take.”
She pushed at him. He let go. She brushed her hair away from her face. She looked inordinately tired, her face drawn and creased, her shoulders rolled forward. She forced a lopsided smile. “Leonard,” she said.
“Maybe I’ll just live out here for a bit,” he said. “I could get a job. All these English teachers. I could teach just as well as them, right? I don’t have a degree, but that shouldn’t matter. I know what a noun and verb and all that jazz is. I could do a good job.”
The train screeched into the station. Leonard reached for Boonsri again, grabbed her hand.
“I’ll write you as soon as I’m back,” he said. “Or. If you can do email. I have one now. America Online. It’s simple, but, never mind. It’s okay. I’ll write.”
Boonsri picked up her bag, walked to the train door marked 2.
“And what I said earlier,” Leonard said, shouting over the train’s noise, “about coming to the U.S. You should think about it.”
Boonsri, on the train steps, turned to Leonard, put her hands together, and bowed. She said, “Goodbye, Leonard. Good luck.” She waved, then walked up the steps.
“Talk to you soon!” Leonard said. He watched her through the train window. She looked for her seat. She sat. “I love you,” he said.
Soon, the train left, and he stood there, wondering what to do next.
Cell Four
Those aren’t real, Jane says, holding her nose. There’s no way.
Sure as fuck look real, Bryan says. And smell . . .
Dangling upside down—arms reaching for the floor, legs crisscrossed, feet bound together by rope—are corpses, fifty of them, men and women, all drenched in blood. A single green light roves madly across the bodies, illuminating the room like a strobe, and from everywhere, long, tortured moans rise up and down, up and down.
But where would the envelopes be? Jane asks.
Jaidee motions to his right, where, attached to the wall, are four carving knives: long and thin, with red wooden handles.
Inside? Jane says.
Jaidee nods.
But they look so real, Jane says.
The scoreboard reads:
# Envelopes Total: 12
# Envelopes Needed to Proceed: 10
CONTESTANTS WHO ATTACK WILL BE DISQUALIFIED
FIRST-AID KIT BEHIND CLOCK
The time clock counts down from 30 minutes.
But how can we be sure none of them are real? Jane says.
Nobody answers. Bryan thinks Jane is done. She has the wide-eyed, frenzied look of someone who’s on the brink.
We only have two more cells left before Martha, Bryan says, staring hard at Jane. Only two more.
He’s not concerned about Jaidee anymore; he’s proven surprisingly resilient. Bryan hasn’t talked much with him, but he thinks something is changing: this experience, fucked as it is, has kindled some sort of admiration on both their parts. The guy hasn’t complained, has hardly said anything though he’s been hit as many times as the others. He just gets through each cell, moves on to the next. There’s something awe-inspiring about that level of focus.
Bryan walks over to an inverted woman. He shakes her. Her eyes flick open. He jumps back, crouches down, looks at her face. They’re big dolls! he says, motioning for Jane to come near. He touches the woman’s cheek. He closes her eyes. They flick back open. They don’t look real up close.
But do we know if they’re all dolls? Jane says, crouching next to Bryan.
Come on, Jaidee says, heading for the knives. We’re wasting time.
28
min, 22 sec.
Okay, Jane says, breathing in through her nose, out through her mouth. I can do this.
Just don’t think too hard, Bryan says. This is all a joke, you know? This is all make-believe.
Okay, Jane says. Okay.
They begin.
Bryan starts with a man in the fourth row. The man is wearing a sailor outfit. His eyes are closed. A hat is on the ground, collecting blood. Bryan inhales a nose full of rot, takes the knife, raises it, thrusts it deep into the man’s abdomen. The man’s eyes open. Blood spurts from the wound, covering Bryan’s face.
More fucking blood, he thinks, wiping the goop from his eyes.
The entire room fills suddenly with screams. Bryan looks over at Jane, who’s holding her knife by her ear, ready to strike. She stands in front of an inverted elderly woman, her floral-print dress flowing over her torso and face, exposing a pair of light-green panties. Jane drops the knife, kneels down, covers her ears.
It’s not real! Victor shouts to her. Just remember what Bryan said!
Jane shakes her head. I can’t.
Okay. Just hold tight, then!
Bryan refocuses. He stabs the doll again, cuts from the sternum to the abdomen, pulls the chest cavity open, inspects. Inside, affixed to the outer shell, are a series of plastic tubes meant to look like intestines. But they’re too big. They look more like swollen sausages or vacuum hoses. He cuts into one. Blood spurts out, collects beneath his collar bone. He cuts until the blood stops squirting. Then he reaches inside the tube, searches, finds nothing.
Got one! he hears Victor shout. He looks over at his teammate. He’s waving a red envelope proudly, his face a spiderweb of gore.
Bryan inspects his doll again; her “innards” now dangle loosely from her body. Whoever formed these representations had no concept of actual internal structures, he thinks. For one, the heart is the size of a grape. For another, the “stomach” is above the lungs, which themselves look like two bunched-up pieces of steel wool. Everything is tied together with rope and tape and looks so shoddily done that for a moment Bryan is embarrassed for the Quigley House, wonders how such careless work could ever be labeled “terrifying.”
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